"Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born." —ALAN KAY

This seminar will cover the history of technology and engineering from the time of the earliest civilizations up to the age of steam. Civilization itself could not exist without technology; canals, city walls, transport of materials, metalwork. All were the result of technical breakthroughs that led to the construction of the civilizations of Sumer and Egypt, and later supported the advances of the classical world of Greece and Rome.

However, we will not focus exclusively on the technology, but also on the social context in which it developed and was used, and the social and economic purposes it served. We will examine various means of transport, by land and by sea; water, wind and muscle power (both human and animal); feats of engineering and imagination, aesthetic and functional, which still astound us today; and the interplay of these technologies with their cultures and how technology spurred science and science technology.

Suggested Reading:
• K.D. White, Greek and Roman Technology, London, 1984 (a serious study of the subject)
• L. Sprague De Camp, The Ancient Engineers, 1963 (reprinted 1993) (easy reading)
• Lynn White, Medieval Religion and Technology, Collected Essays, Los Angeles, 1968 (reprinted 1986) (presumes some knowledge of the history of the period, but not about technology)