Superpower: The Making of a Steam Locomotive by David Weitzman

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews—Labor and Technology 917 Superpower: The Making of a Steam Locomotive. By David Weitzman. Boston: David R. Godine, 1987. Pp. 107; illustrations. $19.95. David Weitzman, author of two popular guides to industrial ar­ chaeology, has now written and illustrated a book describing the de­ sign, construction, and testing of a locomotive. A large-format volume (IDA by 131/4), handsomely produced by David Godine, Superpower tells the story of the building of the first “Berkshire” class steam locomotive, a powerful 2-8-4 freight hauler. This story is told from the perspective of Ben, who in 1925 turns eighteen and goes to work at the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio, where his father and grandfather already are employed. Readers learn about locomotive building by following Ben through an informal apprenticeship, which includes stints in the drafting room, patternmaking shop, molding floor and foundry, machine shop, and erecting shed. A fictionalized but primarily factual account, Weitzman’s story builds on extensive research and interviews, including an interview with Charles Schnell, Lima’s shop foreman in the 1920s. Although historical fiction is usually not reviewed in this journal, Superpower constitutes a unique primer on its subject and could be consulted profitably by anybody wishing to know something about the manufacture of heavy machinery. Indeed, Weitzman’s story ex­ plains aspects of shop practice about which even historians of tech­ nology may be somewhat hazy. How, for instance, are large castings made without introducing weak spots owing to uneven cooling of the molten steel? How were large plates riveted? How do designers of large, complex devices take advantage of metallurgical knowledge concerning the different properties of various kinds of steels? Weitz­ man’s book clearly answers these questions and many more. Because the author has immersed himself in early-20th-century technical lit­ erature, his story is also a reliable guide to the shop practice and methods of the period. Weitzman aims his book at the general reader but shares an agenda increasingly dear to scholars. This is the close study of the specifics of skill and of the work process, a project to which numerous disci­ plines are now contributing. Superpower can be linked, for example, with Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop (Chicago, 1987), a study by sociologist Douglas Harper, who has employed the ethnologist’s techniques to analyze the work and life of a small-town jack-of-all-trades named Willie. The knowledge commanded by Willie enables him to repair almost all of the machines on which his neigh­ bors in his upper New York State community depend for survival. Weitzman’s book also brings to mind The Age of Manufactures 1700— 1820 (New York, 1986) by Maxine Berg, an economic historian who, with a very different topic, also illuminates the linkages among work­ ers’ skills, the tools and machines they use, the products of the work process, and the social relationships impinging on the workplace. Fi­ 918 Book Reviews—Labor and Technology TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE nally, Weitzman’s study recalls a recent T&C article by Laurence F. Gross, “Wool Carding: A Study of Skills and Technology” (October 1987), which adroitly documents the subtle connections between skill levels and technological change. Gross shows that management-pro­ moted deskilling could increase skill requirements as well as decrease them, a point skilled workers like Ben’s father and grandfather at the Lima works would no doubt have acknowledged. Historians interested in the new scholarship on work will want to consult studies like those of Gross, Berg, and Harper, but they will also find Weitzman’s story about building a locomotive enjoyable and instructive. Better than many scholars, in fact, Weitzman evokes the specifics of a world of production now largely lost. Moreover, in tack­ ling the subject of work wholly from the perspective of those who did it, he forcefully emphasizes the importance ofwhat Harper aptly labels “working knowledge.” As a brief and popular account of skill as re­ siding both in the hands and in the head, Superpower is a valuable contribution. Joseph J. Corn Dr. Corn is a senior lecturer in the Department of History at Stanford University, where he...