Download or read book Philosophy of railroads and other essays written by T.C. Keefer and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1972-12-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: T.C. Keefer's Philosophy of Railroads is one of the greatest hymns of praise to the age of iron and steel ever written in North America. Better than any other document it shows why railroads were seen as the arteries of the Canadian nation during the nineteenth century, This volume brings four of Keefer's works together with a brilliant introduction by H.V. Nelles. It includes Philosophy of Railroads, originally published in 1849; a lecture in which Keefer outlines his hopes for the development of the Montreal region and in passing reveals the philosophical foundation upon which they rest; the Sequel to the Philosophy of Railroads, a fascinating illustration of the problems the first engineers faced in raising their trade from a scramble for money and prestige into a legitimate profession; and a final essay on railways written in the early 1860s – expressing Keefer's disillusionment at the failure of railways to fulfill their promise. At one level these essays say a great deal about railroads and about Canadian society in the nineteenth century; at another they represent a cycle, from enthusiastic idealism to realism, in one man's thought; and at yet another they introduce us to the historian's problem of establishing relationships between ideas and the material conditions within which they appear.
Download or read book Philosophy of Railroads and Other Essays written by Thomas C. Keefer and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Cover"--"Contents"--"Introduction" -- "Part 1: Philosophy of Railroads" -- "Philosophy of Railroads" -- "Conclusion of Philosophie des chemins de fer" -- "Part 2: Montreal" -- "A lecture on Montreal from the pamphlet, Montreal and the Ottawa" -- "Part 3: A sequel to the Philosophy of Railroads" -- "Extracts from lectures on civil engineering" -- "Petition to the legislative assembly" -- "The Honourable John Ross before the legislative council" -- "Letters of explanation in the Montreal Herald" -- "Editorial from the Toronto Leader" -- "Keefer's reply in the Globe" -- "Editorial from the Leader" -- "Part 4: Railways" -- "A chapter on Railways from 'Travel and Transportation'
Download or read book Philosophy of Railroads and Other Essays written by Thomas C. Keefer and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Railway Journey written by Wolfgang Schivelbusch and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society. But this was not always the case; as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change—the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness—was very much a learned behavior. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel. As a history of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city. Belonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change. Now updated with a new preface, The Railway Journey is an invaluable resource for readers interested in nineteenth-century culture and technology and the prehistory of modern media and digitalization.
Download or read book Railroads and the Transformation of China written by Elisabeth Köll and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present. China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion. The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.
Download or read book Philosophy of Railroads Published by Order of the Directors of the St Lawrence and Ottawa Grand Junction Railway Company written by Thomas C. Keefer and published by . This book was released on 1853 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nothing Like It In the World written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-11-06 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.
Download or read book The Philosophy of the Western written by Jennifer L. McMahon and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great German novelist Thomas Mann implored readers to resist the persistent and growing militarism of the mid-twentieth century. To whom should we turn for guidance during this current era of global violence, political corruption, economic inequality, and environmental degradation? For more than two millennia, the worldÕs great thinkers have held that the ethically Ògood lifeÓ is the highest purpose of human existence. Renowned political philosopher Fred Dallmayr traces the development of this notion, finding surprising connections among Aristotelian ethics, Abrahamic and Eastern religious traditions, German idealism, and postindustrial social criticism. In Search of the Good Life does not offer a blueprint but rather invites readers on a cross-cultural quest. Along the way, the author discusses the teachings of Aristotle, Confucius, Nicolaus of Cusa, Leibniz, and Schiller, in addition invoking more recent writings of Gadamer and Ricoeur, as guideposts and sources of hope during our troubled times. Among contemporary themes Dallmayr discusses are the role of the classics in education, proper and improper ways of spreading democracy globally, the possibility of transnational citizenship, the problem of politicized evil, and the role of religion in our predominantly secular culture. Dallmayr restores the notion of the good life as a hallmark of personal conduct, civic virtue, and political engagement, and as the road map to enduring peace. In Search of the Good Life seeks to arouse complacent and dispirited citizens, guiding them out of the distractions of shallow amusements and perilous resentments in the direction of mutual learning and civic pedagogyÑa direction that will enable them to impose accountability on political leaders who stray from fundamental ethical standards.
Download or read book Engineering Development and Philosophy written by Steen Hyldgaard Christensen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This inclusive, cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering, development, and culture. It offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary perspectives on how the philosophies of today’s cultural triumvirate—American, European and Chinese—are shaped and given nuance by the cross-fertilization of engineering and development. Scholars from the humanities and social sciences as well as engineers themselves reflect on key questions that arise in this relational context, such as how international development work affects the professional views, identities, practice and ethics of engineers. The first volume to offer a systematic and collaborative study that cuts across continental boundaries, the book delineates the kinds of skills and competences that tomorrow’s engineering success stories will require, and analyzes fascinating aspects of the interplay between engineering and philosophy, such as how traditionally Chinese ways of thinking can influence modern engineering practice in the world’s most populous country. China’s problematic mix of engineering woes and wonders, from the high-profile crash on its high-profile rail network to its ‘bird’s nest’ Olympic stadium, adds to the urgency for reform, while Europe’s Enlightenment-informed legal frameworks are contrasted with Chinese mechanisms in their governance of the field of nanotechnology, a crucial element of future technical evolution. Fascinating and compelling in equal measure, this volume addresses one of the topics at the leading edge of humanity’s quest to survive, and to thrive.
Download or read book Harriman vs Hill written by Larry Haeg and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1901, the Northern Pacific was an unlikely prize: a twice-bankrupt construction of the federal government, it was a two-bit railroad (literally—five years back, its stock traded for twenty-five cents a share). But it was also a key to connecting eastern markets through Chicago to the rising West. Two titans of American railroads set their sights on it: James J. Hill, head of the Great Northern and largest individual shareholder of the Northern Pacific, and Edward Harriman, head of the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific. The subsequent contest was unprecedented in the history of American enterprise, pitting not only Hill against Harriman but also Big Oil against Big Steel and J. P. Morgan against the Rockefellers, with a supporting cast of enough wealthy investors to fill the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. The story, told here in full for the first time, transports us to the New York Stock Exchange during the unfolding of the earliest modern-day stock market panic. Harriman vs. Hill re-creates the drama of four tumultuous days in May 1901, when the common stock of the Northern Pacific rocketed from one hundred ten dollars a share to one thousand in a mere seventeen hours of trading—the result of an inadvertent “corner” caused by the opposing forces. Panic followed and then, in short order, a calamity for the “shorts,” a compromise, the near-collapse of Wall Street brokerages and banks, the most precipitous decline ever in American stock values, and the fastest recovery. Larry Haeg brings to life the ensuing stalemate and truce, which led to the forming of a holding company, briefly the biggest railroad combine in American history, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the deal, launching the reputation of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as the “great dissenter” and President Theodore Roosevelt as the “trust buster.” The forces of competition and combination, unfettered growth, government regulation, and corporate ambition—all the elements of American business at its best and worst—come into play in the account of this epic battle, whose effects echo through our economy to this day.
Download or read book Railroads Triumphant written by Albro Martin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-02 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1789, when the First Congress met in New York City, the members traveled to the capital just as Roman senators two thousand years earlier had journeyed to Rome, by horse, at a pace of some five miles an hour. Indeed, if sea travel had improved dramatically since Caesar's time, overland travel was still so slow, painful, and expensive that most Americans lived all but rooted to the spot, with few people settling more than a hundred miles from the ocean (a mere two percent lived west of the Appalachians). America in effect was just a thin ribbon of land by the sea, and it wasn't until the coming of the steam railroad that our nation would unfurl across the vast inland territory. In Railroads Triumphant, Albro Martin provides a fascinating history of rail transportation in America, moving well beyond the "Romance of the Rails" sort of narrative to give readers a real sense of the railroad's importance to our country. The railroad, Martin argues, was "the most fundamental innovation in American material life." It could go wherever rails could be laid--and so, for the first time, farms, industries, and towns could leave natural waterways behind and locate anywhere. (As Martin points out, the railroads created small-town America just as surely as the automobile created the suburbs.) The railroad was our first major industry, and it made possible or promoted the growth of all other industries, among them coal, steel, flour milling, and commercial farming. It established such major cities as Chicago, and had a lasting impact on urban design. And it worked hand in hand with the telegraph industry to transform communication. Indeed, the railroads were the NASA of the 19th century, attracting the finest minds in finance, engineering, and law. But Martin doesn't merely catalogue the past greatness of the railroad. In closing with the episodes that led first to destructive government regulation, and then to deregulation of the railroads and the ensuing triumphant rebirth of the nation's basic means of moving goods from one place to another, Railroads Triumphant offers an impassioned defense of their enduring importance to American economic life. And it is a book informed by a lifelong love of railroads, brimming with vivid descriptions of classic depots, lavish hotels in Chicago, the great railroad founders, and the famous lines. Thoughtful and colorful by turn, this insightful history illuminates the impact of the railroad on our lives.
Download or read book Official Report written by American Association of School Administrators and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Philosophy of Railroads written by Thomas C. Keefer and published by Armour and Ramsay ; Toronto : A.H. Armour and Company. This book was released on 1850 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Railroads written by Robert E. Gallamore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overregulated and displaced by barges, trucks, and jet aviation, railroads fell into decline. Their misfortune was measured in lost market share, abandoned track, bankruptcies, and unemployment. Today, rail transportation is reviving. American Railroads tells a riveting story about how this iconic industry managed to turn itself around.
Download or read book Making Spaces through Infrastructure written by Marian Burchardt and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infrastructures are fundamental means through which societies create spaces, but little is known about the precise ways in which this occurs. How have infrastructures animated certain understandings of space? How do infrastructures stabilize, or undermine, the spatial formats in which we live, which shape our everyday practices and which regulate access to services and resources? And, conversely, how do spaces frame the ways infrastructural provision is organized? How do existing spaces shape infrastructural development and the scope and forms of access to vital services such as transport and water? In this volume, historians and sociologists draw on a range of fascinating case studies and provide compelling answers to these questions. Exploring, among others, the provision of irrigation water in nineteenth-century Los Angeles, the invention of airport transit zones, and the infrastructural practices of homeless people in Berlin, the book demonstrates how the making of spaces through infrastructure is deeply political. Intent on revealing uneven geographies of provision and hierarchies of access, the contributors highlight how infrastructures are products of global entanglements.
Download or read book Proceedings of the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association written by National Education Association of the United States. Department of Superintendence and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Great Railroad Revolution written by Christian Wolmar and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America was made by the railroads. The opening of the Baltimore & Ohio line -- the first American railroad -- in the 1830s sparked a national revolution in the way that people lived thanks to the speed and convenience of train travel. Promoted by visionaries and built through heroic effort, the American railroad network was bigger in every sense than Europe's, and facilitated everything from long-distance travel to commuting and transporting goods to waging war. It united far-flung parts of the country, boosted economic development, and was the catalyst for America's rise to world-power status. Every American town, great or small, aspired to be connected to a railroad and by the turn of the century, almost every American lived within easy access of a station. By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a latticework of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads and the nation started to forget them. In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and the fall of the greatest of all American endeavors, and argues that the time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.