Military Institutions, Weapons, and Social Change: Toward a New History of Military Technology

Science, Technology, and War ALEX ROLAND I introduced the military technology session at the Madison confer­ ence by noting that the history of technology and war differs in many significant ways from other fields within the history of technology.1 The papers and discussion that followed, however, suggestedjust the opposite. They demonstrated that in most ways technology and war behave much the same as technology elsewhere. Jon Sumida made that point explicitly, stressing that the history of military technology must be based on detailed examination of technical records informed by wide-ranging contextual analysis. This is surely a prescription for good history of technology in any field. Daniel Headrick echoed the point, emphasizing the need for social context. Barton C. Hacker presented a sweeping survey of the historiography of military tech­ nology that was both penetrating and ecumenical.2 Indeed, one point that recurred throughout the session was the need for universal his­ tory of the kind practiced by William H. McNeill, the scheduled com­ mentator for the session, whose travel to Wisconsin was arrested by the weather. Dr. Roland is professor of history at Duke University. 'This session focused primarily on technology and war, a category that many partici­ pants understood as subsuming science and war. Most of the observations here may be construed as applying to both topics. Separate reference is made to science and war only when it seems to differ in some significant way from technology and war. In the discussion in Wisconsin, Jon Sumida placed science in a category of culture and society, only indirectly related to his primary focus. Barton Hacker expressed interest only in applied science, i.e., science that brings about technology. In reviewing the same topic, I made an argument for a significant benchmark in the literature in the 1980s. See Alex Roland, “Technology and War: The Historiographical Revolution of the 1980s,” Technology and Culture 34 (January 1993): 117—34. Nothing in that article is inconsistent with the views expressed in Wisconsin. 2 The following papers were presented at the history of military technology session at the Conference on Critical Problems and Research Frontiers, University of Wiscon­ sin-Madison, Fall 1991: Jon Tetsuro Sumida, “Historical Presentations of 20thCentury Naval Invention”; Daniel R. Headrick, “The Sources ofTechnological Innova­ tion in the Armed Forces: The Case of the U.S. Navy, 1865-1915”; Barton C. Hacker, “On the History of Military Technology: Past Accomplishments, Present Problems, Future Directions.”© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3602-0011S01.00 S83 S84 Alex Roland The essay that follows is really stimulated by the session more than it is shaped by it. It grants the participants’ point that the history of technology and war is similar to other kinds of history of technology. It focuses, nonetheless, on the differences, for these seem to be more interesting than the similarities and more germane to the concept of having such a session in the first place. The article will conclude with some observations on the similarities and what these portend for the future of scholarship in this area. Among the distinguishing characteristics of this subheld is an aver- \sion in scholarly circles to things military. This tendency is not pecu­ liar to the history of technology; it is pervasive. Many scholars simply find war and its associated activities distasteful. Comparable distaste has not stopped historians of medicine from studying epidemic dis­ eases, nor has it stopped historians of science from studying eugenics or historians of technology from studying sewers. But it does seem \ to deter many scholars from studying war or things military. More important in this regard, perhaps, is the suspicion that those ' who study war are themselves closet Napoleons—“war lovers,” in John Hersey’s term, who vicariously experience in their scholarship the lives of the great captains. There is abundant military historiogra­ phy to support such an inference. The great bulk of it is still opera­ tional history, drum-and-trumpet narrative weak on analysis and in­ terpretation. So too has the history of technology and war produced its fair share of loving appreciations of the arms and armor of bygone eras. Naturally, these studies are more...

Book Reviews Osiris. Vol. 10, Constructing Knowledge in the History of Science. Edited by Arnold Thackray. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.00 (cloth) $25.00 (paper). Technology and Culture. Vol. 36, no. 2 (suppl.), Snapshots ofaDiscipline: Selected Proceedings, Conference on Critical Problems and Research Fron­ tiers in the History of Technology, Madison, Wisconsin, October 30November 3, 1991. Edited by Robert Friedel. The joint meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the History of Science Society (HSS) in the fall of 1991 marked a transitional moment in the life of both groups. For HSS, it commemorated both the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Wisconsin’s History ofScience department and the thirty-fourth year since the 1957 symposium titled “Critical Problems in the History of Science” was held at Madison. Thus, the 1991 joint meeting car­ ried what Bruce Sinclair calls “a mythic importance” for many histo­ rians of science and seemed to offer an opportunity to take stock of the field’s developments. For SHOT, the object of commemoration is somewhat clouded by memory, but some historians of technology claim that it was also 1957 when Isis banished from its pages articles on the history of technology, which act did in fact lead to the found­ ing of SHOT. Apocryphal or not, this tale and its retelling signal the continuing tensions between the two fields and for some might suggest that, in time, the Madison meeting will be seen to commemo­ rate the final attempts of these groups to recognize a privileged rela­ tionship. Younger scholars are sometimes baffled by this apparent tension. Educated in an atmosphere of inclusion and expansion rather than exclusion and turf-guarding, and increasingly focused on more re­ cent historical periods than their mentors, many find the similarities between science and technology self-evident and the differences in­ triguing. The disputes of an earlier generation are not their own, and they tend to follow their hunches without regard for historical hurts and slights. Occupying an intellectual middle ground, younger scholars explore not only the territory of science and that of technol­ ogy but also that of labor, architecture, political culture, and theory. Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. 744 TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 745 This was more apparent in the full meeting program at Madison than in these two edited volumes, yet particularly in the SHOT vol­ ume the shift toward new approaches is clear. There are, of course, cultural differences between the two groups, and these are quite plainly represented in the two volumes. Arnold Thackray’s brief, breezy introduction to Constructing Knowledge in the History ofScience mentions the commemorative nature of the Madi­ son meeting but gives little indication of how the selected essays fit into the carefully orchestrated plenary sessions, or how the resulting essays reflect the sometimes creative tensions between taking stock and charting new directions. For the most part, the articles in this volume are review essays of different sectors within the history of science, mostly written by established scholars. They include Evelyn Fox Keller on gender and science, Sally Kohlstedt on women in sci­ ence, David Lindberg on medieval science and religion, Nakayama Shigeru on East Asian science, Daniel Kevles and Gerald Geison on 20th-century life science, Joan Richards on mathematics, Thomas Nickles on philosophy,John Warner on medicine, Nancy Nersessian on cognitive science, and Stephen Brush on scientists as historians of science. The most provocative article for historians of technology is the first in the volume. Lorraine Daston’s “The Moral Economy of Science” is a powerful and eloquent discussion of what “moral economy” means as a category of scientific thought and behavior, and how it structured “how scientists come to know: quantification, empiricism, and objectivity” (p. 8). Her discussion of quantification is particularly apt vis-à-vis technology, as it considers the shift from local to abstract knowledge, from particular skill to general ability, from personal standards oftruth or workmanship to communal stan­ dards. This echoes nicely with questions posed by historians of tech­ nology regarding shifts from artisanal to factory production, or indi­ vidual versus engineering-based...

Engineering a New Order: Military Institutions, Technical Education, and the Rise of the Industrial State BARTON C. HACKER Gunpowder began the military revolution that molded the modern world. Relatively narrow technical changes in weapons and tactics on early modern European battlefields set in train the transformation of almost every aspect of Western civilization, argued Michael Roberts in 1956.1 Widely discussed and critically challenged, his version of the precise nature and timing of change on the equation's military side now commands only qualified respect.2 But the other side of the equation, Roberts's claim of great social consequences flowing from changing military technique, remains substantially intact. It retains enough plausibility, in fact, to suggest thinking about similar processes in other eras. Dr. Hacker is the historian at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Earlier versions of this article were presented at meetings of the Pacific Sociological Associa­ tion, Albuquerque, N.M., 1985; International Congress of History of Science, Berkeley, Calif., 1985; Symposium of the International Committee for the History ofTechnology, Dresden, 1986; Inter-University Centre of Postgraduate Studies, Dubrovnik, 1987; Columbia History of Science Society, Friday Harbor, Wash., 1987; and Society for the History of Technology, Raleigh, N.C., 1987. The author wishes to thank the several friendly critics who helped him reshape and sharpen his argument. 'Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560—1660 (Belfast, 1956), revised and reprinted under the same title in Michael Roberts, Essays in Swedish History (Minneap­ olis, 1967), pp. 195-225, with a second essay on "Gustav Adolf and the Art of War," pp. 56—81. For a recent survey of the technology, see Christian Beaufort-Spontin, Hamischund Waffe Europas: Die militarische Ausriistung im 17.Jahrhundert (Munich, 1982). 'Geoffrey Parker, "The 'Military Revolution,' 1560-1660—a Myth?" Journal of Modem History 48 (1976): 195-214, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise ofthe West, ¡500—1800 (Cambridge, 1988); Bert S. Hall and Kelly R. DeVries, "The 'Military Revolution' Revisited," Technology and Culture 31 (1990): 500-507; ColinJones, "New Military History for Old? War and Society in Early Modern Europe," European Studies Review 12 (1982): 97—108; Simon Adams, "Tactics or Politics? 'The Military Revolution' and the Hapsburg Hegemony, 1525-1648," in Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions ofWarfare, 1445—1871, ed. John A. Lynn (Champaign, Ill., 1990), pp. 28-52.© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X793/3401-0005$01.00 1 2 Barton C. Hacker Military technological change of vast scope disturbed the 19th century, beginning with small arms and guns vastly quicker-firing and longer-ranged than the weapons they displaced. Other changes followed ever more rapidly, spreading through the military system, then throughout society. Ultimately, the result was a new social, political, and economic order. Like its early modern predecessor, this 19th-century transformation deserves the label military revolution because its consequences far transcended strictly military concerns. The 20th-century industrial state is no less the product of a 19th-century military-technological revolution than was the 18thcentury nation-state of the classic military revolution Roberts spotlighted. The present undertaking is more survey than analysis, the subject being far too complex for a brief essay. Accordingly, I address only certain aspects of the 19th-century military-technological revolution, its 18th-century roots, and its 20th-century fruits. Pragmatism largely dictates my focus on the United States—the needed material is more readily available in my provincial outpost—though I do include comparative remarks where they seem appropriate. Despite such self-imposed limits, this essay may still prove helpful to readers seeking an entry to published work on certain relevant topics. It may also serve as a sounding board for several useful themes, chief among them the interaction between military and other social institutions. Only by understanding such interactions may we begin to explain the course and outcome of 19th-century military techno­ logical change. My touchstone is the spread of a novel usage to replace, or at least augment, what had normally in the past been called "the art of war." During the 19th century, "military science" or "military art and science" largely supplanted the older term. Methods of educating officers and training...

Reviewed by: Gunpowder, Explosives, and the State: A Technological History David Stewart Bachrach (bio) Gunpowder, Explosives, and the State: A Technological History Edited by Brenda J. Buchanan. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2006. Pp. xxiii+425. $99.95. This volume, the second collection of its type, had its origins in four gatherings of historians of gunpowder that met between 1996 and 2002 under the auspices of the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC). As is true of many collections of this type, the implicit argument of the volume as a whole is that the material under consideration is vital to a fuller understanding of a wide range of historical fields. But here it is more than implicit. In the foreword, the eminent historian of military technology Bert Hall accurately and succinctly describes the history of gunpowder as standing “at the crossroads of history of technology, of science, of economics and trade, and of politics” (p. xxiii). The twenty essays are divided into five sections: Perceptions and Ancient Knowledge, The Production of Saltpetre and Gunpowder in Europe, The Overseas Transfer of Technology from Europe, Military Technicalities, and Modern Developments. A valuable introduction by the editor, Brenda J. Buchanan, helps to orient the reader, tying together the wide range of focused studies through a survey of the role of the state, mercantalist theory, chartered trading companies, and scientific practice in establishing gunpowder as a dominant element in warfare, industry, and commerce over the course of the early modern and modern periods. Each of the essays has a full scholarly apparatus, and the volume as a whole is provided with scores of beautiful images and illustrations, as well as a useful index. The individual essays cover a very broad geographical and chronological range, including ancient China and India, early modern India, Venice, Iberia, Sweden, and Egypt, the Portuguese maritime empire, and the nineteenth-century United States. Thematically, the volume is equally diverse, considering the origins of gunpowder, its production and storage, the development of gunpowder technology, the transfer of gunpowder technology across cultures, the technology of gunpowder weapons, the place of research and development of gunpowder within the broader compass of the development of European science, and the development of new types of explosive technologies within the context of modern commercial and military competition. Many of the focused studies provide insight into broader questions of economic and technological development. In their discussion of “Breachloading Guns with Removable Powder Chambers,” for example, Kelly DeVries and Robert Douglas Smith make clear that older technologies continued to be deployed for decades, and even centuries, after “improvements” in design were developed. This insight, which has important implications for historians of technology, parallels similar conclusions drawn by [End Page 785] military historians in other periods as well, including the European Middle Ages and the Roman Empire. Addressing the equally important question regarding means by which technology undergoes substantial geographic diffusion, José Manuel de Mascarenhas’s study of overseas Portuguese gunpowder factories during the period of empire demonstrates ways in which gunpowder, as well as industrial processes and infrastructure, made their way from Europe to Asia and Latin America. In sum, this volume is a welcome addition to the history of technology, early-modern and modern military history, and the history of industry and science, as well as to the more focused area of gunpowder studies. These essays will be of considerable value to scholars and graduate students in many fields of European, Asian, and U.S. history. David Stewart Bachrach Dr. Bachrach is assistant professor of medieval history at the University of New Hampshire. Copyright © 2008 The Society for the History of Technology

Previous article FreeNotes on ContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreJon Agar is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at University College, London. He is the author of Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Polity/John Wiley, 2012) and The Government Machine (MIT Press, 2003).Jennifer Karns Alexander is a historian of technology in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Program in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of The Mantra of Efficiency (Johns Hopkins, 2008), winner of the Society for the History of Technology's Edelstein Prize.Rachel A. Ankeny is a professor in the School of History and Politics at the University of Adelaide. She holds a master's in bioethics and a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science; she specializes in history and philosophy of contemporary biology, particularly genetics, and worked in genetic counseling clinics in the 1980s.Theodore Arabatzis is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Athens. He is the author of Representing Electrons: A Biographical Approach to Theoretical Entities (University of Chicago Press, 2006), coeditor of Kuhn's “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” Revisited (Routledge, 2012), and coeditor of the journal Metascience.Massimiliano Badino is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and MIT. He has worked on the history and philosophy of modern physics, particularly on Planck's theory of black-body radiation and on Boltzmann's statistical mechanics. His current research project deals with the evolution of the concepts of order and chaos in mathematical physics from the three-body problem to the ergodic theorem.Charlotte Bigg is a historian of science at the CNRS/Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris. She has coedited (with Jochen Hennig) Atombilder: Ikonografie des Atoms in Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit des 20. Jahrhunderts (Wallstein, 2009) and (with David Aubin and Otto Sibum) The Heavens on Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture (Duke, 2010).Christian Bracco is an associate professor at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and a member of the team for history of astronomy at the Syrte Laboratory at the Paris Observatory. He specializes in the history of physics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and also contributes to pedagogical publications that address historical problematics.Massimo Bucciantini teaches history of science at the University of Siena. His publications include Galileo e Keplero (Einaudi, 2003; trans., Les Belles Lettres, 2008), Esperimento Auschwitz / Auschwitz Experiment (Primo Levi Lecture) (Einaudi, 2011), and Il telescopio di Galileo: Una storia europea (with M. Camerota and F. Giudice) (Einaudi, 2012; trans., Harvard University Press, 2015).Adelene Buckland is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at King's College, London. She is the author of Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology (Chicago, 2013) and coeditor, with Beth Palmer, of A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850–1900 (Ashgate, 2011).Conor Burns teaches history of science and technology courses at Ryerson University in Toronto. His current research examines American field sciences in the period 1780–1850, with a particular focus on archaeology and geology.Christián C. Carman is a professor and researcher at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, and a research member of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET). He works on topics related to philosophy of science as well as the history of ancient astronomy.Imogen Clarke is an independent scholar. She is interested in early twentieth-century physics and culture, science publishing, and the ether.Harold J. (Hal) Cook is the John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University. He works mainly on early modern science and medicine and has published award-winning books, most recently Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale University Press, 2007).Ruth Schwartz Cowan is Janice and Julian Bers Professor Emerita of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening (Harvard, 2008). She is working on the sesquicentennial history of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council.Brendan Dooley is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College, Cork. He has previously taught history of knowledge and history of science at Harvard, Notre Dame, and Jacobs University in Bremen. His current publications include Brill's Companion to Renaissance Astrology (2014), Renaissance Now! (Peter Lang, 2014), and A Mattress Maker's Daughter: The Renaissance Romance of Don Giovanni de' Medici and Livia Vernazza (Harvard, 2014).Sven Dupré is Professor of History of Knowledge at the Freie Universität Berlin and Research Group Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He is the editor of Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Springer, 2014).Richard England is Dean of the Sandra and Jack Pine Honors College and Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Illinois University. He is the coeditor (with Jude Nixon) of Victorian Science, Religion, and Natural Theology (2011) and one of three editors preparing an edition of the papers of the Metaphysical Society (1869–1880).James Evans is Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Puget Sound. His research interests include the history of physics from the eighteenth century to the recent past, as well as ancient astronomy.Paul Lawrence Farber is an Oregon State University Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He has written primarily on the history of natural history and is now working on the tangled questions on race mixing in the first half of the twentieth century. His most recent book is Mixing Races: From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas (Johns Hopkins, 2011).Amy E. Foster is an associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida, where she teaches the history of science, technology, and medicine. Her research includes the history of women and technology, particularly women in the U.S. space program.Craig Fraser is Chair of the International Commission for the History of Mathematics and Director of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. His primary field of interest is the history of analysis and mathematical mechanics.Jean-François Gauvin is the Director of Administration for the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University. Since 2000 he has cowritten and coedited two prize-winning volumes as well as several articles and book reviews dealing with science museums, instruments, and instrument making. He teaches one course per semester at Harvard on the material culture of science.Alexa Geisthövel is a research associate at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin. Her work is part of the ERC-funded research project “Ways of Writing: How Physicians Know, 1550–1950.”Francesco Gerali is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. A native Italian who works on the history of the early oil industry, he moved to Mexico in 2011 to study the development of Mexican oil between 1860 and 1920.Yves Gingras ([email protected]) is Professor in the Department of History and Canada Research Chair in History and Sociology of Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He was President of the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association (CSTHA) from 1988 to 1993 and Editor of Scientia Canadensis from 1995 to 2000. His most recent books are Sociologie des sciences (Presses Universitaires de France, 2012) and Les derives de l'évaluation de la recherché: Du bon usage de la bibliométrie (Raisons d'Agir, 2013). He is also the editor of Controverses: Accords et désaccords en sciences humaines et sociales (CNRS Éditions, 2014).Leila Gómez is Associate Professor of Latin American and Comparative Literatures at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She specializes in travel writing in Latin America; her publications include La piedra del escándalo: Darwin en Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2008), Iluminados y tránsfugas: Relatos de viajeros y ficciones nacionales en Argentina, Paraguay y Perú (Madrid, 2009), and Darwinism in Argentina: Major Texts (Lewisburg, 2011).Christopher D. Green is Professor of Psychology at York University, with cross-appointments to Science and Technology Studies and to Philosophy. His research is focused on turn-of-the-twentieth-century American psychology and on the use of digital methods in the history of science more broadly.Crystal Hall is Visiting Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at Bowdoin College, where she is building a digital project on Galileo's personal library. She is the author of Galileo's Reading (Cambridge, 2013) and several articles on Galileo and literary studies in journals including Renaissance Quarterly and Quaderni d'Italianistica.Christopher Hamlin is Professor in the Department of History and the graduate program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame and Honorary Professor in the Department of Public Health and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His interests include natural theology, the history of public health, and the history of expertise. His most recent book is More Than Hot: A Short History of Fever (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).John Henry recently retired from the University of Edinburgh, where he had been Professor of the History of Science and Director of the Science Studies Unit. He has published widely in the history of science, including an introductory textbook, A Short History of Scientific Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).Jonathan B. Imber is Jean Glasscock Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. He has been Editor-in-Chief of Society since 1998. He is the author of Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine (Princeton University Press, 2008).Catherine Jackson is an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has published on Liebig, Hofmann, and nineteenth-century chemical laboratories and is the coeditor, with Hasok Chang, of An Element of Controversy: The Life of Chlorine in Science, Medicine, Technology, and War (2007).Danielle Jacquart is a professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), where she holds the chair for “History of Sciences in the Middle Ages.” She is the author of numerous publications on medieval medicine. Among the most recent are “Anatomy, Physiology, and Medical Theory,” in The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 2: Medieval Science (2013); and Recherches médiévales sur la nature humaine: Essais sur la réflexion médicale (SISMEL, 2014).Frank A. J. L. James is Professor of History of Science at the Royal Institution and at University College, London. He recently completed the six-volume edition of the Correspondence of Michael Faraday and is now working on a study of Humphry Davy's practical work.Mark Jenner is Reader in Early Modern History and Director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York. His publications include Londinopolis (Manchester, 2000) and Medicine and the Market in England and Its Colonies, c. 1450–c. 1850 (Palgrave, 2007). He completing a book on ideas of cleanliness and dirt in early modern England.Masanori Kaji is Associate Professor of the History of Science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. His research interests include history of chemistry in Russia and in Japan and environmental history. He is the author of Mendeleev's Discovery of the Periodic Law of Chemical Elements (1997).Vera Keller is an assistant professor at the Robert D. Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon. She is the author of over a dozen articles. Her first book, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), explores the role of interest theory in the reshaping of research in early modern Europe.Sally Gregory Kohlstedt is a professor in the Program in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Her recent book, Hands-On Nature Study (2011), won the Margaret Rossiter Prize. She will spend her sabbatical year, 2014–2015, doing research on museum history at various sites, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.Brandon Konoval is on the faculty at the University of British Columbia, where he is cross-appointed in the Arts One Program and the School of Music. He has written most recently on Nietzsche and the Scopes trial for Perspectives on Science (2014) and on the relationship between Nietzsche and Foucault for Nietzsche-Studien (2013).Stefan Krebs, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Technology and Society Studies at Maastricht University, is the author of Technikwissenschaft als soziale Praxis (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008) and, with Karin Bijsterveld, Eefje Cleophas, and Gijs Mom, of Sound and Safe: A History of Listening Behind the Wheel (Oxford University Press, 2014).Kenton Kroker has published on the history of sleep research, experimental psychology, and clinical immunology. His current research project, Epidemic Futures, is a historical reconstruction of the encephalitis lethargica pandemics of the early twentieth century. He is an associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at York University in Toronto.Deepak Kumar teaches history of science and education at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. During the last four decades he has researched and published a great deal on the history of science, technology, and medicine in the context of British India. He is also known for his book Science and the Raj (Oxford, 2nd ed., 2006).Thomas C. Lassman is curator of the post–World War II rocket and missile collection at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. His research interests focus on the history of U.S. industrial and military research and development and the history of weapon systems acquisition in the Department of Defense.Christoph Lehner works on history and philosophy of modern physics, especially quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. He is a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the coordinator of the project “History and Foundations of Quantum Physics.”David Leith is an Advanced Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. His main research interests lie in Greco-Roman medicine, in particular its relations to ancient philosophy.Thomas Lessl is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Rhetorical Darwinism: Evolution, Religion, and the Scientific Identity (Baylor University Press, 2012).Mark Madison is Adjunct Professor at Shepherd University and the Chief Historian for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the National Conservation Training Center Museum/Archives.Anna Maerker is Senior Lecturer in History of Medicine at King's College, London. She works on the relationship between expertise and material culture in medicine and science and is the author of Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775–1815 (2013).Jaume Navarro is Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country. He is the author, among other works, of A History of the Electron: J. J. and G. P. Thomson (Cambridge, 2012) and coeditor of Research and Pedagogy: A History of Quantum Physics through Its Textbooks (Berlin, 2013).Vivian Nutton is Emeritus Professor of the History of Medicine at University College, London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His recent publications include a revision of his Ancient Medicine (2013), the first English translation and commentary on Galen's Avoiding Distress (2013), and the historical introduction to the 2013 Karger translation of Vesalius's The Fabric of the Human Body.Mary Jo Nye is Professor of History Emerita at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Her most recent book is Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science (University of Chicago Press, 2011). Her current research focuses on patterns of collaboration in twentieth-century chemical sciences.Giuliano Pancaldi is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Bologna. He is the author of Darwin in Italy (Indiana, 1991) and Volta (Princeton, 2003). He is now working on a study of the connections between the life sciences and the demographic transition circa 1900.Leigh Penman is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Unanticipated Millenniums: Chiliastic Thought in Post-Reformation Lutheranism (Springer, forthcoming) and numerous articles in the areas of early modern religious and intellectual history.Michael Pettit is Associate Professor of Psychology and Science and Technology Studies at York University. His first book is The Science of Deception: Psychology and Commerce in America (University of Chicago Press, 2013). He studies the history of psychology's research methods and ethics, the relationship between scientists and subject populations, the interface between psychology and public policy, and the circulation of psychology in the public sphere.Patricia Princehouse is a member of the Department of History and Director of the Program in Evolutionary Biology, Institute for the Science of Origins, Case Western Reserve University.Monica Saavedra is a research fellow at the Centre for Global Health Histories, University of York. She has worked in the fields of medical anthropology and the history of medicine and has published about vaccination and malaria in former Portuguese India and Portugal.C. F. Salazar, previously the Editor-in-Chief of Brill's New Pauly, is a research associate at both the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, working on translations of works by Galen and Aetius of Amida, respectively.George Saliba is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at Columbia University and studies the development of scientific ideas from late antiquity to early modern times. His most recent book is Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (MIT Press, 2007; paperback, 2011).Darya Serykh is a Ph.D. student in Social and Political Thought at York University. Her current research focuses on the production of queer discourses in the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.Megan K. Sethi is an adjunct professor at Southern New Hampshire University. Her work examines the educational activities of scientists who promoted nuclear arms control during the early Cold War era. She participated in the Wilson Center's SHAFR Summer Institute on the International History of Nuclear Weapons in 2013.Michael H. Shank is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the coeditor, with David Lindberg, of the Cambridge History of Science, Volume 2: Medieval Science (2013).Elise Juzda Smith has written on the history of craniology, anthropometry, and scientific racism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is currently a Teaching and Research Fellow in the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford.Richard Staley lectures in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Einstein's Generation and the Relativity Revolution (Chicago, 2008), and his current research explores physics and anthropology.Heiko Stoff is Guest Professor for the History of Science and Technology at the Technical University of Braunschweig. He has published on the history of rejuvenation (Ewige Jugend: Konzepte der Verjüngung vom späten 19. Jahrhundert bis ins Dritte Reich [Böhlau, 2004]) and the history of biologically active substances (Wirkstoffe: Eine Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Hormone, Vitamine und Enzyme, 1920–1970 [Stuttgart, 2012]). He is the editor, with Alexander von Schwerin and Bettina Wahrig, of Biologics: A History of Agents Made from Living Organisms in the Twentieth Century (Pickering & Chatto, 2013).Liba Taub is Director and Curator of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science and Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her publications include Aetna and the Moon: Explaining Nature in Ancient Greece and Rome, Ancient Meteorology, and Ptolemy's Universe: The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy's Astronomy.Jetze Touber is a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University. His Ph.D. dissertation, on the cult of the saints and law, medicine, and in Rome, has recently been published by His research interests include in the Dutch and and in the of is Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of and the author of The Science and Technology is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of New and the author of in The of American and the of the and Conservation in America (University of Chicago is Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His research focuses on the history of ancient and early modern mechanics and on the between practical and knowledge in the history of a historian of ancient and medieval Islamic and is coordinator of at University and of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of He is author of The Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth: The Early History of (Princeton, 2009) and The Art of (Princeton, is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science in the Department of History at University. His research focuses on the early modern between and He has published on the history of and astronomy and is now preparing work on early modern and on the of A. is an assistant professor of history at University and teaches in the industrial archaeology graduate program His work is between early modern and and the history of nineteenth-century American military technology and the that J. is an assistant professor of history at The University of the and the author of The as Scientific and in the Early Enlightenment (Chicago, An early who specializes in the history of science, she has published widely on and and education in the first half of the eighteenth century. She is working on a project about the history of the in early modern is Assistant Professor of History of Art at State University. He is a in medieval and the history of His first book, de and the Medieval in from the Institute in is Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of and Research Associate at King's College, Cambridge. Her current research project focuses on the of culture, medicine, and the role of in science, Previous article by Volume of the History of Science Society on by The History of Science articles

SHOT, the History of Technology, and Engineering Education BRUCE E. SEELY And how does one go about forming a new scholarly society? [Melvin Kranzberg, 1956] According to the accepted “creation story,” the Society for the His­ tory of Technology (SHOT) took form after Melvin Kranzberg, John B. Rae, and Carl Condit met in Ithaca, New York, in June 1957 with Henry Guerlac, president of the History of Science Society (HSS). The trio hoped to persuade Guerlac that HSS and its journal Isis should pay more attention to the work of historians of technology. They were disappointed, however, for, according to Kranzberg, the history of science was focused on ‘“intellectual giants.’ What was im­ portant were thinkers. Technologists, so-called tinkerers, were simply Dr. Seely, associate professor of history at Michigan Technological University, writes: “This essay is a serendipitous product of the overlap between my research interest in the history of engineering education and my responsibilities as SHOT secre­ tary since 1990. Secretaries are expected to provide an institutional memory for an organization, so I began to learn about SHOT’S early years in order to answer occa­ sional queries. At the same time, I was visiting university and engineering school ar­ chives, including Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University), in Cleveland, where Melvin Kranzberg taught from 1952 to the early 1970s. This article emerged after I stumbled on information about Kranzberg, his department, and SHOT’S early years. In preparing it, I have incurred numerous debts. Support from the National Science Foundation Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, awards SES-8711164 and SES-8921936, supported research visits. Two of SHOT’S founding members, Melvin Kranzberg and Thomas Hughes, offered recollec­ tions, while many others, including Michael Sokal, Robert Post, Terry Reynolds, Mark Rose, Bruce Sinclair, Merritt Roe Smith, John Staudenmaier, and Charles Weiner, provided information, a willing ear, or useful suggestions and criticism. Comments from audiences who heard versions at a meeting at the American Society for Engi­ neering Education in Toledo in June 1992, at MIT’s STS Colloquium in October 1993, and at Hagley’s Research Seminar Series in October 1994 provided ideas for further development. Finally, the T&C referees offered important guidance and suggestions. My thanks to all, as well as to the members of the society who put me in the position where I could think about these matters.”© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3604-0009$01.00 739 740 Bruce E. Seely not worth considering. Guerlac said as much to me.”1 Kranzberg labeled the meeting a disaster for “the small group that traipsed to Guerlac’s house in Ithaca with such great hope and which saw us going down the hill from his house thoroughly cowed and almost, but not quite, completely discouraged. [Yet] looking back on that episode years later, we can realize that the refusal of HSS (personified by Guerlac) to include the history of technology in its purview was probably the best thing that could have happened to us.”2 According to Kranzberg, Guerlac’s decision precipitated the formation of SHOT in 1958: Kranzberg remembers saying to Condit, “By God, we’re just going to have to start our own society and our own journal.”3 But was SHOT’S formation really a response to Guerlac’s rebuff? Historians usually suspect that straightforward explanations contain hidden complexities, and that is the case here, for Kranzberg’s account does not include the context of the meeting in Ithaca. This article fills in some of that background, stressing connections between the history of technology and engineering education. Since the 1890s, engineering educators had struggled to combine technical, pro­ fessional, and general education in a four-year curriculum, and, on occasion, historical courses emphasizing engineering and/or science were identified as contributing to a better engineering curriculum. At Case Institute of Technology in the post—World War II years, these concerns took a special form. I want to reexam­ ine the origins of the Society for the History of Technology and suggest that educational developments at Case were a crucial ele­ ment in the emergence of SHOT and the history...

Notes on Contributors

The activity of international organizations on the history of science and technology is a remarkable phenomenon in the world scientific and sociocultural sphere. Such centers influence and contribute to the scientific communication of scientists from different countries and the comprehensive development of numerous aspects of the history of science and technology, carry out scientific congresses. That is why the analysis of the acquired experience and the obtained results of these groups are important.
 The history of the formation and development, task, structure, background and directions of the activities of some international organizations in the field of science and technology, including The History of Science Society (HSS), The European Society forthe History of Science (ESHS), The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), The Newcomen Society, The Scientific Instrument Society (SIS) have been shown.
 The History of Science Society (HSS) is the professional society for the academic study of the history of science. It is the world’s largest society dedicated to understanding science, technology, medicine and their interactions with society within their historical context. HSS was founded in 1924 by G. Sarton and L. Henderson. The aim of European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), founded in 2003, is to promote the history of science, technology and medicine throughout Europe. The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) is an international interdisciplinary organization concerned with the history of technological devices and processes and with technology in history — that is, the relationship of technology to politics, economics, science, arts and the organization of production, The Newcomen Society is an international society that studies and promotes the history of engineering and technology from ancient times to the present day. It disseminates historical information by publications, meetings, correspondence and internet forums. The Scientific Instrument Society (SIS) was formed in April 1983 to bring together people with a special interest in scientific instruments, ranging from precious antiques to electronic devices only recently out of production. The Society aimed to contribute to historical knowledge and understanding through the collection, conservation and study of scientific artefacts.
 Ecept for the organizations considered, there are many other scientific unions and societies in the field of history and phylosophy of science and engineering, whose activities require further study and synthesis.

Strategic Determinism in Technology Selection: The Electric Battleship and U.S. Naval-Industrial Relations WILLIAM M. MCBRIDE In May 1904, Admiral Jackie Fisher, the driving force behind the creation of the British dreadnought battleship, declared that ship design must be dictated by strategy.1 Fisher’s pronouncement appears axiomatic, but warship design was (and remains) a compromise re­ sulting from internal service disputes over the “correct” strategic doc­ trine, the level of autonomy engineering specialists were allowed with regard to military decisions, and the influence of political-industrial alliances. In striving for a naval renaissance in the 1870s, American naval officers rejected their tradition of commerce raiding and blockade warfare for an ambitious global strategy—a strategy that required a modern steel navy that comprised “a few vessels that we will not be afraid or ashamed to show to foreign powers.”2 A favoritejustification for this global strategy was the need to protect American commercial expansion around the Pacific rim.3 But operations in the vast Pacific mandated territorial acquisitions for coaling stations or compromises in warship design? The ill-fated USS Maine, commissioned in 1895 as Dr. McBride is an assistant professor of history at James Madison University. He earned his Ph.D. in the history of science and technology from Johns Hopkins University and is a former Olin Fellow in military history and strategic studies at Yale University. 'Admiral John Fisher to the Committee of Seven, May 1904, reprinted in The Papers ofAdmiral SirJohn Fisher, vol. 1, ed. Lieutenant P. K. Kemp, RN (London, 1960), p. 40. "Ensign Robert Welles, USN, to his mother, February 4, 1886, quoted in Peter H. Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism (New York, 1972), p. 301. ’The American navy’s strategic interest in the Pacific Ocean can be traced back to the commerce raiding conducted by the frigate Essex during the War of 1812. The push for U.S. naval expansion, as a result of the professionalization of the late-19th-century American officer corps, is a theme that runs throughout Karsten (n. 2 above); for its relation with commercial enterprise, see pp. 300—317. ’Initially, the question was moot since Congress, fearing imperialistic adventurism, restricted the steaming range of the navy’s first three battleships appropriated in© 1992 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/92/3302-0002J01.00 248 The Electric Battleship and U.S. Naval-Industrial Relations 249 a “second-class battleship,” was originally designed to carry sails, in addition to steam engines, to extend her cruising radius.3 * * The acqui­ sition of the Philippines in 1898 and the emergence ofJapan as a rival Pacific naval power after it vanquished Tsarist Russia in the 1904—05 war underscored the geopolitical factors governing the design of U.S. naval propulsion technology. Without a worldwide coaling network like the British, the United States required warships (as it would later require strategic bombers) capable of long-range operations. Captain C. W. Dyson of the navy’s Bureau of Steam Engineering described the unique situation facing the U.S. Navy: The former [European] nations were providing for operations in confined waters such as the North Sea and the Mediterranean, where they were never far from their bases. . . . Under the conditions foreseen high speed was more desireable than cruising radius, and the latter was sacrificed. Turning now to the conditions which confront us, we see . . . the entire line from Seattle to Panama to the southward, and from Seattle to Honolulu, thence to Guam and on to the Philippines and still further to Samoa, requiring our attention. The areas to be covered are great and the distances to bases and from base to base in some cases are magnificent. Fuel economy is of the highest value, even predominates over speed, as the refueling problem becomes a serious one and the greater our bunker capacities and the fuel economy of our machinery, by so much is the seriousness of the problem reduced.6 By 1909, American battleships were being designed with a steaming radius of 10,000 nautical miles, almost double that of the longestranged battleship, USS Oregon, which had...

Reviewed by: What is Military History? Ronald L. Spiller What is Military History?. By Stephen Morillo with Michael F. Pavkovic . Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2006. ISBN 0-7456-3391-9. Notes. Index. Pp. vi, 150. $19.95. The simple title and the plastic action figure on the cover of this small book belie its contents. This is more than a student reader; it is an exceptional introduction to the study and craft of military history for any reader. In little more than one hundred pages of text Morillo and Pavkovic provide a set of definitions for "Military History," and discuss historiography, conceptual frameworks, current controversies, "doing" military history, and the future of this aspect of the broader study of History. The authors define military history broadly as "any historical study in which military personnel of all sorts, warfare, . . . military institutions, and their various intersections with politics, economics, society, nature, and culture form the focus or topic of the work" (p. 4). They also discuss the military historian's multiple audiences: popular, academic, and professional military. This holistic definition is particularly refreshing and useful. As the authors write, "military history, like all history, is a dialogue between past and present" (p. 7). Stitch-counting buffs and History Channel aficionados, professors and students looking for the next book or dissertation topic, and service personnel looking for new lessons and models do not fragment the craft. The synergy produced by the interaction of these multiple interests strengthens the craft. Not only are these different interests and interpretations not mutually exclusive, "most, in fact, are complementary and the more we have the more nuanced is our understanding of the past" (p. 9). The discussion of historiography is as refreshing as the discussion of subject and audience. Combined with their twelve pages of suggestions for further reading, the authors provide an excellent, broad, and basic historiographical foundation for both students and general readers. They also provide the academic professional an opportunity to surface and reconnect with a broader military history perspective. The authors conclude that the lines separating popular, professional, and academic military history are, in fact, fading, "recreating in some ways the dynamics of the less specialized military literature of ancient and medieval [End Page 543] times, but reconstructed around the standards and methods of professional academic historians" (p. 43). Subsequent discussions of conceptual frameworks, controversies, "doing" military history, and the future of military history live up to the high standard of the first two chapters. Although the authors acknowledge that military historians have often been resistant to new concepts and methodologies, "The influence of social and cultural history and the expansion of the field . . . through war and society studies have added significantly to the military historian's methodological toolkit" (p. 61). On-going controversies—from the debate on revolutions in military affairs to the question of Western exceptionalism—strengthen the study of military history, and "show military history to be a vital and changing piece of the larger historical profession" (p. 96). Although aimed at a student audience, this is not just a book for undergraduate or graduate students. Well-written and clear without being simplistic, it is a worthwhile book for any person with an interest in the study and craft of military history. Ronald L. Spiller Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Edinboro, Pennsylvania Copyright © 2008 Society for Military History

Perestroika of the History of Technology and Science in the USSR: Changes in the Discourse SLAVA GEROVITCH A great social reconstruction of Soviet society (perestroika) ended with the disappearance of the reconstructed object—the Soviet Union—in December 1991. Something else, however, was recon­ structed: people’s thinking—their attitude to socialism, to their his­ tory, and to themselves. Remarkable changes also emerged in Soviet research on the history of technology and science, both reshaping the thematic discourse and altering the methodological profile. Soviet scholarship in the history of technology and science evolved along the lines of the political and social evolution of Soviet society: from sincere and enthusiastic belief in Marxism to degeneration of the Marxist theoretical framework into an instrument of rhetoric. By the mid-1980s, the time of perestroika, this evolution had resulted in an internalist methodology of research, ideological servility, limita­ tions imposed on the sphere of discussion, and a scarcity of imagina­ tive analysis. The policy of openness (glasnost') led to the weakening of ideologi­ cal censorship and opened the doors of some previously inaccessible archives. New opportunities caused a drastic shift in the interests of Soviet scholars toward the recent history of Soviet technology and science. At the same time, the role of Marxist rhetoric began to de­ crease. Changes in research methodology developed more slowly, for they were touching deeper layers of the discourse. The process of Dr. Gerovitch received his Ph.D. from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1992. He is currently working on his second doctorate in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in the his­ tory of cybernetics and artificial intelligence in Russia and the United States. He is very grateful to Professor Loren R. Graham, Professor Deborah K. Fitzgerald, Dr. Nikolai L. Krementsov, Dr. Robert C. Post, Dr. John M. Staudenmaier, and the refer­ ees of Technology and Culture for their helpful suggestions and constructive criticisms. He also expresses his thanks to Gregory Crowe and Gregory Clancey for their assis­ tance in the preparation of this article.© 1996 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040- 165X/96/3701-0005$01.00 102 History of Technology and Science in the USSR 103 revising dogmas and reevaluating historical attainments provoked a sharp methodological debate over fundamental issues concerning re­ lations of technology and science to a sociopolitical context. For some Soviet historians, mostly of the older generation, perestroika con­ sisted of merely changing heroes to villains and vice versa, while pre­ serving the traditional image of technology and science as a largely autonomous enterprise. For others, mostly young historians, technol­ ogy and science were seen as social activities deeply woven into the fabric of politics and culture. This difference stirred up traditional methodological presuppositions and caused an ongoing debate among proponents of internalist, externalist, and contextual styles. In this article, I will examine methodological, thematic, temporal, geographic, and disciplinary changes in the discourse of Soviet histo­ rians of technology and science, basing my study on a quantitative analysis of the content of the journal Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki (Problems in the History of Science and Technology, hereaf­ ter VIET] during the perestroika period, 1986-91. VIET is the major (and the only academic) Russian journal in this area.1 It is published in Moscow by the Institut Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki (Institute for the History of Science and Technology, hereafter IIET), the lead­ ing Soviet (now Russian) institution in this held. A number of popular magazines publish articles on the history of technology and science as well, but they largely reflect the interests of the audience rather than the preferences of academics.1 2 The methodology and criteria of my study are similar to those used by John Staudenmaier in his analysis of the discourse of American historians of technology based on the content of Technology and Cul­ ture (hereafter T&C) from 1959 to 1980.3 For each article published in VIET for the period 1986—91,1 have recorded the same character­ istics Staudenmaier did for T&C: time and place references; method­ ological style (internalist, externalist, contextual); and function of hypotheses in argumentation (a priori, a posteriori). The...

Notes on Contributors

Review: On the Importance of Military Geoscience

Military Technology: Some Recent Interpretations

Notes on Contributors