2. Husbandry and huswifery in the Colonies -- Types of farms in the Colonial period -- Technological system of Colonial agriculture -- Conclusion : the myth of self-sufficiency -- 3. Colonial artisans -- The apprenticeship system and labor scarcity -- Printshops and printers -- Mills, millwrights, and millers -- Iron foundries and iron workers -- II. Industrialization -- 4. The early decades of industrialization -- Oliver Evans, steam engines, and machine shops -- Eli Whitney and the cotton gin -- The armament industry and the American system of manufacture -- Samuel Slater and the factory system -- 5. Transportation revolutions -- Transportation difficulties -- Toll roads and entrepreneurs -- Canal building and state financing -- Steamboats : steam power and state power -- Railroads : completing a national transportation system -- 6. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and engineers -- The patent system : the public history of invention -- Inventors : changes between 1820 and 1920 -- Entrepreneurs : innovation and diffusion -- Engineers : changes between 1820 and 1920 -- 7. Industrial society and technological systems -- Industrialization, dependency, and technological systems -- The telegraph system -- The railroad system -- The petroleum system -- The telephone system -- The electric system -- The character of industrialized society -- 8. Daily life and mundane work -- Farmers and unexpected outcomes -- Skilled and deskilled workers -- Unskilled workers -- Housewives and house servants -- Conclusion : was industrialization good or bad for workers? -- 9. American ideas about technology -- Technology and associated ideas -- Precursers to industrialization -- Technology and romanticism -- Acceptance of romanticism by advocates of industrialization -- Technology and art -- Conclusion : the cultural meanings of technology -- III. Twentieth-century technologies : blessing or curse? -- 10. Automobiles and automobility -- Who invented the automobile? -- Henry ford and the mass-produced automobile -- Alfred P. Sloan and the mass-marketed American automobile -- Automobility and the road system before 1945 -- Automobility and the road system after 1945 -- The unexpected consequences of automobility -- 11. Taxpayers, generals, and aviation -- The early days of aircraft and the aircraft industry -- World War II : a turning point -- The military-industrial-academic complex -- Civilian spin-offs and the race into space -- Conclusion : costs and benefits of military sponsorship -- 12. Communications technologies and social control -- Wireless telegraphy -- Wireless telephony -- Government regulation of wireless communication -- Wireless broadcasting : radio -- Television -- Electronic components : the vacuum tube and the transistor -- Computers -- 13. Biotechnology -- Science, technology, and technoscience -- Hybrid corn -- Penicillin -- The birth control pill.

For over 250 years American technology has been regarded as a unique hallmark of American culture and an important factor in American prosperity. Despite this, American history has rarely been told from the perspective of the history of technology. A Social History of American Technology fills this gap by surveying the history of American technology from the tools used by the earliest native inhabitants to the technological systems - cars and computers, aircraft and antibiotics - we are familiar with today. Cowan makes use of the most recent scholarship to explain how the unique characteristics of American cultures and American geography have affected the technologies that have been invented, manufactured, and used throughout the years. She also focuses on the key individuals and ideas that have shaped important technological developments.

The text explains how various technologies have affected the ways in which Americans work, govern, cook, transport, communicate, maintain their health, and reproduce.