History of Technology Volume 21: Volume 21, 1999 9780826449610, 9781350018921, 9781350018907

Citation preview

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY Editor Dr Graham Hollister-Short INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH Senate House, University of London, London WCIE 7HU EDITORIAL BOARD Professor Hans-Joachim Braun, Universitat der Bundeswehr Hamburg, Holstenhofweg 85, 22039 Hamburg, Germany Professor R.A. Buchanan, School of Social Sciences, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, England

Dr A.G. Keller, Department of History, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LEI 7RH, England Professor David Lewis, Department of History, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama 36849, USA

Professor Andre Guillerme, LTnstitut Francais d'Urbanisme, Cite Descartes, 47 rue Albert Einstein, 77463 Champ-sur-Marne, France

Professor Carlo Poni, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Universita degli Studi di Bologna, Strada Maggiore 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy

Professor A. Rupert Hall, FBA, 14 Ball Lane, Tackley, Oxfordshire OX5 3AG, England

Professor Hugh Torrens, Department of Geology, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, England

Professor Alexandre Herlea, Directeur du Departement Humanites, Institut Polytechnique de Sevenans, 90010 Belfort, France Professor Ian Inkster, International Studies, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG11 8NS, England

Professor R.D. Vergani, Dipartimento di Storia, Universita degli Studi di Padova, Piazza Capitaniato 3, 35139 Padua, Italy

History of Technology Volume 21, 1999

Edited by Graham Hollister-Short

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2000 by Mansell Publishing Ltd Copyright © Graham Hollister-Short and Contributors, 2000 The electronic edition published 2016 Graham Hollister-Short and Contributor have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. History of technology. 21st annual volume: 2000 1. Technology – History – Periodicals ISBN: HB: 978-0-8264-4961-0 ePDF: 978-1-3500-1890-7 ePub: 978-1-3500-1891-4 Series: History of Technology, volume 21 Typeset by BookEns Limited, Royston, Herts.

Contents

Editorial

vii

The Contributors

viii

Notes for Contributors

ix

ANDREW D. LAMBERT Responding to the Nineteenth Century: The Royal Navy and the Introduction of the Screw Propeller

1

PETER J. GOLAS The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China: The Xin Ti Xiang Fa Tao and Its Antecedents

29

CARLO PONI The Circular Silk Mill: A Factory Before the Industrial Revolution in Early Modern Europe

65

IAN INKSTER Technology Transfer in the Great Climacteric: Machinofacture and International Patenting in World Development circa 1850-1914 WALTER KAISER What Drives Innovation in Technology?

87

107

TATSUYA KOBAYASHI The Industrialization of Chair and Table Manufacture in Japan: Subtle Interactions at the Confluence of Indigenous Culture and Western Technology

125

RAFFAELLO VERGANI Metals and Metallurgical Processes in North Italy in Biringuccio's Work

141

VI

Contents

PHILIPPE BRAUNSTEIN Maitrise et Transmission des Connaissances Techniques au Moyen Age (English Summary by Graham Hollister-Short)

155

HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

167

BERT L. FRANDSEN AND W. DAVID LEWIS Nieuports and Spads: French Pursuit Planes and American Airpower in World War I

189

BRUCE SINCLAIR The Power of Ceremony: Creating an International Engineering Community

203

Contents of Former Volumes

213

Editorial

With the appearance of the twenty-first volume of this journal, a backward glance may not be out of place. Until History of Technology began to appear in 1976 there were relatively few outlets for papers in the subject. It was precisely to try to relieve this situation and reduce the time it was taking to get articles into print that Rupert Hall, then Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Imperial College, assisted by Dr Norman Smith, took the decision to establish a new journal. To reverse Canning's aphorism, it was almost a question of calling in the old world to redress the balance of the new. Since that time other journals have entered the field, good evidence that the decision was a timely one and that the discipline was on the point of achieving the more broadly based existence it has today, although it has to be said that this statement would be truer of the United States and Germany than of this country. From the beginning previous editors, like the present editor, have sought to cast the net widely to avoid, as far as possible, a Europocentric approach and, equally important in our view, any undue concentration on the more recent aspects of the history of technology. Also important has been the recognition of, and the attempt to redress, an undeniable tendency among Anglophone historians of technology to overlook the very different technological experience of mainland Europe before its absorption into the Anglo-Saxon technological ecumene in the mid-nineteenth century: what, to use Mumfordian shorthand, might be called the coming of carboniferous capitalism. Or, as Josef Rosowsky has remarked so amusingly, 'And then there was England and discontent entered the world.' In the present volume I have sought to bring together as wide an international group of scholars as possible, and I hope it will be specially welcome by reason of the variety of aspects of history of technology that are covered not only across the centuries but across the globe as well. Graham Hollister-Short London

The

Contributors

Professor Hans-Joachim Braun Universitat der Bundeswehr Hamburg Holstenhofweg 85 D-22039 Hamburg, Germany Professor Philippe Braunstein Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales 54, Blvd. Raspail 75270 Paris, Cedex 06 France Bert L. Frandsen Department of History 310 Thach Hall Auburn University, AL 36849-5207 USA Professor Peter J. Golas Department of History 2199 S. University of Denver Colorado, USA

Professor Tatsuya Kobayashi 3-147 Hachimandai Seto City, Aichi Pref. 489 Japan Professor Andrew David Lambert Department of War Studies Kings College London Strand London WC2R 2LS England Professor W. David Lewis Department of History 310 Thach Hall Auburn University, AL 36849-5207 USA Professor Carlo Poni Dipartimento di Scienze Economichi Universita degli Studi di Bologna Strada Maggiore 45 40125 Bologna, Italy

Professor Ian Inkster Faculty of Humanities Nottingham Trent University Nottingham NG11 8NS England

Professor Bruce Sinclair 404 High Street Bethlehem, PA 18018 USA

Professor Walter Kaiser Technische Hochschule Rheinisch-Westfalische D-52056 Aachen Germany

Professor Raffaello Vergani Dipartimento di Storia Universita degli Studi di Padova Piazza Capitaniato 3 35139 Padua, Italy

N o t e s for

Contributors

Contributions are welcome and should be sent to the editor. They are considered on the understanding that they are previously unpublished in English and are not on offer to another journal. Papers in French and German will be considered for publication, but an English summary will be required. The editor will also consider publishing English translations of papers already published in languages other than English. Include an abstract of 150-200 words. Authors who have passages originally in Cyrillic or oriental scripts should indicate the system of transliteration they have used. Be clear and consistent. All papers should be rigorously documented, with references to primary and secondary sources typed separately from the text, double-line spaced and numbered consecutively. Cite as follows for: BOOKS 1. David Gooding, Experiment and the Making of Meaning: Human Agency in Scientific Observation and Experiment (Dordrecht, 1990), 54-5. Only name the publisher for good reason. Reference to a previous note: 3. Gooding, op. cit. (1), 43. Titles of standard works may be cited by abbreviation: DJVB, DBB, etc. THESES Cite University Microfilm order number or at least Dissertation Abstract number. ARTICLES 13. Andrew Nahum, 'The Rotary Aero Engine', Hist. Tech., 1986, 11: 125-66, esp. 139. Please note the following guidelines for the submission and presentation of all contributions:

x

Notes for Contributors

1. Type your manuscript on good quality paper, on one side only and double-line spaced throughout. The text, including all endnotes, references and indented block quotes, should be in one typesize (if possible 12 pt). 2. In the first instance submit two copies only. Once the text has been agreed, then you need to submit three copies of the final version, one for the editor and two for the publishers. You should, of course, retain a copy for yourself. 3. Number the pages consecutively throughout (including endnotes and any figures/tables). 4. Spelling should conform to the latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. 5. Quoted material of more than three lines should be indented, without quotation marks, and double-line spaced. 6. Use single quotes for shorter, non-indented, quotations. For quotes within quotes use double quotation marks. 7. The source of all extracts, illustrations, etc., should be cited and/or acknowledged. 8. Italic type should be indicated by underlining. Italics (i.e. underlining) should be used for foreign words and titles of books and journals. Articles in journals are not italicized but placed within single quotation marks. 9. Figures. Line drawings should be drawn boldly in black ink on stout white paper, feint-ruled paper or tracing paper. Photographs should be glossy prints of good contrast and well matched for tonal range. Each illustration must be numbered and have a caption. Xerox copies may be sent when the article is first submitted for consideration. Please do not send originals of photographs or transparencies but if possible have a good quality copy made. While every care will be taken, the publishers cannot be held responsible for any loss or damage. Photographs or other illustrative material should be kept separate from the text. They should be keyed to your typescript with a note in the margin to indicate where they should appear. Provide a separate list of captions for the figures. 10. Notes should come at the end of the text as endnotes, double-line spaced. 11. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain copyright clearance for the use of previously published material and for photographs.

R e s p o n d i n g

t o

N i n e t e e n t h

T h e

R o y a l

N a v y

of the

a n d

Screw

t h e

C e n t u r y

the

Introduction

Propeller

A N D R E W D. L A M B E R T

ABSTRACT This paper will reconsider the old view that navies in general, and the Royal Navy in particular, were opposed to the introduction of new technology in the nineteenth century. Through a case study of one critical technology, the screw propeller, it is possible to see how the play of politics, strategy, economics, technology and patent law influenced the process. This analysis will provide a sharp contrast with the narrow, self-serving or adulatory polemics produced by contemporary engineers and their hagiographers. It does not diminish Brunei, Francis Pettit Smith and John Ericsson, to name but three, to discover that their motivations were fame and money, rather than the 'benefit of civilization' so often claimed. Their naval contemporaries were more astute. Charged with professional responsibility for the security of a global empire they could not afford to reject progress. Instead they harnessed the intellectual and engineering resources of the private sector to bring new technologies to production readiness. In the process they were more likely to defraud the engineers than ignore them. * ** There is an enduring myth that the directors of the world's navies were reactionary, or at best unduly conservative, in their handling of technical change in the nineteenth century. This, it has been argued, was symptomatic of large hierarchically structured bureaucracies which were opposed to change in any area, from uniform regulations to weapons procurement. This view is reflected in the work of historians of the liberal progressive school for whom conservatism in technology, as in politics, is the mark of the unthinking and bigoted reactionary. They contend that had the world's navies been more adventurous, technical progress would have been History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

2

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

more rapid, and more economical. As the largest, and among the best documented of navies, the Royal Navy has often been criticized for technological conservatism throughout the long nineteenth century (1815-1914). This line has been adopted in studies of the introduction of steam power, iron ships, the screw propeller, armour plate, turrets and a number of other important new systems. The case against the Admiralty has been supported by the contention that France, the United States and even Russia were, at various times, more far-seeing and technologically astute. However, examining these issues in a different context, that of British international policy, provides completely different results. Between 1815 and 1914 Britain worked for a peaceful and stable European balance as the most effective means of securing her unique global trading empire from hostile competition. The power behind British policy was naval deterrence. If the Admiralty was slow in responding to new technology how did Britain win major arms races with France and Imperial Germany, defeat Russia and deter all four of her Great Power rivals at various times between 1840 and 1911? The British Empire could not have been secured by an obsolescent fleet based on yesterday's technology. This would suggest that the case needs to be re-examined. This paper offers a new analytical model of the way in which large bureaucratic organizations handle major technical developments. By reconsidering one of the most famous case studies of alleged inertia, hostility and conservatism, the introduction of the screw propeller, it will demonstrate that the existing historiography is weak and profoundly flawed, both as to underlying assumptions and research methods. Existing accounts treat the introduction of the screw propeller as a purely technical issue, isolated from politics, finance, strategy, tactics, and even the inner workings of naval administration. For too long the underlying assumptions about the propeller, and the engineers who worked on it, have been based on self-serving contemporary pamphlet literature, the latter day complaints of disappointed speculators and the anti-establishment outpourings of advanced liberals of the mid-century, who really believed the millennium was at hand. By failing to question the underlying assumptions of this literature subsequent generations have done a grave disservice to the memories of several hard-working, professional men. The essential argument is that a 'conservative' bureaucracy either misunderstood or deliberately opposed each new manifestation of progress. This line of attack can be traced back through contemporary pamphlets, which were little more than glorified sales brochures, into the more durable biographies and general histories. Perhaps the first and most influential rendition of this 'critical' version was provided by Isambard Kingdom Brunei junior's biography of his father in 1870. Brunei junior largely created the genre, by linking his father with other engineers and inventors of the era. He based his case on Brunei's favourite anecdote about the 'adverse influence which had been exerted in some departments

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

3

of the Admiralty to prevent the successful issue of these experiments'.1 This version was perpetuated in the standard modern life.2 The source for the anecdote was 'Captain' Christopher Claxton, Brunei's close friend. Claxton's naval connections had provided critical input for the form and structure of the steamship Great Western, while he proved to be a major influence on the Great Western Steamship Company and various other shipbuilding and railways projects around Bristol. However, Claxton was only a half-pay lieutenant, he was not promoted commander until 1842, and finally became a captain in 1860. Clearly Claxton had a grudge against the Admiralty, elaborating the most extreme version of an anecdote that his friend had told so often that it became a parody of truth. Not everyone connected with Brunei believed Claxton's version. His younger son Henry never believed the stories, and was disappointed to find his brother retailing them in the biography.3 They were good stories, but they do not stand up to close scrutiny. When John Ericsson received his valedictory biography his brief relationship with the Admiralty was portrayed in equally bleak terms.4 Even before this version appeared the liberal progressivist version, in which the Admiralty was the source of all obstruction, had been adopted by the standard history of the Royal Navy.5 It would be followed in the standard account of the development of marine engineering.6 These accounts all assume that anyone but a fool, and a peculiarly conservative fool at that, could have seen the merits of the propeller from the beginning, and pressed for its immediate adoption. They ignore the key questions that surrounded the process. These were financial, technical, political, tactical and strategic. When they have been addressed it is possible to see the propeller in a wider context, thus providing an altogether more complex chain of events. The Admiralty was not dragged, reluctantly, into the propeller. It was well aware of what was happening from the beginning, maintained a careful watching brief, intervened in particular experiments to great effect, forced the private sector to conduct almost all the fundamental research and early practical trials, without adequate recompense, and then intervened in the process at a decisive moment, just as the technology matured, to clear up all the patent rights and build the world's first allsteam fleet. Far from the reactionary image created by the engineers and their hagiographers, the most common complaint of contemporaries was that they had been 'defrauded', and that the Admiralty would only deal with people it could 'bully or defraud'.7 Such problems as there were reflected the impact of political change and internal friction on a semireformed naval administration. STEAM, STRATEGY AND TACTICS By the mid-1830s intelligent naval officers were well informed about steam technology, and capable of thinking through the implications of each new development without any prompting from the host of inventors,

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

4

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

speculators and cranks who pestered the Admiralty. In consequence the latter's response to new technology was not one of unthinking animosity and blind worship of the past. They were well informed because the development of naval strategy and tactics between 1805 and 1840 made steam increasingly important. After the crushing victory of Trafalgar the whole thrust of naval operations had shifted from fleet combat to the projection of power from the sea against the shore. Such operations were only practical for large vessels with their own power, independent of the wind. Consequently steam propulsion was critical to the maintenance of naval mastery under the new circumstances, and was the occasion for the first two naval arms races of the nineteenth century. The earliest naval steamers were paddle-wheel packet boats, for strategic communications, and tugs, to get large sailing warships out of harbour. As they became larger and more powerful paddle-wheel warships were able to mount a small number of heavy guns, making them useful auxiliary warships, and capable of tactical towing. By 1850 the best paddle-wheel frigates, such as HMS Terrible, were capable of strategic towing, mounted 24 heavy guns, and cost as much as a small battleship. However, they were not capable of taking their place in the line of battle, because their large wheels blocked much of the broadside, and the machinery, wheels, shafts, cranks and even, most dangerously, boilers, were exposed to gunfire damage. Consequently paddle warships tended to carry an upper-deck battery of extra heavy guns, for long-range fire. They were also poor performers under sail, which limited their strategic utility. Their real value was in amphibious and power projection operations, where their mobility and large paddle-box boats made them ideal for amphibious assault and inshore bombardment. 8 Because there were no regular fleet actions between 1805 and 1866 the paddle-wheel steamer achieved a misleadingly high profile as a naval weapons system. The problems of the paddle-wheel warship, however, were well known by the mid-1830s, and intelligent officers were already looking for solutions.9 Ultimately the screw propeller would answer all of their requirements, enabling the standard wooden sailing warship to be fitted for steam power without the loss of its broadside battery, or efficient sailing rig. The screw transformed steam from an auxiliary power installed in auxiliary warships to an auxiliary power installed in front-line warships. Before examining how the new system was introduced it is essential to consider the administrative structure that had to manage the change. THE ADMIRALTY AND THE STEAM WARSHIP There has been much criticism of the role of the Admiralty in the introduction of the steam warship, and of the screw propeller. However, the real problem was one of administrative structure, rather than decisionmaking. In 1832 British naval administration had been subjected to a comprehensive overhaul, the first root-and-branch reorganization in four hundred years. The age-old distinction between the Board of Admiralty,

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

5

the body charged with executing the duties of the Lord High Admiral, essentially the military direction of the Navy, and the Navy and Victualling Boards, which administered the civil aspect, maintaining the fleet, running the dockyards, and feeding the men, was ended. Day-to-day superintendence of all aspects of naval administration was turned over to the Board of Admiralty, the other Boards being abolished. At one level this saved a small amount of money, in accordance with the political programme of the new Whig Government. More fundamentally the Whigs had long wanted to abolish the Navy Board, which they believed was dominated by conservative nominees. The 1832 reform was a triumph of ideology and political revenge over common sense.10 Hitherto the Navy Board had developed the annual construction programme, organized the work of the dockyards and advised the Admiralty on all matters relating to shipbuilding and steam engineering. Led by an experienced naval officer and a leading ship designer, the Navy Board also had its own engineer. In the two decades that followed, when the need for sound advice on technology and long-term policy was greater than ever before, the Navy Board would be sadly missed. Under the new system the Admiralty would be advised on these issues by the Surveyor of the Navy, under the supervision of the First Naval Lord. Hitherto the Surveyor had been a dockyard-trained shipbuilder and designer with a seat on the Navy Board, but the new incumbent, Captain William Symonds, was a naval officer with some intuitive design ideas. The central tenet of Symonds's work was the primacy of speed in naval warfare, both under sail and steam. He was convinced that the problem would be to catch the enemy. Although tasked with developing construction policy Symonds was more interested in promoting his own designs, and lacked the funds to maintain the fleet at an adequate level. In addition he had been appointed by the Whig ministers, and his term in office would be dominated by party politics.11 Furthermore the Surveyor's Office, like every other department of the new Admiralty, was short of staff and money. The Admiralty simply did not have the manpower to conduct fundamental research, and, as this paper will demonstrate, found it hard to exploit, or even retain the results of such research as it had already conducted.12 It was against this background, starved of funds, shorthanded and lacking any coherent long-term policy, that the Royal Navy had to respond to the screw propeller. Despite these problems the naval response was successful, demonstrating the underlying professionalism of the Admiralty To add to the confusion a new Steam Department, under a Controller of Steam, was created on 19 April 1837. This was an official recognition that steam was now critical to naval operations. The first Controller, the Arctic explorer Captain Sir Edward Parry, was no expert. His claims to office had more to do with the fact that his brother-in-law, Lord Stanley of Alderley, was Patronage Secretary to the Whig Ministry than to any expertise.13 The expertise of the new department was provided by Peter Ewart, a conservative Boulton & Watt-trained engineer. As the relationship

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

6

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

between the two departments was never formally settled Symonds, by far the stronger character, effectively ignored Parry and left the Steam Department to fit engines into his ships, rather than develop steam warship designs as a coherent entity.14 This was particularly problematic as the Symonds hull form, which combined a broad beam with sharply rising floors, was peculiarly ill-suited to the installation of machinery. Symonds's deputy, the senior constructor John Edye, was a cautious man. He was responsible for the structure of warships, and was well aware that paddlewheel propulsion, that applied the drive above the upper deck, made less fundamental demands on the structure of the ship than a submerged propeller. His concerns had been focused by recent problems with the stern frames of large sailing warships.15 Only in March 1850 was the relationship between steam engines and the warships placed on a proper basis, when the Steam Department was subsumed into the Surveyor's Office. This reform recognized that an allsteam Navy was only months away.16 For the preceding twenty years the fractures and divisions within the Admiralty, lack of manpower and money, the clash of individuals, and the failure to prepare long-term programmes had all influenced the handling of the new technology. Fortunately the private sector had been prepared to carry out the fundamental research, and compete for the rewards. THE SHIP PROPELLER COMPANY AND THE PROMOTION OF THE SCREW PROPELLER, 1836-1852 In examining how the Admiralty responded to the screw propeller it has to be stressed that finance and politics were far more important than technological innovation. One of the perennial, irritating features of so much comment on the supposed 'failure' of the Royal Navy and the mercantile community to adopt steam and the various improvements in power and propulsion at the proper time is the conceit that Ericsson, Pettit Smith and others were attempting to 'interest' their fellow men in the new technology for the good of mankind.17 In truth the engineering community wanted to sell these new ideas for significant financial reward. Ericsson's disgust at the failure to sell his designs in Britain should be viewed in purely commercial terms. It is incredible to argue that commercial success was not his prime motive. His sense of outrage reflected his failure to secure financial support from the Admiralty, and the brief confinement in the debtors' prison that followed, rather than concern for his fellow men. The prison term was particularly revealing. It demonstrated that Ericsson simply did not have access to the capital required to develop the screw. His system, whatever its merits, needed Admiralty support, and was in consequence doomed to fail. Similarly Smith, and the backers of the Ship Propeller Company (SPC), were not interested in science and experiment, but in the royalties and financial success they anticipated from the patent of 1836. While the Admiralty demonstrated remarkable skill, or an incredible degree of luck, both in avoiding such entanglements and in

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

1

securing proven technology for the country at a reasonable price, the mercantile community made relatively little use of the patented system. In fact, the screw was of only limited value to the mercantile community before the development of compound engines and iron hulls. Only the world's navies could afford the cost of large wooden screw-propelled ships: both the capital outlay and the alarming frequency of major repairs made them uneconomic.18 It should be recalled that any number of speculators and cranks were also trying to lighten both private owners and the Government of funds, making caution essential. One of the main reasons for creating the post of Controller of Steam had been to filter out the 'cranks' before they troubled the Board.19 The Admiralty, like the Navy Board before it, preferred to work with a small number of large and reliable contractors. For the screw propeller this role would be filled by the SPC. The SPC will serve as an example of the relationship between industry, commerce and Government in the transitional era. While it proved vital to the success of the screw in the period 1840-45, it failed utterly in its main object, to make money, and consequently split apart and collapsed. The marine screw propeller was not 'invented' by Francis Pettit Smith and John Ericsson. Marine screw propellers had been demonstrated thirty years before these two men took out their patents. Furthermore when Smith refined his original general patent of 31 May 1836 on 30 April 1839 he restricted his claim to the position of screw in the deadwood.20 Similarly Ericsson's patent of 13 January 1837 was for 'an improved propeller applicable to steam navigation'. There had been at least five worthwhile 'inventions' of the screw propeller, for use with steam engines, before 1836.21 Instead Smith and Ericsson's deserved primacy in the field reflects their ability to secure the funds required to develop and exploit the new technology, and not to any leap in design or technology. In Ericsson's case the funds were provided by a private individual, who anticipated sales to the American Government and profitable employment on his Canal system. Smith's ideas were taken up on an altogether larger scale. The SPC was incorporated by an Act of Parliament on 29 July 1839. However, before examining the work of the company it is necessary to reconsider the origins of the patent that it was formed to exploit. Francis Pettit Smith, although normally referred to as a 'sheep farmer', was an educated man. His father had been tutor to Lord Sligo, and ended his days as Postmaster at Hythe, close to Sligo's country seat. He had not neglected his son's education. Smith wrote lucid explanations for his ideas and developed rational, if not necessarily accurate, arguments to support his work. After a decade of close contact the Admiralty engineer Thomas Lloyd declared that Smith was 'a man of very excellent and sound judgement'. 22 It was no coincidence that he referred to the 'Archimedean' screw in his patent; this at once revealed his classical education, and placed his idea in a context with which all educated men of the age would be familiar. Through his leading apologist, John Bourne, Smith initially claimed to have hit upon the concept of the screw placed in the deadwood

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

8

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

in 1835. Following a particularly vicious pamphlet attack in the late 1850s, which implied a degree of industrial espionage, or conspiracy, Bourne found it necessary to extend Smith's propeller experiments back to 1834, and to add a lifetime of interest in marine propulsion in the second edition of his A Treatise on the Screw Propeller.23 Despite the close relationship between Pettit Smith and Bourne the second edition of Bourne's book is not a defence against these claims, and does nothing to dispel the possibility of conspiracy.24 The pamphlets suggest or imply that Smith was merely a front for improper conduct by named and unnamed individuals. It requires more specific rebuttal than Smith was ever willing or able to provide. However, the continued employment of Smith by the Admiralty, ever anxious to save money, after the collapse of the SPC, his work with John Penn on stern gland bearings and the massive success of his testimonial in 1856 should dispel the 'front' element of the conspiracy theory. Whatever the source of his design, Smith alone secured the vital element that his less fortunate predecessors lacked, financial support. From the spring of 1836, before the patent had been issued, the banker John Wright was acting as Smith's backer. This support was secured within a year of the first experiments. It allowed Smith to engage an engineer to assist with mechanical development, and to secure a patent, which was then an expensive business. At this time the English patent system was just entering a new phase, one in which intellectual property rights were becoming defensible in court. Before 1830 protection had been limited, and was rarely accorded to intangibles. Thereafter the argument of public utility had seen the courts adopt a more favourable view, upholding nearly twice as many patents as hitherto. The development of specialist patent agents ensured that the specifications were more accurate, and helped to link the innovators with the capitalists. Only if a patent was defensible at law, and the patentee could afford to defend it, was there any value in the invention.25 The introduction of the screw propeller into the Royal and United States's navies would be dominated by the legal implications of patents.26 On the day Smith's patent was proved the six-ton boat F.P. Smith was tried on the Limehouse Canal. In February 1837 its full-turn screw broke, creating a marked improvement in performance and demonstrating an empirical approach to development. This is significant. Further trials at Dover in September 1837, in the presence of Wright, led to an approach to the Admiralty in March 1838. Smith and his backers, Wright and the Rennie brothers, then leading lights in the London engineering community and the earliest advocates of the screw, secured a favourable response from Sir John Barrow, the influential Second (Permanent) Secretary to the Admiralty. In marked contrast to the dismissive treatment accorded to Ericsson, the Smith Consortium was advised that a 200-ton vessel would be required to demonstrate their system. In effect the Admiralty was asking if the projectors had the necessary capital to develop the system to the point at which it would be immediately useful. They had never been interested in clever devices, only finished products, ready for service. The History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

9

Admiralty's response persuaded the projectors that a quick response would prove financially beneficial, and in consequence they concentrated on the Royal Navy as the preferred customer. The support of the Rennies, in particular that of Sir John Rennie, was critical. He had followed his father as the Admiralty's preferred consultant on all civil and mechanical engineering matters.27 The 200-ton Archimedes was laid down in March 1838 by Henry Wimshurst and engined by George Rennie; both were consortium members, and both would have a major input into the prospectus of the SPC. The ship was launched a year later and completed just as the SPC was incorporated as a joint stock company, whose objects were to purchase Smith's patents, transfer the financial interest to the company and sell licences to use the patented location for the propeller, not the propeller itself. The business was begun on the largest possible scale, with a capital of £100,000 in 10,000 £10 shares. The SPC was only the fifth such company formed to exploit a patent, and only 21 were formed between 1837 and 1852.28 All existing sources suggest that Wright and the Rennies were the major backers, the Rennies to the tune of £1,000 each, with a number of lesser speculators. Howe Peter Browne (1788-1845), second Lord Sligo, often named in this role, was a very useful front, being a leading Whig politician, a prominent yachtsman and a grandson of Earl Howe. He had also served as Governor of Jamaica between 1833 and 1836, where he came to appreciate the services of Commander George Evans. The first commissioned officer to command a steamship, Evans had commanded HMS Rhadamanthus, the first Royal Navy steamship to operate in the New World between 1832 and 1835, which played a significant role in suppressing a slave revolt in Jamaica. In May 1836 Smith approached Sligo, whom he would have known very well, and Sligo brought Evans along to advise him. Evans, employed to investigate the Post Office Packet Service, suggested that it would be a good investment to build a larger version of the F.P. Smith.29 However, Sligo's will would suggest that he lacked the disposable capital to take a major financial stake in the company. Despite this, his friendship with Lord Holland, and close ties to other ministers made him particularly useful.30 The company began with the widest parameters, including building, fitting or running screw ships, erecting workshops and selling licences. The prospectus emphasized the auxiliary role of the screw propeller, placing the machinery abaft the mainmast in merchant steamers, using Rennie's high-pressure machinery to save weight and space, with the ultimate possibility of employing Earl Dundonald's rotary engine, to save threequarters of the cost. However, the commercial sector was not the primary target. Only the Royal Navy could be expected to provide a major source of funds in the short term, the 14 years in which the patent would remain in force. The early trials of the Archimedes were attended by a large number of naval officers, both on active duty and on half pay. Earl Dundonald visited the ship while she lay at Portsmouth, while Admiral Sir Robert Otway,

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

10

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

Commander-in-Chief at Sheerness, contended that she was the 'best steam vessel ever' being without paddle boxes and carrying her engines below the water line, something which 'must lead to the introduction of the screw into Her Majesty's service'. He was also aware of the superior sailing properties of the screw steamer. Such testimony was particularly valuable when it could be reproduced, as Otway's was, in a sales brochure.31 Otway's comments, and those of other officers, closely reflected the sales pitch being employed by the company. Of particular interest was the idea that a small steam engine, placed in the orlop, could provide a battleship with sufficient tactical mobility to manoeuvre in battle for a favourable firing position. The London engineers Seaward brothers had hit upon the same concept, but their effort was still linked to the paddle wheel, and as such was of limited interest, despite sea trials in two Indiamen in the late 1830s.32 The first report to members of the Board of Admiralty, by Captain George Evans, was little more than a repetition of the company's claims. Evans was not a new convert to the system, having inspected the six-ton F.P. Smith in London in May 1836. At this stage it should be emphasized that the politics of innovation had a major influence on the propeller. Sligo, Evans and the Admiralty Board were all members of the Whig/ Liberal Party. The most prominent public advocate of the system, Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth 1839-42, was on the advanced or radical wing of the party. Codrington's support was particularly useful, since he was the acknowledged master of naval tactics, the sphere in which the screw had most to offer.33 This degree of success in their chosen market encouraged the SPC to pursue their preferred customer. Over the next six years the company provided the Admiralty, or senior members of the Board, with details of all new ships fitted with the Smith screw, with log entries and claims of speed and engineering improvements.34 Not one of these approaches had the desired effect. The Admiralty Board took a long-term view, and was well aware of the objects of the SPC. They waited for the company to complete the development of the screw, and built just one experimental screw warship, HMS Rattler, ordered in 1840. Although only a secondary target the mercantile community proved more receptive. By the end of her round-Britain promotional tour the Archimedes had garnered plaudits from every port visited. However, these did little to reward the backers of the project, and nothing to improve the cohesion of the company. Furthermore, many of the early screw steamers were designed with little or no understanding of the system, and built in haste. Although the screw propeller worked, the related technologies required for machinery, stern bearings and water-tight glands were insufficiently advanced before 1850 to be employed by cost-conscious shipowners. Before this date only visionary men with access to other men's pockets would have taken the risk of adopting the new system. The promoters of the SPC petitioned to bring a Bill into the House of Commons to form a limited company on 20 February 1839, eleven months

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

11

after the Archimedes had been laid down. Despite the opposition of the Manchester inventor and patent agent Bennet Woodcroft, and his backer Robert Gardner, the Bill received Royal Assent on 29 July. 35 Woodcroft and his backer did not have the capital to fight the SPC at this stage. As a commercial venture the SPC proved to be an unmitigated disaster. The leading members, Wright, Currie, Lord Sligo, Caldwell, Smith, Wimshurst and the Rennie brothers, were unable to co-operate. Eventually the company became moribund, leaving Smith to sell his services direct to the Admiralty, and finally to surrender his patent and the right to royalties for a one-third share in the £20,000 once-and-for-all payment offered by the Admiralty. Even as the company was formed the seeds of disaster were evident. The Archimedes (briefly the SS Propeller), its only physical asset, had been built as a mobile test bed and demonstration model. She cost £10,500, a large sum for a 200-ton steamship, largely on account of her novel machinery and drive arrangement. Her design cruelly exposed the limited nature of previous experimental work. It soon became clear that the success of the F.P. Smith had been relative, for many details of the new ship were fatally flawed. Early trials demonstrated that the final drive arrangement, which attempted to avoid using a shaft passing directly through the deadwood - by passing through two sets of bevels and emerging from above the waterline just ahead of the screw - was unnecessarily complex and wasted power and space, while the wooden spur-wheel gearing to increase the shaft speed generated enough noise to render the ship unsuitable for naval service or passenger traffic. In addition the propeller aperture, intended for a screw with a full turn, was far longer than required, weakening the ship, and wasting space in the hold. In essence the ship had been designed without conducting adequate experimental work. She was, therefore, too much of an experiment herself to do justice to the system she was supposed to promote. To make matters worse George Rennie had, with the full concurrence of the company, adopted his own experimental high-pressure boiler, breaking the cardinal rule of sound experimentation, that only one novelty should be tried at a time. Rennie's intention was sound, to employ the smallest power plant for 'occasional use', the auxiliary role for which the SPC held out great hope. Unfortunately the boiler exploded before the first public trial, and, on the order of the Coroner's Court, was replaced by a conventional item designed by a William Miller. This did not generate enough steam to work the 80 hp engine up to the design speed. Until the screw was changed, and the boiler uprated, Archimedes would be capable of no more than 8 knots, depriving her of even bare equality with paddle steamers of similar size. The SPC admitted the lack of speed in the prospectus, and stressed that the failure lay in the power plant, and not the propeller. Fortunately the ship had been designed to sail as well as steam, with a good contemporary hull form. This combination of steam and sail was the real point of interest for the Admiralty. It is important to note that the Archimedes was demonstrated to the Admiralty before the mercantile community. In October 1839 the Master

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

12

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

of the William and Mary, a yacht employed as the flagship at Woolwich, was ordered to take a log line on board the Archimedes at London Bridge for the trial.36 The officers and engineers who were present at the first demonstration to the Navy on 16 October 1839, including Edward Parry, William Symonds, Peter Ewart, and George Evans, were impressed. They recognized the experimental nature of the vessel, and the auxiliary nature of the propeller. They could also see that the ship was fatally flawed by the limited amount of experience available before her design was fixed. The extremely long screw aperture was unnecessary, as were the convoluted bevel drive to the propeller and the cog-wheel geared drive, while the inability of the company to settle on the purpose of the experiment, as an auxiliary steamship or a full-powered competitor for the paddle wheel, limited her performance. Having proved the big point she was of no further use as a trials platform, being restricted to the role of commercial demonstrator. Almost immediately the Board instructed Captain Chappell, the Superintendent of the Packet Service, and the engineer Thomas Lloyd to report on the ship and the system. They stressed the auxiliary role, and the clear broadside.37 On the basis of their reports the Admiralty hired the ship for further trials.38 After her round-Britain cruise, which was a critical rather than a commercial success, and her experimental work on the Dover-Calais run, the Archimedes was offered for sale to the Admiralty.39 Although the company was only asking for £3,500 the Admiralty had no intention of buying the ship. Her work as a test bed had been effectively complete within months of going to sea, and with their own screw ship the Rattler on order, engineered by Brunei for effective trials, there would be no point purchasing the Archimedes. Her last service to the cause of the propeller, after some years laid up in a London dock, was to tow the Rattler from Sheerness to the East India Dock to receive her machinery in April 1843.40 Instead the Board purchased George Rennie's purpose-built iron-screw steamer the Mermaid in July 1843. Renamed the Dwarf this sleek little yacht was the principal experimental vessel for propeller trials once the Rattler had entered regular service.41 She had become available at a low cost following the failure of John Wright's bank in 1842. Wright had been the principal backer of the SPC and of George Rennie.42 By this stage the question had long ceased to be whether the screw propeller worked, but which of the many designs was the most efficient. The sale of Rennie's yacht, along with the offer for sale of Henry Wimshurst's auxiliary screw steamer the Novelty, symbolized the collapse of the SPC. Having failed to sell a worthwhile number of licences, and exhausted much of its funds in litigation to protect its only asset, Smith's patent, the company had been pulled apart by the very different ambitions of Rennie, who hoped to sell ships and engines to the Admiralty, Wimshurt, who hoped to build ships, Smith, who wanted to make his fortune, and Wright, who wanted a good return. As a result a very large amount of money had been invested without success. By 1845 the company was little more than a business address for Smith, and had failed to maintain its primacy in the field.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

13

It has to be stressed that the SPC was attempting to sell the right to exploit intellectual property; it had no other source of revenue. This was a relatively novel way of doing business, which did nothing to smooth the path of the company. The Admiralty was most unwilling to enter into any such arrangement, and spent years avoiding the financial implications of Smith's patent. There was never any doubt that the Archimedes had proved the point: the propeller was the future. However, the Admiralty was not willing to place itself in the hands of the SPC. Fortunately they were able to call on an entirely different source of advice, a man who did not have a financial stake in the success of the propeller. During her round-Britain tour the Archimedes had visited Bristol in May 1840, where she had been hired by the Great Western Steamship Company for a series of trials. By October 1840 these had led their engineering adviser, Isambard Kingdom Brunei, to recommend that the new iron Atlantic steamer should be adapted for the propeller. Although Brunei, who inspected the ship after her trip to Holland and the subsequent repairs to the broken crank, considered her an inefficient compromise, he had the vision to modify his new iron transatlantic steamer into a screw vessel. Alone of all those who first saw the ship he had recognized the fundamental advantages of the screw for full-powered ships of the largest size, and was prepared to make a complete commitment to its success as the principal drive for a massive ocean-going vessel.43 During the trials Brunei kept the SPC fully informed of the work he was doing, and provided important suggestions on how to transmit power from the crankshaft to the propeller. He recognized that the Admiralty was already involved in the process, and would provide support for more ambitious trials.44 The decision of the Great Western Company was made that much easier by the SPC, which offered one or two free licences to use the patented location of the propeller in their vessel.45 The Steam Department at the Admiralty had been receiving reports on the voyages of the Great Western for several years, but Captain Parry was more interested in 'the large iron ship, including the Screw'.46 At this stage the process of adopting the screw for the Navy, and for the Great Western Company, was going ahead smoothly, Brunei having Captain Chappell and Pettit Smith to dine.47 Within a month Brunei had submitted a copy of his report to the Directors of the Great Western Steamship Company to the Admiralty, unofficially, through Chappell, with a suggestion that Lord Minto, the First Lord of the Admiralty, might like to read it.48 The following day Ewart, Chappell and the engine-builder Seaward were directed to attend a Committee on the Screw at the Office of the Controller of Steam.49 The relationship between the Great Western Steamship Company and the Admiralty was complicated by the negotiations for the Atlantic mail contract. The Company had responded to an Admiralty advertisement by tendering for the service in December 1839, only to be curtly rejected the following month.50 As the final contract, awarded to Samuel Cunard, was almost identical to the Great Western offer, the rejection left a bitter legacy of mistrust between the Great Western and the Admiralty, which influenced Brunei's subsequent work.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

14

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

Even before he had solicited Brunei's report, which he would have been advised of by the SPC, Parry, head of the Steam Department, had recommended that a new vessel be built. Chappell, who was closely involved with the SPC, had advised using a replica of an existing 200 nominal hp paddle-wheel steam packet. Although a conversion was proposed Parry and the SPC were anxious to build a new vessel.51 Symonds agreed, although he was concerned that the new system would not be as fast as the old, and had always emphasized the value of speed. His report was adopted by Lord Minto.52 Parry advised that an experimental ship, based on the 200 nhp packet Polyphemus, should be built with her stern configured for testing various screws.53 More immediately the Board sanctioned the construction of a 42-ton instructional steamer, the Bee, for the Gunnery Training Ship Excellent. This little ship was fitted for a screw and paddle wheels, and was the first Royal Navy vessel to be completed with a screw. Captain Chappell and Pettit Smith were involved in the design.54 To advance the larger project a model of the stern of Polyphemus was sent to the SPC for their advice on how it should be modified. Their reply alarmed Symonds; he very properly considered that an aperture 8 feet long and 9 feet 3 inches deep would 'weaken the ship . . . particularly if she strikes the ground'. 55 This early clash of priorities between the Surveyor and the Steam Department was, in all probability, instrumental in bringing Brunei into the equation. In mid-March he was called to the Admiralty by Parry and invited to direct the project to build the 200 nhp vessel, working with Symonds and Ewart, but being in sole charge of the mechanical arrangements and the experimental testing of the ship. After the previous experience of the Great Western Company this was 'gratifying'.56 Having settled the matter at the Admiralty, in a meeting attended by Minto on 27 April, Brunei's first concern was to produce accurate and reliable trials data from the Polyphemus, to form the basis of his calculations. Symonds made the ship available very quickly, and attended the trials. Brunei was very appreciative of the trouble he had taken and, once he had finished the experiments, wrote to the Surveyor in the most flattering terms about the excellent form of the ship, which had created less resistance in proportion to the midship area than any ship for which Brunei had seen data. 57 He then secured drawings and estimates for three different sets of 200 nhp engines from different builders, and reported to Parry. He also advised Caldwell, the Secretary of the SPC, to see if he could exert any influence on Minto to hasten the project. The report to Parry advised an aperture 10 feet 6 inches long and 11 feet 6 inches deep. As a structural engineer and designer of the Great Western Brunei recognized that such a vast opening would be fatal to the adoption of the system, but stressed that 'the construction of the vessel should, in the first instance, be made entirely subservient to the single object of making a full and complete experiment upon this system of propelling'. Once this was complete the screw aperture could be modified to suit the needs of the ship. He stressed that one of the major advantages of the new system would, 'undoubtedly be the facility it affords of carrying sail, either with or

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

15

without the steam'.58 Deputy Surveyor John Edye, writing in Symonds's absence, rehearsed all the Surveyor's arguments with a vehemence that revealed their source. He was the shipbuilder in the Surveyor's Office. Symonds was an intuitive designer, Edye the experienced constructor. He objected to the elongated stern and sharp lines as lacking in buoyancy, and preventing the installation of a pivot gun at the stern.59 The stern remained a very sensitive area for Edye and Symonds after the partial collapse of the Warspite's stern in 1839.60 There was a minor crisis of confidence at this point, when Brunei believed that the engineering staff were reporting on his work. Parry hastened to assure him that this was not the case, and that Ewart was particularly anxious that Brunei should direct the whole project.61 Whether this was out of admiration for his genius, or an unwillingness to enter into any more quarrels with Symonds remains an open question. In order to place the process on a regular footing the main participants First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Charles Adam, Symonds, Parry, Chappell, Ewart, Brunei and Pettit Smith - assembled in Minto's room at the Admiralty in late September. Parry recommended that Brunei should be admitted to the 'conference' on the propeller, in view of the work he had already carried out for the Admiralty and the Great Western Company, and the fact that he had no financial stake in the project.62 Although he agreed, Symonds objected that Brunei's proposed aperture was even greater than the one Smith had suggested. He considered this a serious objection to the propeller.63 Smith was, understandably, far from pleased by this turn of events.64 A year later he was still arguing that Brunei had no right to interfere. The Admiralty informed Smith that he could not be given the overall direction of a project, and that he must work with Brunei, who would be responsible for installing the machinery and propeller. He was to confine himself to the design, location and aperture of the screw.65 In late September 1841 the whole process was thrown into confusion by the fall of Lord Melbourne's Whig Ministry, which was replaced by the Conservative regime of Sir Robert Peel. As Brunei's relationship with the Board had been essentially a gentleman's agreement, based on mutual trust and a degree of political friendship, the change came at a particularly unfortunate time. Just as the whole process was beginning to take shape, and the personal relationships that were essential to the smooth functioning of nineteenth-century administration had been established, he would have to create a whole new series of links with men of whom he had no experience. While Parry and Symonds would survive, their influence would be greatly reduced by reason of their well-known Whig sympathies: both were political appointees, intimately linked to the outgoing ministers. The resulting period of confusion would have been an ideal opportunity for Symonds, who had been an outright opponent of the project, to have stifled or redirected the effort. Both Brunei junior and Rolt have suggested that he was the villain of the piece, creating a wholly erroneous model of how the propeller would be applied, which reduced the new First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Cockburn, to apoplexy.66 In fact the problems

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

16

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

arose in a different quarter, and their solution required Brunei to take Symonds's advice, not engage the Surveyor in open warfare. Throughout the second half of 1841 the Great Western's experimental work with the Archimedes was continued by Thomas Guppy, and Brunei fed the results into his work on the new ship.67 He hoped these would 'enable me to obviate some of the objections which I understand have been felt regards the construction of the vessel'.68 When he was called to a new conference at the Admiralty late in 1841 he was 'most anxious' to have the latest Bristol results.69 These turned out to be necessary, because on 5 January 1842 Cockburn called Brunei, Parry, Symonds and Ewart to a conference, where he decided that an existing vessel should be converted, and ordered Symonds to report on the suitability of the Acheron.1® Symonds decided that an aperture five feet long should suffice, and although he recognized that the conversion would make all the comparative results unreliable, he did not think it was necessary to do more than inform Brunei of the change.71 Brunei had been too surprised by this sudden shift of direction to make an effective response, but he was convinced that it would be a wrong step. He reminded Sir George, in a letter of 17 January 1842, that private individuals (the SPC) had already demonstrated that the screw would do the same work as the paddle wheel, which remained the system of choice for the Navy. What remained to be settled was whether all the advantages claimed by the promoters of the invention anticipate, of the vessel being capable of being constructed with perfect sailing qualities - and of a press of sail being advantageously carried, either with or without the working of the engines and without stopping to connect or disconnect, and of the efficient working of the screw in the heaviest sea, and whether when working against a very strong head wind which reduces the speed of the vessel to two or three knots - the screw does or does not enable you to keep the vessel's head to the wind and to prevent her falling off, which I think will be found to be the case.72 In order to determine these questions, and to reach reliable conclusions about the relative efficiency of the screw and paddle wheels it was essential to build a vessel with a form suitable for the screw, and for good sailing. If a compromise were adopted now it would all have to be done again. Brunei's concerns increased when he discovered that Symonds had reported that the Acheron was suitable for conversion. He obtained a copy of her draft, and compared it with that of the Archimedes, before writing to ask Symonds how he could best represent to the Admiralty that the conversion of the Acheron would be a waste of time and money.73 He then sent a letter to the Board, repeating much of what he had written to Cockburn, and adding a list of the Acheron's faults. She was too full in the after body for an efficient use of the screw, and had built-in sponsons that would interfere with her sailing. He was adamant that only a new vessel would answer the needs of the Board.74 The letter had an immediate impact: the Board directed that Symonds and Parry should be consulted.75

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

17

Three weeks later Brunei exploited the fact that he would be away for several weeks to encourage Parry to have the matter settled. Ts there any possibility of inducing their Lordships to do the thing properly and quickly?'76 In fact things were going his way, for Symonds reported that the steamers then building were all too large for the 200 nhp engines that had already been ordered, and that it would be best to return to the plan of December 1840 to build a replica of the Polyphemus, at Sheerness in place of the projected paddle-wheel steamer Rattler. This ship had been suspended before any construction work had been started, but the seasoned timber required had been collected. This was approved by the Board on 24 February, and a sheer draft was submitted on 6 April.77 To hasten the construction Symonds was instructed to communicate with Smith, and send the remaining drawings and scantlings to Sheerness as soon as they could be prepared.78 This reflected urgency, not delay, and was largely driven by Symonds. It should be stressed that the Rattler was a wholly new design, built with seasoned timber already collected for the larger 280 nhp paddle-wheel vessel of the Styx class. The decision to build at Sheerness reflected the importance of seasoned timber to the post-1815 Royal Navy - it was the only dockyard with the materials to hand in a state for immediate use.79 Brunei's biographers contended that Sheerness was chosen to hide the ship, but this is incredible.80 Brunei was not immediately informed because he was by then in Italy on railway business. On his return he discovered that the work was already in hand, with Smith advising the Shipwright officers on the screw aperture, the screw, and the gearing. The latter point was one of the key areas where Brunei's superior general engineering background proved to be vital. Smith provided for a cog-wheel drive, similar to the noisy, bulky system used aboard the Archimedes?1 (Brunei had long argued that ropes operating on flat drums would be the most efficient drive, and his system was ultimately adopted.) Brunei realized he was being ignored, and complained to the Board. The fault here lay with the Board: it had simply forgotten to mention him in the order of 6 April 1842 to proceed with the Rattler, leaving Symonds to surmise that he was no longer involved. After a meeting with Cockburn on 22 July Brunei was able to report to Claxton that the matter was put straight, and would get straighter. Cockburn was 'evidently surprised to find that nobody had communicated with me and was rather angry when he was told by a clerk that the hole was making for Smith's long thread instead of the short one as he had supposed'.82 This is the origin of the apoplectic Admiral of Claxton's account. The villain of the piece, as far as there is one, is simple bureaucratic weakness. The Board ratified Cockburn's declaration that Brunei was to be involved early the following month. He was now back where he had been during Minto's regime. He was to liaise with Maudslay's and the Captain Superintendent at Sheerness to ensure the successful installation of the machinery. 83 However, when Brunei invited Smith to come and discuss the vessel it

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

18

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

became clear that their relationship had still to be settled by the Board (this was only done by a minute of 3 March 1843). Smith was under the distinct impression that he was responsible for the aperture, the engines and other aspects which were in Brunei's domain. Brunei offered to give up his role, as he could not act to the benefit of the Board, or his own credit, in such confusion.84 The lines of authority being defined, Brunei agreed that Smith should advise on the form of the propeller, and left it to him to decide if the screw should be fitted for unshipping without going into dock.85 Far from wishing to delay the ship Symonds was annoyed to find, on a visit to Sheerness, that work was suspended 'on account of the indecision of the Engineers who are to provide a screw propeller for her'.86 Brunei, stung by the complaint, hastened to excuse himself on grounds of ill health, claiming that 'no avoidable delay has occurred on my part', and stressed that Maudslay's should prepare all the structural ironwork connected with the screw, to ensure an accurate fit. Cockburn endorsed the letter for Symonds's 'information and guidance'.87 From this point the correspondence reveals a fundamental conflict of ambition between Brunei, who was anxious to finish the Rattler and try her afloat to make comparisons with Polyphemus, and the Admiralty, especially the Surveyor's Department, which was anxious to build the ship properly, which meant taking time to season the structure at various stages. Brunei's anxiety was not unconnected with the imminent completion of his own project, the Great Britain, for which Rattler would provide important experimental data for the design of propellers.88 When the trials of the Rattler began, in October 1843, they quickly revealed that the propeller would need to be far shorter, and of rather greater diameter. Subsequent fine tuning, under Brunei's direction, led to the very successful form devised for the Great Britain in 1844. In that year the Admiralty made it clear that they would not confine their interest to Smith's patent, but would entertain any propeller designs. In consequence there was no interest in the offer of exclusive rights to the use of the patent. This was hardly surprising when the Smith patent did not protect the propeller, only the location. However, the SPC found this a bitter pill, particularly when the most prominent designers were Woodcroft and Steinman, both of whom the company was threatening to prosecute. That the company was reduced to making the offer suggests that the commercial sector had been little more forthcoming than the Admiralty. The SPG was in financial trouble.89 The Board considered further trials would be necessary before reaching a decision. At this stage the trials were still running in the company's favour, with the Smith and Rennie forms proving superior to that of Steinman.90 However, Brunei was still submitting valuable advice for the cost of his expenses. This only served to point out how much better qualified Brunei was than Smith.91 The first trial of The Great Britain gave the SPC a welcome opportunity to recoup some credit from Brunei.92 However, the report of The Times indicated that the political world was still opposed to the SPC, and to

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

19

Smith, making an inaccurate assault on Smith's propeller. This is significant for two reasons: clearly the leading London newspaper was ignorant of the Smith patent, and more significantly, was a sounding board for the opinions of the Government. On 23 April 1845 The Great Britain, then at Blackwall, was visited by the Queen, Prince Albert and the Board of Admiralty aboard the Dwarf. Smith presented the Queen with a gold model of the propeller of the new Royal Yacht Fairy, then fitting out at Ditchburn & Mare's Yard. This, however, availed the SPC very little.93 Two months after this show of Royal and political support the SPC met a significant rebuff. Their request for a royalty on the use of screws in the Arctic Discovery vessels Erebus and Terror was ignored. The screw used was of the Ericsson type, and the installation, designed by Master Shipwright Oliver Lang at Woolwich, appears to have been a deliberate attempt to evade the patent. If so it was a qualified success, but the loss of both vessels and their crews, along with the change of Ministry, ensured that nothing further was attempted along those lines.94 A letter of 11 June 1845 is the last reference to the SPC in the Admiralty files. It appears that the company simply disappeared. Unable to make any money from the patent, the collapse of Wright's bank in 1842 had been a major blow. The royalties paid on all screw steamers built down to 1845, many of which, like The Great Britain, had been granted a free licence, would hardly have kept the Archimedes in coal, which would explain why she had dropped out of class and, apparently, out of repair. The office at Fish Street Hill had been closed in 1844, leaving Smith to resuscitate the company at Beaufort Buildings on the Strand in 1847-48. Litigation both failed to establish the dominance of the company vis-a-vis other propeller projectors and made inroads into the share capital. Other projectors, notably Woodcroft, were also selling licences.95 In consequence the SPC was essentially moribund after mid-1845, although it, or perhaps Smith acting alone under the company name, contested the extension of Woodcroft's patent in 1846, without success. The SPC had failed to secure real financial reward from the Admiralty, and did little better with shipowners. Only Brunei built a merchant ship that the SPC could look upon as an unqualified success, yet there was a marked reluctance to make too much of Brunei's work, for fear he might take further interest in the subject, at the company's expense. Furthermore the Great Western Company had been granted a free licence. Before 1848 the commercial use of the screw propeller was dominated by Liverpool and Dublin. Even here the Great Northern and the efforts of John Laird to sell iron-screw steamers to the Admiralty were of only limited value. Liverpool steam tonnage had only reached 11,000 by 1851; the real growth came far too late to help the SPC. Only in the more favourable economic conditions of the mid-1850s did Liverpool move into iron-screw steamships.96 However, the General Screw Steam Shipping Company's (GSSC) successful auxiliary voyages quickly reduced the insurance premium on screw ships from 4 to 1.25 per cent. Until the mercantile community had brought this work to a successful conclusion the Admiralty was reluctant to

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

20

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

act. The GSSC made the auxiliary work for short sea service, and their experience influenced the design of the early screw sloops. For oceanic voyages, other than those on the subsidized mail services, steamships were simply uneconomic, be they paddle wheel or screw propeller. While the Royal Navy did not have to worry about economy in the same way, it was forced to rely on known coal supplies for service outside home waters. Few steamships were deployed further afield than the Mediterranean. The slow take up of the auxiliary concept in the mercantile community, allied to the caution of the Admiralty, ensured that the SPC would always have problems securing the rewards that had been anticipated back in 1837-38. In this respect their failure to complete anything more than the most basic trials before launching the company, as indicated by the problems of the Archimedes, proved critical. The product did not reach commercial maturity in the lifetime of the SPC. However, if the SPC failed they were not alone. The propeller attracted much interest, and it was largely to forestall other patentees that the SPC moved, and once they began to promote the screw the process could not be stopped. Most accounts cite the loss to the projectors as approximately £50,000, half the share capital. Much of this went into building and running the Archimedes, while further sums were used to improve Smith's standard of living, notably in moving from his Hendon sheep farm to a large house in central London. SMITH AFTER THE FAILURE OF THE COMPANY After the effective collapse of the SPC Smith, who had no funds of his own, required some means of support. In mid-1846 he offered to superintend the installation of the screw for the Royal Navy. The Controller of Steam offered two guineas a day, with expenses. In addition the Surveyor of the Navy recommended that Smith be employed as the 'supervisor of screws'.97 That this change in fortune for Smith was concurrent with the return of a Whig Ministry may have been entirely coincidental, but that would appear unlikely. The major problem for naval architects was the form of the stern run. Brunei had made it clear in February 1842 that a fine stern run was vital for the efficient use of the propeller.98 However, this advice had either been forgotten or ignored in the Board's enthusiasm for auxiliary, low-powered ships, and had to be relearnt after much wasted effort with the first group of large-screw steamships. Apparently unaware of Brunei's advice and the fraught events of 1842 Thomas Lloyd declared that the fine stern run of the Rattler had been accidental, occasioned by the long-screw aperture. Lloyd had objected to the use of a square stern from a sense that it was wrong, and pressed for the critical trials with the Dwarf, which proved his case. At the time everyone, he believed, had adopted the square form, and he believed Smith was largely responsible for the popularity of this view.99 However, he considered Smith 'a man of very excellent and sound judgement'. 100 Symonds had been quick to use Lloyd's Report, of

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

21

3 November 1846, to reinforce his own view that the bluff stern was wrong, and press for the suspension of the ship's building or converting.101 Once again the shift in the balance of political power in naval design circles had a major impact on the resolution of this problem. The 'Tory' designers, those favoured by, and supporters of, the Tory Ministry, had adopted very bluff stern lines for their screw ships. That their ambitions were limited to local defence and auxiliary service at sea needs to be recalled. In 1845 a major programme of new and converted screw steamers was ordered to meet the challenge of France, not from any conviction that the system was the way of the future, merely to meet a pressing current need. Returning to office in 1846 the Whigs inherited a large, if ill-structured, screw-warship programme. The First Lord, Lord Auckland, 1846-48, needed little convincing. In 1848 he declared: I am satisfied that the whole theory of ship building will be directed from the old notions of sailing ships to the manner in which the screw auxiliary may be best combined with good sailing qualities.102 This required the Admiralty to abandon Symonds's controversial widebeamed and sharp-floored form. Symonds had been manoeuvred out of office in mid-1847, not because he opposed the screw, which he did not, but because he was 'a very difficult man to deal with' on all matters relating to his department. The occasion for his retirement had been the Board's sanctioning of modifications to the form of two new 91-gun sailing ships.103 The additional length of the screw ships, and their fine stern runs, sacrificed manoeuvrability and speed to windward for effective use of the screw, but as a bonus the new hulls also provided improved performance off the wind, leaving the engine to solve the age-old problem of windward sailing. This solution, of classic simplicity, made the screw steam auxiliary a far more effective warship than any that had gone before. In June 1848 the Board directed that when designing ships and converting timber for their construction consideration should be given to the possibility that ships would be converted into screw steamers.104 The Select Committee on Naval Estimates that sat throughout the first six months of 1848 produced a wealth of evidence on the state of the steam Navy. Only one member of the Committee, the Peelite Sir James Graham, author of the 1832 reforms, and responsible for the appointment of Symonds, was unconvinced. The majority of naval officers, engineers and politicians considered the screw would be adopted for all ships in the future, although they disagreed about how soon that would be. The screw had yet to displace the paddle wheel as the drive of choice for full-powered steamers. John Edye, the Deputy Surveyor, was the lone voice of restraint. He still argued for slow and steady progress, one ship at a time, and objected to the ordering of four blockship conversions. He was soon proved correct: the first ships being converted with square sterns proved slow and inefficient. He believed the screw was more vulnerable than the paddle wheel: one hit on the stern frame would disable the whole apparatus, while paddle wheels could take a lot of damage. 105 However, he was not reflecting on

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

22

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

the strategic and diplomatic pressures that led to the steam-warship programmes of 1844-45, just the technology. After successful trials off Lisbon, involving the pioneer screw frigate Arrogant, the Board had accepted that auxiliary screw propulsion would be extended to all classes of warship.106 The pioneer steam battleship Agamemnon had been ordered the previous year. Already under pressure to reduce costs the Board baulked at the cost of Smith's services, as the experimental phase had come to an end, but the Controller of Steam, Captain Alexander Ellice, was quick to defend the use of his expertise. The 'inconsiderable expense' contrasted sharply with the 'injury to the service' that might result from an early termination of his contract.107 Ellice left office in February 1850, his post being amalgamated with that of Captain Sir Baldwin Walker, Surveyor of the Navy since 1848. Smith's patent had just been granted a five-year extension and this, with the opportune retirement of Ellice, prompted a sharpening of the Board's methods.108 Smith was informed that the Board would not continue his position, but would only call upon him as occasion required. The 'salary' was discontinued and a gratuity of £400 provided in final settlement.109 This softened up Smith quite effectively, to judge from the haste with which John Wright, Smith's major backer in the formation of the SPC, wrote to claim the merit of having started the Archimedes and assisted Mr Smith by his money, and patronage, and complains of having been defrauded of his shares in the Archimedes by a wilful depreciation of their value.110 The Board had exploited the opportunity created by the legion of screw projectors and the failure of the SPC to establish a dominant position in the field. From 1843 the Admiralty had studied the legal value of the various propeller patents, looking for an economical solution (in view of their limited requirements this was almost certainly the cheapest patent), holding off claims for payment for as long as practicable and ignoring the offer of'exclusive rights'. In 1844 they requested all patentees to send in details of their charges for the use of their patents.111 By 1847 it was clear that the rights of Smith and the moribund SPC could be bought up for a reasonable sum; but still the Board waited.112 The reason for the delay would appear to have been the timing of the patent. If the patent were to lapse, or could not be upheld against the numerous counterclaims and objectors, there would be no need to make any payment. In the event the patent was extended for five years on 11 February 1850. This reflected the failure of the SPC to secure any significant economic advantage from their invention.113 Negotiations for the purchase of all rights were opened immediately, by withdrawing Smith's 'salary'.114 The Board concluded their manoeuvre by purchasing the patent rights of all patentees in 1851. They forced all interested parties to act together by the simple expedient of making a once-and-for-all offer of £20,000. The patentees were represented by Henry Currie, MP for Guildford 1847-52, a partner in Wright's bank and one of the original

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

23

promoters of the SPC. Smith, Woodcroft and Lowe received one-third of the money each.115 Smith exhibited a series of models illustrating the development of the system at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and received a medal for his efforts. This would appear to be the origin of the important collection now held by the Science Museum in London. Having carefully watched the development of the screw, providing a degree of assistance in 1845, which was in itself more a product of international tension than technical commitment or financial relaxation, the Admiralty finally moved to secure the patent rights in 1850. By this stage the twelve-year period of experiment was at an and. The private sector had funded the proving stage of screw propeller development, albeit unwillingly, having been outmanoeuvred all along the line by Admiralty Boards well aware of the financial savings. There was a widespread belief within the naval and engineering community that Smith had not received a proper reward for his efforts. When he was planning the Great Eastern Brunei wrote to consult 'my friend Mr F.P. Smith, to whom the public are indebted for the success of the screw'.116 In 1854 the 'Smith Testimonial Fund' was set up, with a committee that included almost every shipbuilder, marine engineer, naval architect and naval officer connected with the introduction, development and adoption of the propeller. After soliciting testimonials from Lord Minto and Lord Haddington they opened a subscription. The first impact of this widespread agitation came when Smith was awarded a Civil List pension of £200 on 21 January 1855. This was one of the first acts of the Palmerston Government, coming into office in the middle of a major war. In addition he received £3,000 from the Testimonial.117 Reflecting on his own experience of trying to work with the Admiralty during the Russian War Brunei reflected that 'they' had a penchant for bullying and defrauding inventors. The fact that he had just put £50 into the Testimonial for his friend Smith may well have been at the front of his mind as he wrote.118 Subsequently Smith worked with John Penn on the critical issue of stern bearings, helping to develop the lignum vitae gland that was as important to the commercial success of the screw as the position of the propeller. Yet his own business acumen seems to have been limited. His farm on Guernsey failed and in 1860 he was given a post in the Patent Office Museum, under Bennet Woodcroft, one of his rivals in the early days of the propeller. He was knighted in 1871, and died at South Kensington in the same year. CONCLUSION This study of the Admiralty's handling of the introduction of the screw propeller provides a sharp lesson in respect of the dangers facing private capital when engaged in a commercial speculation with the Government as one of the major potential customers. The problems were doubled by the fact that what was on offer was intellectual property, rather than

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

24

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

tangible product. There was a marked resistance to the idea of paying for the use of intellectual property. This has implications far wider than the history of the Screw Propeller Company. The Admiralty refused to be made use of in the manner the SPC had hoped, that is, as a conduit to channel Government funds into a commercial venture, the exploitation of Smith's patent. It is possible that the change of Ministry in 1841 had a major influence on the situation, for the SPC had many supporters among the Whig elite, but found very few in Tory ranks. The Admiralty's handling of the screw propeller demonstrated the value of caution, or rather something approaching sharp practice. By holding back, experimenting and employing Brunei rather than Smith to install the screw in the Rattler the Admiralty paid very little for the use of the patent, and even then moved sufficiently slowly to deny the SPC any tangible reward in the time frame anticipated at Fish Street Hill. By mid-1845, when the technical success of the screw could no longer be denied, the company had fallen apart, leaving Smith to act alone. Without his backers Smith was forced to accept a modest daily rate for the benefit of his experience. When the patents were renewed, and well aware that the Navy would soon be shifting to an all-screw steam force, the Admiralty secured the undisputed right to all and any screw and placement for the sum of £20,000, only twofifths of the sum expended over the previous fifteen years by the SPC alone. It would appear that the Admiralty, well aware of the value of Smith's patent, and of the intentions of the SPC, used their position, as the target customer, to break down the commercial value of the patent, and then to snap up the remains at a bargain price. That Smith received only onethird of the final settlement, the same share as Woodcroft and Lowe, is both revealing and startling. Smith and his backers built the Archimedes, which was the practical proof of the propeller. That they received no benefit for this supports the Victorian convention that they were indeed merely attempting to interest the Admiralty in the invention for the benefit of the nation; for this was indeed all that they actually achieved. Having failed with their target audience the SPC could draw little benefit from the few merchant vessels that used the patent. Failure in both markets reflected the lack of development of the system before taking out the patent, and the limited value of the Archimedes as a practical steamship. It is possible that the projectors acted in haste from a fear that other patentees might reap the anticipated benefits. Without the SPC the screw would not have been adopted so quickly, and similarly without Stockton as his backer Ericsson would have abandoned his screw project, turning his fertile mind to other areas just as he had abandoned the field of locomotives after the failure at Rainhill. Financial support was critical to the success of nineteenth-century innovation and invention. Backers were vital to cover the cost of basic development and early trials, and in return men like Wright and Stockton hoped to make money. Both were disappointed. The self-serving, politically naive and technologically determinist accounts left by nineteenth-century engineers, who wished to portray

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

25

themselves as high-minded servants of humanity, have been taken at face value for too long. By contrast the Admiralty was technologically dynamic, and adopted a professional approach to the management of change, which it handled with great skill between 1815 and 1914. There were a few spectacular examples of failure, notably the loss of HMS Captain in 1870, but this was caused by the politicians overriding or ignoring their professional advisers. Significantly for the mythology of the liberal engineer as hero it was Brunei who gave Cowper Coles the railway turntable as the base for his revolving turret, and free access to his drawing office for the production of his specifications and publicity. Far from being backward or unduly conservative the Royal Navy exploited the dynamic engineering sector of the Victorian economy with great skill. It could mobilize resources on an unrivalled scale for such disparate projects as the screw propeller and the 'Great Armament' of 1856. By contrast France started four technology-based arms races, and lost every one within five years. Because the Royal Navy was central to British strategy the Admiralty had to be certain that it could meet its commitments; it could not afford to take any risks with the core capability, the battlefleet. Britain won the naval races because it had long-term finance, a superior industrial base and greater political commitment. The role of the Admiralty was to ensure that the fleet remained modern and effective on a reasonable budget. It was remarkably successful. Notes and References This paper was given at the XXth International Congress of the History of Science, Technology and Industry at Liege on 25 July 1997. My thanks go to the organizers of the Conference, and especially to Professor David Zimmerman who chaired the session in which it was delivered.

1. I.K. Brunei, Life of Isambard Kingdom Brunei (London, 1870), Vol. I, 285-6. 2. L.T.C. Rolt, Isambard Kingdom Brunei (London, 1957), 282-5. 3. Henry Brunei, Private Journal, 12.2.1863 (Brunei Collection, Bristol University Library). Courtesy of D.K. Brown, who notes that Rolt would not have had access to this source. 4. W.C. Church, Life of Ericsson (New York, 1907), Vol. I, 87. 5. Sir W.L. Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History (London, 1901), Vol. VI, 196-8. 6. E.C. Smith, A Short History of Marine Engineering (Cambridge, 1937), 68. 7. Wright to Admiralty, 2.4.1850; ADM 12/528. Brunei to Burgoyne, 29.8.1856, in G. Wrottesley, Life and Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir John Burgoyne (London, 1873), Vol. II, 357-9. 8. Paddle-box boats were large pontoons mounted upturned over the top of the paddle wheel sponsons. They were used to land heavy, bulky loads and horses. 9. D.K. Brown, Before the Ironclad: The Development of Ship Design, Propulsion and Armam the Royal Navy, 1815-1860 (London, 1990), 99. 10. A.D. Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet: Maintaining Naval Mastery 1815-1850 (London, 1991), 27-38. 11. Ibid., 27-38, 67-87. 12. Ibid., 116. 13. A. Parry, Parry of the Arctic, 1790-1855 (London, 1963), 197-209, esp. 203. 14. Thomas Lloyd, evidence to the 1848 Select Committee PP. 1848, 430. 15. Lambert, op. cit. (10), 159 re HMS Warspite. 16. Ibid., 90.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

26

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

17. J. Hewish, The Indefatigable Mr. Woodcroft: The Legacy of Invention (London, 1979). 18. Edye Evidence PP. 1848, 186; see A.D. Lambert, Battleships in Transition (London, 1984), 55 etseq. 19. J. Barrow, An Autobiographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow Bt (London, 1847). 20. The deadwood is the triangular area of solid timber where the stern and the keel meet. It is critical to the structural strength of any seagoing wooden ship. 21. W.M. Petty, 'The Introduction of the Screw Propeller' (Unpublished University of London MA thesis, 1969). The work of Stevens, Owen and Ressel failed from the inadequacy of contemporary engine and boiler technology. Ressel's effort, as might have been expected in the Austria of Metternich, was brought to a premature end by the secret police. Wilson's valuable work (op. cit. (24)) with hand-cranked screws, which anticipated the correct position for the propeller, was never linked to an engine, while Marc Brunei did not realize the idea was sufficiently novel to be worth patenting. 22. Ibid., 435. 23. J. Bourne, A Treatise on the Screw Propeller, 2nd edn (London, 1867), 188-9. 24. J. Nicol, Who Invented the Screw Propeller? (London, 1858); R. Wilson, The Screw Propeller: Who Invented It? (Glasgow, 1860). 25. H.I. Dutton, The Patent System and Inventive Activity in the Industrial Revolution 1750(Manchester 1984), esp. 69, 72, 78-80, 86, 93-4. 26. D.L. Canney, The Old Steam Navy (Annapolis, 1990), Vol. I, 21-30 on the USS Princeton and the Hunter Wheel experiments. 27. Sir J. Rennie, An Autobiography (London, 1882). 28. Dutton, op. cit. (25), 163-4. 29. Evans to Rear Admiral Sir W. Parker (Second Sea Lord) 28.10.1839 in G.H. Guest, A Record of the Services of Admiral George Evans (London, 1876), 11-14. 30. A.D. Kriegel, The Holland House Diaries: 1831-1840 (London, 1977), 335, 409. 31. Otway to C.A. Caldwell, 12.5.1839; Ship Propeller Company Prospectus 1840. 32. Surveyor of the Navy to Seaward Brothers, 9.10.1839; ADM 91/9. 33. Codrington to the Admiralty, 28.5.1840; ADM12/375 A502; Codrington to Sidney Herbert First Secretary to the Admiralty, 6.10.1841 & 4.8.1843; National Maritime Museum, Codrington papers, COD/172 & 20.2. 34. Caldwell to Lord Minto, 3.6.1841 re New Brighton; Minto MSS National Library of Scotland; SPC to Admiralty, 11.6.1842 (geared cranks); ADM 87/14. Smith to Admiralty, 31.12.1843; ADM 83/26. 35. Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. 94, 1839. 36. Admiralty to Woolwich Dockyard 14.10.1839; ADM 12/361. 37. Reports of Lloyd and Chappell, 2.5.1840; reprinted in Brown, op. cit. (9), 104-7. 38. Request SPC to detail terms for hire, 23.5.1840; ADM 12/361. 39. SPC to Admiralty, 6.7.1842; ADM 12/402 ProS 480. 40. SPC to Admiralty, 20.4.1843, accepted 22.4.1843; ADM12/417 ProS 217. 41. Admiralty to Woolwich Dockyard, 19.7.1843; ADM12/417. 42. Rennie, op.cit. (27). 43. Brunei, 'Report to the Directors of the Great Western Steamship Company on Screw Propellers, 17.10.1840' in Brunei, op. cit. (1). 44. Brunei to Caldwell, 8.7.1840; Brunei Letter Book (LB), 2B, 77. 45. Brunei to Captain Chappell, 8.10.1840; LB, 2B, 94. 46. Parry to Claxton, 6.11.1840; ADM 92/4 S420-1. 47. Brunei to Guppy, 23.11.1840; LB, 2B, 117. 48. Brunei to Chappell, 18.12.1840; ibid., 130. 49. Controller of Steam, 19.12.1840; ADM 12/375. 50. D. Griffiths, Brunei's Great Western (Wellingborough, 1985), 53-4. 51. Admiralty to Surveyor, 4.11.1840; ADM83/25 S5055. 52. Surveyor to Admiralty, 16.11.1840 & 16.1.1841; ADM92/9 S340 & 413. Minto endorsed the latter. Admiral Sir Charles Adam (First Naval Lord) to Minto, 18.11.1840; L: NMM ELL/228. 53. Parry to Admiralty, 14.12.1840; ADM 92/4 S423-4. 54. Surveyor to Admiralty, 26.2.1841; ADM 92/9 S442. 55. Surveyor to Admiralty, 16.1. & 12.2.1841; ADM 92/9 S413, 432. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Andrew D. Lambert

27

56. Brunei to Claxton, 19.3.1841; Brunei DM800. Brunei's letter to Chappell of the following day in LB 2B, 166 is very non-committal, but his relationship with Claxton suggests that the letter to his friend was more explicit than that to a recent acquaintance. 57. Brunei to Symonds, 30.4. & 6.5.1841; LB 2B 175 & 177. 58. Brunei to Caldwell, 3.7.1841 and Brunei to Parry, 3.7.1841; LB 2B, 190 & 192. 59. Edye Minute, 26.7.1841; Report on the Naval and Ordnance Estimates 1848 PP., 1031. 60. Lambert, op. cit. (10), 159. 61. Parry to Brunei, 31.7.1841; ADM 92/4 S446-7. 62. Parry Minute sent to Symonds, 28.9.1841; ADM 92/4 S453-4. 63. Surveyor to Admiralty, 26.10.1841; ADM 92/10 S165. 64. Smith to Admiralty, 1.7.1841; ADM 12/388. 65. Board Minute, 3.3.1843; ADM 12/417. 66. Brunei, op. cit. (1); Rolt, op. cit. (2), 284-5. 67. Brunei to Guppy, 21.9.1841; LB 2B, 214. 68. Brunei to Captain W.A.B. Hamilton, PS to Lord Haddington, 25.8.1841; LB 2B, 215. 69. Brunei to Guppy, 20.12.1841; LB 2B, 241. 70. Admiralty to Surveyor, 1.1.1842; ADM 83/25 SI928. 71. Admiralty to Surveyor, 10.1.1842, with notes by Symonds and Parry of 13.1.1842; ADM 1/5522 S2018. 72. Brunei to Cockburn, 17.1.1842; LB 2B, 253. 73. Brunei to Parry, 28.1.42, to Symonds, 7.2.1842 (twice), to Smith, 7.2.1842; LB 2B, 259-67. 74. Brunei to Admiralty, 16.2.1842; LB 2B, 271. 75. Endorsement on above, 18.2.1842 signed Sidney Herbert (Political Secretary). 76. Brunei to Parry, 7.3.1842; LB 2B, 280. 77. Admiralty to Surveyor, 19.2.1842, endorsed in Symonds's hand, 22.2.1842; ADM 1/5522 S2407. Admiralty to Surveyor, 24.2.1842, endorsed 6.4.1842; ADM 83/25 S2458. 78. Surveyor to Captain Fisher (Captain Superintendent of Sheerness Dockyard), various April-July 1842; ADM 83/25. 79. Lambert, op. cit. (10). 80. Surveyor to Admiralty, 17.1.1842; ADM 92/10 S2156, Rolt, op. cit. (2) 286, quoting a letter from Claxton to Henry Brunei. 81. Smith to Surveyor, 4.6.1842; ADM 87/12 S3361. 82. Brunei to Claxton, 22.7.1842; LB 2C, 16. 83. Admiralty to Brunei, 9.8.1842; ADM 83/26 S3942. 84. Brunei to Admiralty Clerk, Waller Clifton (to whom he was directed to refer all requests for material relating to this project), 1.8.1842; LB 2C, 33. 85. Brunei to Smith, 10.8.1842; LB 2C, 38. 86. Surveyor to Admiralty, 3.9.1842; ADM 83/27 S4354. 87. Brunei to Admiralty, 17.9.1842, endorsed by Cockburn, 28.9.1842; ADM 83/27. 88. Brunei to Guppy, 23.11.1843, 27.11.1843 and to Harmer (Chief Engineer at Bristol) 6.2.1844, 12.2.1844 on propeller design and pitch; LB 2C 264, 283, 294, 303. 89. Admiralty to Controller of Steam, 23.10.1844, SPC to Admiralty, asserting sole rights to the screw, 4.11.1844, SPG to Admiralty, 17.12. and Steinman to Admiralty, 21.12.1844; ADM 12/432. 90. Controller of Steam to Admiralty, 21.12.1844; ADM 12/432. 91. Admiralty to Controller of Steam, 7.5.1844; ADM 12/432. 92. Crispin and Lloyd to Admiralty, 29.1.1845; ADM 12/449. 93. Corlett, The Iron Ship (Bradford on Avon, 1975), 97. 94. M.J.T. Lewis, 'Erebus and Terror', Journal of the Railway and Canal Historical Society, October 1971, 65-8. Lang was a favourite of the Tory Board, 1841-6, but on the change of Ministry his star waned; Lambert, op. cit. (10), 79-90. 95. Hewish, op. cit. (17), 11. 96. Smith to Laird, 22.1.1842; Laird MSS. P.L. Cottrell, 'The Steamship on the Mersey, 1815-80: Investment and Ownership' in P. Davis and D. Aldcroft, Shipping and Trade (Leicester, 1981), 137-63. 97. Controller of Steam to Smith, 30.6, 20 & 30.7.1846; ADM 12/465. Surveyor to Admiralty, 10.7.1846; ibid. History of Technology), Volume Twenty-one, 1999

28

Responding to the Nineteenth Century

98. Brunei to Admiralty, 10.2.1842; ADM 83/25. 99. Thomas Lloyd, testimony before the Select Committee, 9.5.1848 PP, 430-5. 100. Ibid., 435. 101. Symonds to Admiralty, 6.11.1846; PP 1848, 1032. 102. Auckland to Admiral Sir Charles Napier, 7.9.1848; B.M. Add. MSS. 40, 023 f278. 103. Lambert, op. cit. (10), 86, 155-6. 104. Admiralty to Surveyor, 12.6.1848; ADM12/497. 105. PP 1848 John Edye, 10.4.1848, 186-90. 106. Board Minute, 6.12.1850; ADM 87/35. Lambert, op. cit. (18), 30-32. 107. Ellice to Admiralty, 22.1.1848 in Anon, On the Introduction of the Screw Propeller into H.M. Service (London, 1856), 24. 108. Solicitor to Admiralty, 11.2.1850; ADM 12/528. 109. Board Minute, 8.3.1850. Controller of Steam to Board, 11.3.1850, reply 27.3.1850; ADM 12/528. 110. Wright to Admiralty, 2.4.1850; ADM 12/528 ProW 705. 111. Solicitor to Admiralty, 26.1.1843 re Ericsson & Blaxland's Patents; Rennie to Admiralty, 21.8.1843; ADM 12/417; Board Minute, 5.9.1843, Controller of Steam to Admiralty 23 & 24.10.1843; SPC to Admiralty, 4.11 & 17 & 21.12.1844; ADM 12/432. 112. Lloyd, Report for Solicitor, 14.5.1847; ADM 12/481. Law Officer on Patent Rights, 23.8.1848; ADM 12/497. Controller of Steam, 30.11.1849; ADM 12/512. 113. Dutton, op. cit. (25), 155-6. 114. Solicitor to Admiralty, 11.2.1850; ADM 12/528. 115. Solicitor, 13, 20 & 22.9.1851; ADM 12/544. Currie to Admiralty; ADM 1/5641. 116. Brunei to Scott Russell, 21.7.1852 in G.S. Emmerson, John Scott Russell (London, 1977), 66. 117. Palmerston to Smith, 21.1.1855; Anon, op. cit. (107), 61. 118. Brunei to General Sir John Burgoyne, 29.8.1856; Wrottesley, op. cit. (7).

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

T h e

E m e r g e n c e

T e c h n i c a l C h i n a : F a

Y a o

T h e a n d

D r a w i n g X i n I t s

PETER J.

Y i

o f i n X i a n g

A n t e c e d e n t s

GOLAS

By the second half of the tenth century at the latest, Chinese technical illustration had reached a major milestone: the production of a large set of sophisticated drawings to illustrate in detail the workings of a complicated mechanism. This mechanism was an astronomical clocktower built by Zhang Sixun ^ 5 S f l | with the support of emperor Taizong ^ 7 ^ (r. 976-997) some time in the years 976-8. The clocktower itself represented a significant advance over astronomical instruments that preceded it: in rotating a demonstrational armillary sphere for the first time by means of a chain-drive power transmission, it made possible a working model of the heavens that would parallel their movement with a minimum of human intervention. 1 It appears that copies of many of the drawings produced to illustrate the workings of that clocktower as well as further drawings from another clocktower built by Zhou Riyan M B M in the 1078-1085 period have survived in the account of a later astronomical clocktower, built by Su Song g£gi and Han Gonglian ^|£>JS in the late 1080s and early 1090s.2 Many of the earlier drawings were apparently brought into Su's account without alteration, even when they did not coincide very well with the workings of the more advanced mechanism of Su and Han. 3 Probably about 38 of the 47 illustrations we have today in Su Song's account derive originally from Zhang Sixun's work, which has not survived.4 The account of Su Song's astronomical clocktower with its illustrations, the Xinyi xiang fa yao 0 r i H ^ 8 c | ? o r 'New Armillary Sphere and Celestial Globe System Essentials',5 has been brilliantly studied by Joseph Needham, Wang Ling, Derek J. de Solla Price and John H. Combridge, but always with a main focus on trying to explain how this very complex mechanism actually functioned.6 No study to my knowledge has taken as its main purpose an examination of these illustrations in order to place them in the overall context of the early development of technical illustration in

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

30

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

China. That is what I shall attempt here, beginning with a review of what had preceded them. EARLIEST REPRESENTATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY IN CHINA Portrayals by Chinese artists and craftsmen of scenes that at least touch on technology go back very far in Chinese history, easily pre-dating the Han dynasty (BCE 206-220 CE). For example, battle and hunting scenes engraved on 'pictorial bronzes' of the Warring States period (403-221 BCE) can give us an idea of the weaponry and vehicles in use at that time.7 The 'technology' here, however, is purely decorative, an accidental appendage to what more often than not were wild flights of artistic imagination. In the centuries before the Han, however, a revolutionary intellectual and aesthetic transition was occurring in which the Chinese increasingly left behind the fantastical, magical world view that had dominated their consciousness and their arts from earliest times in favour of what we might call a more realistic and objective view.8 A reflection of this change is seen in the increasing emphasis in the visual arts on subjects having to do with daily life, including scenes of people at work. The richest surviving evidence is found in the archaeological discoveries of funereal art from the Han dynasty and the centuries immediately following, in which three forms dominate: (1) Bas-relief carvings on stone ('tomb reliefs') that have been discovered in almost every part of China.9 These portray a variety of production processes, mainly agricultural (digging10 and ploughing, 11 sowing,12 hoeing, 13 weeding, 14 harvesting, 15 hulling, 16 winnowing17) and, much less often, sericultural (weaving),18 but also including scenes relating to salt production,19 the iron industry,20 the making of wheels,21 fishing,22 winemaking23 and cooking techniques.24 Pictures of well-sweeps,25 vehicles (usually, horse-drawn) such as carriages,26 chariots,27 wagons and baggage carts,28 boats,29 and wheelbarrows,30 as well as weapons used in hunting31 and warfare32 also provide clues about the technology employed in their construction and about how they were used. Portrayals of buildings often tell us much about their architectural details.33 (2) Models of objects in bronze or wood or clay placed in graves for the use of the dead in the afterlife.34 Technological representations include pulley assemblies,35 trip-hammers and pestles;36 querns;37 stoves, braziers and cooking vessels;38 ploughs and harrows;39 water-flow control devices for irrigation;40 carriages,41 boats42 and buildings.43 (3) Paintings on tiles and on the walls of tombs or on funeral banners, dealing especially with rural activities. Especially well-known here are the tomb-tile paintings from Jiayuguan in the present day northwestern province of Gansu (Figure l). 4 4 History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

31

Figure 1 A tomb-tile illustration of ploughing from Jiayuguan in Gansu province, either from later Han or shortly thereafter. Anon., Han Tang Bi Hua (Murals from the Han to the Tang Dynasty) (Beijing, 1974), Fig. 49. Various explanations have been proposed to account for the prominence of scenes of daily life in early Chinese art. In the case of funereal art, the motivation was above all practical or functional. The scenes that decorated the graves or tombs would remind their occupants what their life had been like in this world. The models of actual objects with which the occupant had been surrounded in this life made those objects available for use in the afterlife.45 But there were at least two other reasons of a more 'ideological' character that seem to have encouraged such portrayals. They are especially important in that they were to remain important stimulators of illustrations of technology for the succeeding two millennia. We can perhaps approach them best by looking at their influence on Chinese painting. TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATION AND EARLY CHINESE PAINTING Most of the evidence for early Chinese painting not connected with funereal practices survives unfortunately only in literary references. For example, we are told of great cycles of painting that decorated the halls and palaces of the Han, but whatever indications of the technology they might have contained have long since disappeared, along with the paintings themselves.46 That at least some of them included productive activities is suggested not only by the Han tomb scenes but also by slightly later evidence that the emperor Ming Di of the Jin dynasty (r. 323-325) himself painted a series to illustrate a famous early Chinese poem dealing with the yearly round of rural activities, including agriculture and sericulture.47 However, even without the paintings themselves, the surviving references suggest some of the motivations that guided early painters. We mentioned above the transition in Chinese thinking in the middle of the first millennium BCE away from a fabulous toward a more realistic History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

32

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

conception of the physical world around them. An extremely important part of this new outlook was a humanistic vision that came thoroughly to permeate Chinese philosophy and the thinking of the Chinese people in general. As Alexander Soper has written, 'The belief in the dignity of man and the importance of human achievements has been one of the longest held premises in the history of Chinese culture.' This conviction has influenced Chinese art in a number of ways, including encouraging 'a concentration on man and his works as the noblest and most useful function in the art of painting.' 48 One of the results of this view in the Han was the increasing emphasis on subjects having to do with daily life, including scenes of people at work. Focus on the works of human beings was further encouraged by another characteristic of the new worldview. To a degree not found in any other early civilization, moral concerns stood at its very centre. Moreover, because of the pictographic character of the earliest Chinese writing, it was easy for Chinese thinkers to conclude that painting and writing sprang from the same origin, and to extend that insight to the corollary that painting and writing could have similar goals. Just as writing could record historical events and characters to serve as models for those who came later, painting could provide visual illustrations of the same kinds of subject matter, with the same end in mind.49 Chang Yen-yuan expressed the orthodox view in the mid-ninth century when he argued that 'to contemplate [with the help of paintings] good serves to warn against evil, and the sight of evil serves to make men long for wisdom'.50 The emphasis on human beings and their activities as a prime subject matter of painting was further reinforced by the Confucian emphasis on the responsibility of the rulers to provide for both the moral and the material well-being of their subjects. This gave rise to what have been called 'admonitory paintings', often wall paintings, that were meant to remind those who ruled of the difficult lives led by most of their hardworked subjects. Quite naturally, scenes especially of agriculture and sericulture, the work that occupied most people across China, were prominent in these paintings.51 Chinese emperors right down to the Quianlong emperor in the eighteenth century continued to prize and patronize such paintings.52 TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATION FROM THE THIRD TO THE TENTH CENTURIES Compared to the relatively abundant portrayals of technology in materials from the Han, disappointingly few illustrations survive from the following centuries even down through the Tang (619-906). For example, grave decorations from the Tang only occasionally picture technology.53 The famous paintings from Dunhuang and other Buddhist grottoes did not regularly include scenes of daily life, and seldom had anything to do with technology.54 The main exception is the representations of boats of various kinds because of their connections with Buddhist stories and teachings such

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

33

as sailing to the Western paradise.55 In any case, despite the paucity of what survives, we have good reason to believe that technical illustrations must have been, if anything, more common in these centuries than in the Han. Mechanical toys A possibly important stimulus to specifically technical drawing may well have been the keen interest shown at this time by many of the elite in mechanical toys of all kinds. Such toys or 'automata' had made their appearance in China before the Han, though the extremely sparse sources hardly support even a guess as to when or to what extent.56 Even for the Han, the state of the written evidence is little better, though it has been suggested that certain 'enigmatic scenes and designs' found on mirrors and in the tomb art discussed above may be portrayals of various sorts of mechanical toys.57 The somewhat richer evidence from the post-Han centuries, however, reveals that considerable ingenuity was applied to producing automata of various kinds; especially popular were doll-like figures that could bow, pour wine, play musical instruments and dance. The interest in mechanisms flowed over into more functional areas, leading to the invention of 'self-moving' carts, doors that could open and shut automatically, several versions of south-pointing carriages (a cart with a standing figure that, by means of gearing, always pointed to the south whatever the movements of the cart),58 and hodometers (vehicles able to measure the distance travelled) .59 The importance attached to these mechanical devices is partly responsible for the fact that quite a number of their inventors or improvers are known to us by name, an exception to the anonymity so often surrounding inventors and craftsmen in these early times. Unfortunately, our sources almost always limit themselves to describing what the automata could do and tell us nothing about how they did it, i.e., the details of their mechanical construction.60 This was due no doubt in part to the fact that the inventors of the mechanisms had good reason to keep them secret. Many of them used their secret knowledge and technical skills to win or maintain the favour of emperors or other patrons.61 At first sight, it is difficult to imagine that these mechanisms, some of them quite complex, could have been designed and constructed without at least some recourse to sketches and perhaps even construction drawings of some kind.62 That nothing of this kind has survived is hardly surprising. While the wider availability of paper encouraged more 'writing' of all kinds, text and illustrations, its fragility assured that virtually all of this writing would fail to survive.63 With the exception of the considerable number of documents and books from the cache found in a Tunhuang cave in western China at the beginning of this century (very few of them, pre-dating the seventh century),64 nearly all of the manuscript materials from these centuries have long since perished. To be sure, much of the textual material in these manuscripts has survived either because the texts were printed once woodblock printing came into wide use or because they were cited by later writers who still had access to the originals, but this is much less true for illustrations.65

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

34

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

What is more surprising, however, is the silence of the Chinese literature not only in this period but in later periods as well on the subject of, to use Graham Hollister-Short's term, sketches as 'vehicles for ideas'.66 I have already mentioned elsewhere the example of the mechanically highly m gifted Huang Liizhuang ^M^± the seventeenth century who was said to have been extremely adept at working out engineering problems in his mind but about whom we have no evidence that he used sketches to help him think out his ideas.67 Similar evidence, suggestive if not conclusive, exists regarding Ma Jun to whom we have already referred and who was perhaps the most famous engineer of the third century. We know a great deal about him, thanks to an essay written by his friend Fu Xuan fi|3C.68 It seems that Ma's mechanical genius was matched only by his inability to explain his work. Thus we read in the essay: '[Ma's] powers of exposition fell far behind his mechanical ingenuity, and I doubt if he could express half of what he knew' and 'Mr Ma's gifts are all of the mind and not of the tongue.' In connection with his work on a south-pointing carriage, Fu comments: 'But again it was almost impossible [for him] to describe (the principle of it) in words.' After several statements of this sort, one is left puzzled why the idea of drawing sketches is never raised. It suggests that, at least among those relatively rare figures who combined an education in the highly wordoriented culture of traditional China with a serious interest also in technology, using drawings to work out mechanical ideas was seldom if even attempted. Nevertheless, concerns for secrecy and the difficulties of describing and drawing machines of any complexity did not by any means preclude the production of manuscripts designed to record or explain machines. We know, for example, at least the titles of books such as the early sixthcentury 'Illustrated Standards for Machines' (Qi zhun tu §|*p[i] ) by Xindu Fang fff f|$5j. In writing this work, Xindu benefited from being able to draw on a very large library of writings and illustrations belonging to his patron, an imperial prince who was intrigued by all kinds of scientific apparatus. 69 For this early period, however, there is no evidence of any kind of identifiable tradition or standards influencing the production of technical illustrations.70 Indeed, it is doubtful that such technological illustrations that may have existed were in any way seen as a special category of drawing having its own rules and requirements. More than likely, such illustrations were simply expected to meet the same criteria that were applied generally to painting and drawing. Developments in painting The period from the end of the Han through the Tang (220-906) saw Chinese painters gradually developing a repertoire of techniques in the service of a painting style that was increasingly committed to the realistic portrayal of its subjects. Overall improvements in drawing skill and the working out of new techniques helped set the stage for the high level of

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

35

technical illustration found in a number of milestone works produced in China from the tenth through early fourteenth centuries.71 Prior to the discovery by archaeologists in post-1949 China of large numbers of Han through Tang brick and stone tombs prolifically decorated with murals, our knowledge of painting developments in this period was sketchy in the extreme.72 To be sure, there is a great deal of information on early Chinese painting preserved in literary sources, but the rarity of actual surviving paintings made it extremely difficult to determine what the paintings actually looked like, much less how styles and techniques changed over time. Only with considerable prudence could conclusions about paintings be drawn from other, more durable art forms such as the stone reliefs preserved in tombs.73 Now, however, we know a great deal more about developments in early Chinese painting, including the use of techniques that showed considerable promise for improved technological representations. This occurred despite the fact that, from earliest times, Chinese painting theory tended to devalue paintings that focused on the accurate or detailed representation of unanimated objects.74 Among these techniques were the use of shading (originally thought to have come into China with Buddhist art but now shown to have originated in the Han period75), other methods for modelling surfaces including the use of modelling strokes and of hatching, increasingly effective handling of spaces and experiments with various means of portraying perspective.76 The area where painting developments intersected most directly with technology but where at the same time we see the aesthetic ideals of painting undercutting its application to technical illustration was in the socalled 'ruled-line' or jie hua |?-J§| method.77 This technique made its first appearance as early as the Han 78 and referred to paintings in which straight lines were drawn with the aid of a ruler or a plumb-line. In practice, that meant that the method was applied mainly in paintings that included architectural structures since there are few straight lines to be seen in landscapes (as Waley points out) or in portraits, the two main subjects of Chinese painting.79 In later centuries, however, 'ruled-line' artists applied their techniques to a greater range of subjects at the same time as they broadened the emphasis of ruled-line painting to compositions that paid close attention to correct proportions and scale relationships. The efforts at precision and exactitude led to increasingly effective handling of space, including experiments with vanishing point and other kinds of perspective, and with trompe Voeil realism.80 Maeda even suggests that these developments were part of a larger change where painters became 'less concerned about the exact transmission of pictorial traditions than they were about reproducing the world as they saw it .. .'81 The promise that such advances held for technical illustration is unmistakable. Yet, for the most part, these techniques found little application here. This may have been due in large part to the major shift in China's painting ethos that occurred in the Song period, at the very time when Chinese technology and technical illustration were

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

36

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

Figure 2 Detail from the Qingming scroll, circa 1100. Illustration courtesy of the Journal of Sung-Tuan Studies. Valerie Hansen, The Beijing Qingming Scroll and Its Significance for the Study of Chinese History (Albany, NY, 1996), Section 10. Note, for example, the minute treatment of the ship's rudder assembly. registering unprecedented advances. Among the best, or at least the most respected, Chinese painters, there developed a disdain for painting based on too careful observation and too much attention to detail. This new ethos served to reinforce and even turn into dogma earlier criticisms of ruled-line painting that argued against reliance on the straight edge and fussy attention to detail because such an approach robbed a painting of beauty, elegance and life.82 What might have been achieved is hinted at by the great 'Qingming' narrative scroll painted by Zhang Zeduan around 1100 (Figure 2). 83 But instead of being the harbinger of evermore precise and skilful technical illustrations, the Qingming scroll became the crowning culmination and last major example of this kind of genre painting using ruled-line techniques.84 In later centuries, most painters considered themselves as artists first (even if less prestigious professional or specialist artists) and draftsmen second; they aimed primarily for paintings or drawings that displayed elegance and self-expression rather than paying serious attention to 'getting it right' in the sense of realistic accuracy. The advent of woodblock printing In China, just as in Europe before the Renaissance, the fact that early depictions of technology had to be produced individually by hand necessarily limited their circulation. From the eighth century on, however, illustrations of all kinds became available as never before thanks to the spread of woodblock printing, including the printing of large numbers of illustrated books.85 History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

37

The earliest surviving examples of printed illustrations in China tend to be mainly Buddhist in inspiration and content. This is partly because the Buddhist interest in the reproduction of sutras, prayer sheets and the like was one of the major stimuli to much early woodblock printing. 86 Furthermore, most of our pre-tenth century examples of printing come from the great hoard of well over 20,000 scrolls, books, paintings, documents and fragments found in a monastic library at Dunhuang in north-west China; it had been bricked up around 1000 CE and was not discovered until some time in the 1890s.87 These materials, though including classical writings, literature in various forms, non-Buddhist religious and philosophical writings and many kinds of government documents,88 were nevertheless overwhelmingly (up to 85 per cent) Buddhist in origin.89 Thus, it is not surprising that the illustrations in these materials, including practice sketches,90 contain relatively few examples of scenes from daily life and provide only rather scanty information on technology.91 We do not know the extent to which technical illustrations may have appeared in printed secular works during this period. Given the fragility of the paper on which they were printed, very little of this production has survived. But it is difficult to imagine any significant demand for printed technical illustrations at this time (as opposed to, say, drawings that craftsmen regularly used in their work). More than likely, technological objects were included only when they met an aesthetic need and thus it was only in the not very numerous ruled-line paintings that any particular care was taken to portray them with a high degree of verisimilitude and accuracy. Government stimulus to technological illustration The conditions under which technical illustrations were produced is a subject that has thus far received little study. Nevertheless, it seems quite clear that most of at least the more advanced technical illustration must have been done in government workshops, usually those of the central government. It is no accident that the three major illustrated technological works of the eleventh century, at least two of which were never surpassed in later centuries for the quality of their illustrations, were all produced under government sponsorship because of the importance to the government of the technologies with which they dealt. Chronologically, the first of these works is the Wu Jing Zon§> Tao JE£$M$81§ or The Essentials of the Military Classics. Its compilation was ordered in 1041 and it was provided with a preface by the emperor upon its completion in 1044.92 Since it is essentially a work on military strategy, only one of its twenty-two sections deals with military technology per se. Nevertheless, that section contains many illustrations of weapons, vehicles and armour, including an illustration of a very sophisticated flame-thrower now well known thanks to its brilliant interpretation by Joseph Needham. 93 Unfortunately, what we have today are not the original illustrations but later, often not very competent, redrawings.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

38

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

Architecture was also of major concern to the government, which manifested its power in appropriately imposing public buildings. Over some twenty years in the late eleventh century, the Board of Works of the central government compiled a manual for the design and construction of government buildings. When finished in 1091, however, this draft was judged to be unsatisfactory and Li Jie ^SfgSc, a vice-director of the Board, was ordered to revise it. Relying not only on earlier and contemporary works on architecture but also on knowledge he acquired by discussing practical problems with people actually engaged in building, Li produced the classic treatment of traditional Chinese architecture.94 Although the original illustrations were probably markedly superior to the copies that have survived down to this century,95 the copies are nevertheless quite remarkable. Indeed, Needham suggests they are close to 'working drawings' in the modern sense, perhaps the first in any civilization.96 They could not have turned out so well had Li himself not been a rarity among Chinese officials: a painter of distinction as well as an architect and accomplished practical builder for the Court.97 We can only regret that the work contains no actual building scenes and thus provides us with no information on actual building methods and the tools and machines that were used. It was the area of astronomy and astrology, however, that witnessed some of the greatest Chinese achievements in technological illustration, and it was here too that the role of the government was especially crucial. Knowledge and understanding of the heavens was seen by Chinese rulers as a means to power over nature and over men. Establishment of a calendar to which all subjects adhered was one of the primary prerogatives backing up imperial legitimacy. Hence Chinese governments consistently supported efforts to improve knowledge and techniques in this area while at the same time trying to keep such knowledge out of the hands of ordinary people.98 Thus most of the advances in astronomy, including improvements in instruments for observing and calculating the movements of heavenly bodies, were made by officials in the employ of the government.99 The instrument at the heart of efforts to improve astronomical observation in traditional China was the armillary sphere. It apparently developed from a single-ring instrument that could give measurements of declination or right ascension depending on whether it was set up in the meridian or equatorial plane. In the first century BCE, a model with a permanently fixed equatorial ring was constructed (Geng Shouchang ^ ^ ^ , 52 BCE). A little over a century later, the ecliptic ring was added (Jia Kui W?S, 84 CE). Less than half a century after that, horizon and meridian rings were also added (Zhang fttngW&U circa 125 CE).100 The extremely ingenious Zhang Heng, perhaps the greatest polymath in Chinese history and an accomplished poet and painter as well, is the first figure we can identify as associated with the second theme of the armillary sphere story. Armillary spheres can perform a dual role. By using their graduated rings together with a sighting apparatus, one can assign a

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

39

position to an observed heavenly body. But armillary spheres could also serve as demonstrational instruments to assist calendrical calculations. Zhang was the first to construct a demonstrational armillary sphere, remarkable at such an early period, with a model of the earth at its centre. Zhang also figured out a way to apply water power to rotate his demonstrational model, though we know nothing of the details. In the centuries following Zhang Heng, a number of advances helped pave the way for the astronomical clocktower of Su Song that is described and illustrated in the Xin yi xiangfayao. In the early fifth century, Qian Lozhi $31^/21, stimulated by the recovery of the remains of a number of Zhang Heng's instruments, including his armillary sphere,101 and drawing on work done by Ge Heng UHf in the mid-third century102 seems to have built the first solid celestial globe. In the following centuries, a number of water-powered armillary spheres were built (such as those of Tao Hongjing P ® ^ S (452-536) and of Geng XunKfiJ (late sixth to early seventh century)), most of them probably drawing on earlier versions but some perhaps representing reinventions.103 In 633, under imperial authorization, the chief court astronomer, Li Chunfeng ^ ^ S l ? built the first armillary sphere equipped with three layers of rings, which set the standard for later versions.104 Another major advance occurred in the third decade of the eighth century when the emperor's desire for a new calendar that would more accurately predict eclipses led to the construction by the Buddhist monk Yixing—-fj, the greatest mathematician and astronomer of his day, together with the low-ranking but very ingenious official Liang Lingzan ^ ^ ^ of an astronomical apparatus that incorporated in its power train what might have been the world's first 'escapement'.105 Since the apparatus also included two jackwork elements to indicate hours by the striking of a bell and quarter-hours by the beating of a drum, this was in effect an escapement clock.106 Just as in the case of mechanical toys, it is highly unlikely that increasingly complex astronomical instruments could have been constructed without recourse to drawings of some kind.107 Moreover, by at least the Han, books were beginning to be written describing these astronomical mechanisms. There is reason to believe, for example, that Zhang Heng may have produced an illustrated account of his armillary sphere.108 All of these early works, however, have either been entirely lost or survive only in a few fragments. We therefore can usually rely only on their titles to surmise whether they contained drawings of mechanisms, a process that is rendered all the more tenuous since the word tu IB, whose inclusion in the title is often our best clue, can refer not only to illustrations but also to charts, diagrams and the like.109 It is possible, however, to identify one important advance in technical drawing where the early efforts of astronomers to map the heavens and to trace the movements of heavenly bodies played a key role. That was the emergence of scale drawings. The notion of representations to scale can be seen already in the descriptions of Han armillary spheres which were consciously constructed so that between two and four Chinese inches (1 in.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

40

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

= circa 2.25 cm) on the circumference of the outer ring equalled one degree.110 From at least as early as the Han and possibly quite a bit earlier we have an anonymous work called The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the Circular Paths of the Heavens111 which contains a diagram of the motions of the sun through six zones of the sky at different times of the year. Two sets of scales for two sizes of the diagram work out to 1:18,000,000 and 1:38,000,000.112 This technique then spread to the mapping of the earth, with scale maps appearing by the third century.113 THE XIN YI XIANG FA YAO: NEW ARMILLARY SPHERE AND CELESTIAL GLOBE SYSTEM ESSENTIALS AND ITS ILLUSTRATIONS The key surviving document for our story of mechanical clockwork in China through the eleventh century is the short book in three chapters mentioned above, the New Armillary Sphere and Celestial Globe System Essentials (hereafter, System Essentials). Compiled by the court official Su Song from about 1090 to 1094, it was first printed in 1172.114 It describes the great astronomical clocktower built under the overall supervision of Su with much help from a number of other officials, above all Han Gonglian who was largely responsible for its design.115 The book's importance for the earlier history of clockwork in China, however, derives both from the memorial with which it opens and which discusses clockwork and astronomical instruments dating back as far as the Han 116 as well as from the fact that Su's discussion and the illustrations of his own clocktower draw heavily on the illustrated accounts of two earlier astronomical clocktowers, that of Zhang Sixun from the years 976-8 and that of Zhou Riyan from the years 1078-85. Sorting out what was new in Su's discussion from what was borrowed from the earlier treatises has required scholarly detective work of the highest order on the part of a number of scholars, especially those mentioned at the beginning of this paper. The System Essentials contains 47 illustrations relating to the mechanism of Su Song and Han Gonglian.117 The number of illustrations itself is remarkable for so early a period. In addition, to any reader somewhat familiar with traditional Chinese illustrations of technology, these drawings immediately reveal a number of distinctive features. To begin with, there are no human beings in the illustrations. Nothing could reveal more clearly the absolute focus on the mechanism and its components, clearly separating these illustrations from the tradition of agricultural/ sericultural painting and drawing discussed above. Moreover, one sees relatively little effort to make these drawings aesthetically pleasing.118 They have a straightforward, no-nonsense character that, together with the pronounced concern with details, gives something of the flavour of modern engineering drawings. About a dozen of the illustrations are something like assembly or subassembly drawings (Figures 3 and 4) showing the complete mechanism and the relative positions of its different parts, while some 30 of the

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

41

Figure 3 Assembly drawing showing the timekeeping shaft and its jackwheels. System Essentials, Ch. 3, 6b.

Figure 4 Subassembly drawing showing the 'wooden earth box' and the bronze horizon support for the celestial globe. System Essentials, Ch. 2, 3a. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

42

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

illustrations can be seen as component part(s) drawings (Figures 5 and 6). The armillary sphere with its immediate driving mechanism is the best illustrated component; no less than 16 drawings are devoted to it alone. No other mechanism is China before the twentieth century would receive such detailed illustration.119

Figure 5 Component part drawing of innermost ring of the armillary sphere, showing sighting tube, cross-struts and polar-mounted declination circle. System Essentials, Ch. 1, 9b.

ii

Figure 6 Component parts drawing of sighting alidade and diametral bars of armillary sphere. System Essentials, Ch. 1, 18a. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

43

Figure 7 Assembly drawing of the main vertical transmission shaft. System Essentials, Ch. 3, 16a. In illustrated works on technology, one can usually expect that the closer the linkage between text and illustrations, the better the depiction of the technology is likely to be.120 As long as the same person was responsible for both text and illustrations, a close tie between the two was almost inevitable. We see this in medieval manuscripts in Europe where the text was interspersed with illustrations where appropriate or by writing more or less extended identifications or comments in the immediate area of the illustrations.121 In Europe, the appearance of movable-type printing dictated however a separation of text and illustration so that authors came to rely on assigning letters or numbers to various parts of the drawing, and then identifying them either in the text or in a caption.122 In China, the situation was different both because of the nature of the Chinese writing system and because of the early invention and perfection of woodblock printing. We spoke above of the very close connection between writing and painting in China: both writing and painting sprang from the same pictographic origins; both were practised using the same tools and materials; both could be used to accomplish the same purposes. Up through the Han, emphasis tended to be on moral purposes; afterwards aesthetic concerns came to dominate. The most familiar expression of this latter emphasis was the widespread practice of writing poems on paintings, which incidentally had the advantage of allowing the paintings to be more evocative without becoming overly (in the Chinese view) detailed. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

44

The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China

But other kinds of writing on paintings also made their appearance as early as the Han. An interesting example for our purposes are the paintings on the walls of a tomb in north China portraying civil and military officials paying their respects to the deceased. Each figure is identified with a label indicating his office.123 In large part because 'texts rather than images [were] the primary source of representational authority'124 in China, this same practice came to be used in technical drawings but never so extensively as in the System Essentials.125 In this case, labels are used, sometimes profusely, in all but the simplest of the component drawings.126 The insertion of labels was facilitated by the fact that the great majority of the labels consisted of only two or three Chinese characters and could be inserted in the normal vertical format or in a horizontal format, depending on spacing and aesthetic considerations. Moreover, since the Chinese continued even after the invention of movable type printing in the eleventh century to rely overwhelmingly on woodblock printing, characters and illustrations could be combined easily in the same woodblock. One has to admit that, even in the System Essentials, the use of labels is less than entirely consistent, with the choice of which elements to label seemingly quite arbitrary at times. For example, in the general view of the clock tower (Figure 8), only the armillary sphere, its protective roofing, and the upper reservoir for the water to power the apparatus are labelled; the celestial globe and the jackwork are not. Nevertheless, those labels provided frequently assist in making the illustrations significantly easier to interpret.127 This is especially true when the terminology used in the text is imprecise or inconsistent, a problem already well recognized in Su Song's time.128

Figure 8 General view of Su Song's and Han Gonglian's clocktower. System Essentials, Ch. 3, 2a. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Peter J. Golas

45

Figure 9 (a) Assembly drawing of escapement stops and levers; (b) detail. System Essentials, Ch. 3, 18b. Without overestimating their accuracy, it is fair to point out that the illustrations in the System Essentials sometimes display a concern for fine detail that is easy to miss, either because of insufficient skill on the part of the artist or even because the illustration is produced from a block that has been worn down by use. A very good example of the latter is the difficulty the authors of Heavenly Clockwork had in interpreting the 'star-shaped gadget' where the vertical connecting chain intersects the checking fork lower balancing lever (Figure 9). 129 Only a photographic enlargement of the illustration from a superior edition was able to confirm that this was not a part of the wheel mechanism but rather the drawing of a dragon'shead gargoyle fitted with a pipe from which water filled successively the buckets on the periphery of the wheel.130 One of the perennial problems of technological illustration, and one whose solution becomes all the more imperative with the emergence of more complex technology, is how to show the viewer what is happening in those parts of a machine that are enclosed and cannot be seen in normal viewing. This can be done only by the artist creating an artificial condition where all or part of the casing is rendered transparent. In the case of 'cutaway' drawings, a piece of the outer enclosure is pictured as missing, opening a window as it were to the inside of the machine. This technique was already in use in Europe in the fifteenth century, being particularly associated with Mariano Taccola (1382— Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Braun

173

If one compares economic history with the history of technology there has been a tendency in the latter to present historical development as a sequence of dramatic revolutions and discontinuous leaps brought forth by basic innovations and their diffusion. In economic history those spectacular leaps have often given way to smooth curves of economic development which convey a more realistic picture of the subject under consideration.27 Historians of technology have sometimes made good use of those findings.28 In their attempt to explain the success or failure of a technology and the motives for invention and innovation economists have often looked to the market. 29 Authors like Nelson and Winter have shown, however, that the introduction of a new technique is not necessarily due solely to economic calculus, but also to 'organizational routines', to the desire to be the first on the market with a new product, and to the imitation of successful enterprises or to the objective of a more effective control of employees.30 The main weakness of the approaches of most economists vis-a-vis technology has been the fact that they regarded technology as a 'black box'. The most useful research relevant to the history of technology in opening the black box has been done by Nathan Rosenberg who realized that economists' discussion of technological change was usually conducted at too high a level of aggregation and was also lacking in historical specificity.31 To remedy this he, among other issues, investigated the role of complementarities. In many cases a central innovation or small numbers of innovations provided a basis around which further cumulative improvements and complementary innovations were positioned. Rosenberg assessed the important and hitherto neglected cumulative effects of small improvements and the phenomenon of technological interdependence. For example, as the textile industry expanded in the nineteenth century it generated input requirements that were beyond its own technical competence and drew upon skills of the chemical industry and the machinery makers. The above review of theoretical concepts and models of the history of technology has made it clear that there is no general theory of the historical development of technology. Some concepts are more appropriate and useful than others in dealing with a particular period, country, region or issue. While some concepts have more merits than others, all have deficiencies when applied to very complex and long-term problems. This should not tempt us do without them completely. Theory does have a legitimate role in the history of technology; even the most 'atheoretical' and, seemingly, 'merely factual' accounts of technological development are replete with underlying theoretical assumptions which the authors have not made explicit.32 Therefore a diligent, selective and pragmatic use of theoretical concepts can be of use for the historian of technology. A major problem with these theoretical concepts is that most of them have been developed with Western industrial societies in mind. Also, recently, the trend has become stronger to limit research in the history of

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

174

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

technology to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries or only to the last hundred years. Especially in view of the long, varied, and complex technological past of Europe this tendency has to be deplored and should not be continued: historians of technology, limiting themselves to 'contemporary history', actually pursue 'technology studies' (generally from the social science or humanities point of view) and nothing more. To call these - completely legitimate - endeavours 'history of technology' is a vast exaggeration and comes close to imposture. It would be fatal for the historical discipline to ignore 'the long run'. During the last two decades or so the discipline of the history of technology has been enriched by new, often exciting issues which had been neglected before. They deal with technology and the environment, minorities, race, gender and other issues.33 As hinted at above, adherents of postmodern approaches have directed our attention to discourse analysis and to 'linguistic turns' in technology, analysing, inter alia, how technologies were perceived at a particular time.34 Production processes and their effects on working conditions have been an important field of inquiry for those historians of technology who have not been afraid of investigating areas which had hitherto been the domain of industrial historians and labour historians. Still, various deficiencies remain. As Carroll Pursell has recently pointed out, 'the history of technology, as currently studied, privileges design over use, production over consumption and periods of change over those which seem to be static and traditional'. 35 Remedying these long-standing biases will require intensive efforts during the decades to come. David Edgerton complained that in Anglo-Saxon historiography - and this complaint can to a large extent be generalized - historiography of technique is concerned with innovation rather than with technique in use. This leads to unfortunate results and he thus rightly claims that the study of technique already in widespread use should be pursued more intensively, thereby shifting away from a still prevailing 'focalisation sur l'innovation', 'innovation-centredness'.36 So there is a rich research agenda for historians of technology. While we can unreservedly endorse Lewis Mumford's observation of 1966 that whole categories of technology were ignored by scholars and that the tendency to identify tools and machines with technology was to substitute a part for the whole,37 we should, however, insist that those tools and machines are still part of the whole and should not be 'filtered away'. There is more to the history of technology than human intentions and human perceptions vis-a-vis technology, however exciting and revealing these may be.38 A stimulating research topic in which various models have been developed is the complex relationship between science and technology in historical perspective. This has also been a favourite topic for historians of technology in Europe for some time and it was recently at the heart of the 20th Congress of History of Science in Liege in July 1997 which had 'Science, Technology and Industry' as its theme. Most historians of technology agree that the ultimate goal of the scientific enterprise is the

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Braun

175

better understanding of the natural world and that the main interest of technology is the exploitation of the world's natural resources and the making of artefacts. Science is, essentially, an intellectual, truth-seeking endeavour whilst the orientation of technology is essentially practical, an attempt to solve material problems.39 Contrary to what has often been said in the technological literature, technology is, from the historical point of view, not applied science. Research into the history of science and of technology has shown that the content and direction of science has often been heavily shaped by technological considerations. On numerous occasions technological knowledge preceded scientific knowledge in that scientists were confronted by technologists with certain properties or performance characteristics which demanded a scientific explanation. Sadi Carnot's accomplishment in creating the science of thermodynamics, for example, the attempt to understand what determines the efficiency of a steam engine, was about half a century after James Watt's steam engine patents. Apart from this, by providing instruments of observation, testing and measurement, technology has always shaped science.40 Also, the concept of 'science-based industries' such as the chemical, electrical and optical industries, which were supposed to have come into existence in the late nineteenth century, has to be revised. In a recent study of the origins of electrical engineering in Germany in the late nineteenth century Wolfgang Konig has shown that the German Technische Hochschulen profited more from knowledge produced in industry than vice versa.41 In this case the term 'industry-based (engineering) science' would be more appropriate. The historian of technology Edward T. Layton Jnr. sees scientists and technologists as belonging to different communities with their own goals and value systems. Although they may share some values they can be described as 'mirror-image twins' in that there is among technologists a reversal of priorities compared to those in science. In that view, the essence of technology is practice, that of science is theory. According to Rachel Laudan's convincing 'technological conception of science', however, science is also practice, with chemistry being a good case in point. In many cases engineering sciences such as aerodynamics and materials science experimentally apply scientific theories to real or nearly real situations, provided there are theories to apply.42 The issue of current research problems in the history of technology in Europe, of which some have already been mentioned, can be treated in different ways. One possibility is to list the major institutions concerned with this field and their major research topics. This would amount to a lengthy compendium which might be instructive, but could be somewhat tiring. I have therefore opted for a different choice: I shall, admittedly in an arbitrary and subjective way, concentrate on three research issues which have played an important role in the discussions of two major congresses held in the field in 1996: the SHOT conference in London, 1-4 August, and the ICOHTEC Symposium in Budapest, 7-11 August. These will be supplemented by some relevant papers given at the 20th International Congress of History of Science in Liege, 20-26 July 1997.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

176

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

Out of the numerous sessions I shall select only three which seem to be particularly fitting for comparative studies of technological development in Europe: technology transfer, higher technical education and failed innovations. These problems have a general relevance for the history of technology in Europe. They refer to several of the issues mentioned above, such as technological style and technological systems, the genesis of technology, technological interdependence and complementarities, technological change and economic growth as well as concepts of the relationship between science and technology. Some aspects of these topics have also been treated at earlier ICOHTEC and SHOT meetings. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER Technology transfer, in this case the transfer of technical knowledge and technical know-how from one country or one region to another, has been a standard theme at congresses on the history of technology for a long time. There were several sessions devoted to this subject area at the SHOT congress in London and the subject was also touched upon at ICOHTEC, Budapest. One of the reasons why this theme has been such a favourite among historians of technology is probably the many - often failed - attempts to transfer technology from the 1960s onwards. These transfer processes frequently involved technology transfer from Western, industrialized nations to so-called 'developing countries'. The question arose whether, in order to avoid mistakes, it is possible to learn from historical experience. But there are also numerous cases of technology transfer between nations of similar technological standing and also, in the twentieth century, cases of transfer between Western capitalist countries on the one hand and Eastern socialist countries on the other.43 Historically, Britain, as the home of the 'Industrial Revolution', was the great technological donor nation in the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century.44 It has to be pointed out, however, that technology transfer even at that time was not a 'one-way street' and that there are several cases in which Britain benefited from technology coming from central Europe. In the early modern period, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Britain was a recipient of various technical innovations from states such as Prussia or France. Much know-how in mining technology was transferred to Britain from Germany in the sixteenth century and the same is true of textile and chemical technologies from France in the seventeenth century. Artisans from various parts of Europe brought their special skills to Britain in the early modern period, especially in Elizabethan England. English government policy encouraged them to settle in Britain. But there was, of course, much resistance to the new technology coming from abroad: foreign immigrants were often considered as rivals and were confronted with considerable hostility on the part of the native craftsmen. Technical know-how has frequently been kept secret because its

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Braun

177

successful application can bring large material wealth. This was also true of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the other hand there was the scientific tradition of openness and the free disclosure of knowledge which ran counter to the practice of technological secrecy. The network, which the 'republic of chemist-dyers' formed in Europe in the eighteenth century, is a fascinating case in point. Changes in chemistry in the late eighteenth century made for the appearance of new kinds of dyers who, as a group, shared traditional dyeing skills as well as recent chemical knowledge. Thus the chemist-dyers tried to establish a dialogue between the academy and the workshop, between science and technical application. They formed a European network which often overcame secrecy rules and they co-operated through personal relations, travel and publications, as well as through shared patents and informal discussions. Chemists and industrialists like Peel, Hermbstaedt and Berthollet played a leading role in this community. It is well known that Britain in the eighteenth century generally enjoyed a comfortable technological lead and that there was a massive technology transfer from Britain to several continental states, especially to France. There are many instances of a successful transfer of technical knowledge and skills. Instrumental in this was, for example, Vaucanson's Hotel de Mortagne which, supported by the French government, became a public repository for inventions in 1783. The Hotel de Mortagne also developed a new approach to technical education which held an intermediate position between apprenticeship and formal education. On the other hand it often proved difficult to develop and improve technology originating from Britain in France. Much additional input was needed and personal assistance on the part of British technicians was necessary for quite long periods. Of course, Britain transferred technology not only to France, but also to Northern Europe and other parts of Europe. Sweden, for example, benefited much from British steam power technology and Norway from British textile technology. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Finland was a recipient of electrical power technology from various European states. As exemplified by the reception of foreign craftsmen in Elizabethan England, artisans from other countries often had a hard time. A case in point is Pierre Frederick Ingold, a Swiss watchmaker, who tried his luck in England. At the end of the eighteenth century the horological industry in Britain produced about half of the world's output of timekeepers. A century later the British horological industry was in terminal decline. British watchmakers were unable to compete with those in Switzerland and the United States. How did this come about? In 1842-43 P.F. Ingold attempted to establish a factory in London for the mass production of watches, after having developed various machine tools to make this possible. After failing twice in France in the 1830s he attempted to transfer his newly developed method to London. He failed, however, to raise the necessary capital in

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

178

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

London and was not supported by the British parliament. But there was another reason: his method entailed a revolution in the production process of watches. This would have put craft skills in the London watch industry as well as the social structure and culture of that branch of industry at risk. The resistance was so severe that he had no chance of putting his plan into reality. Progressing further towards the end of the nineteenth century the centre of gravity in innovation shifted.45 Britain slowed down considerably and countries like Germany and the United States made rapid progress. This meant that they developed into typical donor countries of technology, whose technological know-how was much sought after. In mechanical engineering, especially in machine tools, the United States took the lead, developing automotive machine tools, while in chemical engineering and the optical industry Germany was number one. The USA, together with Germany, was most innovative in the electrical industry. Therefore countries in the rest of Europe, but also in Britain, looked to Germany and the USA for recent technology. States like Germany, Britain and France were instrumental in the industrialization of Russia, and much technology from Europe was used in the industrialization of Japan which started in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century American mass-production techniques spread all over Europe and countries like Britain, Germany, France, Sweden and Switzerland developed their own ways of adapting rationalization processes such as Taylorism and Fordism. Technology from America was also prevalent in various European states in the second half of the twentieth century: USdesigned nuclear energy plant, computer technology and space technology. In all these cases, however, technological know-how, already developed in Europe shortly before and during the Second World War, was used. The contribution of rocket technology from Germany to the US and Soviet space programmes is well-known. German aircraft engineers in the Soviet Union immediately after the end of the Second World War were, however, much less successful. Technology from America, in this case the deep-fermentation technique for penicillin by the pharmaceutical industry, was adapted in Britain and France shortly after the Second World War. 46 British and French firms successfully tried to learn from the American model of success with penicillin - the interaction between academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies and government organizations — and they transferred and adapted the US model to suit their scientific and industrial interests. What conclusions can be drawn from European historical experiences with technology transfer for solving similar problems of today? To be sure, no case is exactly like any other and circumstances change all the time. But historical experience can certainly teach us some lessons: what is of vital importance is not only to transfer technical know-how, but also the provision of favourable conditions in the recipient country for the new technology to thrive. The recipient country must be willing and able to use the new technology and to adapt it to the particular national or regional

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Braun

179

circumstances. There must be an appropriate educational system, an efficient infrastructure and, very important, a favourable attitude to technological change in vital parts of the society. Historical experience also shows that, in spite of all the sophisticated means of modern communication, the personal element in transfer is still of vital importance. TECHNICAL EDUCATION For a long time there has been a great interest among historians of technology in the history of (higher) technical education, often in combination with the development of professionalization in engineering. The 14th ICOHTEC Symposium, held in 1985 at Berkeley in conjunction with the 17th International Congress of History of Science, devoted itself exclusively to this topic,47 and also two recent ICOHTEC symposia in Bath 1994 and Budapest in 1996 and the International History of Science Congress in Liege 1997 held sessions on this subject. SHOT has, for some time, had normally one or two smaller sessions on this at its conferences. The development of higher technical education is a theme particularly suitable for comparative research. It is generally possible to distinguish different 'styles' of technical education in different countries, but it is also fascinating to trace the numerous instances of transfer of technical knowledge, often combined with adaptation processes of that knowledge. It seems obvious that an efficient system of engineering education is a vital prerequisite for technical and industrial development and economic growth. If one looks at the matter more closely, however, it becomes clear that the relationship between technical education and industrial development is only one factor contributing to industrial performance. It is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for economic growth. Its success or failure is largely determined by the state of industry and the economic and social context at a particular period of time.48 To obtain more precise answers to this question it would be necessary to know more about the careers of individual engineers and about the selection process and the recruitment procedures of industrial engineers.49 Whilst we have quite an extensive knowledge of higher engineering education from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries we need to know more about non-academic technical education50 and also about developments in the twentieth century. Technical schools emerged in the early sixteenth century with artillery schools in Venice, Sicily and Burgos. Apart from military institutions, mining academies played a large role in the early modern period, for example in Freiberg, Saxony, founded in 1765. Still, when using the term 'engineering' in the late eighteenth century, military engineering (fortresses, weaponry) was generally meant. At the end of that century John Smeaton, the British engineer, coined the term 'civil engineer' to distinguish this branch of engineering from the military side. From the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards the French model of higher technical education exercised an enormous influence in

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

180

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

Europe, but also in other parts of the world. A key year was 1794 with the foundation of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. This institution, originating in the French revolutionary period, stressed science and mathematics in its curriculum; fields of scientific investigation such as thermodynamics, hydraulics and hydrodynamics played a large role. It was soon apparent, however, that, with the emphasis on theory, there were deficiencies in practical application. This was remedied by the foundation of more practically oriented institutions such as the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. Although the French model of the Ecole Polytechnique and the various Ecoles d'Application made quite an impact on the foundation of Polytechnical Schools in several German states, for example in Karlsruhe (Baden) in 1825, the government in Prussia refrained from following the French model closely. After all, the Ecole Polytechnique had been founded in the period of the French Revolution and was therefore considered bourgeois and emancipatory. However, Prussia and other German states established 'trade schools' (Gewerbeschulen) to prepare technicians, stressing practical experience rather than theory. With the growing sophistication of technical development it soon became clear that the level of teaching at the Gewerbeschulen was not sufficiently advanced. Polytechnical schools, which later became Technische Hochschulen, were therefore established in Germany with the objective of combining 'scientific' technology and practice. The French system of higher technical education made quite an impact in Europe and North America, but it was never adapted in toto anywhere in the world.51 This system was probably better suited to centralized, bureaucratic states like France, Russia and Spain and was not so easily adaptable to countries with a stronger capitalist orientation like Britain or the United States. As far as Russia is concerned, the Russian government in the early nineteenth century was very interested in the way France organized technical education. When reorganizing her engineering corps and introducing higher technical education in 1809, Russia took France as her model. The first Russian 'grande ecole', the Institute of the Engineering Corps for Transport and Communication, can be regarded as a blend of the French Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees. During the following half century the engineering profession in Russia was institutionalized. In this process French grandes ecoles, like the Ecole Royale d'Application et l'Artillerie et du Genie in Metz, the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers and the regional Ecoles des Arts et Metiers served as models, but not every feature of them was copied. Something similar goes for the relationship between institutions of technical education in Europe, especially in France, and in the United States of America. Military engineering in the US, as practised at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, established in 1802, has always looked to Europe for inspiration. After the war of 1812 the US government embarked on an ambitious programme to create a national system of defence. At that time American engineering education drew on the best of European training but, in the end, created its own unique blend

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Braun

181

of fortification research, design and construction. At West Point, for example, US engineering scientists and educators combined European engineering theory, which came to a large extent from France, with their own approach of testing and experiment, which was very much influenced by the emerging scientific community in the United States. In the field of military and civil engineering F J . Gerstner reformed the State Institute of Civil and Military Engineering in Prague in the early nineteenth century. Although he, too, looked to the Ecole Polytechnique as his model, he was very keen on practical applications. The combination of theory and practice played a large role in the creation of the Poly technical School in Prague founded in 1803. The transfer of technical knowledge and the fact that engineering students often spent considerable time at polytechnical schools and institutes of technology in foreign countries helped to even out differing levels of technical knowledge and expertise. Nordic students, for example, often studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Hungarian students frequently went to Germany, for example to the Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe. But what about Britain, the 'first industrial nation' and home of the 'Industrial Revolution'? Engineering was a successful profession in midnineteenth century Britain, but there was no special educational institution devoted to it. Britain practised a variant of the old apprenticeship method, called 'pupillage', which involved working under and being trained by an experienced, skilled engineer or technician. Whereas British engineering education thus relied heavily on practical training in the period from 1750 to 1850, the 'Heroic Age' of British Engineering, this is no longer true of the time after 1850. Then a steadily increasing proportion of theoretical input can be clearly recognized. This development can be illustrated very well by the career of Sir Alfred Ewing, whose own education as an engineer was both theoretical and practical. Ewing was to become one of the most important practitioners of academic engineering training in Britain. Whereas in the nineteenth century the English universities were generally reluctant to incorporate engineering in their academic curriculum, the case in Scotland was somewhat different. The University of Glasgow was the first British University to establish a chair of engineering. But there was considerable resistance from the established scientific disciplines. The second holder of the chair, however, W.J.M. Rankine, managed to find a suitable way to integrate engineering into the university. As he could teach neither pure science nor pure practice he created a novel field of engineering study, which he labelled 'engineering science'. This field combined elements of theory and practice in a new intermediate body of knowledge. FAILED INNOVATIONS Studies in the history of technology largely convey a story of winners.52 The idea often prevails that the development of technology consists in a

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

182

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

large number of success stories. Not so successful cases are seen as temporary lags within longer developments of ultimately successful technology. In this line of reasoning all successful technologies must, by definition, be the 'best' in that they alone have been able to survive the tests of engineering experimentation and of the competitive marketplace. This idea of progress rests upon a naive faith in objective science, economic rationality and the wisdom of the market. It also assumes that the flow of creative inventions passes through three successive filters: the technical filter, which selects the most scientifically sound solutions, the business filter, which eliminates all the options that might not be economically viable, and, finally, the self-correcting market mechanism, which is ultimately decisive in selecting the 'best' innovations. This narrow view which suggests that technical and economic factors alone decide the fate of an innovation, is misleading: it disregards 'real' people, power, institutions or competing values and differing cultures. It therefore leaves out important questions like the 'best technology for whom and for what, to what criteria and to what visions?' In analysing technological development, failed innovations are just as important as successful ones. Indeed, most innovations fail. Incorporating failed innovations into historical studies of technology enables us to obtain a more realistic view of how technology developed. Dealing with failed innovations also makes clear that the 'internal' way of writing the history of technology is entirely inadequate. The various case studies presented on the development of technology in Europe at the Symposium on 'Failed Innovations' at the 18th ICOHTEC Symposium in Hamburg 1989 and at the SHOT Congress in London 1996 show that the reasons for failure were, apart from technical deficiencies, often economic, social, political or cultural - or, typically - a mixture of some or all of them. At those sessions it became clear that, as hinted at above, it is impossible to talk about 'success' or 'failure' in objective terms, and that the question of 'success or failure for whom' has always to be asked. According to a market definition a product succeeds if it is accepted by the market - if there is a sufficient demand for it - and it fails if there is not. But this approach disregards the vital issue of specifying for which social groups, organizations or individuals that product is a success or a failure. Also, different social groups use different criteria to define success: an engineer puts emphasis on functionality, a customer on low price and on convenience, a stockholder on profitability and various social movements on safety. Regarded so, an innovation can be a success for one group and a failure for another. The 'Social Construction of Technology' approach is very useful in this context. The case studies which are mentioned later confirm the view that there is generally a variety of reasons for failure. It has to be pointed out, however, that in all these cases 'failure' can only mean that an innovation is not successful at a particular time and in a particular place and that, in most cases, only 'market failure' is meant. An innovation can, possibly, be 'resurrected' later and then be successful. For the failure of the atmospheric railroad of I.K. Brunei in Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century,

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Brawn

183

for example, mainly technological and economic factors were decisive.53 Brunei recommended the adoption of atmospheric propulsion on the South Devon Railroad in 1844. The principle of atmospheric propulsion had been convincingly demonstrated in various models and small-scale operations and it also offered attractive advantages on the heavy gradients in some parts of south-west England. But its installation proved to be a costly failure for a variety of reasons: there were problems in scaling up the atmospheric system for main-line operations, and there were problems with sealing. Apart from technical problems there was also the issue of competition: to some extent the atmospheric system was overtaken by continuing improvements in steam locomotion. Something like this has happened quite often in the history of technology. If an 'old' technology comes under pressure from a 'new' one, it is often improved to such an extent as to make it very hard for the new technology to succeed. In the long term any advantages the system of atmospheric railroad had were surpassed by those offered by electric traction. Another example of a failed innovation, this time roughly half a century later and not in Britain, but in Wilhelmine Germany, is the failed attempt to introduce electric ploughs into agriculture. Prior to the First World War, electric ploughs held great promise in Germany. They were better suited to carrying out deep ploughing than steam ploughs and they also promised to solve social and political problems, such as the increasing labour shortage east of the Elbe. But although the prospects for electric ploughs looked good, the system failed and only about 1,000 of them were introduced into Germany at that time. The main reason for this failure of electric ploughs to spread in agriculture in Germany was a mismatch between the technical innovation on the one hand and the social, political and economic conditions on the other: in the western parts of Germany, electrification had, by about 1910, progressed sufficiently to use electric ploughs on a wide scale. But in this part of Germany agricultural holdings were too small to make their introduction a feasible proposition. In eastern Germany the size of the holdings would have been appropriate, because they were larger, but electrification had not progressed far enough there to use electric ploughs in a profitable way. The application of Hughes's concept of 'technological system' is useful here. Whereas in the two case studies just mentioned technical and economic factors played a dominant role, the failure to introduce television into Czechoslovakia in the 1930s was largely prevented by bureaucratic red tape. In the second half of the 1930s the Czechoslovak professor of experimental physics, Jaroslav Sfranek, designed a system for the transmission of visual images for low-line mechanical television. It made the production of an authentic spatial impression of the picture possible which was transmitted on the screen. Although experts and the general public were enthusiastic about this invention, the innovation did not find practical application in Czechoslovakia at that time. This was due to the prevailing red tape in state authorities, to internal political quarrels and to the unstable political situation prior to the Second World War.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

184

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

Another case of a failed innovation comes from Sweden, that of the plastic bicycle. The bicycle boom, which followed the 1973/74 oil price crisis, inspired a group of engineers in Gothenburg to develop a bicycle in fibre-composite plastics. Essential parts, such as frame, wheels, fork and handlebar, were to be produced by automatic injection moulding, thus requiring little subsequent finishing. In spite of intense advertising and high media attention the new plastic bicycle has never been accepted in the marketplace. The bicycle boom was already fading out and few people were prepared to pay the relatively high price for it. But the main reason for its rejection was probably its shape. It looked somewhat clumsy and inelegant and therefore deviated from the modern notion of what a bicycle should look like. It has been said above that the main reason for the failure of Sfranek's invention of a television in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s was bureaucratic inertia, the inflexibility of the economic-political system. This is to a large extent true of the failure of many innovations in European countries after the Second World War. Many were not introduced at all, but others failed to spread on a wide, economically significant scale. To be sure, there were certainly some successful technological developments, for example in space technologies in the Soviet Union, but in many other sectors technical innovations and industrial development was rather slow and inefficient. This was also true of the German Democratic Republic, whose technological development has recently been studied rather closely.54 After the Second World War East Germany had been left in a comparatively disadvantageous position compared to West Germany and the prevailing economic and social system was not, on the whole, conducive to technical innovation. Innovation on a large scale in many industrial sectors would have required the GDR government to introduce several features of capitalism, especially entrepreneurial freedom, into their system. A concurrent liberalization of the GDR - and that goes for other socialist states also - would most probably have put the political system at risk. There have certainly been some 'technological islands' with some freedom to manoeuvre in the GDR, but they were too small to provide sufficient momentum. The economic and political dependence on the Soviet Union did not make things easier. CONCLUSION It has, hopefully, been possible to show that the history of technology in Europe is a vigorous discipline, dealing with a large number of issues which are not only of interest for the historian of technology but for anybody concerned with contemporary problems of technology, society, economy, politics or culture. Although the theoretical concepts reviewed - technological determinism, the model of technological evolution, social construction of technology, technological systems and technological momentum, economists' models of technological development and models of the relationship between science and technology - have

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Braun

185

deficiencies, their careful and selective use can be of value for historical research on technology. Investigation of the three research areas of technology transfer, technical education and failed innovations has shown that, in the case of technology transfer, a favourable attitude towards technological change in the recipient country is of vital importance. There also has to be an efficient system of (technical) education and an efficient infrastructure. In many cases the technology is not adopted in its original shape but modified substantially and adapted to the particular requirements of the host country. Something similar goes for technical education. It was made clear that there were various (national) styles of technical education and that the model of the French Ecole Polytechnique exercised an enormous influence on education in the other industrializing nations. Although nobody would contradict the notion that an efficient system of technical education is and was an important pre-condition for industrial development and economic growth, it is very difficult to assess that importance with any degree of precision. Historical experience shows that technical education has never been a sufficient condition for economic growth and that there have to be other favourable economic, social, cultural and political factors. Those favourable 'contextual' factors were also highlighted in the review of research on successful and failed innovations. Although shortcomings in technical aspects of products such as impractical design or a faulty construction were sometimes the main reason for failure, the role played by economic, social or cultural factors were often more decisive. Many more research problems have been tackled by historians of technology from a comparative European perspective. To mention only a few: large-scale technological systems, especially electrification; processes of de-industrialization after 1945; technology and the arts, especially technology and music; transport and communication; differing national styles of research and development; high-technology fields like nuclear energy, microelectronics, laser technology or biotechnology, the development of gunpowder, or technology and the environment. New conceptual approaches and a shifting emphasis from innovation to use and from production to consumption will provide scholars with new, challenging research agendas. Acknowledgements I would like to thank David Edgerton for useful comments on a draft of this article. Notes and References 1. See S. Angliss, J. Law, N. Wyatt, T. Boon and R. Bud (eds), Guide to the History of Technology in Europe (London, 1996). For Germany, see W. Weber (ed.), Naturwissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte in Deutschland, 1993-1996 (Weinheim, 1997). There are also reports on research in the history of technology in different European countries in the SHO T Newsletter, the ICOHTEC Newsletter, Technology and Culture and ICON. See, e.g., S. Gerovitch, Terestroika of the History of Technology and Science in the USSR: Changes in the Discourse', Technology and Culture, 1996, 37(1): 102-34 and M.R. Levin, 'What the French Have to Say about the History of Technology', Technology and Culture, 1996, 37(1): 158-68. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

186

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

2. For this and the following see, among others, R. Rurup, 'Historians and Modern Technology: Reflections on the Development and Current Problems of the History of Technology', Technology and Culture, 1974, 15: 161-93. 3. See M.R. Smith and L. Marx (eds), Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism (Cambridge, MA, 1994). 4. D. Edgerton, 'De l'innovation aux usage. Dix theses eclectique sur l'histoire des techniques', Annates, 1998, 53: 815-37. 5. W. Rammert, 'Wer oder was steuert den technischen Fortschritt? Technischer Wandel zwischen Steuerung und Evolution', Soziale Welt, 1992, 43: 7-25. 6. G. Basalla, The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge, 1988). 7. J. Mokyr, The Lever of Riches. Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New Y 1990). 8. R. Fox (ed.), Technological Change. Methods and Themes in the History of Technol (Amsterdam, 1996), 6. 9. D.A. Hounshell, 'Hughesian History of Technology and Chandlerian Business History: Parallels, Departures and Critics', History and Technology, 1995, 12: 205-24, 213. 10. T.J. Pinch and W.E. Bijker, 'The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other', in W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes and T. Pinch (eds), The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 17-50. 11. W.E. Bijker and J. Law (eds), Shaping Technology!Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnic Change (Cambridge, MA, 1992). 12. W.E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Cha (Cambridge, MA, 1995). 13. R. Kline and T. Pinch, 'Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States', Technology and Culture, 1996, 34: 763-95, 767. 14. Adherents of the Leitbilder concept are M. Dierkes and U. Hoffmann (eds), New Technology at the Outset: Social Forces in the Shaping of Technological Innovations (Frank Boulder, CO, 1993). In a similar vein, see A. Knie, Diesel - Karriere einer Technik. Genese und Formierungsprozesse im Motorenbau (Berlin, 1991). Critical of this is W. Konig, 'Technik, Macht und Markt. Eine Kritik der sozialwissenschaftlichen Technikgeneseforschung', Technikgeschichte, 1993, 60: 243-66. 15. Rammert, op. cit. (5), 8. 16. Bijker and Law, op. cit. (11), 13. 17. B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (M Keynes, 1987), 144. 18. B. Latour, Trreductions', published with The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, MA, 1988). 19. M. Foucault, UArcheologie du savoir (Paris, 1967). 20. B. Latour, 'Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artefacts', in Bijker and Law, op. cit. (11), 225-58. 21. T.P. Hughes, 'Technological Momentum' in Smith and Marx op. cit. (3), 101-13, 102, 112. 22. T.P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore 1983). 23. A. Picon, 'Towards a History of Technological Thought', in Fox op. cit. (8), 37-49. 24. See the contribution by J. Radkau on the history of technology and environmental history in G. Ambrosius, D. Petzina and W. Plumpe (eds), Moderne Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Eine Einfuhrung fur Historiker und Okonomen (Munich, 1996). 25. W. Rammert, 'Entstehung und Entwicklung der Technik: Der Stand der Forschung zur Technikgenese in Deutschland', Journal fur Sozialforschung, 1992, 32: 177-208, 195. 26. H.J. Braun, 'Technik und Wirtschaftswissenschaften', in A. Hermann and C. Schonbeck (eds), Technik und Wissenschaft (Diisseldorf, 1991), 137-85. 27. G. Daniels, 'The Big Questions in the History of American Technology', Technology and Culture, 1970, 11: 1-21. 28. N. von Tunzelmann's Steampower and Industrialization (Oxford, 1977) has, among others, created a great impact. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Hans-Joachim Braun

187

29. H.L. Dienel, 'Sociological and Economic Technology Research: A Guideline for the History of Technology?' ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technolo 1995, 1: 70-84, 74-5. 30. R.R. Nelson and S.G. Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Cambridge, MA, 1982). 31. N. Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge, 1982) and N. Rosenberg, Exploring the Black Box. Technology, Economics, and History (Cambridge, 1994). 32. See, e.g., the exchange between R.A. Buchanan and J. Law: R.A. Buchanan, 'Theory and Narrative in the History of Technology', Technology and Culture, 1991, 32: 365-76; J. Law, 'Theory and Narrative in the History of Technology: Response', ibid., 377-84; and P. Scranton, 'Theory and Narrative in the History of Technology: Comment', ibid., 385-93. 33. As to gender see, among others, N.E. Lerman, A.P. Mohun and R. Oldenziel (eds), 'Gender Analysis and the History of Technology', Special Issue of Technology and Culture, 1997, 38(1). 34. M. Osietzki, 'Kritische Uberlegungen zum 'linguistic turn' in der Geschichtswissenschaft', Blatter fur Technikgeschichte, 1995/6, 57/58: 99-110. 35. C. Pursell, 'Seeing the Invisible: New Perceptions in the History of Technology', ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology, 1995, 1: 9-15, 9. 36. Edgerton, op. cit. (4), 817. 37. L. Mumford, 'Technics and the Nature of Man', Technology and Culture, 1966, 7: 306. 38. I concur in this with J. Radkau, 'Literaturbericht Technik- und Umweltgeschichte', Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 1997, 48: 479-97, 481. 39. C. Chant (ed.), Science, Technology and Everyday Life, 1870-1950 (London, 1989), 42. 40. N. Rosenberg, 'How Exogenous Is Science?', in idem, Inside the Black Box, op. cit. (31), 141-59. 41. W. Konig, 'Science-Based Industry or Industry-Based Science? Electrical Engineering in Germany before World War I', Technology and Culture, 1996, 34(1), 70-101. 42. E.T. Layton Jr., 'Mirror Image Twins: The Communities of Science and Technology in 19th Century America', Technology and Culture, 1971, 12: 562-80. See also idem, 'Through the Looking Glass: or, News from Lake Mirror Image', in S.H. Cutliffe and R.C. Post (eds), In Context: History and the History of Technology. Essays in Honour of Melv Kranzberg (Bethlehem, PA, London and Toronto, 1989), and A. Herlea (ed.), ScienceTechnology Relationships ~ Relations Science-Technique, presentations made at the XVIIIth International Congress of ICOHTEC, Paris 1990 (San Francisco, 1993); I. Inkster, Science and Technology in History: An Approach to Industrial Development (London, 1991); P. Kroes an M. Bakker (eds), Technological Development and Science in the Industrial Age (Dordrecht, 1992); R. Laudan, 'Natural Alliance or Forced Marriage? Changing Relations between the Histories of Science and Technology', Technology and Culture, 1995, 36 (2, Supplement to April 1995): 517-28. 43. For the following see, e.g., H.J. Braun, 'Technologietransfer. Theoretische Ansatze und historische Beispiele', in E. Pauer (ed.), Technologietransfer Deutschland - Japan von 1850 bis zur Gegenwart (Technology Transfer from Germany to Japan from 1850 to the Present) (Munich, 1992), 16-47. 44. See, e.g., the papers on technology transfer by L.H. Yungblut on Elizabethan England, A. Nieto-Galan on the chemist-dyers, L. Hilaire-Perez on the Hotel de Mortagne, J.R. Harris on technology transfer between Britain and France, or A.C. Davies on Ingold, given at the London SHOT conference 1996. Abstracts are in the abstract volume of this conference. A collection of essays by John Harris is in J. Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer. Britain and France in the 18th Century (Aldershot, 1998). 45. See W. Konig and W. Weber, Netzwerke. Stahl und Strom, 1840 bis 1914 (Networks. Steam and Electric Energy, 1840-1914) (Berlin, 1990) and H.J. Braun and W. Kaiser, Energiewirtschaft, Automatisierung, Information seit 1914 (Energy, Automation, Information since 1914) (Berlin, 1992). 46. V. Quirke, 'Penicillin in Britain and France, 1939-1959: Technological Transfer in a National Context', in Abstracts, SHOT conference, London 1996. 47. The papers of this session are in M. Kranzberg (ed.), Technological Education Technological Style (San Francisco, 1986) and in what follows I draw on Kranzberg's introduction and some of the papers. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

188

Current Research in the History of Technology in Europe

48. R. Fox and A. Guagnini (eds), Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europ 1850-1939 (Cambridge, 1993), Introduction. 49. W. Konig, 'Technical Education and Industrial Performance in Germany: A Triumph of Heterogeneity', in Fox and Guagnini op. cit. (48), 65-87. 50. W. Weber, 'Mittlere technische Bildung im deutschen Kaiserreich', Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 1993, 16: 151-63. 51. For this and the following see especially the contributions to the 23rd ICOHTEC Symposium in Budapest, 1996, session on Engineering Education in Comparative Perspective, by I. Gouzevitch, Introduction, D. Gouzevitch on France and Russia, M. Thomas on France and the USA, M. Efmertova on Gerstner; T. Myllyntaus on Nordic Students at the ETH Zurich, L. Szogi on Hungarian students at Karlsruhe, R.A. Buchanan on Ewing and D. Channel on Rankine. Abstracts of most of them are in the abstract volume. There are also relevant contributions in the abstract volume of the ICOHTEC Symposium in Bath, 1994. See also the very useful articles in A. Karvar and B. Schroeder-Gudehus (guest eds), 'Special Issue: Techniques, Frontiers, Mediation. Transnational Diffusion of Models for the Education of Engineers', History and Technology, 1995, 12(2-3): 79-204. At the 20th International Congress of History of Science there was an extensive session organized by Andre Grelon, Irina Gouzevitch and Anousheh Karvar on 'The Evolution of Engineer Training: Institutional Transfer of Patterns and Communication Networks' (XlXth-XXth Centuries). Abstracts are in the book of abstracts and the contributions will be published. 52. The ICOHTEC Symposium in Hamburg 1989 concentrated on this. The contributions to this symposium were edited by H.J. Braun 1992, in a special issue of the journal Social Studies of Science, 22(2). See the introduction to this volume. 53. See the case studies by Buchanan, op. cit. (32) on Brunei; E.N. Todd on electric ploughs; M. Efmertova on Sfranek, and J. Hult on the Itera plastic bicycle. 54. There were also papers on this at the SHOT sessions in London, of which abstracts can be found in the abstract volume. See, among others, the contributions by R.G. Stokes, B. Ciesla, A. Steiner, M. Judt and A. Tandler. The annual meeting of the Historical Commission of the Association of German Engineers (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure) 1996 also compared the technological development of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Some of the papers were published in Technikgeschichte 1996, 63(4). See also the contribution by R. Bauer on car manufacturing in the GDR in the ICOHTEC Budapest abstract volume and in ICON 1997, 3. There is now his PKW-Bau in der DDR. £ur Innovationsschwache von £entralverwaltungswirtschaften (Frankfurt, 1999). (Studien zur TechnikWirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte, ed. Hans-Joachim Braun, vol. 12.) There was also a session on 'Science and Technology in the GDR' organized by Dieter Hoffmann and Ray Stokes at the 20th International Congress of History of Science in Liege, July 1997. The contributions will be published.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

N i e u p o r t s

French

Pursuit

Airpower

a n d

Planes

S p a d s

and

in W o r l d

American

W a r

B E R T L. F R A N D S E N A N D W. D A V I D

I

LEWIS

Ten months after the United States entered World War I in April 1917 the first American air combat units arrived in France and were assigned to the 1st Pursuit Group. The main problem facing the Americans was securing combat aircraft.1 The American aircraft industry was not yet capable of producing an acceptable fighter plane. As a result, the American Expeditionary Force planned to rely on foreign models. Because France had the most advanced aircraft industry among the Allied nations, the American high command looked toward that country for planes. Its original plan had been to equip the 1st Pursuit Group with the latest topof-the-line pursuit plane, the Spad XIII. Because of an imminent German offensive, however, the French army needed these highly advanced aircraft itself and was reluctant to supply them to the Americans. Instead, they suggested another plane, the Nieuport 28.2 The Nieuport 28 was not an inferior aircraft. It was one of the latest in a series of increasingly sophisticated French fighter planes originally conceived by a notable designer, Edouard de Nieuport. A relatively small, single-seat biplane, it was powered by a 160-horsepower, 9-cylinder Gnome Monosoupape (single-valve) rotary engine. In such a power plant, the cylinders and propeller whirled around a stationary crankshaft. The rotation of the nickel-steel cylinders created a gyroscopic effect that helped make the Nieuport extremely manoeuvrable - it could 'turn on a dime'. The spinning of the cylinders in the ambient air, combined with fins that dissipated heat, made the engine self-cooling; it therefore needed no radiator, giving it a good horsepower-to-weight ratio and a rapid rate of climb. Because a rotary engine needed no warm-up, the plane had an extremely short take-off roll. The simplicity of the engine also made it easy to service and overhaul. Depending on the trade-off desired between speed, altitude and firepower, the Nieuport 28 carried one or two Vickers machine guns that fired through a synchronized propeller. Its clean lines made it one of the most beautiful fighter planes of the war.3 One writer likened it to a 'high-bred race horse'.4 The Nieuport 28, however, was not without flaws. Its airspeed could be History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

190

Nieuports and Spads

controlled only by using a switch that varied the number of cylinders firing at a particular time. Because of the heat produced by the rotary engine, the only lubricant it could use was castor oil; even though the engine was enclosed in a protective cowling, the pilot ingested a constant vapour spray that induced nausea and diarrhoea. Forward visibility during take-offs and landings was impeded by the size of the engine, requiring a pilot to fishtail while taxiing and sideslip while descending toward the ground. Above all, the engine was fire-prone and the plane's wing structure was fragile. Apparently the French knew about some of these limitations but did not advertise the plane's most dangerous characteristics to the Americans. Because the Americans were anxious to get into the fight, they took the ship after much discussion, almost in desperation.5 As one officer said, 'they were better than nothing'. 6 On 6 March 1918, pilots belonging to the 1st Pursuit Group began ferrying Nieuport 28s from Paris to the unit's base at Villeneuve-lesVertus, located south of Reims and Epernay at a site where the French had already built a combat aerodrome. Among these flyers were Lieutenants Eddie Rickenbacker, a French-trained American airman who became the United States's top fighter ace, and Jimmy Meissner, a Canadian-born pilot whose father, an engineer-executive, had moved to New York City to work for US Steel. Rickenbacker and Meissner belonged to the Group's 94th Pursuit Squadron, which began patrolling its assigned sector on 28 March 1918. Thus the 94th, with its Nieuports, became the first American squadron at the front. As a symbol of the squadron's fighting spirit, its members selected Uncle Sam's hat in the ring, emblematic of an invitation to combat, to be painted on the fuselage of the Nieuports. The 94th thus became known as the 'Hat-in-the-Ring' squadron.7 General John J. Pershing and his advisers soon moved the 94th to a new base near Toul, situated in a relatively quite zone in which American units could undergo training without having to fight crack enemy units that the Germans had deployed on the French and British fronts to the north. The 94th Pursuit Squadron, therefore, did not have to face the cream of the German Air Service.8 Even though the Americans experienced success in their first air battle, which occurred on 13 April 1918 and resulted in the downing of two German planes, a series of incidents involving the wing structure of the Nieuport 28s caused pilots in the 94th Pursuit Squadron and its sister unit, the 95th, to lose confidence in the aircraft. Strong feelings for and against the plane escalated into a leadership crisis within the 1st Pursuit Group. What was the problem? How did pilots become aware of it? How did the situation result in a leadership crisis? These are the questions the remainder of this article will discuss. Jimmy Meissner's experience with the Nieuport is of particular interest because he became the only American pilot to survive two harrowing incidents connected with its wing problem. Meissner, who had studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, was an excellent athlete

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bert L. Frandsen and W. David Lewis

191

Figure 1 James Meissner and his Nieuport 28. The sleek Nieuport appears to be almost all wing and engine, emphasizing its manoeuvrability. The Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum is restoring a Nieuport 28 for display that bears Meissner's markings as pictured above. (Courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum, USA)

Figure 2 Meissner's Nieuport 28 after his first wing failure. The top wing's wooden spar is visible in the centre of the picture; the wing's leading edge normally extended about 12 inches forward of the spar. (Courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum, USA)

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

192

Nieuports and Spads

Figure 3 Rear of Meissner's Nieuport 28 after one of his wing failures. The fabric on the top of the upper wing has been almost completely stripped off. (Courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum, USA) and an avid motorcycle driver. His agility and sharpness of mind probably saved his life in these emergencies. On 2 May 1918, Meissner won his first victory in a harrowing dogfight in which he lost the upper surface of his top wing. After the episode, Meissner wrote in his diary, (Collision on way down ripped top surface off upper wings, so I landed at Martincourt O.K.' His subsequent memories of the event, however, suggested that the damage was not caused by collision. 'The strain was too great, with a crack my top wing seemed to break loose and whip back overhead at the instant I shot under the Boche, so near that I thought we had met... I couldn't figure how such a thing could occur in colliding.' It seems that at some later point after he had made his original diary entry Meissner changed his mind about the cause of the wing damage, attributing it not to a collision but to wind pressure associated with a vertical dive.9 (Figures 1, 2 and 3) Exactly when Meissner changed his mind is not known. His detailed account of the incident is undated. Clearly, however, his first diary account stated the likelihood of a collision, apparently by his top wing striking a glancing blow against his opponent's undercarriage. Only later did he begin to theorize that wind pressure associated with his downward plunge had torn the fabric off the wing. Rickenbacker came to the same conclusion in his memoir, Fighting the Flying Circus, which was published a year later.10 Other pilots quickly experienced the same terrifying phenomenon that Meissner had encountered. Only five days after Meissner's victory, Captain James Norman Hall also stripped his top wing while flying a Nieuport 28. Hall, an experienced pilot, had served with the famed Lafayette Escadrille before being transferred to the Hat-in-the-Ring squadron. As he was making a steep dive and preparing to fire, he heard

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bert L. Frandsen and W. David Lewis

193

the sound of wood cracking and fabric tearing. When he pulled up and off the enemy plane he was pursuing, he immediately saw that 'his upper right wing had broken and was torn, and in the prop wash the fabric was tearing further and further back along the width of the wing'. Hall tried to nurse his stricken aircraft back home, but a German anti-aircraft gun scored a direct hit on his motor. By some miracle the shell failed to explode, but its impact sent Hall into a downward spin, after which he crash-landed behind enemy lines, was captured, and became a prisoner of war. American pilots therefore did not learn about his wing-stripping problem until after the Armistice. But they had already heard about Rickenbacker's experience, which occurred little more than a week after Hall went down.11 On 17 May 1918, Rickenbacker scored his second official victory and stripped his right wing, sending him into a tailspin from which he barely recovered. After this traumatic ordeal, Rickenbacker noted in his diary, just as Meissner had done, that he had lost his upper right wing in a collision. Again like Meissner, however, he later changed his explanation and attributed the incident to wind pressure. In Fighting the Flying Circus, he stated, 'I pulled my stick back close into my lap and began a sharp climb. A frightening crash that sounded like the crack of doom told me that the sudden strain had collapsed my right wing. The entire spread of canvas over the top wing was torn off by the wind and disappeared behind me.' The contradiction between Rickenbacker's diary and the later reminiscence that appeared in his published memoir follows the same pattern of change as Meissner's. At first, Rickenbacker believed he had been in a collision and only later reported that the problem was wind pressure associated with a sharp pull-up.12 Meissner's second victory, which took place on 30 May 1918, was again accompanied by the stripping of his top wing. This time he lost the upper surface of his right top wing. Rickenbacker, who witnessed the combat, later wrote, 'The whole surface of the linen on the right wing was torn off.'13 (Figure 4) Again, the combat and diary reports recorded at the time of this combat that the wing damage was due to a collision, but a later reminiscence, in Rickenbacker's Fighting the Flying Circus, states that the problem was due to wind pressure. On 30 May, Rickenbacker's combat report stated, 'During his manoeuvers, he [the German] and Lieutenant Meissner collided, Lieutenant Meissner losing most of his upper wings.' Meissner's own report stated, 'Piqued on an enemy monoplane [sic] and at the same time another piqued on me and hit my upper wings, ripping off the top surface.' Meissner's diary reaches the same conclusion, stating that a German plane 'rammed me, top wings ripped as before, landed O.K. at camp'. Note the similarity in the pattern of reports about this incident and Meissner's first incidence of wing-stripping on 2 May. In each case, the reports filed immediately after the wing-stripping state that the wing damage was caused by collision, while later accounts of the incident assert that wind pressure was the cause.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

194

Nieuports and Spads

Figure 4 Meissner's sombre expression reflects the near fatal consequences of his experience. Uncle Sam's Hat-in-the-Ring is clearly visible on the taut fabric covering the wooden stringers that define the fuselage of the fragile aeroplane. (Courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum, USA) On the same day that Meissner lost wing fabric while scoring his second victory, another American pilot, Lieutenant Wilfrid V. Casgrain, also experienced wing failure. Unlike Meissner, however, who survived his combat and was able to return to base after the fight, Casgrain went down behind German lines and became a prisoner for the duration of the war. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bert L. Frandsen and W. David Lewis

195

Casgrain therefore did not file a report about his wing-stripping experience. In any case, it appears that American pilots were still not aware of the fragility of the Nieuport's wings and their tendency to fail while undergoing violent manoeuvres in aerial combat.14 Meissner's lack of awareness that the force of a violent manoeuvre could strip the Nieuport's fragile upper wings helps explain why he repeatedly conducted violent manoeuvres that his aircraft was in extremis incapable of withstanding. Had he been aware of the upper wing's weakness, one would think he would have avoided inflicting such potentially fatal damage on his aircraft for the second time in less than a month. Not until June, apparently, did American pilots realize that the Nieuport's wings could not withstand such violent manoeuvres because of inherent structural flaws. The official history of the 94th Pursuit Squadron notes that during June the Nieuport 28 had become highly unpopular with pilots because they believed it had several fundamental weaknesses. Perhaps Meissner and Rickenbacker had figured out what was wrong with the help of some new arrivals who joined the 1st Pursuit Group. At the beginning of June two more squadrons were assigned to the Group: the 27th, commanded by Harold E. Hartney, and the 147th, commanded by Geoffrey H. Bonnell. In his memoirs, Up and At 'Em, Hartney writes that both he and Bonnell had learned from similar machines in England about the frailty of the Nieuport wing structure and the likelihood of the fabric ripping off from too sharp a dive or pull-out. Hartney further noted that, 'Being unwarned about this weakness, both the 94th and 95th had some mean experiences with it before they discovered it and moderated the steepness of their dives.'15 Whether they had learned about the true cause of the wing-stripping problem from members of the 27th and 147th, or discovered it for themselves, it is clear that, by the end of June, pilots in the 94th and 95th squadrons were highly upset with the Nieuport 28. Rickenbacker, who had just scored his fifth victory, was hospitalized at the end of the month because of a fever and reflected on his combat experiences. He later wrote in Fighting the Flying Circus that the principal fear that hampered him in the midst of combat was the knowledge that the Nieuport's wings might give way under the stress of a necessary manoeuvre. Taken in context, this statement can be interpreted to mean that Rickenbacker had only recently realized that the problems he and Meissner had encountered with the Nieuport were due not to mid-air collisions but to structural failure. As soon as he was out of the hospital, Rickenbacker visited an American air depot near Paris and, by artful negotiation with the officers in charge, flew back to his home base in the first Spad XIII assigned to the 94th.16 The Spad XIII was a single-seat biplane with a 220 hp V-8 HispanoSuiza engine that was much more powerful than the Nieuport 28's rotary power plant. The Spad had a sturdy, bulldog-like appearance and was as solid as it looked. Because it was a relatively heavy aircraft it was not as manoeuvrable as the Nieuport 28 or the Fokker VII, a splendid fighter that the Germans had recently introduced. But neither of these planes was as fast as the Spad, which could reach a top speed of 125 mph.17 (Figures 5 and 6)

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

196

Nieuports and Spads

Figure 5 Eddie Rickenbacker looks back from the cockpit of his Spad XIII. The Spad's stubby appearance and heavily braced wings made it a symbol of masculine strength. (Courtesy of Auburn University Archives, USA)

Figure 6 Eddie Rickenbacker with his Spad XIII. Rickenbacker's expression conveys confidence in himself and his aeroplane. (Courtesy of Auburn University Archives, USA) Within a short time the Nieuports were retired and the 1st Pursuit Group was re-equipped with Spad XIIIs. Converting to the new airplane in the midst of combat, however, required pilots to stand down from alerts and patrols for a period of time, substantially reducing the Group's combat readiness. The new plane also required changes in logistics and the History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bert L. Frandsen and W. David Lewis

197

acquisition of new mechanical know-how. Pilots in the 94th and 95th pursuit squadrons, however, enthusiastically supported converting to the Spad due to the influence of pilots like Meissner and Rickenbacker, whose nearly fatal experiences with the Nieuport's fragile wings caused them to hate the sleek but vulnerable aircraft. This was not the case, however, with the new squadrons, the 27th and 147th, that had been added to the Group. Both of their leaders, Hartney and Bonnell, wanted to keep the highly manoeuvrable Nieuport and agitated against adopting the Spad. In his wartime memoirs, Up and At 'Em, Hartney defended the Nieuport, stating that the Spad's complicated V-8 engine was hard to repair and maintain and that the Nieuports could take off much faster than the Spads when an alert was sounded. Both Hartney and Bonnell had distinguished themselves flying for the British Royal Flying Corps before being reassigned to the American 1st Pursuit Group. Both argued that the Spad 'flew like a brick' and stressed the reliability and ease of maintenance of the Nieuport. For a time it appeared to Bonnell that he would have his way. Beginning on 14 July, the 147th began to receive Nieuports that had belonged to the 94th and 95th, which were now rapidly being re-equipped with Spads. But Bonnell was wrong. Much to his disappointment, the 147th squadron's Nieuports were also replaced by Spads. Suddenly, on 22 July, he was relieved of his command. Many of his pilots believed that he had incurred the ill will of higher brass for protesting too strongly against adopting the Spad - a move that must have been approved, if not ordered, by Colonel William (Billy) Mitchell, who was in overall charge of American air operations on the Western Front. Mitchell was also responsible for the selection of Bonnell's successor.18 Officers and men alike were shocked by the sudden change. One of the 147th's pilots later wrote that Bonnell was the heart and soul of the unit, and that as Bonnell bade his men farewell most of them openly shed tears. Lieutenant John A. Hambleton, a veteran of the 95th pursuit squadron with two victories, initially replaced Bonnell, but feelings were so intense that he kept command of the 147th for only two days. This controversy was probably the greatest leadership crisis that faced the 1st Pursuit Group during the entire war. A squadron commander is ultimately responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do. His influence is so great that a squadron often begins to reflect its commander's personality. Indeed, this was exactly the case in the 147th, whose airmen derisively referred to pilots who flew the Spad XIII as 'hit and run' drivers and fervently wanted to keep their Nieuports, which enabled them to 'out turn anything they come up against'. The engine's reliability and the outstanding glide characteristics of the Nieuport, moreover, gave them a sense of security that they did not feel with the Spad. Morale and esprit de corps significantly influence a fighting unit's combat effectiveness. These intangible qualities help men overcome their fear of death and risk all to accomplish a mission. Morale and esprit de corps must have been at an all-time low for the men of the 147 th.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

198

Nieuports and Spads

Two members of the squadron, Maxwell O. Parry and Daniel W. Cassard, had only recently been killed in action. 19 The humiliating dismissal of Bonnell, the man who had trained them, brought them into war, and guided them through their initial engagements must have upset them greatly. To make matters worse, the survivors were now being ordered to give up their beloved Nieuports for an unfamiliar plane that their leader thought flew like a brick. All this was happening during a period marked by the most intense combat and heaviest casualties that the Americans had suffered up to that time. It was imperative that the squadron's spirit be quickly turned around. The challenge for the new commander would be all the greater because his first task would be to persuade the men of the 147th to give up their cherished Nieuports for the Spad, the very issue they believed had caused Bonnell to 'fall on his sword'. These thoughts must have been going through the minds of Mitchell and Bert M. Atkinson, the officer in charge of the 1st Pursuit Group as they considered the plight of the 147th and decided who should command the unit after Hambleton lasted only two days.20 Who was the best man for the job? Rickenbacker, who was already an ace (as Meissner was not) and the most outstanding flight commander in the Group, might well have been their first choice had he been available. Because he was also five or six years older than most of the pilots, his maturity could have provided a stabilizing influence. But Rickenbacker was once again in hospital. That left Meissner, who got the job. Meissner had four victories, only one less than Rickenbacker had at the time. He had proved himself as a flight commander and had served as squadron commander in the absence of Kenneth Marr, who was then in charge of the 94th. In addition, Meissner's narrow escapes from the Nieuport's wingstripping tendencies made him a perfect symbol of the Nieuport's weaknesses and a true believer in the Spad. Meissner himself had just converted to the Spad, and loved it. Nor could Mitchell and Atkinson overlook his engaging personality.21 By September, Meissner and Rickenbacker were both squadron commanders. Late in August, possibly in part because of the good judgement he had displayed by putting Meissner in charge of the 147th, Atkinson was elevated to command of the 1st Pursuit Wing. Hartney, who had acquiesced (albeit with much grumbling) in the adoption of the Spad, now took Atkinson's place at the helm of the 1st Pursuit Group. One month later, on September 25, against the advice of some of the brass at Pershing's headquarters at Chaumont, Hartney put Rickenbacker, who was now out of hospital, in command of the 94th.22 Rickenbacker's promotion was attributable not only to his age, maturity and courage but to the replacement of the Nieuport 28 with the Spad XIII. Having himself been nearly killed by the wing-shredding tendency of the Nieuport, Rickenbacker hated that aircraft as much as Meissner did. As previously indicated, Rickenbacker had flown the first Spad from Paris to the 1st Pursuit Group's new aerodrome at Saints after

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bert L. Frandsen and W. David Lewis

199

Figure 7 Eddie Rickenbacker shows off the Spad's two .303-calibre Vickers guns. The Spad had greater firepower, a higher service ceiling and greater endurance than the Nieuport. (Courtesy of Auburn University Archives, USA) learning that General Benjamin D. Foulois, because of persistent lobbying by pilots in the 94th and 95th, had decided to equip the entire Group with Spads instead of Nieuports.23 From the beginning, Rickenbacker was an ardent devotee of the Spad. This was not merely because he had nearly lost his life in the Nieuport. Before the United States entered World War I, Rickenbacker had been a champion automobile racer. He liked the Spad partly because it had so much more horsepower than the nimble but vulnerable Nieuport. The manoeuvrability of the Nieuport was less important to him than the ruggedness of the Spad, which could dive safely at high speed into a German formation and come out quickly after scoring a kill. Whereas the Nieuport had more than a touch of feminine gracefulness in its sleek contours, the Spad's stubbier appearance and heavily braced wings made it a fitting symbol of masculine strength. Not only did it have greater horsepower than the Nieuport (235 as opposed to 165) but greater firepower with its two .303-calibre Vickers guns, which had 800 rounds of ammunition. It also had a considerably higher service ceiling (22,300 feet as opposed to 19,685) and greater endurance (2.5 hours as opposed to 2). It was all business, and Rickenbacker revelled in it. (Figure 7) Rickenbacker's devotion to the Spad, however, was not the only factor that led Hartney to put him in command of the 94th over objections from Pershing's headquarters. Born to poor Swiss immigrants in Columbus, History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

200

Nieuports and Spads

Ohio, he lacked the pedigree, manners and education expected of a squadron commander (or any other rank of officer as far as the top brass was concerned). He had dropped out of school in the seventh grade to support his mother after his father, a common labourer, was killed by an assailant in 1904. From that point on, his formal education was limited to a mail-order course in automotive technology that he had taken from International Correspondence Schools. His command of English was poor; for the first ten years of his life his family spoke Swiss-German, and he was called 'Dutchy' because of his thick central European accent. Had it not been for the exigencies of war, he would never have become a lieutenant in the Army Air Service, let alone a captain, the rank to which Hartney wished to promote him. Hartney, however, needed Rickenbacker's intimate knowledge of what made the Spad the aerial warhorse that it was. Prior to the war, he had been not only an automobile racer but a highly skilled mechanic who had worked his way up in the motor car industry by demonstrating an instinctive feel for engines. He could diagnose what was wrong with a sputtering motor merely by listening to the sounds it made or feeling its distinctive vibrations. The highly complex Hispano-Suiza V-8s that powered the Spad held no secrets for him. But they baffled the ground crews that had to maintain, repair and overhaul them after being accustomed to the much simpler rotary engines of the Nieuports. From the time Hartney took command of the 94th, he was confronted by a logistical nightmare because the Hispano-Suizas, consisting of a more advanced type that had only recently been introduced, were constantly breaking down and taking much longer to repair than had been the case with the Nieuports. It was hard to keep enough Spads in the air to carry out the squadron's orders at a time when the war in the American sector was reaching its climax in an offensive against German units on the St Mihiel Salient. By mid-September, Hartney had decided to sack Marr, who had proved unable to cope with the situation. Rickenbacker's leadership qualities, maturity and knowledge of engine technology made him a logical candidate to succeed Marr. For these reasons, Hartney refused to take 'no' for an answer from Pershing's headquarters at Chaumont. Calling together the pilots of the 94th, all of whom were better educated than Rickenbacker and most of whom had been in the Army Air Service longer than he had, Hartney won their endorsement of what he intended to do. Soon thereafter Rickenbacker took command of the 94th. On the day of his promotion, determined to set a worthy example for his men, he singlehandedly took on seven German planes, bringing two of them down and scattering the rest. His subsequent performance as chief officer of the squadron was all that Hartney had hoped. By the end of the war, Rickenbacker had transformed the 94th into the most highly admired unit in the Air Service. It was chosen to accompany Pershing's army of occupation into Coblenz. By war's end, Rickenbacker was also America's Ace of Aces, with 26 confirmed victories to his credit. Ultimately he won the Medal of Honor.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bert L. Frandsen and W. David Lewis

201

Rickenbacker's total record is not the focus of this paper. Instead, we should simply note that, once again, differences between Nieuports and Spads had much to do with the tangled leadership politics of the 1st Pursuit Group. The central contention of this article can be simply put as follows: There are few better examples in twentieth-century warfare of the response of military leadership to technological change than the switch from the JVieuport 28 to the Spad XIII and the related roles that Meissner and Rickenbacker played in the power structure of the 1st Pursuit Group as it made a difficult transition from one plane to the other. It is for this reason that the experience of the American Air Service with two pursuit planes of French manufacture makes this story worth telling. NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE The Nieuport series of fighters got its name from Edouard de Nieuport (originally Nieport), a notable French designer who conceived a monoplane in 1905 and started producing it at Suresnes in 1909, using the name Nieuport. After he died in 1911 (following a crash landing) his brother Charles took over the company. After Charles died in 1913, Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe took charge of the company but retained the Nieuport name. Nieuport planes were championed by a French naval officer, Gustave Delage, who joined the Nieuport firm as an engineer in 1914 and designed the biplane configuration that became standard for this series. Perhaps the most famous of the series was the Nieuport 17, which saw much action with the French air service. The Nieuport 28 was a modified design that, as we have indicated, was spurned by the French in favour of the Spad XIII but sold to the Americans who had wanted the Spad XIII to begin with. For further information see David Donald (ed.), The Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft (New York, 1997), 684-6. The Spad XIII (like other planes in the series to which it belonged) derived its name from its manufacturers. SPAD is an acronym for Societe Anonyme pour l'Aviation et ses Derives, which took over a company with the same initials (Societe Provisoire des Aeroplanes Deperdussin) in 1914 and worked out a corporate name that retained the same initials.

Notes and References 1. On the history of airpower in World War I generally, see John H. Morrow, Jr., The Great War In the Air (Washington, DC, 1993). 2. Philip J. Roosevelt to Captain Arthur R. Brooks, San Antonio, Texas, 14 February 1921, letter in records of 1st Pursuit Group, United States Air Force Historical Research Center (hereafter cited USAFHRC), Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. For a survey of the history of warplanes in the Nieuport series from 1910 to 1918, see William Green and Gordon Swanborough, The Complete Book of Fighters (New York, 1994), 430-37. For a scholarly overview of American aircraft procurement in World War I, see Irving B. Holley, Jr., Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapon by the United States During World War I; A the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapon Air Force History, Washington, DC, 1983). 3. Royal Frey, 'The Nieuport 28 Described', US Translation NF 2493 of French description, assembly, and operating instructions for the Nieuport 28, Cross & Cockade, Summer 1971, 12(2): 117. For additional perspectives on the Nieuport 28, see a large History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

202

JVieuports and Spads

curatorial file on this aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC; Michelle Crean and Joseph Ventolo, Jr., 'Nieuport 28', W.W.I Aero: The Journal of the Early Aeroplane, September 1986, 111: 31-40; Roy F. Houchin, Jr., 'Nieuport 28', W.W.I Aero, April 1988, 119: 14-16; and Frank Tallman, 'Great Antiques: The Nieuport 28,' Flying, July 1967, 81: 64-7. For an excellent general account of pursuit planes and their characteristics in World War I, see Richard P. Hallion, The Rise of the Fighter Aircraft, 1914-1918 (Baltimore, MD, 1984). 4. Letter, J. Gordon Rankin, Detroit, Michigan, to Captain Arthur R. Brooks, San Antonio, Texas, 7 February 1921, 1st Pursuit Group records, USAFHRC. 5. Frey, op. cit. (3), 117; Rankin to Brooks, 7 February 1921, USAFHRC. 6. Roosevelt to Brooks, 14 February 1921, USAFHRC. 7. 'Parts of History of 94th Aero Squadron, 1918,' USAFHRC, 3. 8. Maurer Maurer (ed.), The U. S. Air Service in World War I, 4 vols (Washington, DC, 1978-9), Vol. I, 29. 9. Diary ofJames A. Meissner, 2 May 1918, compiled with diaries of other members of the 1st Pursuit Group by James J. Parks, at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum (hereafter cited as WORASM), Denver, Colorado. 10. Ibid., 'Some New Experiences', essay written for Carl Meissner by James A. Meissner, Park Collection, WORASM; Edward V. Rickenbacker, Fighting the Flying Circus (New York, 1919), 49. 11. James Norman Hall, High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (New York, 1929), 234-5; Paul L. Briand, Jr., 'A Fateful Tuesday, 1918: The Last Combat Flight of James Norman Hall', The Airpower Historian, April 1964, 11: 34-8. 12. Rickenbacker, op. cit. (10), 62-3; 1918 Diary of Edward V. Rickenbacker (hereafter cited as Rickenbacker Diary), copy in United States Air Force Museum, Dayton, Ohio, dated 17 May 1918. 13. Meissner Diary, 30 May, 1918, WORASM; Rickenbacker, op. cit. (10), 117-19; James J. Sloan, Jr., Wings of Honor: American Airmen in World War I (Atglen, PA, 1994), 130. 14. R.L. Cavanagh, 'The 94th and Its Nieuports, 15 April-11 June 1918', Cross & Cockade Journal, Autumn 1980, 21: 204-5; Meissner Diary, 30 May 1918, WORASM. 15. Harold E. Hartney, Up and At 'Em (New York, 1971), 182. 16. Rickenbacker, op. cit. (10), 185-8. 17. For a historical survey of planes in the Spad series, see Green and Swanborough, op. cit. (2), 539-45; the National Air and Space Museum has a large curatorial file on the Spad XIII. Among a large number of articles about the plane and its predecessors, see particularly Jack M. Bruce, 'Spad Story', Part 1, Air International, May 1976, 10: 237-42, and Part 2, ibid., June 1976, 10: 289-312; idem, 'Spads VII and XIII', WW1 Aero, December 1985, 107: 7-47; Roland W. Richardson, 'Spad XIIF, The Aerospace Historian, Winter 1980, 27: 257-60. 18. Richardson, op. cit. (17), 257-60; Meissner Diary, 12-15 July, 1918; Hartney, op. cit. (15), 183. 19. Parry and Cassard were killed on 8 and 16 July respectively; Sloan, Jr., op. cit. (13), 135. 20. Kenneth Lee Porter and Clarence Richard Glasebrook, 'Combat Flight Commander', unpublished, unpaginated manuscript, and James J. Parks, '147th Aero Squadron', Parks Collection, WORASM, 28-30. 21. Hartney, op. cit. (15), 183; Sloan, op. cit. (13), 129. 22. The account that follows is based on Rickenbacker, op. cit. (10), 259-61; Edward V. Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker: An Autobiography (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967), 121-2; Hartney, op. cit. (15), 277-85; Stephen Longstreet, The Canvas Falcons: The Men and the Planes of World War I (New York, 1970, repr. New York, 1995), 252; and Sloan, op. cit. (13), 122. For a summary of the interpretation presented here, see W. David Lewis, 'Historical Introduction', in a new, abridged and annotated edition of Fighting the Flying Circus (Chicago, 1997), lx-lxii. 23. For operational and tactical reasons, the 1st Pursuit Group was headquartered at various places during the months it was on the front. Initially assigned to Villeneuve les Vertus early in March 1918, it went on 1 April to Epiez. On 10 April it moved to Gengoult in search of dry ground. On 29 June it shifted its headquarters to Touquin, and on 8 July it moved to Saints. In early September it went to Rembercourt, where it remained for the rest of the war. For a concise history of the unit's operations during this period, see Robert F. Dorr, '94th Fighter Squadron', Wings of Fame (Westport, CT, 1996), 4: 20-25. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

T h e

P o w e r

Creating

an

Engineering

BRUCE

o f

C e r e m o n y

International C o m m u n i t y

SINCLAIR

The international engineering congresses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are directly connected to the great international industrial expositions of that period, and together they clearly reflect the final stages in the articulation of a Western-dominated world economic order. These formal assemblies of engineers are also the natural consequence of the full emergence of professional technical societies at a national level, and they demonstrate the growing power of the specialization of knowledge - which the American telephone engineer John J. Carty called 'an evidence of progress and law as immutable as the law of gravity'.1 But besides these considerations, or indeed precisely because of them, creating an international community of engineers was an ideological mission, and that is the issue I want most to focus on in this brief and exploratory essay. One could say this movement is essentially the 'modernist' agenda for the world, and that would be a useful approach. But for the moment, let me instead describe it by what seem its salient elements. They include such engineering concerns as efficiency and rationalization, under which rubrics technical men focused their attention on standardization, automation and on the relation between machines and the labour force. This enterprise also depended on the values of science to undergird its claims for objectivity, universality and - implicitly if not explicitly - for inevitability. And the ideology rested heavily on a set of cultural assumptions - as well as rhetorical strategies - that linked technological progress, civilization and globalization. Expositions and engineering were closely connected from the outset. As soon as the basic form of these industrial fairs was established, so did they employ dramatic contemporary engineering accomplishments as the emblem of modern progress. Thus, a large-scale model of the Suez Canal became the ideological centrepiece of the Paris Exposition of 1869. Another substantial scale model, this time of the Mont Cenis tunnel through the Alps - complete with trains and signals - served that function at the Vienna Exposition of 1873, as did the gigantic Corliss steam engine History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

204

The Power of Ceremony

at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Exposition of 1889 and the heroic representations of the Panama Canal at the San Francisco Exposition of 1915.2 Such icons, embedded in elaborate ceremonial, and so triumphal in their character, argued that the essential nature of civilization was progressive, that progress was computed by technical advance, and that the fruit of progress was to be measured in terms of greater national wealth and improved relations - personal as well as commercial - between the peoples of the earth. Behind such ample rhetorical claims, these industrial displays and the social circumstances behind them brought into life an actual web of relationships between engineers from different countries. The technical men who developed the methods of testing and evaluation upon which exhibit prize awards were based, those who served as members of prize juries, and the ones appointed as state or national commissioners, came to think about technology in global terms. For example, John Anderson, the person chiefly identified with the renovation of Britain's Ordnance Department, served as a juror at four international expositions and developed an acute sense of the worldwide practice of mechanical engineering. 3 Men like these saw in expositions opportunities for international exchange, as well as the need for it. The most obvious avenue for international technical collaboration lay in the development of standards, and by the 1870s mechanical and electrical engineers from several countries were casting about for suitable institutional mechanisms that could be used to define and promulgate universal practice. Mechanical engineers at the US Centennial Exposition in 1876 who were concerned with evaluating the characteristics of steam boilers in order to award prizes for the best performance quickly discovered the need for a standard test, by which boilers made anywhere could effectively be compared.4 Similarly, in the 1880s American, British and Continental engineers began meeting in order to develop standard practices for materials testing, as a fundamental preliminary to international commerce in the building blocks of industry. The search for standard units of electrical measurement began earlier, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1861. But after 1878, that business became a staple element of international electrical expositions, which gatherings explicitly aimed to link science and industry on a global basis. The making of standards was satisfying work because it was obviously a useful form of communication that cut across international boundaries. Like science, standard-setting seemed to rise above mere political considerations, particularly when physical constants were at the root of the process. This sense of unity in a common purpose also proved personally rewarding to technical men, and as they found increasing opportunities to meet together, their language began to encompass broader visions of destiny. American engineers, newly professionalized and eager to exercise their sense of special status, seized upon the 1889 Paris Exposition as an

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bruce Sinclair

205

appropriate occasion for travel abroad, to celebrate technical accomplishment with their counterparts in other countries. For years, Alexander Holley, technical counsel to the American Bessemer Steel Association, had been arguing an identity of interest between British and American engineers; here, then, was an opportunity to test that proposition on an even wider stage. We get a nice insight into the meaning the American engineers of 1889 built into their overseas excursion from its style and ceremonials. This group of delegates from all the major national engineering organizations in the US chartered an ocean liner for the trip, and then had it refitted so that all accommodation was in first-class cabins. The voyage across the Atlantic, one of them remembered, 'seemed like a large yachting party', with organized games during the day and black-tie dinners at night.5 On the other side of the Atlantic, the Institution of Civil Engineers, having taken overall responsibility for British hospitality, orchestrated an impressive reception for the Americans. The principals of Liverpool's largest shipping interests boarded the American vessel even before it docked, then ushered their guests smoothly through Customs. And for the visitors, that was just the beginning of an absolutely dazzling round of special entertainments, at which their hosts included Laird the shipbuilder, Lord Brassey of railway fame, Sir Henry Bessemer, Sir Frederick Bramwell, Professor Unwin and Professor Tyndall, and the Lord Mayor of London. Each of these occasions generated oratory that celebrated technical accomplishment, collective interest and the onward march of human progress. Engineers, they were told, were doing more to bring about 'the brotherhood of man' than any other agency in the world. From London, the Americans travelled by 'a magnificent special train' to Dover and embarked on a chartered steamboat for Calais, where dignitaries of the French Society of Civil Engineers stood ready with yet another special train to carry them directly to Paris and still more tours, luncheons, banquets and speeches. Then, after the close of the Exposition, for those with the fortitude, the Germans were waiting, to treat their brother engineers from the United States to yet further Kamaradschaft.6 This European tour, so infused with language celebrating the creation of an international fraternity, inspired American engineers to plan the first International Engineering Congress, held in conjunction with the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. And the success of that meeting led them to adopt a pattern like that of the Paris expositions, so that future engineering congresses would gather at eleven-year intervals. Thus, the next meeting was held in St Louis in conjunction with the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, then in 1915 when the Panama Pacific Exposition was held in San Francisco. But the subsequent meeting, slated for Tokyo in 1926, was delayed until 1929 because of the devastating Kansai earthquake and fire of 1923. These several international congresses were by no means the only multination meetings of engineers. There were international electrical expositions in Paris, beginning in 1878. The first international congress of

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

206

The Power of Ceremony

electricians also took place there in 1881, then met in Frankfurt in 1891 and again in Chicago in 1893, while the first World Power Conference took place in London in 1924, in conjunction with the British Empire Exposition of that year. So the type of meeting varied, as did the locale, but the dominant characteristic of these gatherings is that they took place in a context of industrial display. Indeed, those men who organized the International Electrical Exposition of 1881 - which finally established basic units of measurement for electricity - claimed that its success stemmed from the fact that it was essentially industrial in character.7 Thus artefact and ideology were tightly linked, and perhaps that connection will not surprise us much. Langdon Winner has helped us to understand that technologies have their politics, and Robert Rydell has shown us the ways in which the international expositions contrasted the industrial power of Western nations with the exoticism of their colonial peoples, and used those differences to define civilized progress.8 What we can further see, in the context of these international engineering gatherings, is the construction of a master narrative that defined civilization not just in terms of technical accomplishment generally, but particular kinds of technical achievement. By way of making the point, let me offer two examples, namely from the San Francisco and Tokyo conferences. An engineering congress had already been scheduled for 1915, and the opening of the Panama Canal automatically gave special drama and point to the gathering in San Francisco that year. In particular, the canal exemplified that often-claimed power of technology to alter man's relation to space and time. Some ocean passages wrere immediately shortened by almost a month, and in important respects the world certainly seemed smaller and more closely connected.9 But besides substantial changes in patterns of commerce and the disposition of naval fleets, engineers expected the canal to alter the relations of humans to each other. In ways they probably did not anticipate, it actually brought Americans from the east and west coasts closer together. But just as certainly, the canal fundamentally changed the view Americans had of those other countries that bordered the Pacific, especially Japan, then engaged in a remarkable expansion of its merchant marine. Grand in conception, bold in execution and vast in its consequences, the Panama Canal perfectly mirrored modernist values and, it might be implied, modernist political ideas as well. To General George Goethals, who supervised the entire project, the canal was 'another instance of the fact that engineers are fitted for great executive and administrative functions, and also that they can establish and manage a government to the satisfaction of those governed'. Then, in a nice reflection of the way in which the US ordered, built and administered the canal, Goethals continued, 'believing in straight-forward, practical administration, as the engineer does, such a government to be successful must not be democratic, but autocratic, for with politics involved there would enter an unfamiliar factor opposed to the engineer's training and ideals, and he would fail'.10

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bruce Sinclair

207

Just as Frederick Winslow Taylor sketched out an autocratic structure for the management of industry, Goethals also imagined centralized technocratic commonwealths of the future, ruled by the stern efficiency of engineers. While few at the San Francisco meeting so explicitly argued for the optimal political form modern civilization should take, most engineers taking part causally linked the waterway, international trade and world peace, and derived from that powerful calculus the conclusion that a technical accomplishment of such scale and importance necessarily placed the engineer at the centre of modern life. In the mind of the Canadian delegate J.B. Challies, the relationship between the exchange of engineering ideas and international harmony was embodied in the U S Canadian boundary, marked as it was by hydro-electric power plants rather than border posts. That image led him to claim that the engineer served as 'the advance-guard of civilization'.11 Admiral M. Kondo, leader of the Japanese delegation, carried the point a step further when he said, T think that among engineers there is a sort of bond which unites us in a brotherhood which knows neither nationality nor class distinction.'12 But to John J. Carty, even more, the canal and its vast consequences was proof that 'engineering has now reached the point where it is conscious of its great power, conscious of the fact that it is re-building the entire world'.13 It tells us something about the way the engineers framed this moment that, even as Carty spoke, Europe was already one year into its most devastating war. The success of such a dramatic engineering project as the Panama Canal provided an obviously appropriate moment for hyperbole and these engineers, so sanguine about their prospects, so persuaded of the worldwide importance of their work, eagerly seized it. But in the regular sessions of engineering congresses we can see this 'progressive' ideology at work in less obvious forms. By their very nature such meetings were designed to establish paradigms of practice, to define for a given era the ideal technology. Beginning in 1893, the organizers of these congresses explicitly devised a format in which prominent figures in all the different branches of engineering were selected to describe the state of their art, and to identify the most promising line of future effort. So, for example, the programme committee for the 1929 World Engineering Congress in Tokyo asked Willis Carrier to address the subject of temperature and humidity control in industry, the crucial relationship in the newly emergent field of air-conditioning and the one Carrier himself had so successfully exploited.14 The engineers' formula for programmes, then, joined descriptions of exemplary practice with prescriptive judgements about the work ahead. We can see in a little more detail how this approach worked in one of the sessions at the San Francisco International Engineering Congress. Ralph E. Flanders, a former editor of the influential trade magazine Machinery, head of a leading firm in the industry, and thus a central figure in the American machine-tool business, presented a paper entitled

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

208

The Power of Ceremony

'Automatics'.15 In his presentation, Flanders described two concurrent developments, both of which were highly important to mass production technology, his description casting modern engineering objectives in a clear light. First, Flanders talked about 'widening the field' of operation for automatic machines, by which he meant to argue that manufacturers should make more and more elements of a given machining process automatic, leaving the operator simply to supply blanks to the machine. For example, when the new technology of 'dial feed' was applied to the machines that made tins for canned fruit and vegetables, all sequences in forming the can could be performed automatically. The development of automatic milling machines and automatic drill presses gave the same results. Of course, these improvements had the advantage of decreasing labour costs, and Flanders pointed that out. In the case of automatic drill presses, he claimed that 'the number of spindles an operator can keep going is limited only by the rapidity with which he can change the work'.16 But Flanders was also concerned with machining efficiency, and in the search for ways to eliminate 'idle time' in the operations of a machine, we can see a nice parallel to Taylor's efforts to eliminate waste motions in the workforce. Second, Flanders addressed the question of increased output, and in this case he sketched the ideal historic progression of machine-tool design from hand-operated lathes, to automatic lathes, and then to multiplespindle automatic lathes. New multiple-spindle automatic machines, he observed, were capable of fourfold increases in output. Yet the success of automatics revealed an interesting contradiction between high productivity, multiple-spindle machines that minimized labour skills, and highaccuracy, single-spindle machines that depended on them, particularly for small, close work. And there was another problem, too. The automatics tended to be wasteful of material, especially when applied to the machining of larger castings, and proved, in the case of batch production, to be uneconomic also. By contrast, a hand-operated turret lathe cost less, required less special tooling, and under close supervision was capable of a greater output, as well as a greater return on investment. Yet in spite of these very real differences, Flanders argued that the task of machine-tool designers was to improve the accuracy and performance characteristics of the automatics. Indeed, it is clear from his presentation at the Congress, and from the discussion which followed it, that automatization had become at that time the reigning paradigm in modern machinetool design and usage. Partly this attitude was shaped by ideas about novelty and the nature of change itself. As one engineer put it: 'What is a special feature of today, five years hence may be considered as regular equipment.' 17 But we should also hear in this language a sense of inevitable progress. As Fred Rogers, then editor of Machinery magazine put it, 'These automatic machines will be more complicated and costly than existing machines, but they will come because the demand for greater economies in manufacturing makes their development imperative.'18

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bruce Sinclair

209

This briefly described case reveals that there are constructed norms in technology, just as in science. And it is evident, too, that these agendas are not shaped by simple considerations of interest. A machine-tool manufacturer himself, Flanders knew that his firm's profits depended on selling a wide range of machines of varying capability. But for him, and for his colleagues as well, the concept of automatic machinery proved irresistible. An approach to machine design that enhanced the engineer's role in the productive processes - and in industrial management, also, as their machines altered the relations of capital and labour - was just too appealing to be resisted for a profession that saw in the Panama Canal proof of its ability to manage modern civilization. Advanced nations use advanced tools. That was the message from San Francisco. So, just as machine evolution traced a steady path towards fully automatic operation, the progress of civilization itself was measured by increasingly complex technologies. And a central tenet of this ideological structure was that the same yardstick determined admission to the family of nations. The fact is that Japan got rights to the club in 1905 when it defeated the Russian navy in the battle of Tsushima Straits. But for technical men, staging the 1929 World Engineering Congress in Tokyo signalled Japan's status as a modern nation, and Kiichiro Toyoda's description of his father's invention of the automatic loom at that congress confirmed it. Using the same conceptual framework Flanders had thought in, the younger Toyoda outlined the development of an automatic machine that at fast operating speeds employed unskilled labour to mass produce high-quality goods.19 There is more than a little irony in this story. Toyoda claimed that a long tradition of craft skill in silk weaving lay behind his father's success. And the exquisite perfection of those nineteenth-century Japanese handicrafts, the rich fruit of patient hand labour, was exactly what Americans had so admired at the Philadelphia and Chicago international expositions - even as it made them reflect critically on the direction of their own industrial efforts.20 But engineers at these expositions, and in their conjoined congresses, were intent on technologies without apparent connection to handicraft methods of production. In the same way that new machines seemed to elide cultural differences, this modernist ideology denied historical process, except to suggest the inevitability of technical change. The Tokyo Congress, the only one to have broken free of the connection to an exposition, the most highly developed in its social activities, and thus the most mature expression of the form, proved to be the last. The World Depression of the 1930s, and then the Second World War, ended any idea of an eleven-year cycle. And as twentieth-century engineering continued to splinter into ever more narrow specialities, these large, undifferentiated gatherings of engineers served less and less purpose in the marketplace of usable knowledge. They also fell out of favour, I think, as people's taste for the elaborate formalities that characterized them changed, too. But it was in

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

210

The Power of Ceremony

institutional settings like these international engineering congresses that the argument that technology had its own logic and interior purposes was framed, and here also that the connection between engineering and civilization was most fervently proclaimed. Naming them verities served mythic purposes, of course, but ideas like these also had more immediate and important legitimating functions, particularly in the exploitation of the world's resources.21 Engineers liked to link internationalism with fraternity, but their long reach to faraway places always had the matching of materials to industrial capabilities and appetites as its central concern. It was pleasant for them to assume, as the architects of globalization do today, that trade and technical advance drew the peoples of the world closer together - and that the ceremonials of these engineering congresses served to demonstrate the truth of that notion. But we need to realize that this was display and rhetoric with an agenda, projected by specific people for knowable reasons. Notes and References 1. Transactions of the International Engineering Congress, 1915, Index Volume, Section Historical and Statistical (San Francisco, 1916), 104. 2. Kenneth W. Luckhurst, The Story of Exhibitions (London, 1951) has general information on the subject, but see also Richard D. Mandell, Paris 1900 (Toronto, 1967); Robert Rydell, All the World's a Fair (Chicago, 1984); and Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men (Ithaca, 1989). 3. See, e.g., the observations of John Anderson, British Commissioner to the US Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, in Reports of the Philadelphia International Exhibition (London, 1877), 219. 4. American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Transactions, 1885, VI: 256. 5. Frederick Hutton, A History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (New York, 1915), 230. 6. The trip is described in Bruce Sinclair, A Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Toronto, 1980), 36-8. 7. For a characterization of that exposition, see D.P. Heap, Electrical Appliances of the Present Day: being a report on the Paris Electrical Exhibition of 1881 (New York, 1884). 8. Langdon Winner, 'Do Artifacts Have Politics?', in The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago, 1986), 19—39. Besides Rydell's book, All the World's a Fair, op. cit. (2), his more recent World of Fairs (Chicago, 1993), explores these connections further. 9. There is a substantial literature on the import and impact of the opening of the canal, and it stretches over several decades. For one example see Edward Neville Vose, 'How Panama Will Alter Trade,' World's Work, July 1912, 24: 418-33. Transcontinental railways had already made passenger travel easy and cheap but contemporary commentators were imagining a new kind of continental interconnectedness. 10. Transactions of the International Engineering Congress, op. cit. (1), 74—5. 11. Ibid., 88. 12. Ibid., 94. 13. Ibid., 104. 14. Willis H. Carrier, 'The Control of Humidity and Temperature as Applied to Manufacturing Processes and Human Comfort', in Proceedings of the World Engineering Congress, Tokyo, 1929 (Tokyo, 1931) XXVII, 21-48. 15. Transactions of the International Engineering Congress, op. cit. (1), 133-63. 16. Ibid., 137. 17. Ibid., 162. 18. Ibid., 163. Clearly, this language also included automatic assumptions about the value of labour skill and the expense of labour costs. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Bruce Sinclair

211

19. Kiichiro Toyoda, 'The Toyoda Textile Machinery', in Proceedings of the World Engineering Congress, op. cit. (14), 151-68. 20. Neil Harris, 'All the World a Melting Pot? Japan at American Fairs, 1876-1904', in Neil Harris (ed.), Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern Am (Chicago, 1990), 29-55. 21. Adas, op. cit. (2), adroitly analyses the connections between specialized knowledge and Western hegemony in the less developed areas of the world.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

C o n t e n t s

o f

F o r m e r

V o l u m e s

* indicates out of print FIRST ANNUAL VOLUME, 1976* D.S.L. CARDWELL and RICHARD L. HILLS, Thermodynamics and Practical Engineering in the Nineteenth Century. JACQUES HEYMAN, Couplet's Engineering Memoirs, 1726-33. NORMAN A.F. SMITH, Attitudes to Roman Engineering and the Question of the Inverted Siphon. R.A. BUCHANAN, The Promethean Revolution: Science, Technology and History. M. DAUMAS, The History of Technology: Its Aims, its Limits, its Methods. KEITH DAWSON, Electromagnetic Telegraphy: Early Ideas, Proposals and Apparatus. MARIE BOAS HALL, The Strange Case of Aluminium. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, Leads and Lags in Late Seventeenth-Century English Technology. SECOND ANNUAL VOLUME, 1977* EMORY L. KEMP, Samuel Brown: Britain's Pioneer Suspension Bridge Builder. DONALD R. HILL, The Banu Musa and their 'Book of Ingenious Devices'. J.F. CAVE, A Note on Roman Metal Turning. J.A. GARCIA-DIEGO, Old Dams in Extremadura. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, The Vocabulary of Technology. RICHARD L. HILLS, Museums, History and Working Machines. DENIS SMITH, The Use of Models in Nineteenth-Century British Suspension Bridge Design. NORMAN A.F. SMITH, The Origins of the Water Turbine and the Invention of its Name.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

214

Contents of Former Volumes

THIRD ANNUAL VOLUME, 1978* JACK SIMMONS, Technology in History. R.A. BUCHANAN, History of Technology in the Teaching of History. P.B. MORICE, The Role of History in a Civil Engineering Course. JOYCE BROWN, Sir Proby Cautley (1802-71), a Pioneer of Indian Irrigation. A. RUPERT HALL, On Knowing, and Knowing How to ... FRANK D. PRAGER, Vitruvius and the Elevated Aqueducts. JAMES A. RUFFNER, Two Problems in Fuel Technology. JOHN C. SCOTT, The Historical Development of Theories of WaveCalming Oil. FOURTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1979* P.S. BARDELL, Some Aspects of the History of Journal Bearings and their Lubrication. K.R. FAIRCLOUGH, The Waltham Pound Lock. ROBERT FRIEDEL, Parkesine and Celluloid: The Failure and Success of the First Modern Plastic. J.G. JAMES, Iron Arched Bridge Designs in Pre-Revolutionary France. L.J. JONES, The Early History of Mechanical Harvesting. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, The Sector and Chain: An Historical Enquiry. FIFTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1980* THOMAS P. HUGHES, The Order of the Technological World. THORKILD SCH0LER, Bronze Roman Piston Pumps. STILLMAN DRAKE, Measurement in Galileo's Science. L.J. JONES, John Ridley and the South Australian 'Stripper'. D.G. TUCKER, Emile Lamm's Self-Propelled Tramcars 1870-72 and the Evolution of the Fireless Locomotive. S.R. BROADBRIDGE, British Industry in 1767: Extracts from a Travel Journal of Joseph Banks. RICHARD L. HILLS, Water, Stampers and Paper in the Auvergne: A Medieval Tradition. SIXTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1981* MARJORIE NICE BOYER, Moving Ahead with the Fifteenth Century: New Ideas in Bridge Construction at Orleans. ANDRE WEGENER SLEESWYK, Hand-Cranking in Egyptian Antiquity. CHARLES SUSSKIND, The Invention of Computed Tomography. RICHARD L. HILLS, Early Locomotive Building near Manchester. L.L. COATSWORTH, B.I. KRONBERG and M.C. USSELMAN, The

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Contents of Former Volumes

215

Artefact as Historical Document. Part 1: The Fine Platinum Wires of W.H. Wollaston. A. RUPERT HALL and N.C. RUSSELL, What about the Fulling-Mill? MICHAEL FORES, Technik: Or Mumford Reconsidered. SEVENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1982* MARJORIE NICE BOYER, Water Mills: A Problem for the Bridges and Boats of Medieval France. Wm. DAVID COMPTON, Internal-Combustion Engines and their Fuel: A Preliminary Exploration of Technological Interplay. F.T. EVANS, Wood since the Industrial Revolution: A Strategic Retreat? MICHAEL FORES, Francis Bacon and the Myth of Industrial Science. D.G. TUCKER, The Purpose and Principles of Research in an Electrical Manufacturing Business of Moderate Size, as Stated by J.A. Crabtree in 1930. ROMAN MALINOWSKI, Ancient, Mortars and Concretes: Aspects of their Durability. V. FOLEY, W. SOEDEL, J. TURNER and B. WILHOITE, The Origin of Gearing. EIGHTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1983* W. ADDIS, A New Approach to the History of Structural Engineering. HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN, The National Association of GermanAmerican Technologists and Technology Transfer between Germany and the United States, 1884-1930. W. BERNARD CARLSON, Edison in the Mountains: The Magnetic Ore Separation Venture, 1879-1900. THOMAS DAY, Samuel Brown: His Influence on the Design of Suspension Bridges. ROBERT H.J. SELLIN, The Large Roman Water Mill at Barbegal (France). G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, The Use of Gunpowder in Mining: A Document of 1627. MIKULAS TEICH, Fermentation Theory and Practice: The Beginnings of Pure Yeast Cultivation and English Brewing, 1883-1913. GEORGE TIMMONS, Education and Technology in the Industrial Revolution. NINTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1984* P.S. BARDELL, The Origins of Alloy Steels. MARJORIE NICE BOYER, A Fourteenth-Century Pile Driver: The Engin of the Bridge at Orleans. MICHAEL DUFFY, Rail Stresses, Impact Loading and Steam Locomotive Design. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

216

Contents of Former Volumes

JOSE A. GARCIA-DIEGO, Giovanni Francesco Sitoni, an Hydraulic Engineer of the Renaissance. DONALD R. HILL, Information on Engineering in the Works of Muslim Geographers. ROBERT J. SPAIN, The Second-Century Romano-British Watermill at Ickham, Kent. IAN R. WINSHIP, The Gas Engine in British Agriculture, c. 1870-1925. TENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1985* D. de COGAN, Dr E.O.W. Whitehouse and the 1858 trans-Atlantic Cable. A. RUPERT HALL, Isaac Newton's Steamer. G.J. HOLLISTER-SHORT, Gunpowder and Mining in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe. G.J. JACKSON, Evidence of American Influence on the Designs of Nineteenth-Century Drilling Tools, Obtained from British Patent Specifications and Other Sources. JACQUES PAYEN, Beau de Rochas Devant la Technique et ITndustrie de son Temps. ORJAN WIKANDER, Archaeological Evidence for Early Water-Mills an Interim Report. A.P. WOOLRICH, John Farey and the Smeaton Manuscripts. MIKE CHRIMES, Bridges: A Bibliography of Articles Published in Scientific Periodicals 1800-1829. ELEVENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1986* HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN, Technology Transfer under Conditions of War: German Aero-Technology in Japan during the Second World War. VERNARD FOLEY, with SUSAN CANGANELLI, JOHN CONNOR and DAVID RADER, Using the Early Slide-Rest. J.G. JAMES, The Origins and Worldwide Spread of Warren-Truss Bridges in the Mid-Nineteeth Century. Part 1: Origins and Early Examples in the UK. ANDREW NAHUM, The Rotary Aero Engine. DALE H. PORTER, An Historian's Judgments about the Thames Embankment. JOHN H. WHITE, More Than an Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Beginnings of Steel Freight Cars. IAN R. WINSHIP, The Acceptance of Continuous Brakes on Railways in Britain.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Contents of Former Volumes

217

TWELFTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1990 KENNETH C. BARRACLOUGH, Swedish Iron and Sheffield Steel. IAN INKSTER, Intellectual Dependency and the Sources of Invention: Britain and the Australian Technological System in the Nineteenth Century. M.T. WRIGHT, Rational and Irrational Reconstruction: The London Sundial-Calendar and the Early History of Geared Mechanisms. J.V. FIELD, Some Roman and Byzantine Portable Sundials and the London Sundial-Calendar. R.T. McCUTCHEON, Modern Construction Technology in Low-Income Housing Policy: The Case of Industrialized Building and the Manifold Links between Technology and Society in an Established Industry. Book Review by Frank A J.L. James: Andre Guillerme, Le Temps de Veau: la cite, Veau et les techniques: nord de la FrancefinIII1'-debut XIXe siecle. Eng. trans.: The Age of Water: The Urban Environment in the North of France, AD 300-1800. THIRTEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1991* BRUCE J. HUNT, Michael Faraday, Cable Telegraphy and the Rise of Field Theory. IWAN R. MORUS, Telegraphy and the Technology of Display: The Electricians and Samuel Morse. BRIAN GEE, Electromagnetic Engines: Pre-Technology and Development Immediately Following Faraday's Discovery of Electromagnetic Rotations. GRAEME GOODAY, Teaching Telegraphy and Electronics in the Physics Laboratory: William Ayrton and the Creation of an Academic Space for Electrical Engineering in Britain 1873-1884. W J . READER, 'The Engineer Must Be A Scientific Man': The Origins of the Society of Telegraph Engineers. C.A. HEMPSTEAD, An Appraisal of Fleeming Jenkin (1833-1885), Electrical Engineer. A.C. LYNCH, The Sources for a Biography of Oliver Heaviside. W. BERNARD CARLSON, Building Thomas Edison's Laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey: A Case Study in Using Craft Knowledge for Technological Invention, 1886-1888. BRIAN BOWERS, Edison and Early Electrical Engineering in Britain. R.W. BURNS, The Contributions of the Bell Telephone Laboratories to the Early Development of Television. JONATHAN COOPERSMITH, Technology Transfer in Russian Electrification, 1870-1925. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, ICOHTEC XVIII Conference Report: A Personal View.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

218

Contents of Former Volumes

FOURTEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1992 HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN, Aero-Engine Production in the Third Reich. ANDRE GUILLERME, Chaleur et Chauffage: LTntroduction du Confort a Paris sous la Restauration (English summary by G.H.-S.). JOHN LANGDON, The Birth and Demise of a Medieval Windmill. MICHAEL J.T. LEWIS, The South-Pointing Chariot in Rome: Gearing in China and the West. STANLEY SMITH, The Development and Use of the Tubular Beam, 1830-1860. NICOLAS GARCIA TAPIA, Some Designs of Jeronimo de Ayanz (c. 1550-1613) relating to Mining, Metallurgy and Steam Pumps. DONALD E. TARTER, Peenemunde and Los Alamos: Two Studies. GRAHAM HOLLISTER-SHORT, Reflections on Two Conferences: ICOHTEC XIX and MASTECH. Announcement: The Georgius Agricola Commemorations, 1994. FIFTEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1993 MICHAEL E. GORMAN, MATTHEW M. MEHALIK, W. BERNARD CARLSON and MICHAEL OBLON, Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray and the Speaking Telegraph: A Cognitive Comparison. GRAHAM HOLLISTER-SHORT, On the Origins of the Suction Lift Pump. ALEX KELLER, Technological Aspirations and the Motivation of Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century England. WALTER ENDREI, Count Theodore Batthyany's Paddle-Wheel Ship. BJORN IVAR BERG, The Kongsberg Silver Mines and the Norwegian Mining-Museum. HERMANN KNOFLACHER, Does the Development of Mobility in Traffic Follow a Pattern? MICHAEL J.T. LEWIS, The Greeks and the Early Windmill. GRAEME GOODAY, Faraday Reinvented: Moral Imagery and Institutional Icons in Victorian Electrical Engineering. PHILIPPE BRAUNSTEIN, Legendes Welsches et Itineraires Silesiens: La Prospection Miniere au XV e Siecle (English summary G.H.-S.). SIXTEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1994 WILLIAM J. PIKE, Drilling Technology Transfer between North America and the North Sea: The Semi-Submersible Drilling Unit. GUNNAR NERHEIM, The Condeep Concept: The Development and Breakthrough of Concrete Gravity Platforms. W. DAVID LEWIS, Edward A. Uehling and the Automatic Pig-Casting Machine: A Case-Study of Technological Transfer. DONALD HILL, The Toledo Water-Clocks of c. 1075. GRAHAM HOLLISTER-SHORT, The Other Side of the Coin: Wood Transport Systems in Pre-Industrial Europe. History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

Contents of Former Volumes

219

ALAN WILLIAMS, The Blast Furnace and the Mass Production of Armour Plate. MELVIN KRANZBERG, ICOHTEC: Some Informal Personal Reminiscences. MICHAEL FORES, Hamlet without the Prince: The Strange Death of Technical Skill in Histories. WERNER KROKER, History of Technology at the German Mining Museum, Bochum. R. ANGUS BUCHANAN, The Structure of Technological Revolution. HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN, Reforming ICOHTEC: International Committee for the History of Technology. SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1995 SUSAN MURPHY, Heron of Alexandria's On Automaton-Making. D.L. SIMMS, Archimedes the Engineer. THOMAS F. GLICK, Moriscos and Marranos as Agents of Technological Diffusion. CARROLL PURSELL, Variations on Mass-Production: The Case of Furniture Manufacture in the United States to 1940. JENNIFER TANN, Space, Time and Innovation Characteristics: The Contribution of Diffusion Process Theory to the History of Technology. DAVID BRIDGE, The German Miners at Keswick and the Question of Bismuth. WALTER ENDREI, Jean Errard (1554-1610) and His Book of Machines: Le Premier Livre des Instruments mathematiques mechaniques of 1584. HELLMUT JANETSCHEK, From the Imperial-Royal Collection of Manufactured Products to the Museum of Technology and Industry in Vienna. GRAHAM HOLLISTER-SHORT, Cranks and Scholars. EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1996 A. RUPERT HALL, Theory and Responsibility in Science and Technology. M.T. WRIGHT, On the Lift Pump. IAN INKSTER, Discoveries, Inventions and Industrial Revolutions: On the Varying Contributions of Technologies and Institutions from an International Historical Perspective. R.L. HILLS, James Watt, Mechanical Engineer. ALAN L. LOUGHEED, Technological Advance in the Manufacture of Chemicals: The Case of Cyanide, 1888-1930. JOHN K. BRADLEY, Putting the Wind up the Pilot: Cloud Flying with Early Aircraft Instruments. STEPHEN N. TRAVIS, 'Seeing' Is Believing: The Development of Microwave Radar in Britain, Summer 1940. TERRY GOURVISH, Diffusion of Brewing Technology since 1900: Change and the Consumer.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999

220

Contents of Former Volumes

NINETEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1997 YVES COUTANT and PAUL GROEN, The Early History of the Windmill Brake. WOLFGANG VON STROMER, Nuremberg as Epicentre of Invention and Innovation towards the End of the Middle Ages. WILFRED G. LOCKETT, Friction According to Jacob Leupold. JENNIFER TANN, Steam and Sugar: The Diffusion of the Stationary Steam Engine to the Caribbean Sugar Industry 1770-1840. MICHAEL FORES, Uneven Mirrors: Towards a History of Engines. A.P. WOOLRICH, John Fareyjr (1791-1851): Engineer and Polymath. MARTIJN BARKER, A la Recherche des Ingenieurs Disparus - les Hydrauliciens Neerlandais au Dix-huitieme Siecle. BOOK REVIEWS: A. RUPERT HALL, S.A. Jayawardene, The Scientific Revolution: An Annotated Bibliography. ROBERT SMITH, Brenda J. Buchanan (ed.), Gunpowder: The History of an International Technology. DENNIS SIMMS, Brian Cotterell and Johan Kamminga, Mechanics of Pre-industrial Technology. TWENTIETH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1998 WALTER KAISER, The PAL-SECAM Colour Television Controversy. GIJS MOM, Inventing the Miracle Battery: Thomas Edison and the Electric Vehicle. JENNIFER TANN, Two Knights in Pandemonium: A Worm's-eye View of Boulton, Watt & Co., c. 1800-1820 CLIVE EDWARDS, The Mechanization of Carving: The Development of the Carving Machine, Especially in Relation to the Manufacture of Furniture and the Working of Wood. MARCUS POPPLOW, Protection and Promotion: Privileges for Inventions and Books of Machines in the Early Modern Period. B.W. KOOI, The Archer's Paradox and Modelling: A Review. ALAN SMITH, A New Way of Raising Water by Fire: Denis Papin's Treatise of 1707 and its Reception by Contemporaries.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty-one, 1999