*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Mr. John Miller
Summary Sentence: This symposium on technology and the American Civil War comprises part of the Georgia Institute of Technology's contribution to the war’s sesquicentennial commemoration.
Full Summary: This symposium on technology and the American Civil War comprises part of the Georgia Institute of Technology's contribution to the war’s sesquicentennial commemoration. It will be jointly hosted by the School of History, Technology, and Society, the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, the Colonel Leslie Callahan Memorial Endowment, the College of Architecture, the Georgia Tech Library, the Georgia Battlefields Association, the Atlanta History Center, the National Civil War Naval Museum, and the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta.
Technology and the Civil WarTechnology as it was applied to the Civil War — in weapons, equipment, medicine, military operations, communications, and transport — will be the focus of the symposium. New or newly improved weapons affected the conduct of war at all levels. But that was only part of the story. Technological changes remote from the battlefield also shaped the conduct of war. Agricultural mechanization permitted larger armies to be fed; growing industries provided them not only with arms but with other supplies as well; steam-powered transport helped deploy and sustain them. In addition, new techniques of food preservation and medical care conditioned the outcome of the war. Finally photography, telegraphy, new signal devices, and aerial observation from fixed balloons improved communications, both military and civilian.
Nevertheless, this was a period of transition to the full-fledged industrialized warfare of World War I: horses still mattered more than steam engines in the nineteenth century and more soldiers still died from disease in the Civil War than from wounds sustained. This Symposium will take the measure of technological innovation's impact on warfare at a point when the Industrial Revolution had been underway for a century.
Agenda (for full details, visit related link below):
