{"id":295,"date":"2021-09-18T17:09:41","date_gmt":"2021-09-18T17:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/sites\/masscommhistorybibliography\/?page_id=295"},"modified":"2025-08-17T19:47:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T19:47:29","slug":"selling-technology","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/selling-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Advertising Index Page<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adams, Judith A.  \u201cPromotion of New Technology Through Fun and Spectacle: Electricity at the World\u2019s Columbian Exposition.\u201d  Journal of American Culture <\/em>18:2 (Summer 1995): 45-55.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Altman, Karen E.  “Television as Gendered Technology: Advertising the American Television Set.”  Journal of Popular Film and Television <\/em>17:2 (1989): 46-56.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baughman, James L.  “The Frustrated Persuader: Fairfax M. Cone and the Edsel Advertising Campaign, 1957-59.” In The Other Fifties.  Joel Foreman, ed.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        This essay makes use of agency records and Cone’s personal papers to examine the failed campaign to market the Ford Edsel in the late 1950s.  According to Baughman, several factors explain the lack of response to the new model automobile and Cone’s inability to sell it.  Even in the era of chrome and tail fins, consumers were attracted to more than image.  The Esdel was only unique in its appearance.  As Baughman notes, it was “a Ford or Mercury in costume.”  The ad campaign generated a lot in interest and the ads themselves were well regarded, but people did not buy the cars. Baughman uses this to point out first that the power of advertising to shape consumer behavior is limited; you cannot sell Americans something they ultimately do not want.  He also chides 1950s-era critics of advertising, like Vance Packard and John Kenneth Galbraith, for overestimating the power of advertising for mischief in American society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behling, Laura L.\u00a0 “The Woman at the Wheel: Marketing Ideal Womanhood, 1915-1934.”\u00a0\u00a0Journal of American Culture<\/em>\u00a020:3 (1997): 13-30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blake, Art M. “Audible Citizenship and Audiomobility: Race, Technology, and CB Radio.”\u202fAmerican Quarterly<\/em>\u202f63, no. 3 (2011): 531-553.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonhomme, Brian. “Falling for Fallout? The Marketing and Consumption of Fear and Shelter in Northeast Ohio, 1961\u201363.”\u202fOhio History<\/em>\u202f131, no. 1 (2024): 9-31. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brewer, Patricia J.  “We Have Got a Very Good Cooking Stove: Advertising, Design, and Consumer Response to the Cookstove, 1815-1880.” Winterthur Portfolio<\/em> 25 (1990): 35-54.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buerglener, Robert. \u201cDriving Ambitions: Charles Roswell Henry and the Changing Status of the Early Automobile Consumer.\u201d Michigan Historical Review<\/em> 37 (Fall 2011): 79\u201398.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlat, Louis.  “A Cleanser for the Mind: Marketing Radio Receivers for the American Home, 1922-1932.”  In His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology<\/em>, Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun, eds.  Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   <\/strong> This essay is helpful both to advertising historians and scholars studying the spread of radio into the American home in the inter-war period.  Carlatt discusses what he considers the feminization of radio technology that allowed it to be marketed successfully as an appliance for the home and, eventually, something of an expression of style or design.  Early radio technology tended to be home-made and difficult to use correctly, which made it more likely to be a hobby for males, at leas according to conventional wisdom.  Companies that sold radio equipment realized in the 1920s that ideally women would become consumers of radio and the device would move from the basement or garage to the family room or parlor.  To do this, radio designers had to make the gadgets easier to use and more attractive.  They devised pushbutton tuning, preset knobs, and easy-to-use volume control.  They also packaged the technology inside elaborate wooden cabinets or stylish modern packages.  Radio was also pitched as a sophisticated device that allowed the middle-class housewife access to classical music and the latest news and ideas.  Carlatt argues that RCA in particular was extremely successful in changing radio from an amateur’s box of wires to a central component of the stylish American home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarke, Sally H.  Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market<\/em>.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corn, Joseph.  “Selling Technology: Advertising Films and the American Corporation, 1900-1920.”  Film and History<\/em> 11:3 (1981): 49-58.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corn, Joseph J., ed.  Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Future<\/em>.  Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz.  More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technologies from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. <\/em>New York: Basic Books, 1983.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz.  “The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology.”  In The Social Construction of Technological Systems<\/em>, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch.  Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

De la Pena, Carolyn Thomas.  The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American<\/em>.  New York: NYU Press, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duncan, Phillip D. \u201c\u2018A Truer Test of Woodcraft\u2019: Bell & Howell Camera Advertising, Nature<\/em> Magazine, and the Creation of the Modern \u2018Camera Hunter.\u2019\u201d Journal of Film & Video<\/em> 75, no. 4 (December 1, 2023): 20\u201331.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Einstein, Arthur W.  \u201cAsk the Man Who Owns One\u201d: An Illustrated History of Packard Advertising<\/em>.  Jefferson: McFarland, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fischer, Claude S. \u201c\u2018Touch Someone\u2019: The Telephone Industry Discovers Sociability.\u201d Technology and Culture<\/em> 29, no. 1 (1988): 32\u201361. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gansky, Paul. \u201cFrozen Jet Set: Refrigerators, Media Technology, and Postwar Transportation.\u201d Journal of Popular Culture<\/em> 48:1 (2015): 73-85.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garvey, Daniel E.  \u201cIntroducing Color Television: The Audience and Programming Problem.\u201d Journal of Broadcasting<\/em>24:4 (1980): 515-525.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George, Leigh.  “The Sun’s Only Rival:  General Electric’s Mazda Trademark and the Marketing of Electric Light.”  Design Issues<\/em> 19 (Winter 2003): 62-71.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gerl, Ellen J., and Craig L. Davis.  \u201cSelling Detroit on Women: Women\u2019s Day and Auto Advertising, 1964-82.\u201d  Journalism History<\/em> 38:4 (Winter 2013): 209-220.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Godley, Andrew.  \u201cSelling the Sewing Machine Around the World: Singer\u2019s International Marketing Strategies, 1850-1920.\u201d  Enterprise & Society<\/em> 7:2 (June 2006): 266-314.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gronow, Pekka.  \u201cThe Record Industry: The Growth of a Mass Medium.\u201d Popular Music<\/em> 3 (1983): 53-75.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hadlaw, Jan. \u201cSaving Time and Annihilating Space: Discourses of Speed in AT&T Advertising, 1909-1929.\u201d Space and Culture<\/em> 14:1 (2011): 85-113.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hensley, J.  “Selling the Blast: DuPont’s Agricultural Explosives Advertising, 1902-1920.”  Delaware History<\/em> 22:2 (1986): 99-110.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laird, Pamela Walker.  “A Car Without a Single Weakness: Early Automobile Advertising.”  Technology and Culture<\/em> 37:4 (1996): 796-812.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lauer, Josh. “Visualizing Black Telephone Users: Technological Whiteness and Racial Exclusion in Bell System Advertising.” Technology and Culture<\/em> 65, no. 3 (2024): 899-931.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lieberman, Hallie.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cSelling Sex Toys: Marketing and the Meaning of Vibrators in Early Twentieth-Century America.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Enterprise & Society<\/em>\u00a017:2 (June 2016): 393-433.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom, Gijs. “Orchestrating Automobile Technology: Comfort, Mobility Culture, and the Construction of the \u201cFamily Touring Car,\u201d 1917\u20131940.”\u202fTechnology and Culture<\/em>\u202f55, no. 2 (2014): 299-325.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moretti, Myrna.  \u201cKeeping Up With Atari: Neoliberal Expectations in Early Electronics Advertising.\u201d Journal for Media History<\/em> 26:2 (2023): 1-22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nickles, Shelley.  \u201cPreserving Women: Refrigerator Design as Social Progress in the 1930s.\u201d Technology & Culture<\/em> 43:4 (October 2002): 693-727.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parkin, Katherine.  \u201cDriving Home Class Status: Women and Car Advertising in the United States.\u201d  Advertising & Society Quarterly<\/em> 20:2 (2019). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penner, Barbara.  \u201cThe Cornell Kitchen: Housing and Design Research in Postwar America.\u201d  Technology and Culture<\/em> 59:1 (January 2018): 48-94.

Prelinger, Megan.  Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race, 1957-1962<\/em>.  New York: Blast Books, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regan, J. Ward.  \u201cNeed to Necessity: Carriage Advertising in the Gilded Age.\u201d History of Retailing and Consumption <\/em>5:2 (2019):111-132.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rieger, Bernhard.  \u201cFrom People\u2019s Car to New Beetle: The Transatlantic Journeys of the Volkswagen Beetle.\u201d  Journal of American History<\/em> 97:1 (June 2010): 91-115.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roberts, Peter.  Any Color So Long as Its Black: The First Fifty Years of Automobile Advertising.  <\/em>New York: Morrow, 1976.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rose, Mark.  Cities of Light and Heat: Domesticating Gas and Electricity in Urban America<\/em>.  University Park: Penn State University Press, 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rowsome Jr., Frank.  Think Small: The Story of Those Volkswagen Ads<\/em>. Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Greene Press, 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scharff. Virginia.  Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age<\/em>.  New York: Free Press, 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schorman, Rob. \u201cClaude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers, and the Birth of Modern Advertising.\u201d Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era<\/em> 7:2 (April 2008): 181-219.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schorman, Rob. \u201c\u2018This Astounding Car for $1,500\u2019: The Year Automobile Advertising Came of Age.\u201d Enterprise & Society<\/em> 11 (September 2010): 468\u2013523.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott, Peter, and James T. Walker.  \u201cBringing Radio into America\u2019s Homes: Marketing New Technology in the Great Depression.\u201d  Business History Review<\/em> 90:2 (June 2016): 251-276.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shrum, Rebecca K.  \u201cSelling Mr. Coffee: Design, Gender, and the Branding of a Kitchen Appliance.\u201d Winterthur Portfolio<\/em> 46: 4 (Winter 2012): 272-298.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith-Brewer, Kelli.  \u201cThe Silent Partner: Tonearms and Modular Masculinities in U.S. Midcentury Hi-Fi Culture.\u201d Journal of the Society for American Music<\/em> 16:3 (August 2022): 319-342.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snow, Rachael. \u201cTourism and American Identity: Kodak\u2019s Conspicuous Consumers Abroad.\u201d Journal of American Culture<\/em> 31:1 (2008): 7-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spaulding, Hannah.  \u201cReach Out and Watch Someone: Televisuality, Gender, and the Short Life of the Picturephone.\u201d Journal of Cinema and Media Studies<\/em> 60:5 (2021): 150-173.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strasser, Susan.  “The Convenience is Out of This World: The Garbage Disposal and American Consumer Culture” in in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century<\/em>, Susan Strasser, et.al., eds.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson, Emily.  “Machines, Music, and the Quest for Fidelity: Marketing the Edison Phonograph in America, 1887-1925.” Musical Quarterly<\/em> 79 (Spring 1995): 131.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tobey, Ronald C.  Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home<\/em>.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vesentini, Andrea.  \u201cIt\u2019s Cool Inside: Advertising Air Conditioning in Postwar Suburbia.\u201d  American Studies<\/em> 55\/56:4\/1 (2017): 91-117.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volek, Thomas W.  “Examining Radio Receiver Technology Through Magazine Advertising in the 1920s and 1930s.”  Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wajcman, Judy.\u00a0\u00a0Feminism Confronts Technology<\/em>. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1991.\u00a0\u00a0Chapter 4, \u201cDomestic Technology: Labor Saving or Enslaving?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wasiak, Patryk. “Computer Dealer Demos: Selling Home Computers with Bouncing Balls and Animated Logos.”\u202fIEEE Annals of the History of Computing<\/em>\u202f35, no. 4 (2013): 56-68.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wasson, Haidee. “Electric Homes! Automatic Movies! Efficient Entertainment!: 16mm and Cinema’s Domestication in the 1920s.” Cinema Journal<\/em> 48, no. 4 (2009): 1-21. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

West, Nancy Martha.  Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia<\/em>.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Williams, James C.  “Getting Housewives the Electric Message: Gender and Energy Marketing in the Early Twentieth Century” in in His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology<\/em>, Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun, eds.  Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Williams, Jim.  Boulevards Photographic: The Art of Automotive Advertising<\/em>.  Osceola, Wis.: Motorbooks International, 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Witkowski, Terrence H.  \u201cVisualizing Winchester: A Brand History Through Iconic Western Images.\u201d Journal of Historical Research in Marketing <\/em>10:4 (2018): 383-419.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advertising Index Page<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Advertising Index Page Adams, Judith A.  \u201cPromotion of New Technology Through Fun and Spectacle: Electricity at the World\u2019s Columbian Exposition.\u201d  Journal of American Culture 18:2 (Summer 1995): 45-55. Altman, Karen E.  “Television as Gendered Technology: Advertising the American Television Set.”  Journal of Popular Film and Television 17:2 (1989): 46-56. Baughman, James L.  “The Frustrated Persuader: Fairfax M. Cone and the Edsel Advertising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-295","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2392,"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/295\/revisions\/2392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mupages.marshall.edu\/masscommhistorybibliography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}