A Technological History of Florida : From Sails to Spacecraft

A sweeping technological and environmental history of Florida from its earliest peoples to the space age

Over the past 14,000 years in Florida, human ingenuity and the natural world have influenced one another in unique ways. In this book, Brad Massey offers a survey of Florida’s past through the lens of technology and the natural environment. Massey reveals how tools, systems, and machines emerged in a place of distinctive swamps, heat, storms, coasts, and wetlands, drawing attention to the lives, labors, and inventions of the people who called Florida home.

Massey takes readers on a journey of technological advances through time, as the peninsula’s people hunted with stone tools, sailed the high seas, built modern cities, constructed theme parks and thrill rides, and launched rockets from the Atlantic shore. He spotlights breakthrough technologies, from Cold War–era Nike missiles in the Everglades to the defensive architecture of St. Augustine’s Castillo de San Marcos fort to the development of air conditioning, offering fresh insights for readers interested in technological, environmental, military, or space history.

A Technological History of Florida offers a compelling new way of understanding Florida’s complexity, inviting newcomers and longtime residents alike to discover how technologies played a role in Florida’s long history—and how Florida’s people and landscapes, in turn, shaped the technologies that the state is known for.