Scientists & swindlers : consulting on coal and oil in America, 1820-1890
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Scientists & swindlers : consulting on coal and oil in America, 1820-1890
（John Hopkins studies in the history of technology）
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
- : hbk
- Other Title
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Scientists and swindlers : consulting on coal and oil in America, 1820-1890
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In this impressively researched and highly original work, Paul Lucier explains how science became an integral part of American technology and industry in the nineteenth century. Scientists and Swindlers introduces us to a new service of professionals: the consulting scientists. Lucier follows these entrepreneurial men of science on their wide-ranging commercial engagements from the shores of Nova Scotia to the coast of California and shows how their innovative work fueled the rapid growth of the American coal and oil industries and the rise of American geology and chemistry. Along the way, he explores the decisive battles over expertise and authority, the high-stakes court cases over patenting research, the intriguing and often humorous exploits of swindlers, and the profound ethical challenges of doing science for money. Starting with the small surveying businesses of the 1830s and reaching to the origins of applied science in the 1880s, Lucier recounts the complex and curious relations that evolved as geologists, chemists, capitalists, and politicians worked to establish scientific research as a legitimate, regularly compensated, and respected enterprise.
This sweeping narrative enriches our understanding of how the rocks beneath our feet became invaluable resources for science, technology, and industry.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Money for Science
Part I: Coal
1. Geological Enterprise
2. The Strange Case of the Albert Mineral
3. The American Sciences of Coal
4. Mining Science
Part II: Kerosene
5. The Technological Science of Kerosene
6. The Kerosene Cases
Part III: Petroleum
7. The Rock Oil Report
8. The Elusive Nature of Oil and Its Markets
9. The Search for Oil and Oil-Finding Experts
10. California Crude
Epilogue: Americanization of Science
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
