Exploding Steamboats, Senate Debates, and Technical Reports: The Convergence of Technology, Politics, and Rhetoric in the Steamboat Bill of 1838

by R. John Brockmann

By 1838, over two thousand Americans had been killed and many hundreds injured by exploding steam engines on steamboats. After calls for a solution in two State of the Union addresses, a Senate Select Committee met to consider an investigative report from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, the first federally funded investigation into a technical.

158 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

Reviews

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

i mean, this is not entirely a book that you would like, read, as much as peek into like a closet of discarded but entirely valid documentation of bygone human existence BUT this book owns, steamboat explosions were a real infrastructure thing and also a crisis of technology/regulation/human relationship to the material realm. Also, people wrote and published a lot of music about steamboat explosions. please google "I Do Not Want To Be Drowned: a song respectfully dedicated to the survivors of the wreck of the GOLDEN-GATE" and other hits