TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 945 Of greatest interest to readers of Technology and Culture will be chapter 2, on the protection of the environment in and outside the factories, and chapter 6, on the history and organization of research facilities. The production of aluminum is the production of powerful pollutants in great quantity, including carbon monoxide and gases rich with fluorine. The first factories were built in the mountains to utilize hydroelectricity on site, and although the gaseous emissions devastated the countryside, it was, as so often in the 19th century, thought cheaper to pay compensation to farmers for the loss of cattle by fluoride poisoning than to control emissions. Gradually, it was seen to be cheaper to control emissions by improved recovery of the fluorine to save cryolite and to protect the workmen, initially exposed to cruel levels of gases and high temperatures, and ultimately this gave improved production. Research facilities as such were initially minimal: every works had its laboratory, at first only for quality control. Only slowly did research expand from mostly factory-floor improvements in production to the setting up of genuine, separate, research facilities. This latter move ment, mainly (as with Alcoa) a development of the period between the world wars, was hindered by the economic crisis of the 1930s and, in France, by the devastation of French economic life during World War II, caused by German occupation. After the war, the French economy experienced a resurgence, partly stimulated by surveys of American and German firms, which resulted in the creation of more ambitious research laboratories and the essaying of pilot plants, in the now familiar R&D pattern. Its success is witnessed by the use of very high currents. At present, French research in aluminum production is organized, centralized, and directed from various establishments sepa rate from the factories and recognized as requiring substantial funding. This is altogether an authoritative and sweeping survey of the French aluminum industry, particularly useful for comparison with the recent histories of Alcoa. Marie Boas Hall Dr. Hall is reader emeritus in history of science and technology at the University of London (Imperial College). Industry and Technology in Antebellum Tennessee: The Archaeology of Bluff Furnace. By R. Bruce Council, Nicholas Honerkamp, and M. Eliza beth Will. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 227; illustrations, tables, notes, appendixes, bibliography, in dex. $42.50 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). By the 1850s, blast furnace operations had become a technical challenge. Ironmasters had to deal with precise mixtures of iron ore, charcoal, and limestone and the maintenance of proper hot blast 946 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE regulation, while being alert to what was happening inside the furnace and managing the logistics of keeping all furnace hands working harmoniously. Ironworkers had to be intelligent and atten tive to the possible problems that could arise at any moment (and usually did). Iron making was becoming big industry in the American South as well as the North, in contrast to the traditional southern image of happy, singing slaves working for indifferent, white aristo cratic planters. Bluff Furnace, at Chattanooga in eastern Tennessee, was not a pocket of intense iron manufacture in the midst of Helds of cotton, just as Tennessee was not an island of industry in the midst of an otherwise agricultural South. During the 1840s and 1850s Tennes see charcoal iron had acquired a national reputation for its quality in foundry castings. The state produced 30,420 tons of pig iron in 1850, leading the South, and was fourth in the nation behind Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland. Chattanooga in the 1850s was a busy railroad junction on the east bank of the Tennessee River. In 1847 the East Tennessee Iron Manufacturing Company was incorporated, and seven years later the company built a charcoal-fired blast furnace below a limestone bluff overlooking the river. Bluff Furnace took advantage of the railroad both for transportation and as a customer for the iron it needed to keep operating. For reasons unknown, the furnace did not go into blast until 1856, and indications are that its performance was lackluster. Two northern ironmasters arrived in 1860 and converted the furnace into a state-of-the-art, cupola...