352 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE other scientific developments that allow DCL to occur at lower temperatures and pressures. These advances have improved the economics significantly so that in some of the newer processes more than 50 percent of the hydrogen gas, which is a major contributor to DCL’s high cost, reacts with the coal to form distillable liquid fuels rather than little-valued gaseous hydrocarbons. There are also several misleading statements, such as the year of establishing the Office of Coal Research (pp. 6, 7, 67, 114, 141); the use of coal gas as a synonym for water gas (pp. 39, 42); suggesting that CO is converted to H2 in the water gas shift, reactions conditions are changed to give CO2 for easier separation instead of CO (p. 42); and assigning the German government’s policy of rearmament after 1933 to the Wei mar government (p. 143). Anthony N. Stranges Dr. S i ranges teaches the history of science and the history of science in America at Texas A&M University. He is completing a book on the history of the synthetic fuel industry. Technik und Sicherheit in der deutschen Industriegesellschaft 1850 bis 1930. By Wolfhard Weber. Wuppertal: Bergische Universitat, 1986. Pp. 227; notes, bibliography. Paper. Arbeitssicherheit: Historische Beispiele—aktuelle Analysen. By Wolfhard Weber. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988. Pp. 248; illustrations, bibliography, index. Paper. Technik und Sicherheit (Technology and safety) is not a monograph in a proper sense but a somewhat hastily written compilation of perti nent materials collected by several research assistants. Wolfhard Weber’s idea is to concentrate on the public perception of technical risks rather than on the modes or details of regulating them. Public perception and discussion of technical safety are illustrated in indus trial exhibitions and social museums, occupational health, accident prevention, and transportation systems. The Weimar Republic pe riod, when conflicting interests were engaged in occupational health and safety, is treated most intensively. The reader who is not aware of the actual regulation of technical safety matters in Germany should turn first to Weber’s Arbeitssicherheit (Occupational safety) and start on page 100, when occupational health and safety as a “new value” become part of the political agenda in 1869. (In the long history of technological development in prein dustrial and early industrial times [pp. 29—96], only a few physicians took notice of dangerous working conditions, judging by our present standards.) Imperial Germany finally established the peculiar mixed system or “dualism” between public administration (Gewerbeaufsichts- TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 353 beamte or factory inspectors of the Departments of Trade) and industrial self-government (Berufsgenossenschaften or trade corpora tions of the Workmen’s Compensation Act [1884], and steam-boiler inspection associations in charge of safe construction). Weber gives the briefest account (pp. 104— 11) of this basic pattern, with no details on accident prevention as attempted by pertinent standards. Instead, he is interested in public debates about enlarging or limiting the power of the federal government, or broadening the concept of occupational safety by including occupational health. As a conse quence, the Weimar period gains prominence, and the text is almost identical with chapters 8 and 9 of Technik und Sicherheit. Beginning in 1925, occupational health was gradually included in workmen’s compensation. During the 1960s and 1970s, the regulation of occu pational health and safety was seriously intensified, but the “dual system” remained basically unchanged, as Weber’s final chapter makes clear. Peter Lundgreen Dr. Lundgreen is professorofthe social history ofscience at the Universitat Bielefeld. He is the author of Standardization-Testing-Regulation: Studies in the History of the Sciencebased Regulatory State (Bielefeld, 1986). Shaping Science and Industry: A History ofAustralia’s Councilfor Scientific and Industrial Research, 1926—49. By Carl B. Schedvin. Sydney: Allen & Unwin (now Unwin Hyman, 8 Winchester Place, Winches ter, Mass. 01890), 1987. Pp. xix + 374; illustrations, tables, notes, index. $45.00. Two years into World War I, it was abundantly clear to many Allied leaders that their nations’ scientific and technological abilities had to be harnessed if they were to meet the challenge of the German partnership of the military with science-based industry. Britain’s response was the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (1915); it was natural...