TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1081 control. This, Rhodes argues, is a direct consequence of science’s challenge to the traditional power of nation-states. Zuoyue Wang Mr. Wang holds a Master’s degree in history of science from Academia Sinica, Beijing, and is working on his Ph.D. in the History of Science and Technology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His interests include history of modern physics and scientists and nuclear armaments. RAND’s Role in the Evolution of Balloon and Satellite Observation Systems and Related U.S. Space Technology. By Merton E. Davies and William R. Harris. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation (1700 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138 90406), 1988. Pp. xiii+126; illustrations, bibliography. $10.00 (paper). In 1946, the U.S. Army Air Force, under contract with Douglas Aircraft, initiated a procurement-related research program dubbed Project RAND (.Research A;Vd Development). The first investigation carried out under this program—a study of space satellites—soon expanded to include other vehicles such as balloons and rockets capable of being used for photoreconnaissance and remote sensing. With air force encouragement, Project RAND was institutionalized as the RAND Corporation in 1948, thus becoming the prototypical government-sponsored “think tank.” In the 1950s, RAND carried out broad-based studies related to national security that pioneered most of the contemporary methods of strategic analysis, but space technol ogy remained a primary focus of its research. Unfortunately for historians, much of RAND’s work has been, and remains, classified, and the open literature that deals with RAND’s research on space-based systems in a substantive way is quite limited, consisting of a few articles, and chapters in specialized books on technical intelligence gathering (for example, R. C. Hall, “Early U.S. Satellite Proposals,” Technology and Culture 4 [1963]: 410—34, and P. Klass, Secret Sentries in Space [New York, 1971], pp. 72—89; see also B. Smith, The RAND Corporation [Cambridge, Mass., 1966]). This book, written by two long-term employees to commemorate RAND’s fortieth anniversary, therefore represents a highly significant addi tion to the sum total of public knowledge about RAND. It is intended as an overview that illustrates the scope and consequences (technical, social, and economic) of multidisciplinary research at RAND and how RAND scientists and their research findings influenced early (1946—60) U.S. space policy and operations. 1082 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The authors’ backgrounds allow them to address both technical and sociopolitical issues with authority (Merton Davies is an engineer and mathematician, and William Harris is an international lawyer). Some of the book’s flaws—it is overly given to generalizations and not well organized—are, perhaps, not the fault of the authors but rather the re sult of the protracted security review process to which the manuscript was subjected. The authors can be faulted, however, for occasionally neglecting to make use of public information that provides insight into the way RAND was linked to other government and nongovernment organizations. As one example, the authors describe the origins of RAND but fail to point out that H. Rowan Gaither, president ofthe Ford Foundation, became a founder and director of RAND when it was in corporated in 1948 with an interest-free loan from the Ford Founda tion. Gaither later chaired the presidentially appointed Security Re sources Panel. Information of this type is important for understanding RAND’s influence on U.S. space technology because RAND produced concepts, not hardware, and the extent to which its research findings were implemented by other organizations as operational systems de pended on effective linkages to policymakers. (Such linkages are being addressed by the Smithsonian-RAND History Project at the Depart ment of Space History, National Air and Space Museum. The project aims to produce analytical historical studies of RAND and to organize and preserve the primary sources on which they are based.) Neverthe less, such shortcomings are more than offset by the excellent descrip tions of RAND’s technical research, which make this book, at present, the single most informative source for scholars interested in RAND’s role in the origins of U.S. satellite and balloon-borne surveillance tech nology. Charles A...