Propylaen Technikgeschichte, vol. 4, Netzwerke Stahl und Strom: 1840-1914.

This volume is the first one to appear in a five-volume history of technology published by the Propylaen Verlag under the editorship of Wolfgang Konig, professor at the Technical University of Berlin. The completed work the first of its kind in German--will trace in loose chronological order the origins of modern technological society, from antiquity to the 1990s. Its scope will be encyclopedic: some 2,500-3,000 pages of text primarily covering western societies, hundreds of illustrations (249 in the present volume alone), and a different author for each of the two parts making up each volume.

The organizing principle for this project is a combination of the modern approach known as the social construction of technology and a more traditional focus on those technological developments that became historical winners. Technological winners set the stage for subsequent successes, which ultimately brought forth the technological systems prevailing today. The editor is aware that this focus exposes the project to possible accusations of teleology and bias. He defends it in a separate introduction accompanying the volume with the argument that concentrating on winners is inherent in any quest to understand the present genetically and that the history of technology in particular is less interested in Ranke's "wie es eigentlich gewesen" than in "wie es eigentlich geworden" (how it really became). Hence the decision to emphasize the origins of future successes rather than evaluate all ramifications and explore the full life cycles of established technological systems (Editor's Introduction, 6).

This approach is certainly legitimate, although some readers might wonder precisely how it squares with another editorial decision: to arrange the material in the different volumes depending on the extent to which technological innovations managed to characterize their times. Both organizing principles have their logic, but they do not always coincide. In part two of the volume under review here, for example, Konig's survey of the period 1880-1914 includes a first-rate discussion of the origins of postindustrial society (service and information technologies such as early radio and data processing and leisure technologies such as amateur photography and motion pictures), because they anticipated the future. In contrast, the volume excludes any mention of early aviation, on the grounds that it did not leave enough of a mark on the years before 1914. Pointing out that one might have used the same reasoning to make the exact opposite choice is a minor squabble, to be sure. But it serves to remind us that history, more than anything else, is what the historians do. We frequently cannot (nor do we have to) reconcile that with the historicist principle of recreating the past's own order.

As the word "networks" in the title suggests, the volume's overall theme reflects the current state of conceptualization in its field. The authors treat the nineteenth century's new sources of energy, new materials and new technologies not so much as individual inventions or machines (technology as discrete things) but rather as the constituent elements of emerging large systems that define the forms and conditions of human existence. Thus, railroads, cities, factories, automobiles, electrification, etc. appear primarily in their capacity as all-encompassing and increasingly global networks. This approach builds important bridges to social and economic history--bridges further strengthened by an emphasis on the social construction of technological innovation as the volume's second, most important methodological principle. The authors fashion their explanations of invention and innovation in terms of the social and economic conditions as well as the technological culture, education, and scientific knowledge in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States.

Especially effective in this regard is the volume's second part. Konig weaves together the various elements of technological innovation--national variations in preexisting scientific knowledge and technological practice, supply, demand, cost structures, political and economic organization, educational institutions, inventions, bottlenecks, development, and evolving paths of usage--to fashion a highly readable and lucid account of how the new technologies emerged when and where they did. United States leadership in areas such as specialized machine tools and production technology, for example, as well as the early spread of automobiles, electrification and mass marketing, are discussed with reference to conditions such as the high cost and scarcity of skilled labor, the large market constituted by a relatively affluent farm population, and the country's democratic social order. Likewise, Konig associates German strengths in engineering design with factors such as the heritage of political and economic fragmentation, high energy costs, and technical education. He mentions the industrial latecomer's need to exploit market niches, Germany's patent system, its scientific culture, and its dependence on raw material imports to explain an early decision to industrialize invention in corporate research laboratories and the German dominance in synthetic dyes and pharmaceuticals. To be sure, such explanations are not original in and of themselves. Konig's systematic comparison of the various cultural, economic and technological factors across four countries, however, is new and constitutes a valuable contribution to knowledge. His chapters are models of what a solidly grounded comparative approach to the social history of technology can achieve.

Konig's most original discussion is his treatment of "technical education and science as forces of production" (393-413). He compares the organization of engineering education, the social status, rivalries and career patterns of engineers in the four countries to highlight subtle differences in their technological cultures. Those differences in turn form the background to a discussion of the problematic relationships among science, technology and industrial development in the decades before World War I. The author rejects older interpretations of the emergence of science-based industries after 1880 as a one-way street from science to industry. He argues persuasively that a complex pattern of reciprocal interaction emerged, in which scientific theory and industrial practice increasingly fertilized each other.

Another strength is Konig's use of visual aids. He has selected and positioned contemporary photographs, paintings, and drawings in the text so as to explain the principles of particular technologies where words alone might have fallen short. In some ways this is only fitting, since the language of much nineteenth-century technology was that of graphics, sketches and drawings. But one is struck by the contrast between Konig's inspired and unusual effort and Wolfhard Weber's rather less effective use of illustrations in part one. This is all the more disappointing because Weber's descriptions of the technologies that emerged between 1840 and 1880 tend to assume the reader is familiar with their principles and are less helpful than one would expect in a publication of this type. For an introduction to processes such as steel making, steam boilers, machine tools, paper making, etc., readers will have to look elsewhere.

While lacking in explanatory depth, Weber's discussion offers good breadth and covers not only the standard technologies but also those sometimes ignored, such as the evolution of sailing and steam ships, elevator and sewer systems, and agricultural machinery. Weber anchors those surveys in the broader social contexts, though his comparisons are somewhat less systematic than Konig's, and his perspective tends to emphasize the supranational unity of technology more than national peculiarities. He makes a point of stressing that before 1880 Germany trailed behind Britain, France and the United States in most areas.

With network and social construction of technology constituting backdrops, Weber ties together his survey with the theme, "technologies without balance." By this he means that the new technologies were an integral part of the wave of deregulation that swept the industrializing world during the heyday of liberalism. Technological change in this period was a one-dimensional development, ruthlessly pressed in the service of generating new wealth and power with total disregard of its harmful effects in dislocating society, causing physical harm and polluting the environment. By 1880, the tide had begun to turn, as governments and voluntary associations stepped in to control technology. This manifested itself in legislation concerning occupational safety, hygiene, urban planning, boiler inspections, railway nationalization, etc., all of which complemented the emergence of the interventionist state.

Thus, in Weber's view our modern sensibility concerning the positive but also the negative consequences of technology came into focus as early as the 1880s. To what extent this interpretation accords with Konig's argument--in line with Thomas P. Hughes--about the fundamental "technology acceptance" (547, 536-52) and technological enthusiasm among all social groups in all four countries before 1914 remains an open question. So does the problem of how one would reconcile Konig's "technology acceptance" with the well-known "politics of cultural despair," reactions against modernity, and emergence of a new consciousness that also characterized fin-de-siecle Europe.

In conclusion, if the present publication is any indication of the entire work, one can expect an major albeit somewhat uneven work of synthesis, reflecting the current state of the literature. Interpretive conflicts among the various authors will be inevitable, and different readers will find different things to criticize. Still, this should become an invaluable reference work for years to come. An inexpensive, paperback edition would bring it within reach of the individual scholar.

Kees Gispen University of Mississippi