Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology ed. by Lance Day, Ian McNeil

Abstract

1014 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE No guide to sources used accompanies the bibliographies, and it is important to realize that this is because they were not compiled by systematically examining selected sources. For example, finding a 1944 reference to a paper on the Houghton Iron Works in the Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records does not mean an equally important article from a year or two earlier or later will be listed. Instead, the bibliographies evolved historically. Roos began work on them about 1970 when he was a graduate student at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University ofToronto. Bruce Sinclair taught a course on the history of Canadian technology and asked his students “to survey periodi­ cals, books and so forth to collectively put together a preliminary bibliography dealing with the history of Canadian technology” (p. iii). This effort was to have formed part of a larger bibliographic project, which fell by the wayside. After Roos joined Parks Canada as a historian of technology he dug out the mimeographed sheets and transferred the entries to index cards. Over the years the grow­ ing card catalogue became a useful in-house resource at Parks Can­ ada as well as the basis for brief bibliographies published by the Ca­ nadian Science and Technology Historical Association. Eventually the card file was computerized and formed the basis for this publica­ tion by the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Associa­ tion. The history of Canadian science and technology is not a highprofile field. Sometimes those of us who work in it complain about the lack of activity, support, and opportunities. This bibliography illustrates that results can be achieved by persistence and by pooling resources. It also reminds us that a healthy historical discipline needs practitioners working outside universities as well as inside. Parks Canada is a small haven for history of technology research. It is a pity Parks Canada does not have more of an outreach program to help make their research more useful to others, or a tradition of working with other researchers to define research needs and oppor­ tunities and to do joint work. Norman R. Ball Dr. Ball is director of the Centre for Society, Technology, and Values at the University ofWaterloo, Ontario. His most recent book, coauthored withJohn Vardalas , is Ferranti-Packard: Pioneers in Canadian Electrical Manufacturing (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994). BiographicalDictionary ofthe History ofTechnology. Edited by Lance Day and Ian McNeil. London: Routledge, 1996. Pp. xiii+884; index by subject area, index by topic, index of names. $125.00 (cloth). In their useful preface, the editors reveal that this volume had its inspiration in the “hundreds ofcharacters” who “flitted in and out” TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1015 of the pages of the 1990 reference An Encyclopaedia of the History of Technology, also published by Routledge. In the course of producing the present volume, those hundreds grew to thirteen hundred names of “technologists” which were then written up by twenty-six authors. The editors realized that their work would inevitably be rich in white male technologists and that although a few, such as Apollonius of Perga (c. 240-190 b.c.), would be from the eastern Mediterra­ nean, the vast bulk would be from Western Europe and North America. They made a special search for “others” but came up with only a handful: an African-American here, a Chinese there, and a sprinkling of women. Necessarily, the editors had some rough and unquantifiable stan­ dard of “importance,” which seems to have run heavily toward in­ ventors and engineering designers, and the fact that many “others,” even when known by name, did not make that cut is perfectly under­ standable. In order to serve as a useful guide to what modern, white men have defined and valorized as “technology,” this reference work had to be exactly what it is. Each entry encompasses a short biography, which is used also to suggest the subject’s major contributions. A bibliography follows, listing written works and patents by the subject of the sketch, and a section of further readings for each lists a number of pertinent secondary references. The entry for Sidney...