The Winners
Laudatio
The Maurice Daumas Award Committee distinguished the papers as exceedingly excellent so a really difficult round. All the papers have a very high standard. They are original, innovative, relevant, clear, and meaningful articles, presenting fascinating topics and visual materials. The committee panel praised many papers, published in relevant journals, as beautifully written, fluent, and richly argued. From the general perspective, the papers are good enough to be considered, and their contribution to the History of Technology is estimated as high and distinct.
The variety of subjects presented analyses a number of scopes such as:
- the role of icebreakers in the twentieth-century in Sweden, Finland, and North America from a transnational perspective, and examines how the technology grew out of open-water vessels;
- a ‘media archaeology of keystroke’ from an interdisciplinary angle. Employing methods and theories reaching from literary studies, media studies, to philosophy and biopolitics, examining the history of keystroke dynamics, a biometric method still used today to identify users according to their typing patterns;
- assessment of the role of Air conditioning in modern newsrooms, which the author describes as ‘centers of identity formation and mediation for news workers’. While the history of AC has been studied in the past, the author argues that this has not been the case for this specific setting. The study examines the history of air conditioning in newsrooms as a black-boxed technology. The article explores the functioning of AC as a force of efficiency and modernization, as well as its role in information work and journalism. It originally interlaces the STS approach and various materials to reconstruct a nuanced story of AC. The story told of the introduction and assimilation of air conditioning to the modern newsroom;
- the history of industrialized chemical weapons in Germany between 1915 and 1945 against the backdrop of the history of race. It focusses on the ways in which techno-nationalists developed poison gas in order to uphold specific ethnic and racial definitions. Nuclear weapons, so the author argues, were complicit in constructing and maintaining whiteness and upholding racialized imperial power structures;
- debates the issue of economic development (Nafia) in Ottoman Iraq in the late 19th century: role of the state, especially via the monopoly of steam navigation on the Tigris. Original study of Ottoman Iraq’s developmentalist ideology (nafia) in the turn from the 19thto the 20th century through a close study of regulation of steamship navigation in the Tigris (and, to a lesser extent, the Euphrates).
- Precise analysis of the airplanes/ flying objects imagined in Miyazaki’s work: comparison with the Japanese and Italian productions of the inter-war period;
- the presence of the words “seaplane”, “hydro-aeroplane” or “hydroaeroplane” in the French specialized press (technical and military) a little before (1909) and after (until 1914) the first flights in the world of such a type of aircraft (1910);
- the workrk on the circulation of technology in Spain in the middle of the XX century, centred in the agriculture tractors. The main interest is in economic history;
- the cultural role of technology, centred in the aviation;
- a highly scholarly study on the origins of the use of satellites as new views of the Earth. The sources are in the French context and there is an analysis as a sociotechnical imaginary, provided by satellites (after being initiated by aircraft’s images);
- the study of medical film and its use in Japan and abroad. The author demonstrates the dual purpose of medical film production and use: first, educational and academic use; second, governmental use, which he calls “medical nationalism.” The study is original and highly relevant to the history of medical and media technology. Takes an innovative, “material” turn in the study of medical knowledge exchange between Germany and Japan, and emphasizes medical films as an important epistemic tool for teaching, learning, and academic presentations by Japanese practitioners. Appreciates for the first time the culture of medical film production in Japan, and connects the story—by following circulation—to other peripheries of the emerging Japanese empire;
- a curious mixture of approaches and concepts to analyze the production and reception of Secrets of Nature and Secrets of Life films both in terms of scientific popularization and of knowledge co-production. A contribution to the history of ciné-biology and the place of biologists in British public discussion;
- the construction of racialized understandings of chemical weapons in the German context during the interwar period. The author originally shows the connection of its development with the understanding of nationality, ethnicity, and race;
- the history of the perception of poison gas in Germany from World War I to the Holocaust, revolving around its technical control and its ideological meaning as a civilized weapon. It aptly pursues these connotations switching from the European to the colonial context, which enables the author to explore the significance of race in a technology of death.
As in the previous year, the Committee has decided to award an honorarium/diploma prize, besides the ICOHTEC Maurice Daumas Article Prize 2022, to the papers in second and third positions.
Thus, the ICOHTEC Maurice Daumas Article Prize 2022 (the twenty-second) will be awarded to Andrew Morris, a historian of History and Philosophy of Science at Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium, for his paper “’The joint labours of ingenious men’: John Smeaton’s Royal Society network and the Eddystone Lighthouse,” Centaurus Vol. 63, no. 3, 2021, pp. 513–531. DOI 10.1111/1600-0498.12398
Andrew Morris ‘s article paper considers the construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse as an example of complex and nuanced collaboration between scientists and engineers. The author introduces the concept of “hybrid knowers” to grasp not just a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge, but also the exchanges between different kinds of subject matter. This original study focuses on the role of Smeaton as a project manager and epistemic coordinator, which is highly relevant to the social history of technology. However, the author’s conceptual moves and conclusions seem underdeveloped in terms of contribution to explicit fields of study. Parts of the discussion remain shallow, though the paper is clearly written and contains illustrative materials.
Excellent inquiry into the emergence of hybrid experts around the institution of Royal Society, which moves beyond the artisan/scholar dyad and shows the synergies between different fields of expertise rather than relying on the oft-emphasized exchanges (in “trading zones”) between theory and practice, artisans and scholars. Uses newly uncovered sources, and a neglected cast of historical characters to tell a compelling story of the so-called Industrial Enlightenment.
Excellent, engaged investigation into the formation of two “astrocultures” in postwar Germany, and the importance of understanding ideological distinction—not just technological differentiation—with regards to the rhetoric of “dual use” and the formation of rocket technology.
This paper adds complexity and nuance to the old thesis linking the scientific revolution (or at least one of the institutions most commonly associated to it: the Royal Society) to the Industrial Revolution. Rather than simply dismissing the old narrative, it sets to understand collaborations between science and industrial innovators in the 18th century through a detailed study of a small group of people in Smeaton’s network, which enables the author to show the significance of exchanges between different but related fields of work that were simultaneously practical and theoretical.
The 2nd and 3rd Prizes (Honorarium) will be awarded to Gemma Cirac-Claveras and Daniel Brandau, respectively.
Gemma Cirac-Claveras is a historian of Science, a Research fellow at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. Gemma Cirac-Claveras ‘s paper Re-imagining the space age: Early satellite development from Earthly fieldwork practice, Science as Culture, (2021); DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2001451. An article that argues that although a focus on big science and the Cold War makes sense in many ways when looking at satellite development, there are other stories that are being ignored by this picture. She argues that older scientific practices (aerial photography and its associated field practices) are what ultimately shaped French satellite development in the 70s and 80s.
Daniel Brandau is a historian that teach at the Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include the history of science and technology, didactics of history and public history. Daniel Brandau’s paper “One Nation, Two Astrocultures? Rocketry, Security and Dual Use in Divided Germany, 1949–61, in Alexander C. T. Geppert et al. (eds), Militarizing Outer Space European Astroculture, vol. 3 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95851-1_7, offers an excellent cultural history of the differences in West and East German “satellite culture”. The article examines astroculture in divided Germany. Technopolitics meant that fields such as rocket technology had to be overseen by the state for they could potentially pose a risk to the Cold War. The author studies astroculture against the backdrop of German-German comparative division beyond the aspect of ‘pop-culture’, highlighting the asymmetries between East and West in the context of technoscience. In the West, private spacejet societies were tied to political and governmental interests. In the East, astrocultural activities were hard to carry out beyond the framework of the SED. The author argues that these activities contributed to the growing East West divide, shaping public debates. While the East understood militarism through ideology, separating civilians from military by locating it in institutions, the West focused on technoscientific networks beyond ‘government propaganda’ as it was the case in the East. Yet the fact that these networks became European ‘corner stones’ in the new order of the Cold War makes one wonder whether the West’s approach was not just as ideological, something the author alludes to without spelling it out explicitly. The use of primary and secondary sources as well as images and exhibition, here used as sources in their own right, is analytically sound and balanced and the article is well researched, written, and argued. Interestingly, Germany’s internal fear of remilitarization is something which is again discussed in public debate as military budgets are being increased.
Offers an excellent cultural history of the differences in West and East German “satellite culture” – if I may say so. There is really nothing I could point at that would not qualify Brandau for the prize.
PRIZE COMMITTEE
Maria Elvira Callapez, Researcher. Dr., [Prize Committee Chairperson],
CIUHCT, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Email: mariaelviracallapez@gmail.com
Antoni Roca-Rosell, Dr.
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
Email: antoni.roca-rosell@upc.edu
Bertrand Guillaume, Prof.
Université de technologie de Troyes (UTT), France
Email: bertrand.guillaume@utt.fr
Eike-Christian Heine, Dr.
Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany
Email: eikechristian.heine@googlemail.com
Hyeok Hweon Kang, Dr.
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Email: hhkang@wustl.edu
Laurent Heyberger, Dr.
Université de technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM), France
Email: laurent.heyberger@utbm.fr
Liliia Zemnukhova, PhD
Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SI RAN), St. Petersburg,
Russian Federation
l.zemnukhova@gmail.com
Lino Camprubí, Dr.
Universidad de Sevilla, Facultad de Filosofía, Spain
Email: lcamprubi@us.es
Mirjam Brusius, Dr.
German Historical Institute London
Email: m.brusius@ghil.ac.uk