42 nd History of Technology Conference - Raw Materials. Natural Resources in History
Dear all, the 42nd History of Technology Conference will be held at the Klostergut Paradies in Schlatt near Schaffhausen, Switzerland on 13 and 14 November 2020. The Conference has served as an outstanding platform for the exchange of ideas between research, teaching and industry since 1978. The speakers and the invited guests come from universities, libraries, collections and museums or contribute their business and industrial experience. The conferences are renowned for the breadth and topicality of the papers presented.
This international and interdisciplinary event is organized by the Iron Library (Eisenbibliothek), Foundation of Georg Fischer Ltd. Responsibility for the content of the conference is in the hands of a scientific advisory board consisting of Dr. Gisela Hürlimann (ETH Zurich), Prof. Reinhold Reith (University of Salzburg) and Prof. Friedrich Steinle (TU Berlin).
Interested persons involved in research, teaching and practice are kindly invited to apply to present a paper.
Conference topic in 2020: Raw Materials. Natural Resources in History
The conference topic in 2020 will be ‘Raw Materials: Natural Resources in History’. The extraction of materials from the natural environment is the first step in a wide range of technical and economic processes. From industrial corporations and construction companies, to financial services and medicine – virtually all aspects of economic and everyday life are involved in raw material cycles. Raw materials are dug out of the earth, blasted out of stone and pumped out of the seas; they are extracted from plants and culled from animals. These resources are then dissolved, prepared, chemically altered and recombined to be widely used and further transformed, or indeed wasted. Conflict over the use – and overuse – of natural resources has likely been entwined with human history since the earliest settlements. The 20th century has witnessed a dramatic rise in resource consumption, especially since the 1950s. The globalized economy’s boundless hunger for natural resources and the recent debates on the “Anthropocene” have significantly increased scientific attention given to raw materials as the material basis of our society.