Learning and Technological Change ed. by Ross Thomson

Abstract

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 173 point continues Bachrach’s long-standing argument that “military technology in early medieval Europe is consistently underestimated by modern scholars” (p. 62). On 20th-century topics, in which the impor­ tance of logistics has long been recognized, Daniel Beaver writes on the development of the 21^-ton truck in the United States before World War II, and Joel D. Meyerson explores the logistical build-up in Vietnam. At their best, these articles demonstrate the power of logistics as a category of analysis. Operational history may have its place; strategy, tactics, and great captains may explain some battles and wars. But armies and navies have always been tethered to supply. Sometimes the tether is decisive. Lynn, for example, explains why Louis XIV and his contemporaries fought for land they knew they would have to abandon later; an army of 60,000 men required 67.5 tons of bread a day and 400 tons of dried fodder for the horses. Most of this had to be prepositioned in magazines or foraged from the land. Commanders had to fight starvation before they could fight the enemy. Similarly, Shy offers a novel interpretation of the American Revolu­ tion: the logistical failure of the Americans in the Revolutionary War was caused not by government incompetence so much as by an inadequate transportation infrastructure. Shy even suggests that the impact of this development extended beyond the war. Because the central government appeared unable to meet the needs of the army, power shifted to the states and allowed them to successfully challenge the Articles of Confederation in 1787. In his hands, logistics and technology become categories of analysis with power reaching even beyond the outcome of the war. In Feeding Mars, Martin van Creveld’s Supplying War is recognized, criticized, and displaced as the best introduction to this important topic. Alex Roland Dr. Roiand is a professor of history at Duke University. Learning and Technological Change. Edited by Ross Thomson. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Pp. xiii+290; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00. Ross Thomson begins with the proposition that we do not have adequate explanations of technical change; this book’s contribution is to interpret “technological change as a learning process” (p. 2). Change is endogenous, embodied within and emerging in various institutional settings. The essays assembled are by an illustrious group of economists and historians and sparkle with insights on the marriage between learning and technological change. Richard Nelson starts off with a stimulating discussion of the private versus public goods aspects of technological innovation; he is superb in differentiating specific and generic applications of technology. Alfred 174 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Chandler makes a strong case that students of technological change must also be students of business history. He emphasizes the role of the firm in developing and marketing new products, arguing that the realization of economies of scale and scope required integration of marketing, which in turn had powerful impact on both product design and production. Management mattered. Chandler argues that in the late 19th and 20th centuries, “it was the institutionalizing of the learning involved in product and process development that gave established managerial firms advantages over entrepreneurial start-ups in the commercializing of technological innovations” (p. 37). Carolyn Cooper maintains that patent management (getting the patent; using, selling, or licensing it; defending it against infringers) created an educational milieu, encouraging technological change; her innovative essay uses mechanical technology in the 19th century as a case in point. These three essays in the first part of the book consider institutional structures of learning: Nelson’s article is contemporary, Chandler deals with the late 19th and 20th centuries, while Cooper’s topic lies primarily within the early 19th century. History is inverted. Similarly, the rest of the book has no sense of chronology; data from different periods are interspersed.John K. Smith’s fine article convinces his reader to reject any simple invention, development, and commer­ cialization sequence (with the stress on the first step) and instead to pay more attention to the postinvention selections and redefinitions—the “niche finding.” Thomson, based on his research on 19th-century shoe manufacturing machinery, considers three economic forms...