TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 687 delphia & Reading Railroad being the capstone of his work. Robinson went to Europe in 1825, living in Paris and attending Faculty of Science lectures at the Sorbonne. He traveled widely throughout France, examining harbors, bridges, and waterworks, and through the north of England and Wales examining railroads. Having digested this information, Robinson “never hesitated to urge railroad construc tion in preference to waterways” (p. 135). His letter to a Richmond newspaper in 1825 argued for a 130-mile railroad that, together with canals and inclined planes, would link eastern Virginia to the Ohio River. Before leaving engineering for administration, Robinson con tributed to distinctively American rail design and puzzled some observers by consistently purchasing British locomotives. (Stapleton believes this was the result of heavy British investment.) Finally, David Thomas, Welsh ironmaster, brought anthracite iron technology (and the idea of far larger furnaces) to America in 1839, and successful techniques such as the hot blast and more powerful blasts spread to the bituminous iron industry a few decades later. Ironmasters schooled by Thomas at his Lehigh Crane Iron Company and Thomas Iron Company went on to play key roles at furnaces in Chattanooga and Birmingham. Stapleton cites Thomas as “one of the clearest examples of the transfer of technology in the 19th century” (p. 201). Stapleton’s work demonstrates how useful knowledge crossed the Atlantic in the first half of the 19th century. There are gaps in some of his stories, but he readily admits this and alerts the reader to uncertainties. Fair enough. Maps, drawings, and other illustrations add to the utility of the book, as does a selected bibliography. It seems to me that Stapleton’s most important achievement may have been unintentional; namely, he follows the lead of Thomas Cochran and Philip Scranton in reminding readers that there was an industrial revolution on the western side of the Atlantic that did not take place in New England. Thomas R. Winpenny Dr. Winpenny is professor of history at Elizabethtown College. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Bending Is Not Breaking: Adaptation and Persistence among 19th-Century Lancaster Artisans. The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Vol. 2: 1805—1810. Edited by John C. Van Horne, Lee W. Formwait , Darwin H. Stapleton, and Jeffrey A. Cohen. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press for the Maryland Historical Society, 1986. Pp. xxxix + 982; illustrations, notes, index. $75.00. In this second volume of the fourth series of The Papers ofBenjamin Henry Latrobe, some 350 documents are included, constituting 688 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE approximately 20 percent of' the surviving correspondence for this time. Although only six years are covered, 1805-10 (whereas vol. 1 covered twenty years, from 1784 to 1804), its greater size may be due to the fact that a considerably larger number of documents have survived for the period during which Latrobe used a polygraph for duplicating his papers. The polygraph, manufactured and marketed by Charles Willson Peale, was a machine that automatically produced multiple copies of the document being written. It enabled Latrobe to maintain complete hie copies of all his outgoing correspondence without the necessity of making handwritten transcripts or summa ries during the fourteen years he used the device, from 1803 until December 1817, when he apparently lost the instrument during bankruptcy proceedings. Fittingly enough, the first document in the book, a letter to President ThomasJefferson, discussed Latrobe’s use of the polygraph and Peale’s replacement of the earlier model he had promoted with one based on Jefferson’s modified design. To Peale, Latrobe ex pressed his own enthusiasm for the instrument despite its slow sales, writing, “I think however that in a little time the Polygraph must find its way into the study of every man who writes letters, and can scrape 60 dollars together.” Peale’s considerable investment in money and time in producing the polygraph and Latrobe’s prophecy for its success were not to be fulfilled, however. It was an invention before its time, and although several hundred were sold, its complicated delicate structure made it less than a satisfactory substitute for either the commercial clerk or the copying press. Only...