The Longue Duree of Abbott Payson Usher

Abstract

A History of Mechanical Inventions by the economic historian Abbott Payson Usher, first published in 1929, pioneered the modern study of the history of technology. Its meticulous attention to the details of technological evolution give it the appearance of a narrow "nuts-and-bolts" history, now long out of fashion. But, it actually took on the human and moral dimensions of technology in the broadest way. The book's introductory chapters lay out an ambitious agenda for history, embracing issues of novelty, technological determinism, and historical causation—issues that remain central to the field today. Usher's book was very much a product of the Machine Age and of the moral questions it raised about human freedom in the face of technology. Advocating human agency in history, Usher was driven by a "material sense of things" and by ideas from contemporary revolutions in relativity, quantum theory, and Gestalt psychology, theories asserting a new more intimate relationship between humans and the cosmos.

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