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Article: Laboratories
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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LABORATORIES
LABORATORIES
exist at the nexus of commerce, academic disciplines, and the State in early twenty-first-century America. Laboratories have been, and remain, a source of American military and economic power; their products indispensable elements for everyday life. How these organizations, ostensibly dedicated to the production of new knowledge and technologies, came to occupy such a central place in the landscape of American history is at one with the history of American science and technology as well as the growth of the American state during the twentieth century.
The Nineteenth Century
Although laboratories existed to test materials for railroads and small chemical ...