Velocipedomania

Velocipedomania PDF

Author: Corry Cropper

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2022-12-09

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1684484359

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When blacksmith Pierre Michaux affixed pedals to the front axle of a two-wheeled scooter with a seat, he helped kick off a craze known as velocipedomania, which swept France in the late 1860s. The immediate forerunner of the bicycle, the velocipede similarly reflected changing cultural attitudes and challenged gender norms. Velocipedomania is the first in-depth study of the velocipede fad and the popular culture it inspired. It explores how the device was hailed as a symbol of France’s cutting-edge technological advancements, yet also marketed as an invention with a noble pedigree, born from the nation’s cultural and literary heritage. Giving readers a window into the material culture and enthusiasms of Second Empire France, it provides the first English translations of 1869’s Manual of the Velocipede, 1868’s Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede, and the 1869 operetta Dagobert and his Velocipede. It also reprints scores of rare images from newspapers and advertisements, analyzing how these magnificent machines captured the era’s visual imagination. By looking at how it influenced French attitudes towards politics, national identity, technology, fashion, fitness, and gender roles, this book shows how the short-lived craze of velocipedomania had a big impact.

Cycling and Cinema

Cycling and Cinema PDF

Author: Bruce Bennett

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1906897999

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A unique exploration of the history of the bicycle in cinema, from Hollywood blockbusters and slapstick comedies to documentaries, realist dramas, and experimental films. Cycling and Cinema explores the history of the bicycle in cinema from the late nineteenth century through to the present day. In this new book from Goldsmiths Press, Bruce Bennett examines a wide variety of films from around the world, ranging from Hollywood blockbusters and slapstick comedies to documentaries, realist dramas, and experimental films, to consider the complex, shifting cultural significance of the bicycle. The bicycle is an everyday technology, but in examining the ways in which bicycles are used in films, Bennett reveals the rich social and cultural importance of this apparently unremarkable machine. The cinematic bicycles discussed in this book have various functions. They are the source of absurd comedy in silent films, and the vehicles that allow their owners to work in sports films and social realist cinema. They are a means of independence and escape for children in melodramas and kids' films, and the tools that offer political agency and freedom to women, as depicted in films from around the world. In recounting the cinematic history of the bicycle, Bennett reminds us that this machine is not just a practical means of transport or a child's toy, but the vehicle for a wide range of meanings concerning individual identity, social class, nationhood and belonging, family, gender, and sexuality and pleasure. As this book shows, two hundred years on from its invention, the bicycle is a revolutionary technology that retains the power to transform the world.

The Bicycle — Towards a Global History

The Bicycle — Towards a Global History PDF

Author: P. Smethurst

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-22

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1137499516

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This is the first history of the bicycle to trace not only the technical background to its invention, but also to contrast its social and cultural impact in different parts of the world, and assess its future as a continuing global phenomenon.

Founders of the Future

Founders of the Future PDF

Author: Óscar Iván Useche

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2022-03-18

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1684483875

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In this ambitious new interdisciplinary study, Useche proposes the metaphor of the social foundry to parse how industrialization informed and shaped cultural and national discourses in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain. Across a variety of texts, Spanish writers, scientists, educators, and politicians appropriated the new economies of industrial production—particularly its emphasis on the human capacity to transform reality through energy and work—to produce new conceptual frameworks that changed their vision of the future. These influences soon appeared in plans to enhance the nation’s productivity, justify systems of class stratification and labor exploitation, or suggest state organizational improvements. This fresh look at canonical writers such as Emilia Pardo Bazán, Concha Espina, Benito Pérez Galdós, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, and José Echegaray as well as lesser known authors offers close readings of their work as it reflected the complexity of Spain’s process of modernization.

Dynamics and Optimal Control of Road Vehicles

Dynamics and Optimal Control of Road Vehicles PDF

Author: D. J. N. Limebeer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0192559818

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Dynamics and Optimal Control of Road Vehicles uniquely offers a unified treatment of tyre, car and motorcycle dynamics, and the application of nonlinear optimal control to vehicle-related problems within a single book. This is a comprehensive and accessible text that emphasises the theoretical aspects of vehicular modelling and control. The book focuses on two major elements. The first is classical mechanics and its use in building vehicle and tyre dynamics models. The second focus is nonlinear optimal control, which is used to solve a range of minimum-time and minimum-fuel, as well as track curvature reconstruction problems. As is known classically, all of this material is bound together by the calculus of variations and stationary principles. The treatment of this material is supplemented with a number of examples that were designed to highlight obscurities and subtleties in the theory.

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