The Second Industrial Revolution: The History of a Concept
Author(s)
Hull, James
Abstract
Traces the use of the term “second industrial revolution” in 20th-century historiography of economics and technology, beginning with Patrick Geddes’s reference to it in Cities in Evolution in 1915. Historians of the 1940’s and 1950’s did not use the term consistently, referring to a variety of industrial phases subsequent to the Industrial Revolution without demonstrating any consensus about the geographic or chronological parameters of these shifts. David Landes’s use of the term in a 1966 essay and in The Unbound Prometheus (1972) standardized scholarly definitions of the term, yet historians of the late 20th century continue to express reservations about its use.
