John R. Harris (1923–1997)

Abstract

Memorial JOHN R. HARRIS (1923-1997) EUGENE FERGUSON John Raymond Harris of Birmingham, England, died of a heart attack on 5 March 1997. He was an extraordinary scholar and a be­ loved friend to many historians of technology in Great Britain, the United States, and France. His lovely wife, Thelma, died in 1994 of a brain tumor. They are survived by two sons: Paul, a military histo­ rian in London, and Philip, a barrister. John was born on 15 May 1923, in St. Helens, one of those indus­ trial towns in England that produced coal and a considerable range of industrial products, such as glass and copper, that require fire or high temperature in their production. When he went to college in Manchester, about twenty miles from home, one of his classmates was Theo Barker, who shared Harris’s interest in industrial St. Hel­ ens. The two decided that they would someday collaborate on a book about St. Helens. World War II took both Harris and Barker out of college tempo­ rarily, but they returned to finish their degrees. In 1954, they pub­ lished a substantial book, A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolu­ tion: St. Helens.1 It was reprinted twice, most recently in 1993. Edwin Layton, in a 1996 letter nominating Harris for the Leonardo daVinci Medal, pointed out that although the two authors dealt extensively with St. Helens, the book is really a panoramic view of the social effects of the Industrial Revolution in the entire Manchester-Liv­ erpool region, one of the two centers of the revolution (the other being Greater Birmingham). Dr. Ferguson is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Delaware in Newark. 'T. C. Barker and J. R. Harris, A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolution: St. Helens (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1954) Permission to quote from or reprint this memorial may be obtained only from the author. 368 John R. Harris (1923-1997) 369 In a university career spanning more than forty years, Professor Harris was chiefly concerned with British and French industrial his­ tory. Basing his published works on exhaustive research in primary sources both in Britain and in France, he substantially advanced our understanding of the history of technology in those countries. He questioned points ofreceived wisdom—for example, the extent and significance of steam engine production in the latter part of the eighteenth century—and in so doing, enlarged the horizons of his chosen field. His studies of industrial espionage, which included the smuggling of machines proscribed by acts of Parliament and the ex­ port of workers skilled in the construction and operation of ma­ chines in the textile and allied industries, showed in detail how an established technology is in fact transferred from one industrial cul­ ture to another. His totally original interpretation of the nature of coal fuel technology demonstrated that the techniques ofusing coal as a heating fuel in such industries as glass and steel were much more difficult to transfer to other countries than were machines. The techniques for using coal as fuel rested on tacit and fingertip knowledge developed not by engineers or entrepreneurs but by nameless workers responsible for burning coal in those industries. He argued convincingly that England’s fifty-year lead in the Indus­ trial Revolution depended crucially on those workers who gradually developed expertise in using coal as a fuel, because that expertise was exportable only in the heads and hands of experienced workers. As codirector of the Ironbridge Institute (formerly the Institute for Industrial Archaeology), Professor Harris also helped develop a graduate-level school for industrial archaeology and heritage man­ agement. David Hounshell, now the Henry Luce Professor of Technology and Social Change at Carnegie Mellon University, recalls being in John Harris’s classeswhen Harris served as distinguished visiting pro­ fessor at the University ofDelaware. Hounshell, then a graduate stu­ dent, told me recently, “I remember so clearly his wonderful teach­ ing around your dining table in Newark my first year of graduate studies—the way he employed slides, and the depth of his knowl­ edge about the metal trades, file-making, and other skilled work in Birmingham and other British cities. These were formative lectures for...