Volume 21 (2015)

The traditional historiography of French technical education largely has focused on the physical sciences and higher mathematics as the keys to entering choice positions, especially at the École Polytechnique. Instead, this study argues that drawing, generally neglected by scholars of technical education, and geometry held first place outside the elitist École Polytechnique. It examines the importance of drawing by looking through the lens of the scholarships administered by the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale at various technical schools during the first half of the nineteenth century. The society distributed the scholarships (bourses) based on competitive exams (concours) that were creations of the Revolution that forged a new social and institutional order that valued merit over birth.

Drawing upon the experiment POLDER conceived in 1984, this paper explores how a system for collecting, producing, archiving and diffusing satellite data in support of different domains of the physical Earth sciences was constituted between 1985 and 2005 in France, a system that presented major departures from the one prevailing during the first 25 years of the history of space technologies. This system promoted the broad delivery and use of a specific form of satellite data, entailed a growing intervention of non-academic institutions in the data-handling and divided the scientific community into those who produce the data, those who consume them and those who curate them. It postulated that experimenters had no longer entire control of the experiment and that data were no longer their property. I associate this regime of practices with the introduction of remote-sensing techniques for observing the Earth – achieved in France mainly through radiometry. I finally suggest strong connections between the history of physical Earth sciences and these changing practices of collecting, producing, storing and disseminating satellite data. 

Recipe books and technical manuals from fifteenth and sixteenth century Spain contain abundant references to the use of alum. These citations refer to its primary use as a mordant in dyeing and to its secondary uses, including leather tanning. Reference to its use as a mordant in dyeing is found in the Dyeing Handbook by Joanot Valero, a text written in the dyers’ workshop of Saint Maurice (Valencia) at  the end of the fifteenth century. Its use as a material for leather tanning is witnessed in the Book of Trades from the monastery of Guadalupe, which also dates to the late fifteenth century, and contains an Ordinances section showing its use for the tanning and dyeing of different hides. Other applications of alum in metallurgical processes, illumination and ink making are found in separated recipes contained in fifteenth and sixteenth century medical or other manuscripts from Spanish libraries. 

The Soviet airship programme of the 1930s is one of the least studied topics in the history of Soviet aviation. Based on Imperial precedents, the Soviets thought that through their ambitious Five Year Plans they could rapidly catch up to and surpass the West in airship and all technical construction. Although lacking all the required components of such an ambitious aviation project, the Soviets believed that sheer revolutionary enthusiasm and ideology would ensure success. While public support for the programme started in 1930 and remained high for years, Communist Party support at best was guarded. Once the airship programme started, the Soviets quickly learned that this technology was far more complex than anticipated. Goaded by Stalin’s desire to create aircraft that could fly ‘faster, further and higher’ and for immediate results, the airship programme found itself in immediate trouble. This article will explore how technology and politics led to a ‘fantasy’ airship programme and a deeply flawed airship programme, both of which have largely been unexamined by scholars. 

After several years of in-depth study of the problem of mooring airships in the open, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo had his patent for ‘Moyens de campement pour ballons dirigeables’ accepted in Belgium on 2 February 1911. It became operative in the UK one year later under the title ‘Improvements in Mooring Arrangements for Airships’. This patent established the main characteristics of the structural device known today as the ‘Mooring Mast’. Clearly Torres Quevedo should be given credit as inventor and designer of the technological concept that facilitates the docking and mooring of airships in the open air, yet his contribution is almost unknown today and his achievements are not generally acknowledged in modern literature (printed or virtual). Thus, we have reconstructed the whole story of the Mooring Mast, detailing the controversies that surround the originality and priority of its design and the most significant precedent contributions from other authors. We also examine other devices that Torres Quevedo envisaged based on his initial concept: the floating Airship Carrier and the Rotating Track. Finally we explain the relevance today of Torres Quevedo’s technological inventions and their potential to assist in the future development of lighter-than-air flying machines. 

This article discusses the work of the most successful populariser of science and technology during the 1950s and 1960 in the Netherlands, Leonard de Vries. De Vries not only wrote books in which modern technologies were explained, but also started a movement of Hobby Clubs for secondary-school-age boys and girls (very similar to the American Science Clubs). His very optimistic view of technological and industrial progress contrasted sharply with the intense pessimism of most intellectuals at the time. The largely implicit dialogue between these extreme positions is analysed in this article. It is argued that De Vries’ popularity was based not so much on his arguments, as on his articulation of the emotional appeal of cooperative technological creativity. Without entering into the contemporary intellectual debate about technology, he offered a romantic alternative to the ‘cog-in-the-machine’ view of the cultural critics, a view that attracted many young people at the time.

This article explores tensions during the Cold War between the need to have infrastructure to enable truck transport in the countries of the Eastern Bloc and the restrictions the ‘shortage economy’ imposed on investments in infrastructure. Outsourcing, the use of external truck transport service providers by manufacturers and other enterprises, began in the Eastern Bloc in the 1950s along with new forms in the organisation of truck transport, such as ‘swap traffic’ or ‘encounter traffic’. However, conflicts between authorities that competed to oversee truck transport led to chaos in the overall transport sector and to deterioration in quality of service.

Arguably the most important Western source on the early history of gunpowder technology is the late-thirteenth-century manuscript, ‘Das Fuerwerkbuch’. When it was translated into English in 2001, it contained a commentary on the chemistry of many of the formulations given. These were largely dismissed as useless alchemical nonsense which could not work. Although some mysteries remain, much of the formulation can be understood either as contemporary ‘best practice’ or by comparison with modern pyrotechnic and explosive knowledge. This essay re-examines the underlying chemistry and demonstrates some surprising innovations anticipating much later claims.

In 1840, the former Swedish diplomat and gun foundry owner, Martin von Wahrendorff, patented a breech-loading mechanism for cannons. Its key component was a steel disc placed behind the projectile. Slightly conical when inserted, it was flattened out by the pressure of the igniting powder, thereby sealing the bottom of the barrel. With this device Wahrendorff became a pioneer of the breech-loading technique, and his cannons were introduced in a number of European countries – most successfully, it would seem, in Prussia. Starting from this technological achievement, one may ask if there were social conditions favouring Sweden and the Wahrendorff foundry as country and place of invention – this article points to the likely existence of such conditions. One might also wonder if and how the breechloading technique for cannon was linked to the simultaneously appearing technique of inserting rifles in the cannon barrel, for together these two improvements can be said to have initiated an artillery revolution around the middle of the nineteenth century.

Jonathan Coopersmith
Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine (Andrew Butrica) 182

James Rodger
Fleming Toxic Airs: Body, Place, Planet in Historical and Ann Johnson, eds. Perspective (Caroline Williams) 183

Sophie Gerber
Kitchen, Küche, Kühlschrank, Kilowatt: Zur Geschichte des Privaten Energiekonsums in Deutschland, 1945–1990 (Sylvia Wölfel) 184

Anna Guagnini and Luca Molà, eds.
History of Technology, vol. 32, Special Issue:  Italian Technology from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century (Barbara Bettoni) 187

Anique Hommels, Jessica Mesman and Wiebe E. Bijker, eds.
Vulnerability in Technological Cultures: New Directions in Research and Governance (Daniel Normark) 189

Ruth E. Iskin
The Poster Art, Advertising, Design, and Collecting, 1860s–1900s (Vicki Thomas) 191

Myles W. Jackson
The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race ( John Z. Langrish) 193

Wolfgang König
Der Gelehrte und der Manager – Franz Reuleaux und Alois Riedler (Stefan Krebs) 194

Victor Margolin
World History of Design: Two-volume Set (Artemis Yagou) 195

Clapperton Chakanetsa
Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Mavhunga Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe
( Jennifer Hart) 197

Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, Christina Holmes, eds.
Beyond  Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America (Ian Inkster) 200

Arwen P. Mohun
Risk: Negotiating Safety in American Society (Eric van der Vleuten) 201

Claudia Muntschick
Topographie der Bauten der Moderne/ Topografie Staveb Moderní Architektury (Cathleen M. Giustino) 203

Naomi Oreskes and John Krige, eds.
Science and Technology in the Global Cold War (Saara Matala) 205

Per Högselius, Anique Hommels, Arne Kaijser, and Erik van der Vleuten, eds.
The Making of Europe’s Critical Infrastructure: Common Connections and Shared Vulnerabilities (Matthew Adamson) 207

Carroll Pursell
From Playgrounds to PlayStation: The Interaction of Technology and Play (Allison Kreitzer) 210

Miroslaw Sikora
Die Waffenschmiede des ‘Dritten Reiches’: Die Deutsche Rüstungsindustrie in Oberschlesien Während des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Bochumer Studien zur Technik-und Umweltgeschichte, vol. 3) ( Jaromír Balcar) 211

Galit P. Wellner
A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cell Phones: Genealogies, Meanings, and Becoming (Petter Wulff ) 213

Daniela Zetti
Das Programm der Elektronischen Vielfalt: Fernsehen als Gemeinplatz in der BRD, 1950–1980 (Hans-Joachim Braun) 216