Background
Joseph J. Corn was born on May 12, 1938 in New York City, New York, United States to the family of an attorney Joseph J. Corn Sr. and Margery Hafner.
Joseph J. Corn
Joseph J. Corn studied at Bates College graduating it with Bachelor of Arts in 1960.
In 1963 Corn graduated as Bachelor of Laws from New York University.
In 1963 Corn graduated from New York University in 1969 as Master of Arts.
Corn obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977.
Joseph J. Corn studied at Bates College graduating it with Bachelor of Arts in 1960.
In 1963 Corn graduated as Bachelor of Laws from New York University.
In 1963 Corn graduated from New York University in 1969 as Master of Arts.
Corn obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977.
(From the day when two bicycle mechanics made the first fl...)
From the day when two bicycle mechanics made the first flight at Kitty Hawk until the end of World War II, Americans invested extraordinary hope in airplanes, expecting them to revolutionize daily life and transform the world. For many, the flying machine became a virtual god. Exploring these early years of aviation, Joseph Corn describes the fascinating, and often bizarre, plans for the future of manned flight (including the Depression-era dream of "an airplane in every garage") and brings back to life the famous and lesser-known aviators who became American heroes - Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Calbraith P. Rodgers, and many others. Rich in colorful detail, The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation provides a vivid picture of America in the first half of the century and the exuberant and often utopian response to a major new technology.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801869625/?tag=2022091-20
1983
(Enormous skyscrapers will house residents and workers who...)
Enormous skyscrapers will house residents and workers who happily go "for weeks" without setting foot on the ground. Streamlined, "hurricane-proof" houses will pivot on their foundations like weather vanes. The family car will turn into an airplane so easily that "a woman can do it in five minutes." Our wars will be fought by robots. And our living room furniture - waterproof, of course - will clean up with a squirt from the garden hose. In Yesterday's Tomorrows Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan explore the future as Americans earlier in the last century expected it to happen. Filled with vivid color images and lively text, the book is eloquent testimony to the confidence - and, at times, the naive faith - Americans have had in science and technology. The future that emerges here, the authors conclude, is one in which technology changes, but society and politics usually do not. The authors draw on a wide variety of sources - popular-science magazines, science fiction, world fair exhibits, films, advertisements, and plans for things only dreamed of. From Jules Verne to the Jetsons, from a 500-passenger flying wing to an anti-aircraft flying buzz-saw, the vision of the future as seen through the eyes of the past demonstrates the play of the American imagination on the canvas of the future.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801853990/?tag=2022091-20
1984
(Imagining Tomorrow takes a lively and informative look at...)
Imagining Tomorrow takes a lively and informative look at the future as envisioned in the American past. Covering the period from the 1880s to the present, it examines the expectations that various groups of Americans held regarding the technology of tomorrow. The book contributes to our understanding of twentieth-century culture, technology and what may be called the history of the future.Six of the ten essays in the book probe the future imagined for particular inventions, such as the electric light, x-ray, radio, and computer. Two others explore the way architects and designers repackaged the traditional house and city into exciting and evocative images of the future. The remaining two essays focus respectively on the novels of 19th-century technological utopians and 1930s world's fairs, both popular forums for speculating about technology and the future. Contributors Paul Ceruzzi, Steven L. Del Sesto, Susan J. Douglas, Brian Horrigan, Folke T. Kihlstedt, Nancy Knight, Carolyn Marvin, Jeffrey L. Meikle, Howard P. Segal, and Carol Willis
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530767/?tag=2022091-20
1986
(Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Ameri...)
Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Americans in air and space, gathering sixty of the best eyewitness and participant narratives from Benjamin Franklin's letters on the first hot air balloons to Chris Jones's account of being marooned on the International Space Station. Here are those who made flight happen: Orville and Wilbur Wright, self-taught pioneers whose homespun invention stunned the world; World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, whose memoirs (excerpted here for the first time in unedited form) describe the frightening novelties of aerial combat; and daredevils like Texas barnstormer Slats Rodgers and test pilot Jimmy Collins. Ernest Hemingway offers a vivid dispatch on a 1922 flight over France, and Gertrude Stein muses on the look of America from the air; Charles A. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart narrate their groundbreaking transatlantic flights; Ralph Ellison reflects on the experience of African American airmen at Tuskegee; William F. Buckley Jr. recounts his mishaps as an amateur pilot; Wernher von Braun envisions a space station of the future, while astronauts John Glenn, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin provide firsthand recollections of the conquest of space. Here too, among many other subjects, are scenes and episodes in the development of commercial aviation, from the hiring of the first stewardesses and the high stress lives of air traffic controllers to the new ubiquity of what Walter Kirn calls "Airworld." A thirty-two-page insert offers photographs, some previously unpublished, of the writers and their crafts.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1598531085/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(We’ve all been there. Seduced by the sleek designs and sm...)
We’ve all been there. Seduced by the sleek designs and smart capabilities of the newest gadgets, we end up stumped by their complicated set-up instructions and exasperating error messages. In this fascinating history, Joseph J. Corn maps two centuries of consumer frustration and struggle with personal technologies. Aggravation with the new machines people adopt and live with is as old as the industrial revolution. Clocks, sewing machines, cameras, lawn mowers, bicycles, electric lights, cars, and computers: all can empower and exhilarate, but they can also exact a form of servitude. Adopters puzzle over which type and model to buy and then how to operate the device, diagnose its troubles, and meet its insatiable appetite for accessories, replacement parts, or upgrades. It intrigues Corn that we put up with the frustrations our technology thrusts upon us, battling with the unfamiliar and climbing the steep learning curves. It is this ongoing struggle, more than the uses to which we ultimately put our machines, that animates this thought-provoking study. Having extensively researched owner’s manuals, computer user-group newsletters, and how-to literature, Corn brings a fresh, consumer-oriented approach to the history of technology. User Unfriendly will be valuable to historians of technology, students of American culture, and anyone interested in our modern dependence on machines and gadgets.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421401924/?tag=2022091-20
2011
Joseph J. Corn was born on May 12, 1938 in New York City, New York, United States to the family of an attorney Joseph J. Corn Sr. and Margery Hafner.
Joseph J. Corn studied at Bates College graduating it with Bachelor of Arts in 1960. In 1963 Corn graduated as Bachelor of Laws from New York University and in 1969 as Master of Arts. Corn obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977.
Trained as a social and cultural historian, Joseph J. Corn in his dissertation dealt with the reception of new technology in the United States: heavier-than-air flight. That became his first book, The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation. He has subsequently done research and written about other kinds of popular responses to and expectations regarding new technologies and am presently completing a book on the history of users of complex personal technologies, starting with clocks and sewing machines and ending with automobiles and computers.
Corn works at History Department of Stanford University where he began as an instructor in history and later became a senior lecturer in history.
(Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Ameri...)
2011(From the day when two bicycle mechanics made the first fl...)
1983(Enormous skyscrapers will house residents and workers who...)
1984(Imagining Tomorrow takes a lively and informative look at...)
1986(We’ve all been there. Seduced by the sleek designs and sm...)
2011Quotations: “I have been attracted to the history of technology and to the history of cars, trains, and planes, no doubt, in part because they were my interests as a child. Parental expectations and societal pressures barred me from being a mechanic or even an engineer, but by writing about such people I’ve found happiness and a career.”
Joseph J. Corn married an American art and cultural historian Wanda Marie Halperin on July 27, 1963.
