How Leisure Helps Make Tech — An Historian’s Perspective
Maker Faire Bay Area 2016
May 20th-22nd
Presentation
Electronics
Using historical evidence from the hobby of amateur radio, I’ll show how leisure tinkering long supported tech innovation. Learn why the Army deployed homemade radios in WWI, why big electronics manufacturers catered to the radio-maker niche, and how the hobby radio community helped shape computing.
Kristen Haring
Kristen Haring is an historian of science and technology, who trained first in mathematics. At Stanford University, she teaches history and American studies, with an emphasis on hands-on learning. She is currently writing a book about how the telephone changed conceptions of place.
