last year of the war i i had had given union cavalry and some union infantry a great advantage in tactical combat and as you said, lincoln was instrumental in getting john ericsson the contract for the monitor, and spent a great deal of time at the navy yard with john dahlgren, inventor of the foremost naval gun, watching the testing of the naval guns at the washington naval yard. he also went up to west pointe in june of 1862 and watched the test of parent rifle cannon at the cold spring army, which is just across the hudson river from west pointe. so lincoln was very much open and on top of the changing technology of warfare, and did, in fact, play a creative role in getting more advanced weaponry for the union army and navy. what about davis? davis is less hands-on than lincoln but i think every bit as interested in the potential of technology, and innovation and indeed in almost any conflict in history the underdog is the one who is most likely to be willing to try an
of spencer repeating carbines and rifles in 1862 which by the last year of the war i i had had given union cavalry and some union infantry a great advantage in tactical combat and as you said, lincoln was instrumental ain getting john ericsson the contract for the monitor, and spent a great deal of time at the navy yard with john dahlgren, inventor of the foremost naval gun, watching the testing of the naval guns at the washington naval yard. he also went up to west pointe in june of 1862 and watched the test of parent rifle cannon at the cold spring army, which is just across the hudson river from west pointe. so lincoln was very much open and on top of the changing technology of warfare, and did, in fact, play a creative role in getting more advanced weaponry for the union army and navy. what about davis? davis is less hands-on than lincoln but i think every bit as interested in the potential of technology, and innovation and indeed in almost any conflict in history the
professor david mendel talks about the experience of the crews aboard one of the first ironclads. this is about 50 minutes. well, i ve got to say i was so excited when our next speaker contacted me and wanted to be part of what we re doing today. and david mindell has been a friend of the uss monitor for quite some time. and i m so pleased that his book has been reissued with a brand new name, right up here. we have it in the gift shop. i ve got to admit, i was an english literature nerd. and so the fact that he used so much melville and hawthorne in his book just made me so happy. well, david mindell is a historian and electrical engineer. and he is the dibner professor of the history of engineering and manufacturing and professor of aeronautics and mast of aeronautics at mit. we re not sure when he sleeps either. he is also director of mit s program on technology and science and interdisciplinary department. he is an expert on human machine relationships in broad techni
much melville and hawthorne in his book just made me so happy. well, david mindell is a historian and electrical engineer. and he is the dibner professor of the history of engineering and manufacturing and. we re not sure when he sleeps either. he is also director of mit s program on technology and science and interdisciplinary department. he is an expert on human machine relationships in broad technical, social, and historical context. now, for years he s been combining engineering a ining a historical research into the evolution of humans relationships to machines. his book digital apollo, human and machine and space flight examined the computers, automation, and software in the apollo moon landings, their effects on human performance. his first book, war technology and experience aboard the uss monitor, now reissued at iron coffin, explored personal issues and dimensions of mechanization in the u.s. civil war and was awarded the sally hacker prize by the society of
very, very geometric and the kind of very modern, modern in the capital m sense, modernist sense of the ship, which is one of the things that made it so striking to people. it really was. you would not have been surprised if the monitor was built in the 1920s and not in the 1860s. that s almost how people thought of it. lastly, i want to talk just a little bit about all the things that have gone on. and there s been a lot of war in the last 20 years, since the first gulf war. and a lot of those same questions that came around the monitor were raised. this is, of course, not from them but from before. this is from world war ii. late world war ii. and it s an advertisement from general electric depicting the air war over europe, which was a pretty brutal and, in some ways, very monitor-like experience for the crews aboard the b-17s. and you can see the introduction of electronics and electronic technology, the idea is without it, everybody s flying all around and it s a big m