The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective by Joel A. Tarr

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 781 on a larger scale. From the end of the 1920s, for example, efforts were intensified to recruit new customers and to propagate new forms of electricity use (electric heat)—to increase the rate of utili­ zation of the output capacities (p. 235). In this respect, the results of Gilson’s study represent a critical argument against Thomas P. Hughes’s opinion in Networks of Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) that by centralized supply via superpower sta­ tions (Grofikraftversorgung) electric energy can be provided in any case more economically because of the better load factor and energy mix. Gilson’s study is a convincing demonstration of the significance of economic interests and political power in the formation of huge technical systems. For everybody who is interested in the beginning of the still-existing structure of electricity supply in Germany, this book is a must. Siegfried Buchhaupt Dr. Buchhaupt is research assistant in the Department of History, Technical Uni­ versity Darmstadt. The Searchfor the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in HistoricalPerspective. ByJoel A. Tarr. Akron, Ohio: University ofAkron Press, 1996. Pp. xlvii+419; illustrations, figures, tables, notes, index. $44.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). In 1971, Joel Tarr published a pioneering article on the horse as a polluter in American cities. Environmental history was not yet a recognized field, and scholars had paid little attention to the history ofpollution, yet Tarr saw rich possibilities in the subject. In the years since, he has published dozens of original and influential works on the history ofsmoke pollution, industrial wastes, water-quality policy, and sewage recycling, to name just four examples. Now his most important works are available in one volume, and the collection should bring Tarr new readers in a number of academic and techni­ cal fields. The Searchfor the Ultimate Sink holds special interest for people in­ terested in the past and future use of technology to solve environ­ mental problems. Throughout his career, Tarr has focused on his­ toric moments of technological choice. Why did city officials decide to build combined storm and sanitary sewer systems in the late 19th century? Why did railroads take decades to adopt the cleaner and more efficient electric-diesel engine? For Tarr, the answer to such questions never is narrowly academic. As a professor with a joint appointment in history and public policy at Carnegie-Mellon Univer­ sity, he has worked with colleagues in the engineering disciplines on a number of large projects intended to provide policy makers with historical perspective. He also has published his work in a re­ 782 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE markable variety of venues—from Technology and Culture to Waste Management and Research, from American Heritage to the AmericanJour­ nal of Public Health—and the variety testifies to his ability to speak to a range of audiences. The range of Tarr’s research also is impressive. Tarr has found new ways to look at familiar sources: The Search for the Ultimate Sink includes a fascinating reading of the Pittsburgh Survey—a classic study of the city by early-20th-century reformers—as a kind of envi­ ronmental impact statement. Yet Tarr often has made use of innova­ tive sources and methodologies. With the help of a colleague, for example, Tarr reconstructed the major sources of pollution in the Hudson-Raritan region since 1700. Though he has explored a considerable terrain, this collection makes clear that Tarr has pursued one great issue from the first. The 1971 piece on horses is a vivid case study of the American pen­ chant for overlooking or downplaying the potential costs of techno­ logical solutions to environmental problems. In the early 1900s, a host of commentators extolled the internal combustion engine as a way to avoid the environmental hazards of horse transport—the flyinfested piles of manure, the dead carcasses, the unsanitary manure dust, the nerve-shattering noise of horseshoes on cobblestone—yet cars and trucks soon created a new set of environmental problems. Tarr has found similar patterns again and again. The title piece of The Search for the Ultimate Sink—probably the most often cited essay in the historical literature on pollution—of­ fers a particularly...