Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society
The Life of New Materials
A conference at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (Philadelphia, PA) and the Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE) on November 17-18, 2011
Thursday, November 17 – Chemical Heritage Foundation
1:00 PM: Opening Remarks—Ron Brashear and Phil Scranton
1:15-2:30 PM: Session 1, Remaking Nature
Chair: Carin Berkowitz (Chemical Heritage Foundation)
Anthony Acciavatti (Princeton University), "Do Industrialists Dream of Soy Sheep?"
Mary Brooks (Consultant/Monument Fellow, York Museums Trust), "Inventing and Forgetting New Substitute Fibres: Understanding the Biographies of Regenerated Protein Fibres"
2:30 PM, Coffee Break
3:00-4:45 PM: Session 2, Users and Re-users
Chair: Ron Brashear (Chemical Heritage Foundation)
Augustin Cerveaux (University of Strasbourg and Chemical Heritage Foundation), "Changes in Paint and Varnish Chemistry and Technology as an 'Ontological Shift of Materials': The Life History of Du Pont's "DuLux" (1900-1932)"
Grace Ong Yan (Moore College of Art and Design), "WRAPPING: The Mutable Life of Aluminum through Reynolds Metals' Marketing"
Mei-Ling Israel (Bard Graduate Center) and Casey Mathern (Bard Graduate Center), "Adhering to Impermanence: (Re)positioning the Post-It"
5:00-5:45 PM: Summary
Commentator: Amy Slaton (Drexel University)
5:45 PM, Reception
6:30 PM, Dinner – by invitation
Friday, November 18 – The Hagley Library
7:30 AM: Buses Depart for Hagley
8:30-9:00 AM: Continental Breakfast
9:00- 10:45 AM: Session 3, Creativity
Chair: Roger Horowitz (Hagley Museum and Library)
Tatiana Ausema (University of Delaware), "Influence of Acrylic Resin Paint on Color Field Painting"
Andrew Bozanic (University of Delaware), "From Rotor Blades to Resonant Bodies: The Space Age Use of Fiberglass in Ovation Acoustic Guitars"
Claire Leymonerie (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Institute for the History of Aluminum), "Aluminum at the 1937 Paris World's Fair: How Aluminum Became a Material for Decorative Arts"
10:45 AM, Break
11 AM-12:45 PM: Session 4, Failures
Chair: TBA
Martha Gardner (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences), "'The Hexachlorophene Story': the Invention, Popularity and Danger of the First Synthetic Chemical for Use as a Germicide in Soap, 1939-1973"
Sharra Vostral (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), "Organisms & Objects: The Technological Health Crisis of Toxic Shock Syndrome & Rely Tampons"
David Brock (Chemical Heritage Foundation), "MIT's Superconducting Cryotron, SRI's Tunnel-Effect Vacuum Tetrode, and Merck's Silicon Epitaxial Oscillator: Materials Innovation in Early Microcircuitry, 1954-1962"
12:45-2:00 PM, Lunch
2:00-3:15 PM, Session 5, Strategy
Chair: Phil Scranton (Rutgers University/Hagley Museum and Library)
Benjamin Gross (Princeton University), "From Carrots to Clocks: How Liquid Crystals Left the Laboratory"
Joris Mercelis (Ghent University), "Positioning Bakelite: Leo Baekeland's Vision for Industrial Plastics"
3:15 PM, Coffee Break
3:30-4:45 PM, Session 6, Transnational Transfers
Chair: Lynn Catanese (Hagley Museum and Library)
Sara Wermiel (Independent Scholar, Visiting Scholar, MIT) "Ancient Materials Beget Skyscrapers: Structural Hollow Blocks in American Building Construction"
Christophe Lecuyer (University of California) and Takahiro Ueyama (Sophia University), "The Development of Gallium Nitride and Blue LEDs in the United States and Japan"
5:00-5:45 PM, Summary Session
Commentators: Paul Israel (Thomas A. Edison Papers, Rutgers University) and Martin J. Collins (National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution)
5:45 PM, Reception
6:30 PM, Buses Depart for Philadelphia
For more information contact Carol Lockman (clockman@hagley.org) at the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society.