History of Technology Volume 20: Volume Twenty, 1998 9780720123760, 9781350018891, 9781350018877

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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY Editor

Dr Graham Hollister-Short INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH Senate House, University of London, London WC1E 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 Professor Andre Guillerme, LTnstitut Francais d'Urbanisme, Cite Descartes, 47 rue Albert Einstein, 77463 Champ-sur-Marne, France Professor A. Rupert Hall, FBA, 14 Ball Lane, Tackley, Oxfordshire OX5 3AG, England Professor Alexandre Herlea, Directeur du Departement Humanites, Institut Polytechnique de Sevenens, 90010 Belfort, France Professor Ian Inkster, International Studies, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG11 8NS, 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 Carlo Poni, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Universita degli Studi di Bologna, Strada Maggiore 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy Professor Hugh Torrens, Department of Geology, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire ST5 5BG, England Professor R.D. Vergani, Dipartimento de Storia, Universita degli Studi di Padova, Piazza Capitaniato 3, 35139 Padua, Italy

History of Technology Volume 20, 1998 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

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2009 by Mansell Publishing Copyright © Mansell Publishing and Contributors, 1999 The electronic edition published 2016 Graham Hollister-Short has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author 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 author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-7201-2376-0 ePDF: 978-1-3500-1887-7 ePub: 978-1-3500-1888-4 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: History of Technology, volume 20 Typeset by BookEns Limited, Royston, Herts.

Contents

Editorial The Contributors Notes for Contributors

vi viii ix

WALTER KAISER

The PAL-SECAM Colour Television Controversy GIJS MOM Inventing the Miracle Battery: Thomas Edison and the Electric Vehicle

1

17

JENNIFER TANN

Two Knights in Pandemonium: A Worm's-eye View of Boulton,

Watt & Co., c. 1800—1820

47

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

73

MARCUS POPPLOW

Protection and Promotion: Privileges for Inventions and Books of Machines in the Early Modern Period

103

B.W. KOOI The Archer's Paradox and Modelling: A Review

125

ALAN SMITH

A New Way of Raising Water by Fire: Denis Papin's Treatise of 1707 and its Reception by Contemporaries

139

Contents of Former Volumes

183

Editorial

When, on 30 March 1965, General de Gaulle's Minister of Information signed a treaty with his Soviet opposite number under the terms of which the USSR agreed to adopt SECAM (the French colour television system) a variety of political objectives was satisfied. On the French side, more clearly than anything else, emerges a policy whereby de Gaulle simultaneously achieved so many of his other political desires at one stroke that the coup can be seen as only apparently a continuation of technology by other means. Examination of the real complexity of events demonstrates, however, as Walter Kaiser shows with great clarity, that the treaty was also an expression of a powerful desire to strengthen the French economy, to meet, as Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber expressed it at the time, le defi americain. This is not to slight certain psychological imperatives whose expression also found an outlet in the events of 30 March. To some commentators on mechanical road carriages it was already clear in the late 1890s that steam propulsion was not likely to have much of a future. In most respects, and for most purposes, the petrol engine was preferred. But what of the electrically-powered car, at once a silent, reliable and clean form of locomotion? Despite the undoubted advantages of the electric car, few engineers were staking either their money or their reputations on the electric storage battery as a means of achieving such goals. Thomas Alva Edison, for whatever reason, was one of those few and, as Gijs Mom shows in a pioneering study, spent long years of his life in dogged but fruitless pursuit of the grail of a battery-powered silent car capable of outperforming the petrol-engined automobile. At the end, after many years and an untold amount of effort had failed to bring forth the miracle battery of his imagination, Edison had to admit defeat. If ever emotion was recollected in tranquillity, it cannot often have been more poignantly expressed than by Edison in 1927. It was not, however, the case in the early 1900s that things were going swimmingly for the partisans of the petroleum engine either. Louis de Baudry de Saunier, writing about 1909, felt that what drivers of petrol-engine cars needed above all else was (ominously enough) 'sang froid - and a mechanical instinct'. Not a great deal of work in the English language has been devoted to the Machine Books, the series of publications portraying both real and imaginary machines that begins with Jacques Besson's Livre premier des

Editorial

vii

instruments mathematiques et mechaniques of 1569 and 1571, and may be said to end with Jacob Leupold's ten-volume work of 1724-1739. What purposes these books were meant to serve, how seriously one should take the mechanical confections they offered and what interpretation, in cultural terms, might be put upon these more or less elaborate productions, remain questions of considerable interest. Marcus Popplow's article is a very welcome contribution, therefore, to our understanding of the connection between the earliest of these works - those by Jacques Besson, Jean Errard and Agostino Ramelli in particular - and the emergence of the patent system in Europe. The interpretation of the machines and devices shown in these works is not thereby made very much easier. As indicators of contemporary levels of mechanical achievement (and sometimes of mechanical imagination!) the importance of the Machine Books is as considerable as it is sometimes difficult to evaluate. These sixteenth century virtuosi are far removed from the largely anonymous creators of the 'high mechanization' of the recent past and of contemporary society. It was their achievement that Siegfried Giedion attempted to recover in his Mechanization Takes Command of 1948. Clive Edwards, in his study of the mechanization of wood carving (concerned particularly with Britain after about 1850), complements an earlier study by David Lewis in Volume 16 (1994) on the development of the automatic pig-casting machine. Such enquiries are the very building blocks from which a more synoptic history of technology may be constructed that does justice to both technology and its cultural matrices. Certainly, to write history of technology in such a way as to take the measure of the socioeconomic and cultural structures within which technology has its being but which, per contra, that very technology is continuously modifying, entails also rendering an adequate account of whatever machine complex or process happens to be under discussion. This is to attempt something approaching total history. To do less, however, is to incur a charge of the kind that Roy Campbell levelled against certain novelists of the 1950s: They use the snaffle and the curb all right But where's the bloody horse? Our other contributors offer a wide variety of topics: Alan Smith presents the first translation into English of Denis Papin's treatise of 1707; Jennifer Tann, a worm's eye view of steam engine construction in the early nineteenth century based on the very recently discovered correspondence of the Creighton brothers; and B.W. Kooi, how seriously the resources of mathematical modellers have been stretched to explain how an arrow has to bend to get past the bow and yet still hit its target.

The Contributors

Dr Clive Edwards Loughborough University School of Art and Design Epinal Way Loughborough Leics., LEU 3GE England Professor Dr Walter Kaiser Rheinisch-Westfalische Technische Hochschule Kopernikusstrasse 16 D-52056 Aachen Germany Dr B.W. Kooi Faculty of Biology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam De Boelelaan 1087 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands Dr ing. G.P.A. Mom Steenheuvelsestraat 69 NL 6578 AB LEUTH The Netherlands

Dr Marcus Popplow Max-Planck-Institut fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte Wilhelmstrasse 44 D-10117 Berlin Germany Mr Alan Smith 63 Abbey House la Abbey Road London NWS 9BX England Professor Jennifer Tann The Business School The University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT England

Notes 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: DNB, 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, p.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 (but not used) 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 and photographs. Line drawings should be drawn boldly in blank 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.

The PAL-SECAM Colour

Television Controversy WALTER KAISER

INTRODUCTION

In the wider historiographical context this analysis of the PAL-SEGAM colour television systems controversy is intended as a case study of the relationship between the history of technology and general history. To this extent the history of the PAL-SECAM controversy mirrors the enormous problems in the political relationship between France and Germany immediately after the Franco-German treaty of friendship. The more narrow focus is on the political impact of this relationship on science, invention, engineering, development, marketing and final decision-making in a field of competing industrial standards.1 Instead of beginning with an introduction to the technological features of the colour television systems PAL and SEGAM, I shall start by describing directly the politically troubled atmosphere of the PALSECAM 'war' which was at its height in March 1965. On 31 March 1965 (issue number 14) the German news magazine Der Spiegel, under the headline 'France' and 'Ostpolitik', published an article with the typically short title 'Colourful agreement' ['Farbiger AkkorcT]. The article reported: Charles de Gaulle drank a toast to Moscow's departing ambassador Sergei Vinogradov in Paris: 'To the traditional, now renewed, friendship between Russia and France' . . . The day before the Russian . . . had achieved a colourful agreement with de Gaulle's Minister of Information Alain Peyrefitte: the Soviet Union had decided to adopt the French colour television system ... In close cooperation with the Soviet Union Charles de Gaulle tries to force the Europeans to do his will, and [by] collaborating with the Soviet Union, punish at the same time Bonn [the Federal Republic of Germany] and Washington . . . Regarding the Eurovision programme interchange system and the technological difficulties of colour television a single colour TV ['colour gogglebox', 'Buntgeflimmer'] seems necessary. At its conference opened last week in Vienna the International Radio Consultative Committee, abbreviated to CCIR from its French name, Comite Consultatif International des Radiocommunications, therefore sought a decision for a common system. But Paris and Moscow pre-empted any decision. Following [the lead History of Technology, Volume Twenty, 1998

2

The PAL-SECAM Colour Television Controversy

of] the Soviet Union, all the eastern countries including the GDR will adopt the Gallic colours. The Federal Republic, which is now surrounded by colours ['farbig eingekreisf], has only one choice: either stick to its PAL system, and thus, assisted by the colour tube, divide Germany even further and lose its transmission capacity into the GDR, or to play along with the Franco-Russian settlement. As a result of Moscow's decision, Europe, extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains, is now expected to buy tubes 'Made in France' and to pay millions in royalties on patents [' Tantiemen'] to the cashiers of the 'Compagnie Francaise de Television', which owns the SECAM patents.2 Even this simple news item reveals the bitterness of the debate, the variety of subject matters and the political intensity of a controversy which sprang from a purely scientific comparison of the three colour television systems the American NTSC, the German PAL and the French SECAM. THE NTSC SYSTEM

After World War II the US was the leading country technologically, especially in communication technologies. A major US achievement of the immediate postwar years (1950 to 1953) was the creation of a colour television system based on the recommendations of the National Television System Committee (NTSC). The NTSC, a US group of over 100 scientific, engineering and administrative representatives of the television industry (especially of four major companies) designed the colour television system, also called NTSC. The standards for this system were set by the US Federal Communications Commission in 1953. They were adopted in Canada in 1956 and then in Japan in 1960. Based on a black and white standard using 525 horizontal lines and 60 fields per second, the NTSC group accomplished the creation of a colour television system perfectly compatible with the black and white standard.3 The NTSC system was thus able to guarantee the performance of an old monochrome receiver when receiving a colour signal. Conversely, it guaranteed the ability of a colour receiver to receive monochrome signals, as for example would be the case in transmitting an old black and white film. Basically, the French SECAM, and even more so the German PAL, systems are mere modifications of the NTSC system. Any technical and historical analysis of the PAL-SECAM controversy therefore starts with the pioneering work of the US National Television System Committee in the years 1950 to 1953. As early as 1965 Richard Theile, who was Director of the German broadcasting system's Institut fur Rundfunktechnik in Munich and in 1962 was elected chairman of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) ad hoc group on colour television, attributed 80 per cent of research and development in colour television to the NTSC system. More explicitly, this meant that very important achievements were already attributable to NTSC, namely, separation of signals for luminance and chrominance, History of Technology, Volume Twenty, 1998

Walter Kaiser

3

reduction of the frequency band width for the transmission of colour, and accommodation of the two colour signals in the upper frequency region of the luminance signal. Essentially, the American NTSC system transmits simultaneously the maximum in colour information for every single line, namely: First:

the luminance signal, that is, the monochrome signal which in turn is a correct physiological mix of the red, green and blue signals originating from the camera. Second: one colour signal, which results from subtracting the red signal from the luminance signal. Third: another colour signal, which results from subtracting the blue signal from the luminance signal.

Figure 1 Block diagram of colour coder, which converts electronically the primary-colour signals (U R , UG, UB) into the luminance (U Y ) and chrominance signals (colour-difference signals UR-UY, and UB-UY). The luminance matrix contains an electronic addition circuit, the colour-difference-matrices consist of electronic subtraction circuits.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty, 1998

4

The PAL-SECAM Colour Television Controversy

Figure 2 Block diagram of a colour receiver, which recovers the luminance signal (Uy) and the chrominance signals (UR-Uy, UB~UY) and through matrices I and II reproduces white light as well as the primary colour-signals. Matrix I mirrors the luminance signal (U Y ), Matrix II furnishes the colour difference signal UG~UY. HF denotes High Frequency detection, IF is an intermediate-frequency amplifier.

It was not necessary, however, for the luminance and colour signals to be transmitted within the same band width. The band width for the luminance signal had to be comparatively large, namely 5 megacycles per second. On the other hand, owing to the physiological properties of human colour recognition, the NTSC system could allow for a much smaller band width for colour signals. Consequently, it was possible to modulate the colour signals on a colour subcarrier (of 3.58 megacycles in the US, 4.43 megacycles in Europe) and to insert this subcarrier into gaps within the upper region of the luminance signal without disturbing the signal itself, thus guaranteeing mutual compatibility. Compatibility between the luminance signal and the colour signals was perfect in the NTSC system. There remained, however, a severe weakness in the details of its transmission of the two colour signals. Actually, the subcarrier for the colour signals was primarily split into two oscillations with a phase shift of 90 degrees; each of the two colour signals was separately modulated on one of the partial oscillations (quadrature amplitude modulation, QAM). The amplitude of the resulting wave was assigned the saturation of the colour, whereas the shade of the colour was connected with the phase of the resulting wave (of the subcarrier). The latter choice caused a remarkable problem with stability of colours. In the case of echoes (multipath signals) in mountainous areas or in long-distance transmissions, differential phase distortion occurred which could lead to dramatic shifts in colour, for example a change from blue to green. Therefore every NTSC receiver was equipped with a separate tuning knob for control of colour saturation and especially hue control, dubbed in the German literature 'preference knob' or 'tasteknob' ('Geschmacksknopf'}.^ History of Technology, Volume Twenty, 1998

5

Walter Kaiser

THE SECAM SYSTEM

In the years 1956 to 1958 Henri de France tackled precisely this problem of phase distortion causing hue errors.5 He was then with RBV - La Radio-Industrie. Owing to the bankruptcy of RBV the patents were taken over by Compagnie Francaise de Television (CFT). CFT was in turn a subsidiary of the big glass company, Gompagnie Saint-Gobain, and also of Compagnie Generale de Telegraphic Sans Fil (CSF). Although retaining the basic principles of the NTSC system, Henri de France avoided its double modulation of colour signals on the split subcarrier and transmission of both colour signals simultaneously. He proposed transmitting the chrominance signals sequentially.6 Thus, in the first line, for example, he transmitted the luminance signal plus one of the two chrominance signals which, after decoding, needed to be stored in the receiver over one line. In the second line he transmitted the luminance signal again plus the second colour signal, which was now added to the stored colour signal in the receiver. A reduction in colour signal band width was therefore possible which allegedly had no noticeable effect on picture quality.7 Consequently, starting with what retrospectively was called version SECAM II, from 1960 frequency modulation of the colour subcarrier became feasible. Different from amplitude modulation, signals transmitted with the help of frequency modulation are primarily very 'robust' signals, which means that they are less sensitive, less open to phase distortion and less affected by atmospherics (atmospheric disturbances received by the antenna alter the amplitude of the signal!). As mentioned before, the reconstruction of the colour signals in the receiver depended upon a delay device which stored the first colour signal over one line (ie over 64 (is) while waiting for the second. On account of the method of sequential transmission and the storing of one colour signal in the memory of the receiver, Henri de France's colour television system was named SECAM, mostly derived phonetically from sequentiel [couleur] a memoire.^ At first the engineers developing the SECAM system used a delay cable with the remarkable length of 32 metres (due to its poor delay capacity of 2 |is/m). The cable was furnished by the firm Kabelmetall of Hanover. In 1959/60 the delay cable in the SECAM development was replaced by an acoustic glass delay device (invented by Telefunken in their wartime No. of line

Received signals

1.

Y, I, Y,Q Y, I Y,Q

3. 5. 7.

Signals stored Signals evaluated in delay line simultaneously of receiver in the receiver

i

Q I Q

Y, Q, IoU Y, I, QM Y, Q, IM

Figure 3 Sequential evaluation of the luminance (Y) and the colour-difference signals (I, Q) in the SECAM system.

History of Technology, Volume Twenty, 1998

6

The PAL—SECAM Colour Television Controversy

radar development) which fitted into the receiver9 and could be mass produced at relatively low cost.10 No later than 1963 this acoustic glass delay device was also introduced into Telefunken's own PAL system development. Perhaps it is somewhat surprising that the rival systems SECAM and PAL both made use of this identical acoustic delay device which stores a first signal while waiting for the second. Thus they showed an important common component in the circuitry of the receiver. In actual fact, however, the role of the delay line was completely different in both systems. The SECAM system differed from the PAL and NTSC systems principally in that the colour signals were sent in frequency and not in amplitude modulation. This was the basic technical difference across which no bridge could be thrown. Although ardently wished for by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, no compromise could be struck. THE PAL SYSTEM

From 1960 onwards Walter Bruch in his Telefunken laboratory at Hanover did in fact strive for a much closer tie with the NTSC system. He modified NTSC by simply making the delicate link between the shade of the colour and the phase of the subcarrier automatically error-correcting. Bruch proposed transmitting the luminance signals plus both colour signals simultaneously in one line but differently, however, from NTSC, and, having regard to band width restrictions, reversing the phase of the colour signals alternately from line to line. Because of this 'phase alternation line' the system was assigned the acronym PAL. By reversing the phase of the colour signals alternately from line to line, any differential phase distortion occurring during transmission could be corrected after decoding at the receiver. The reason was that each of the reversed (actually conjugate-complex) colour subcarriers suffered opposite phase distortion. In order to yield a mean value of oppositely distorted phases the PAL receiver needed, however, to store the alternately reversed colour signals over one line. So, for completely different reasons, the PAL receiver also utilized the acoustic delay line. In the PAL system the acoustic delay line represents the technological core of the automatically working error-correcting device.11 In the SECAM system - featuring the maximum of colour signal reduction per line - the acoustic delay line is the hardware prerequisite for the penalty-free application of error-prone frequency modulation (instead of amplitude modulation in the NTSC and PAL systems). From the point of view of the engineering sciences SECAM is likely to be the more elegant solution to the colour television problem (a judgement valid then and valid now).l