STS Circle at Harvard
[image.png]
Daniel Kevles
Yale, History

on
A, B, Seeds: Advertising, Branding, and IP in an Emergent Industry


Monday, September 16
12:15-2:00 pm
Maxwell Dworkin, 33 Oxford Street, Room 119

[image.png]

Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to 
sts<mailto:[email protected]>@hks.harvard.edu<mailto:[email protected]> 
by 5pm Wednesday, September 11.

Abstract: Advertising and branding accompanied the American seed industry as it 
expanded from the era of the -Revolution through the late nineteenth century to 
meet demand from growers of grains, vegetables, and flowers. Among the most 
important seed houses was the firm of D. Landreth in Philadelphia, founded in 
1784, which became a leader in the industry’s development and practices. Like 
other seed houses, Landreth’s at first issued catalogues that simply listed the 
varieties of seed on offer, but in the 1850s, the industry having grown far 
more competitive, it began issuing catalogues with illustrations that 
increasingly touted new varieties and sought to protect the Landreth brand 
against competitors providing fraudulent and impure batches of seed. The firm’s 
advertising and packaging evolved into a system for protecting its IP that in 
1884 began enlisting trade-mark law for the purpose.



Biography:  Daniel J. Kevles teaches and writes about issues in science and 
society past and present. His works include The Baltimore Case, In the Name of 
Eugenics, The Physicists,  and articles, essays, and reviews in scholarly and 
popular journals, including The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, 
and The New Yorker.  He is also coeditor, with Leroy Hood, of The Code of 
Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project and a coauthor 
of Inventing America: A History of the United States.  He is currently 
completing a book on the history of innovation and intellectual property 
protection in living organisms since the 18th century.
Kevles received his B.A. in physics and Ph.D. in history from Princeton 
University. From 1964 to 2001, he taught at the California Institute of 
Technology. In 2001 he joined the faculty of Yale University where he is the 
Stanley Woodward Professor of History and was Chair of the Program in the 
History of Science and Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Society of American 
Historians, the International Academy of the History of Science, and the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received various 
honors and prizes, including the History of Science Society's George Sarton 
Medal for career achievement.




A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
Follow us on Facebook: STS@Harvard<http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS>




_______________________________________________


<<inline: image.png>>

_______________________________________________
Sci-tech-public mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sci-tech-public

Reply via email to