A Material World

by Robert Friedel

Published in conjunction with a major exhibit at the National Museum of American History, A Material World investigates the substance of the artifacts of American history. It surveys the vast array of materials and "stuffs" that make up our modern environment, and reveals how these substances have changed due to a complex set of factors ranging from shifting resource availability and new methods of synthesis, to swings in taste, fashion, and social psychology. It traces the changing substance of American artifacts from predominantly natural elements such as wood, clay and stone, to manufactured substances such as steel, to those whose creation entails complex chemical processesóspecialty alloys, celluloids, reinforced resins and artificial polymers.
Robert Friedel's book examines a number of human accomplishments such as the fabulous cable span of the George Washington Bridge and the evolution of the automobile, always placing them in a historical and technological context. It gently enquires about our synthetic world, about what our striving for constant novelty and artifice says about our most basic values. A Material World is a provoking study of how material choices reflect not only current economics and the state of technology, but also subjective matters of status and cultural value. It shows that the history of these evolving substances is an inseparable and integral part of the shaping of the modern technological, social and political world.

72 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 1988

About the author

Robert is a professor at the University of Maryland. His latest book is a wide ranging survey of Western Technology since the Middle Ages, A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millenium. Before going to the University of Maryland, he was a historian at the Smithsonian Institution and at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He collaborated on projects for museums and agencies in Calcutta, Dheli, Stockholm, Munich and Pittsburgh. Robert held fellowships at the Smithsonian, the Hagley Museum, The American Antiquarian Society, the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science.