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The history of aluminum illustrates how the concept of symbolic meanings can help connect culture with business history. Aluminum's symbolic meanings played a crucial role in its industrial history, largely through the enthusiasm that greeted the introduction and diffusion of the metal. Symbolic meanings influence technological innovation through their role in shaping expectations, a role understood by the historical actors who engage in struggles over the meanings of competing innovations. For aluminum, this struggle centered on the conflict between the material's two major meanings: aluminum as modern and aluminum as ersatz. This debate over meanings has played out differently in aviation, electric wiring, and automobiles.

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F. Robert van der Linden. Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. xv + 349 pp. ISBN 0-8131-2219-8, $35.00.

Symbolic Culture and Technological Change: The Cultural History of Aluminum as an Industrial Material

The Airway to Everywhere: A History of All American Aviation, 1937–1953.ByW. David Lewis and William F. Trimble. · Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. ix + 230 pp. Illustrations, appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. $27.95.

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3 results

F. Robert van der Linden. Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. xv + 349 pp. ISBN 0-8131-2219-8, $35.00.

Symbolic Culture and Technological Change: The Cultural History of Aluminum as an Industrial Material

The Airway to Everywhere: A History of All American Aviation, 1937–1953.ByW. David Lewis and William F. Trimble. · Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. ix + 230 pp. Illustrations, appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. $27.95.