202 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tem of flip-discs whose light and dark sides could be programmed to create moving words and numbers on signs, came partly to the rescue. There is much of interest here, too, on the related issues of foreign control and technology transfer. Packard Electric started out making American products for the Canadian market but in time adapted them to meet local requirements such as reliability under extremes of temperature. Especially after World War II, Ferranti permitted its subsidiary to undertake independent research and development in computers. Though in the end this initiative failed commercially, the enthusiastic experimenters then turned their hands to such glamor ous topics as fuel cells and superconductivity, which it is unlikely many Canadian firms were prepared to tackle in the 1960s. Thus, neither company fits the pattern of the technologically backward branch plant, which is often seen as a drag on the economic develop ment of Canada. The volume is nicely produced by McGill-Queen’s University Press in coffee-table size, with many black-and-white photographs. The au thors have not only made fine use of the company’s own picture collection but have cast their nets more widely to good effect. They also supply enough potted history of the key developments in electri cal technology that even the uninitiated, like myself, can grasp what the issues are. All in all, this is a fine piece of work in the technical and business history of an important Canadian industry. Christopher Armstrong Dr. Armstrong is professor in the Department of History at York University and coauthor, with H. V. Nelles, of Monopoly's Moment: The Organization and Regulation of Canadian Utilities, 1830—1930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986). Science on the Run: Information Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920—1940. By Geoffrey C. Bowker. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Pp. viii + 191; illustrations, notes, bibliog raphy, index. $27.50. This slender and charming book exemplifies both the unique power and the unhappy frustrations the “new” sociology of science and technology brings to the history of technology. Geoffrey Bowker’s theoretical stance is descended, with considerable modifica tion, from Latourian “network” theory. Bowker begins byjuxtaposing two narratives: an orthodox, “rhetorical history” of Schlumberger technique that stresses linear development, from scientific insight to technological invention, to development and dissemination, and fi nally to commercial triumph; and an alternative account that portrays what Bowker calls “infrastructural work,” which is what the Schlum berger firm actually did. It is this work that ultimately produced the “rhetorical history” itself: “Origins are things that occur long after TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 203 the fact—we work to them not from them” (p. 31). For Bowker, this “infrastructural work” is the creation and sustentation of a network of relations among social, technical, economic, natural, and political entities that allowed Schlumberger the space-time to produce both its technique and itself. Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger’s original idea was to use surface measurements of electric resistivity (inscribed on paper as linear trac ings, or “logs”) to “prospect” for mineral deposits of any sort. Because they had personal access to the oil field at Pechelbronn in Alsace, they by chance began with oil. Although this surface prospecting technique at least could be construed as having succeeded in the Caucasus region in the 1920s, it failed everywhere else, victim of various forms of electrical and social interference, or “parasites” as Bowker terms them. Schlumberger therefore turned its technique on its side and began to make vertical measurements down individual well bores, the intent of which was to identify oil-bearing strata missed, or inadequately characterized, by physical methods. Schlumberger purported to use universal measurement tech niques, as defined by its resistivity and SP (“spontaneous potential”) patents from the mid-1920s, which in turn it claimed were based on fundamental scientific principles. In fact, as Bowker beautifully demonstrates, Schlumberger throughout the entire period of this study was desperately scrambling to secure enough local knowledge and control to give its technique the appearance of efficacy and, si multaneously, to gain enough experience (financed by the purchasers of its services) to produce true efficacy. This struggle is what Bowker means...