The concept of technology first emerged after the industrial revolution, expanded during the interwar period, and became widespread in the early post-war decades, to reach the 20th century connected to everything - even to the possibility of our disappearance through a nuclear holocaust or an environmental disaster. This volume covers a period in which technology not only developed rapidly on many levels, but also shaped a series of critical technologies in a specific way: cars, airplanes, nuclear reactors, and computers. Why did gasoline-powered vehicles prevail over electric ones? Were wooden airplanes inferior to metal ones? Was there a universally superior nuclear reactor design? Was the work of human computers eliminated by electronic computers? What was the role of the state and ideology in shaping technology in the above examples? What was the role of gender stereotypes? The historians of technology who contribute to the studies in this volume ultimately attempt to confront a major question: Is it correct to assume deterministically that technology evolves towards "progress," or not?