Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790–1860 by Brooke Hindle, Steven Lubar

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 151 Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790—1860. By Brooke Hindle and Steven Lubar. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986. Pp. 309; illustrations, bibliography, index. $29.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). This is a most timely book. The past two or three decades have seen a veritable outpouring of scholarly works on numerous facets of technical change in early industrial America. Scholarship, how­ ever, needs to be popularized (in the best sense of that term). Brooke Hindle and Steven Lubar have donejust that for early Ameri­ can technology. In sixteen short chapters, the authors swiftly survey the move­ ment of technology from Europe to America, its modification to suit New World circumstances, and the consequent forging of new in­ dustrial techniques and technical systems. The substance of most of the text, since it synthesizes the findings of the major monographs, will be familiar to specialist historians of technology. The useful­ ness of the volume lies in its value as an introduction. Encompassed are such topics as the United States’ economic and social potential for exploiting industrial technology; technology transfer; American inventiveness; technological change in agriculture, transportation, and the manufacture of textiles, shoes, sewing machines, clocks, and guns; the “American system” of manufacture; the problems of in­ dustrialization (the least satisfactory section, because it is relatively lit­ tle explored by scholars); and the international recognition for American technical achievement. Supplementing the text is a bibliog­ raphy that, arranged in line with the chapters, covers the major mod­ ern monographs; only quotations are footnoted so as to avoid (presumably) deterring the general reader. The volume derived from an exhibition (which I have not seen) of the same title in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The strong influence of that exhibition emerges in the wealth of illustrations with which the book is packed. The authors see their photographs, drawings, and maps— about 200 illustrations in all—as constituting the book’s primary mes­ sage. Like contemporary sketches and drawings, artifacts preserve impressions of long-gone human technical activity. However, when three-dimensional artifacts are reduced to two-dimensional images, inevitably the sense of scale, mass, texture, and component interrela­ tionship diminishes or disappears. The photographs of the various American plows are not wholly illuminating: the picture of the John Deere plow makes it appear like a domestic shovel. Illustra­ tions like those of the pin machine or the throstle-twisting frame con­ ceal much greater levels of technical sophistication: cross-sectional diagrams might have helped. A great deal nevertheless remains. Dif­ ferences between European and American axes are not easy to under­ 152 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE stand from the verbal description; contrasting photographs make them immediately plain. For the central features of America’s early industrial landscape, the authors chose illustrations that convey not only appearance but also the essential mechanism. Such are the pictures of the steam en­ gine, Whitney’s cotton gin, Oliver Evans’s flour mill, the waterwheel and turbine, and gauges used in the American system. Diagrams showing the elements of carding, spinning, and weaving would have strengthened the sections relating to textiles. The distinctive American contributions of the cap spindle and the ring spindle need supplementing with drawings of the whole spinning frame. Another major American textile invention, John Goulding’s woolen condenser, is depicted, but without comment or the necessary dia­ grammatic exploration. Besides mechanisms, some illustrations reveal much about manu­ facturing systems; for example, the internal organization of a New England shipyard, the flow-production system of Oliver Evans, and the regimented clothing factories of polite ladies. Other pictures af­ ford glimpses of working conditions as well, like the series showing a locomotive engineering works. However, the rarity of the camera before 1860 usually meant that photographs of people at work were posed, like those recording the lads from the clock factory or the girls in the weave room. Now and again the legends to illustrations could have benefited from some amplification. Were all the artists equally reliable? Also, scales might have been added to the photographs of artifacts. These quibbles aside, the wealth of illustrative material assembled here is broad, rich...