University

This is the home page for the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), an American organization interested in studying technology in the past and its relationship to culture, politics, economics, art and society. The site has three subsections: one provides information about the organization, its membership and leadership, informing visitors how to sign up to become a member, and displaying updated details about prizes, awards and meetings. Two, covers the publications of the organization, specifically the SHOT newletter and booklet series as well as Technology and Culture, published by SHOT and the Johns Hopkins University Press. The latter is available on line only to subscribers. The last subsection, three, lists materials (mostly on the Web) of interest to historians of technology, such as syllabi from history of technology courses and the sites of other institutions dedicated to the history of technology.

The Karolinska Institute's History of Biomedicine web site is a massive list of links grouped according to period, region and field. Researchers will find multiple links to texts, essays and exhibits in: History of Diseases, General Museums, Libraries & Special Collections, Indigenous Cultures, Mesopotamian Medicine, Ancient Egyptian Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Traditional Indian Medicine, Classical Islamic Biomedicine, and in Western Biomedicine for the Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern and Modern Periods. Researchers can also learn more about the Karolinska Instutute and Library and will find links to other helpful resources in the history of medicine.

This site promotes the use of case studies in the teaching of science, something that the authors claim is not yet common. While the site is not particularly historically oriented, some of the case studies they present for use in a classroom are drawn from the history of science, technology and medicine. For instance, there is a short case study of an appearance of "childbed fever" in the nineteenth century and how doctors discovered and understood the disease. All of these case studies are accesible; intended for a junior high, high school or college audience. Concentrating on teaching contemporary scientific fields to students, this site also contains some links to other case study sites and general sites that may focus on the history of science.

This site introduces and gives a brief history of this well-known center at the University of Pittsburgh, which is clearly oriented more toward the philosophy of science than the history of science itself. Two of the center's publications, the Pittsburgh Series in Philosophy and History of Science and the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Series in the Philosophy and History of Science, cover topics germane to those interested in the history of science. There is also a link to the University's Archives of Scientific Philosophy that covers the twentieth century and includes famous philosophers of science such as Carnap and Wittgenstein.

This site serves as the home page for both the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Manchester. Most of the site's content relates to the physical center and its people and students. There are faculty and student lists, event listings, programs and courses, as well as links to the libraries of the University of Manchester and the five museums having to do with science and technology near the university. Web visitors interested in the history of science and technology may find the online projects on the site useful: one is a catalog of historical scientific objects held by the university.

This is an in-depth site with excerpts and full text works in the history of chemistry, including works by Francis Bacon, Niels Bohr, Robert Boyle, John Dalton, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Michael Faraday, Antoine Lavoisier, Dmitrii Mendeleev, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Priestley, and Ernest Rutherford among many others. Also included are links to brief biographies of many key chemists. The site has a search engine, it also allows for easy navigation alphabetically or by subject matter within chemistry (i.e. biochemistry). The site also includes a glossary of chemical terms, a calendar of important events in the history of chemistry and links to related pages.

This excellent, comprehensive site examines the life and work of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), as well as Renaissance science. The site has scores of images from Galileo's notebooks and pictures of his scientific instruments, and there are long notes about important related scientists such as Copernicus and Kepler, with illustrations of their theories. In addition to the scientific materials, there are short essays introducing members of Galileo's family, his patrons, associated institutions and universities, as well as more general historical context (e.g., the Inquisition). Bibliographies accompany the essays, and often a photograph or two of portraits, illustrations or manuscript pages. A portrait gallery contains about 30 other images of the key figures discussed on the site. An extensive timeline of Galileo's life, a searchable database of information on him and his world, an excellent glossary, and three maps of Europe, Italy and Florence round out the site.

The History of Technology Research Unit is located in the School of Conservation Sciences at Bournemouth University. This site is particularly interesting for its collection and presentation of the oral history of technology in the twentieth century. The authors had an ongoing project on the history of military electronics, and had conducted dozens of interviews on various consumer and industrial technologies which changed the lives of many in the last century. An online entry form allows visitors to record their own memories of using twentieth-century technologies such as the washing machine and television. The site also contains a geographical map of museums dedicated to preserving old machines and technologies.

This site from the University of Virginia Health System Historical Collection, provides documents relating to the last chapter of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, a terrible example of racism and ethical lapses by officials of the United States Public Health Service. For forty years, almost 400 African-American males were denied proper treatment for syphilis as part of a controlled study. A commission was finally put together in the 1990s to deal with the legacy of this experiment, leading to a presidential apology in 1997. The commission's report, as well as the president's apology, are reprinted on the site.