The Grammar of the Machine: Technical Literacy and Early Industrial Expansion in the United States

This text describes the important technological changes that took place in antebellum America and the challenges they posed for education. Investigating the instruction, curricula and textbooks used in the common schools, mechanics' institutes, and at the Troy Female Seminary and the Rensselaer School in upstate New York, it demonstrates how advocates of technical literacy attempted to teach new skills. Stevens shows that the tensions between the liberal and the vocational, between a culture of print and a non-verbal culture of experience, persisted in technical education through the first half of the 19th century but were resolved temporarily by a common moral vision.