Reverse Salients Research Articles

L'histoire comme systèmes en évolution

L'objectif de cet article est de réfléchir, à l'invitation desAnnales,sur ma façon d'écrire l'histoire des techniques. Je m'intéresse aux systèmes techniques (qui sont constitués de composants artificiels) et aux systèmes socio-techniques (qui comportent à la fois des composants artinciels et des composants organisationnels). J'utilise un concept de « saillants rentrants »(reverse salients)pour expliquer la manière dont les systèmes évoluent à la fois en synchronie et en diachronie. J'étudie également la nature de la créativité, et spécialement la création de ces systèmes techniques et sociotechniques. Dans mon travail antérieur, je me suis concentré sur les « constructeurs de système », c'est-à-dire ceux qui ont créé ces systèmes techniques. Je m'intéresse actuellement aux constructeurs collectifs qui édifient de gigantesques systèmes socio-techniques. La description de l'évolution de tels systèmes requiert des modèles complexes et formalisés.

Crossover Inventors and Technological Linkages: American Shoemaking and the Broader Economy, 1848–1901

Crossover Inventors and Technological Linkages: American Shoemaking and the Broader Economy, 1848—1901 ROSS THOMSON Many technologies are linked across industries. Such interindustry linkages can influence technological change; as a result, advances in one industry may depend on progress in a second and set conditions for the evolution of a third. Technological change then takes on an interindustry cumulativeness that helps explain why economically advanced countries lead in many industries, not just one. This article will try to show that technological linkages across industries directed invention along certain paths in the case of U.S. shoe manufacturing in the second half of the 19th century. It will then argue that linkages could only have had this effect because socioeco­ nomic institutions, including firms, occupations, and communities of inventors, immersed inventors in communication networks that helped them identify and make use of technological linkages. Thus, linkages and social structure both affected invention. Issues To clarify the thesis, consider how linkages are analyzed by two historians of technological change, Nathan Rosenberg and Thomas Hughes. Technological linkages refer to connections among technical problems or among their solutions. Linkages are of two types. On the one hand, problems concerning the adequacy of a production process or product are interdependent; solving one problem may have little impact without solving others and may even generate new problems requiring attention. Hence, technological change may be driven by a sequence of such problems. The dependence of James Watt’s steam Dr. Thomson, formerly with the Department of Economics at the New School for Social Research, is the chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Vermont. This article benefited from the comments of John Berry, Carolyn Cooper, Robert Heilbroner, David Weiman, and the Technology and Culture referees. John Berry, David DeRamus, Salim Khan, and William O’Callaghan provided research assistance.© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/91/3204-0005$01.00 1018 Crossover Inventors and Technological Linkages 1019 engine on John Wilkinson’s cannon-boring machine is a classic example. Rosenberg calls the problematic feature of a production process or product a technological imbalance; for Hughes, it is a reverse salient.1 Such problems arise in relation to the purposes of specific agents. Rosenberg focuses on one kind of agent, the firm (or group of firms), for which imbalances limit profitability. For Hughes, techno­ logical systems are agents; for example, the electrical light and power system must overcome reverse salients in order to generate and distribute electrical power. This system includes not only utility companies, but also suppliers, designers, and even financiers and regulatory agencies.2 On the other hand, a solution may be applied to technological problems quite different from the problem originally addressed, such as when the stationary steam engine was adapted to water and land transportation. Rosenberg calls this wider applicability technological convergence and illustrates it with the remarkable series of machinetool innovations that connected the production of firearms, sewing machines, bicycles, and automobiles in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hughes’s idea of a salient can support a similar argument. In part, salients are just the techniques limited by—and thus defining—reverse salients. But salients can lead to the solution of ‘That both Nathan Rosenberg, an economic historian, and Thomas Hughes, a historian of technology, employ these categories suggests a place where the two kinds of history can fruitfully learn from one another. Rosenberg discusses imbalances in many of his writings, including “Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry,” pp. 9—31, and “The Direction of Technological Change: Inducement Mechanisms and Focusing Devices,” pp. 108-25, both in his Perspectives on Technology (New York, 1976) (hereafter Perspectives). The latter article expands imbalances to include nontechnological limits of the supply of labor and other inputs. Hughes analyzes reverse salients widely (Networks ofPower: Electrification in Western Society, 1880—1930 [Baltimore, 1983], American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870—1970 [New York, 1989]). He develops the idea of a system in these works and in “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems,” in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas...

The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology ed. by Wiebe E. Bijker, et al

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 705 Nevertheless, the book has many strengths, particularly in part 2, which explores specific areas of engineering involvement after a general sociological background has been set out in part 1. The discussion of engineering education (chap. 6) is a valuable summary of the peculiarities of the British tradition, especially with its debili­ tating emphasis on intellectual education and the laissez-faire role of the state. The critique of science (rather than engineering) as the “motor” of industrialization is also timely, and, despite the lopsided discussion of professionalism already mentioned, the chapter on professional associations and trade unions contains much useful information. The conclusion also makes some robust statements about the need for British engineers to become more involved in public affairs, the value of a “protected title,” and the crucial impor­ tance of manufacturing, so “foolishly and eccentrically neglected in Britain” (p. 237). Whatever the response of engineers, the book provides an intelligent commentary on their role in society, and it should at least stimulate a deeper understanding among social scientists of the nature of the engineering dimension. R. Angus Buchanan Dr. Buchanan is director of the Centre for the History of Technology, Science and Society at the University of Bath, and Secretary-General of ICOH 1'EC. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Tho­ mas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987. Pp. xi + 405; illustrations, notes, bibliography, indexes. $35.00 (cloth); $12.95 (paper). Sociologists and historians often pay lip service to each other’s work but seldom achieve true dialogue based on mutual respect and shared concepts. This collection reflects that rare situation, along with marking the birth of the sociology of technology. It is thus a landmark volume that belongs on the shelf of every researcher in science and technology studies. The contributions, hrst presented at a workshop in 1984, discuss and use a handful of concepts and approaches to the study of technology, some drawn from the work of historians and some from that of sociologists. Their common ground is the view that techno­ logical systems are the transient products of human effort and negotiation and cannot be understood without tracing the processes through which technical, social, economic, and political elements are integrated into the very nature of technologies. From sociology, Michel Calion, Trevor Pinch, and Wiebe Bijker introduce the main concepts that embody this perspective. Calion points out that technologists always attempt to carry out their plans in 706 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the context of heterogeneous actor networks, made up of (in his example of the electric vehicle) electrons, consumers, government agencies, industrial firms, existing technologies, and social structure. Technologists are thus necessarily sociologists; when they design and introduce technologies, they project social structures within which these will be used. The fate of their plans depends on all the elements of the heterogeneous network, according to Calion, and all those elements must be treated symmetrically when technological process is analyzed. Pinch and Bijker argue that technological development proceeds through variation and retention. At any stage, different audiences may interpret an artifact differently: for instance, some turn-of-the-century bicycle users wanted more speed and others more safety. Variations in the technology appear in relation to different perceptions of problems, and certain variations will stabilize when an audience sees its problems as solved. From history, Thomas Hughes, Edward Constant, and Ruth Schwartz Cowan all outline important concepts and perspectives. Hughes’s essay catalogs the major ideas from his well-known work on electrical power systems, including the notion of technological system itself as well as reverse salients, technological style, and momentum; it also reflects his skepticism about the innovative capacity of large organizations. Constant provides a framework for uniting commu­ nity, organization, and systems approaches to technological develop­ ment. Cowan presents the case for viewing the heterogeneous actor network from the viewpoint of the consumer, who ultimately decides the fate of the technology. These last two essays are too rich conceptually to have been relegated to the third section ofthe book. By and large, tbe contributions in parts 2 and...

The Science-Technology Interaction: The Case of High-Voltage Power Transmission Systems

There has been a strong tendency in the history of science and technology to explain complex technological change with primary reference to antecedent scientific discoveries. The science-technology relationship has been thought to be technology's strongest. The major thesis of this paper is, however, that the evolving technology of the high-voltage transmission system-a major chapter in the history of electric light and power-can best be explained by reference to needs arising within that system rather than by attribution to science. These needs can be designated as reverse salients in an expanding technological front-the front, in this case, being the high-voltage transmission system.1 In order to support the thesis my effort has been to seek-and describe when found-a relationship between engineering research problems and reverse salients in the expanding front. I have also sought support for the major counterthesis, that is, that the engineering research problems were primarily related to antecedent science.