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* Twentieth Century Technologies *
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(from "A Social History of American Technology", Ruth Schwartz Cowan,
Oxford University Press)
A 20th century concept: ** technoscience **
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Automobility:
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Electric vehicles went commercial, but batteries too heavy.
Steam engines: EXTERNAL combustion
By 1860: first commercially successful INTERNAL combustion engine:
Belgian mechanic Etienne Lenoir (his engine was too heavy for transport)
German inventor Nicholas Otto (four-stroke cycle for piston)
Gottlieb Daimler,
Wilhelm Maybach, and Karl Benz (practical engine & electric ignition system)
early 1890ies: commercial production in France, Germany, and Britain.
By 1900: thirty companies & about 2,500 cars in the U.S.
By 1910: TWO ways of manufacturing cars:
* assemble one vehicle at a time ---> Cadillac, Rolls Royce
* develop & adapt techniques of mass production ---> Chevrolet
Henry Ford: pioneered the second way of making a car.
Ford Motor company (founded 1903):
* Model N $600 in 1906
* Model T $825 in 1908
* built plant for Model T production: (ideas from a TEAM OF ENGINEERS)
- specialized tools
- incoporated continuous conveyor belts
- by 1914: ALL production aspects were realized on assembly lines
- cost went down: $360 in 1916 and $290 in 1927.
Ford's impact:
* fewer companies were making more and more automobiles
* replaced skilled workers with "unskilled" ones
* "Fordism" -- production of inexpensive goods by assembly-line methods
spread throughout American industry.
Ford's personal quest:
* his workers should be able to afford his cars
* had a "Socialogical Department" that spied in workers political activities
Alfred P. Sloan:
* pioneered organizational and marketing innovations that formed American
culture and economy
* General Motors Acceptance Company (founded 1910)
* decentralized production divisions
* kept central divisions for research, planning, and advertising
* several cars for DIFFERENT markets, several colors, etc
* annual model change
* good relationships with dealers
By 1920: automobile industry had settled into a form that pretty much
remained for the rest of the 20th century
Growth of rail-road industry resulted in poor maintanance of national
road system.
AAA (founded in 1905)
Road Aid Act (1916 & 1921)
By 1920: several states taxed gasoline in order to raise revenue for
road contruction and maintanance.
Most driving was for local purposes. High-speed, long-distance driving
was largely unknown/impossible.
Automobile manufacturers: concern on sales-inducing features, safety not
believed to the one of them
Automobiles made development of suburbs possible. As a result,
suburbs DEPENDED on automobiles (even WITHIN a suburb).
By 1970:
* more cars than households in the U.S.
* more cars than people in LA
* "universal ownership"
* increased horsepower, fuel consumption
* production costs of larger/high-end cars not all that higher!
* car ownership: an economic necessity
* building boom supported by and supported car industry
* most miles spent on duties, not on leisure
* "suburbians" largest demopgraphic group
Defense Highway Act (1944) and
Interstate and National Defense Highway Act (1956):
* several billions for highway construction.
* excise tax
* use tax on trucks
* --> cars and express highways became default medium of transport
Unexpected consequences:
* safety issues
* environmental degradation
* rising price of fuel
Second half of 20th century: Congress set safety standards for cars bought by
the government.
National Motor Vehicle Safety Act (1966):
* created National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
* NHTSA could set safety standards for new cars (after 1967)
Automobile industry's reluctance to improve safety eroded public trust.
National Air Pollution Control Act (1955) funded research into
pollution causes and their potential elimination.
LA City Council banned use of coal and fuel oils, but car exhausts turned out
to be the major culprit!
Automotive smog:
* damages vegetation
* eats away rubber, textiles, dyes.
California legislature required crankcase blowby devices, exhaust emission
devices (catalytic converter!), which forced the sale of unleaded gasoline.
Automobile industry (1) denied the problem, then claimed it (2) had no
solutions, or that it be (3) too expensive. Again, this eroded public
trust.
In 1920ies: operations of military became dependent on internal
combustion engines --> oil supplies.
After WW II: this dependency applied to society and the economy at large.
Domestic politics of oil was complicated; international one even more so!
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) increased oil
price markedly after President Nixon authorized a weapons airlift to
Israel during the Yom Kippur War with Egypt and Syria.
Exposed the degree of dependence on oil price. 1973 was the last year
of good sales for big cars (but SUVs appeared in the 90ies!).
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Military-industrial-academic complex:
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Initial pioneers worked in barns. No research & development possible.
WW I changed the landscape:
* Army and Navy sought to use that technology for surveillance
* French requested airplanes from the U.S.
* aircraft made "total war" possible and inevitable
* nedded to improve aircraft and aircraft engines
1920ies:
* commercial air transport began
* Kelly Act (1925): Post Office had to contract airmail service with
commercial airliners
* air-cooling
* double & triple engine designs
* monoplanes
* National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) founded in 1915
* Army & Navy founded their own R&D sites
1930ies:
* automating pilot system
* stressed skin concstruction
* pressurization of cabins
* new fuel additives
* Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-3
* local and state governments built airports to attract airlines
Air Commerce Act (1926): authorized federal goverment to regulate routes, rates
and safety.
1927: Charles Lindbergh flew non-stop across the Atlantic.
By 1938: federal government took over air-traffic control.
WW II:
* American airforce totally inadequate at the beginning of the war.
* national effort: industry could produce 110,000 aircraft in 1945
President Roosevelt created The Office of Scientific Research and
Developement (OSRD 1944).
War-time innovations:
* radar
* long-range missiles
* managed R&D; e.g. The Manhattan Project --> creation and use of atomic bomb
* scientists delivered the bomb, but had no say in if and when to use it
1949: Fist atomic tests by the Soviet Union.
Resulted in a dramatically increased federal spending on R&D: by
mid-sixties, the government paid for one third of all R&D costs; in
some military industries as much as three quarters!
University actively involved:
* Berkeley operated Los Alamos Laboratory for the Atomic Energy Commission
* California Institute of Technology operated Jet Propulsion Lab for Army
* individual faculty members were allowed to accept federal grants
* later on, they were encouraged to SEEK grants and to forgo teaching duties
1957: Soviet Union launched the Sputnik.
* U.S. concerned about its technological advantage
* NACA transformed into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
* Congress passed the National Education Defense Act
* by 1969, one third of science & engineering students funded by federal
government
The space race:
* federal agencies (e.g. NASA) developed the concept of a "spin-off": the
civilian benefits of federally funded research
* jet propulsion R&D was exclusively a military application
* 1945 -- 1955: F-86, B-47, B-52
* commercial jet airliner was an after-thought, a spin-off
* Beoing 707 in 1958, DC-8 in 1959: SPIN-OFF indeed!
Early NASA activities:
* launched communication satellites
* put a man into orbit
* Soviet's had Yuri Garagin in orbit first
* ---> the Apollo program:
- largely political in motivation
- largest managed R&D project ever
- July 20, 1969: Neil Amstrong and Edwin Aldrin
At present: NASA's budget cut; more push in medical and biomedical research.
All federally funded R&D efforts had spin-offs, but their nature was
also hard to predict.
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Communications Technology and Social Control:
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Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell: light as an electromagnetic wave
German Heinrich Hertz: constructed an apperatus that could generate
and measure high-frequency and low-frequency waves
Italian Guglielmo Marconi: Hertz' machine sent a signal from one place to
another WITHOUT a wire!
---> "wireless telegraphy" British Marconi (1897). American Marconi (1899).
Americans Lee DeForest, Reginald Fessenden, and Edwin H. Amstrong made
"wireless telephony" possible:
* alternator
* diodes
* audion (ancestor of vacuum tube technology)
* regenerative amplifying circuit
1912: Titanic sunk. Ensuing wireless telegraphy with rescue ship etc created
information chaos.
---> Congress passed Radio Licensing Act (1912):
* owner of radio transmittal equipment needed a license from government
* transmission operators needed to pass a government exam
* government could assign frequency spectrum and time limits on licenses
* all transmissions had to use call number for identification
* could commandeer privately owned radio equipment in a national
emergency (applied after 1914)
Between 1912 and 1916:
* government effectively nationalized property of American Marconi.
* ordered hold on all patent suits for this technology
* created a patent pool
After Versailles treaty:
* bill for federal monopoly on radio transmissions got rejected
* only 20 percent of stock for radio companies could belong to foreigners
(Deutsche Telekom & VoiceStream !!)
In next 20 - 30 years:
* attempts of maintaining regulatory control through instrumented monopolies
* e.g. the Radio Copertation of America (RCA) controlled virtually all
international and ship-to-shore wireless telegraphic facilities in the U.S.
Commercialization made such control more and more difficult:
* commerical radio broadcasting driving by a small "outsider" company
* commercial television eventually split into several stations
* cable TV provided more diversity
* commercial computers and the internet give us even more freedom
* vacuum tube, integrated circuit another example of spin-offs
* PCs needed to CREATE a market without real demand; the internet
changed that completely!
Main lesson:
In the communications R&D business, it is impossible (in the long-term)
to form AND control an entire market (how does Microsoft fit in?).
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Biotechnology:
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* the Pill did not reach its INTENDED constituency and was partly
responsible for major social changes
* French abortion pill was an accidental development!
* pharmaceutical companies now waive their patent rights for aids medication
in South Africa
* human cloning may happen in Italy next year
* the descendants of Penicillin begin to show up in drinking water
* arms race between bacteria and antibiotics
* patented and non-reproducing seedlings increase farmers dependence on
biotech companies
Copyright 2001 Michael Huth (huth@cis.ksu.edu).