Life in the Slow Lane: Research and Electrical Engineering in Britain, France, and Italy, CA. 1900

Abstract

This paper is a reflexion on an assumption that has run through studies of industrial technology ever since the First World War. The assumption, broadly stated, is that in the age of science-based industry a strong and preferably expensive commitment to research and development is an essential ingredient of a nation’s technological prowess. The corollary is that technological success and, by a deceptively easy extension, economic success have come to be seen as being dependent on a capacity for autonomous innovation. A serious commitment to research has assumed, in the process, an almost symbolic and, as we shall argue, exaggerated importance. Among historians of the period that concerns us here — the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — it has come to be regarded as one of the main touchstones dividing the countries we traditionally see as the technological pacemakers — in particular Germany, the U.S.A., and Switzerland — from those, of which Britain, France, and Italy are typical, which are usually portrayed as limping along in their wake.KeywordsElectrical EngineeringShop FloorElectrical IndustryForeign TechnologyElectrical MachineryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.