State Sponsored Technological Development

• 

  Technology Development

  State and private sector development of technology, privatization

• State involvement with legislation, regulation, resources and infrastructure
• State involvement with technological innovation questioned, competition and efficiency
• Polymer Incorporated, Canadian Crown corporation, manufacturing synthetic rubber
  • Polymer altered structure to match a competitive strategy: R+D and sales divisions, price competition with natural rubber, profit prioritization, export markets, process improvement, new product development, by-product sales
  • Market for synthetics, access to skilled scientists, advanced technology
• Postwar infant industry request denied, deregulation of industry
• Demand increases due to Marshall Plan funding and Korean war
• Synthetic materials and public opinion, advertising and education, automobiles
• Claim of private sector efficiency is historically contingent
• Ownership is not the crucial issue for competition

State Sponsored Technological Development is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Feudalism

• Fall of the Roman Empire, feudal economy, local defense and self-sufficiency, trade in luxury goods and slaves
• Land based feudal system, craft based industry
• Common ownership of land, forced labor
• Lords provided protection from aggressors, demanded service
• Technological advances (iron, ploughs, harnesses and looms, mills) dispersed
• Feudal economy expanded in scope over more land
• Trade and local manufacturing, importance of towns, wealthy capitalists
• Expansion and labor shortages, mechanical action and water and animal power

The Christian Church

• Church a landowner, source of literacy
• Church opposed the rising urban class of merchants and artisans
• 12^th century: universities in Europe, liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music), philosophy and theology
• 12^th century massive translation of Arabic works into Latin, classical ideas
• Islamic and Christian problems with natural philosophy: how was the universe created, how were faith and reason related, literal readings of the Bible and Koran, and the validity of mystical experience
• Conflict and change, economic needs
• European science and clerics, Islamic science and doctors
• Christian science part-time, supporting revelation with experience
• Astronomy for calendars and astrology
• All nature was a hierarchy, spheres for the fixed stars, planets and moon

Technology and Industry

• Technologies from China: the horse-collar, the clock, the compass, the sternpost rudder, gunpowder, paper and printing
• Improved means of production and transportation, trade
• Industry in the countryside, water and windmills (fulling cloth, forging iron and sawing wood), innovation outside of guilds
• Millwrights as “mechanics” base of knowledge for later innovations
• Mechanical clocks, magnets and the compass, force at a distance
• Gunpowder, Chinese origin, land based aristocracy and wealthy republics, technical skills and natural resources
• Gunpowder and medieval chemistry, theories of combustion
• Cannonball trajectories and dynamics, distillation, alcohol
• Paper, shortage of copyists, development of printing
• Printing with movable type, literacy, cheap books, trades and the learned classes
• Larger market for manufactured goods, rich merchants
  “The fundamental reason why that advance [of science] was so long delayed was that in a feudal economy, Islamic or Christian, there was no way in which rational science could be used to any practical advantage.” (246)

Medieval Science Part II is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• by 1800 math teaching in England was better than math teaching in France
• in addition, after 1750 British math was oriented towards practical teaching, French towards developing calculus and astronomy
• The British market was less regulated and less controlled by guilds
• Both the British and the French were increasingly influenced by markets, and markets demanded basic mathematical skills and education
• Some of the English preference for more practical mathematical explanations could be found in Newton’s preference for geometry over algebra
• An example of the differences between the two countries can be found in the steam engine, it was developed by the English and theoretically explained by the French
• Several British industrialists are profiled, showing how technical rather than purely mathematical knowledge became important, and carried social status with it
• They also discuss how these industrialists taught their workers technical knowledge rather than mathematical knowledge
• In short, the British education system put the focus on mathematical skills for practical purposes, whereas the French was more abstract
• In the early days of the industrial revolution, when technical knowledge was more important than abstract mathematical knowledge, this gave the English an advantage, as the revolution proceeded, abstract and complex mathematics became more important, and the UK advantage decreased

Mathematical Education and Industry is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Agriculture developed approximately 10000 years ago
• Growing of crops and the domestication of animals
• Change from nomadic tribes to settlements, knowledge of growing cycle of plants: Early agriculture expanded our knowledge of plants
• Populations growth, food storage, work
• Agricultural techniques: sowing, hoeing, reaping, threshing, storing, grinding, baking, brewing, weaving, pottery, etc.
• Surplus food as common goods, private property
• Agriculture and delayed gratification of work
• Religion, change of the seasons, fertility rites
• Artificial irrigation, food surplus, higher populations, early government: “hydrological hypothesis” — civilization arose from the development of large-scale irrigation agriculture; Large scale irrigation agriculture, centralized coordination for management, storage and distribution
• Creation of cities, administration, crafts, trade and labour
• Urbanization and division of labour, specialization
• Priests as administrators and rulers
• Urbanization, class differentiation, slaves, labourers and citizens

Metal, Transportation and Trade

• Use of metal for tools: trial and error (experimentation), material properties (chemistry)
• Use of bronze (tin and copper), guilds and metal working techniques
• Sharp edged tools, carpentry, machines out of wood
• Transportation technologies for food, goods, metal
• River valleys, water transport, sea travel, navigation, astronomy
• Wheeled cart and plough, agricultural expansion, measurement, recording and standardization
• Writing and trade, mathematics and transactions
• Large-scale public works and complex economic transactions, complex mathematics
• Architecture and early geometry, e.g. volume of pyramid
• Agriculture and the calendar, astronomy, astrology
• Medicine, prognosis and case knowledge
• Precious metals, measurement, chemistry

Class Divisions in Early Society

• Priesthood, mathematics, astronomy and medicine, upper classes
• Scholars versus labourers in Egypt, class society and basic technologies
• Benefits of production and labour
• Agriculture, war, expansion, technological progress
• Engineering weapons, siege engines, mining
• Wealth concentration and large civil engineering projects
• Large-scale hydrological agriculture: dams, canals, ploughs, sickles and wheels
• Slavery, expansion, casualties of war, separation of labour from knowledge
• Hieroglyphics, poetry, literature, techniques and technologies

Agriculture, Metals, and Class Divisions is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Theoretical changes and practical gains
• Rene Decartes and Francis Bacon
• Bacon’s work empirical, observations and common-sense, Descartes rational, logic and reason
  Induction – going from the particular to the general
  Deduction – going from the general to the particular
• Bacon and inductive method, accumulating observations
• Descartes and deductive method, clear and distinct ideas
• Descartes – system of ideas, Bacon – organization of scientists
• Bacon’s ideal scientific community, common sense, experiment and observation
• Bacon – science and industry, improvement of society
• Descartes – deductive logic and self-evident propositions, mathematical analysis, coordinate geometry
• Cartesian quantitative philosophy, separation of religion and science, matter as extension and motion, living beings as machines

The Expansion of Science

• Merchant interests and manufacturing interests
• Nation building, economic expansion, communication, cooperation and demand for scientific innovation
• Scientists independently wealthy, merchants, landowners, lawyers, doctors, clergy
• Royal Society of London and the French Royal Academy
• Science and practical issues: pumping and hydraulics (mining), gunnery and mechanics (warfare) and navigation (trade)
• Scientists traded ideas, published work, carried out public experiments
• Experimental basis to 17^th century science
• Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and air-pump, vacuum, atomism, corpuscular theory

Experimental Equipment

• Telescope and optical theory
• Microscope and new observations, microorganisms
• Barometer, pressure of the air, vacuum
• Air pump, experiments on vacuum and combustion, respiration, sound, electricity

Celestial Mechanics

• Copernicus and physics, rotating and revolving Earth
• Determination of longitude, astronomically and chronologically
• Motion of stellar bodies, centrifugal force and gravity
• Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), mathematics, astronomy, optics, mechanics, chemistry, alchemy
• Professor, warden of the Royal Mint, Knighthood
• Principia Mathematica Philosophia Naturalis (1687)
• force should decrease with distance, inverse-square law (1/r²)
• Force associated with a change in motion, rather than motion itself, objects tend to preserve their motion until acted upon by a force
• Universal gravity: planets, moon, falling objects, tides
• Unifies terrestrial and celestial realms

Revolutions in Science

• Disruption of capitalism and revolution in science
• Unity to 17^th century science, in persons (broad interests), ideas (quantitative analysis) and applications (practical)

The Scientific Revolution Part 2 is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Science and economic needs, other commercial inputs to science

Objectivity and the Growth of Science

• Descriptions of natural objects, personal acquaintance
• Scientific revolution occurred during the “first age of global commerce”
• Medicine and the life sciences, “folk” traditions of local knowledge
• “Head and the hand” reunited in the Renaissance
• Knowledge from tradesmen and common people, not just scholars
• Reports/specimens from travelers: sailors, tourists, doctors, merchants, diplomats
• European middle class, dominant personal, intellectual and economic interests
• Global trade in foreign spices, tobacco, chocolate, coffee and tea
• Collecting strange objects, cabinets of curiosities, elaborate gardens
• Colonial holdings and the “data base” of science, local knowledge
• Manorial production in Low Countries, middle class and other occupations
• Holland, Portugese, trade with East and resource extraction from the Americas

Commerce and Knowledge

• Descriptive knowledge of objects and economic transactions
• Methods for handling objects, trades, science and medicine
• Purchase of objects, knowledge, good taste and social standing
• Knowledge by acquaintance, not scholarly knowledge
• Objectivity: knowledge related to the detailed acquaintance with objects
• Realistic painting
• Early Modern preference for acquaintance over discourse
• Discoveries in new world and renewed exchange with East, questioning of ancients, importance of personal acquaintance

Pharmacy and Medicine

• Apothecaries “hunting” for substances, medical practice
• Hippocratic tradition of detailed descriptions of disease symptoms
• “Pleasure gardens” local and foreign plants, botanical gardens for pharmaceuticals
• Exotics, “cabinets of curiosity” wealthy and powerful
• Anatomy, dissections, direct knowledge of the inner workings of the body

Natural History

• Existing tradition of inquiry nature, natural history
• Pliny the Elder, complex and contradictory work
• Religious tradition of natural history

Scientific Growth

• We have seen a number of arguments that science improves under certain conditions
  Science grows in a democracy (Greece)
  Science grows when spurred on by economic demands (Bernal)
  Science grows when there is a “free space” for inquiry (Huff)
  Science grows when commerce increases (Cook)
• Open inquiry, abstract theoretical knowledge, knowledge of objects

Commerce and Science in The Scientific Revolution is a post from: The Glaring Facts

“Second Industrial Revolution”, internal combustion engine, electrical technology and chemicals

Industrial developments were interdependent

The Merger of Science and Engineering

• Scientific R+D was appropriated by industrial interests
• Scientific research:
  • Increased productivity
  • New methods of production
  • Required innovation and capital access
• Scientific R+D was long, and expensive, this required excess capital from:
  • Traditional manufacturing profits
  • Financial speculation
  • Industrial consolidation (vertical integration)
• 1920’s: over 500 corporate mergers
• Union Carbide, Dupont
• Union Carbide (carbon, alloys, oxyacetylene, liquid gas, bakelite and plastics)
• Dupont (explosives, gasoline, and automobile applications)
• Science, variety and industrial laboratories
• Petroleum, metallurgy, paper, cement, photography, fertilizers, steel

The Chemical Industry in the US

• Medieval dye technology: plant extracts and acids
• Industrial revolution: batch production, artificial substances
• US industry: Acids, alkalis, inorganic salts
• Industries that used chemicals: textiles, paper, leather, glass, soap, paint, petroleum, rubber, electrical equipment, fertilizers, insecticides, automobile
• Dye industry, textiles and printing
• Before WWI, German chemical companies:
• Initial lead
• Low cost chemicals
• Advanced university scientific research
• Ownership of patents
• After WWI, German patents redistributed, tariff barriers
• US industry: catalytic, electrochemical, organic synthesis and liquifaction processes
• Electrolytic process used to produce salts, soda, chlorine and bromine

The Reciprocal Relationship between Science and Industry

• Science, new processes, monopolies, and patent control
• Science directed by industrial interests, curriculum
• Science/engineering skills brought to mining, petroleum, steel, rubber, automotive industries

Electrical Industry

• Turn of century electrical industry dominated by a few large companies, electrical power generation, lighting, transportation and communications
• Engineers and scientists determined industrial model:
• Patents
• Research laboratories
• Technical training programs
• GE, Westinghouse and ATT
• 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, voice transfer over wires
• Reliable current, efficiency, standardization and reliability
• In 1885 Westinghouse, alternating current

Patents and Innovation

• Patents lasted for 17 years
• Securing of patents and mergers to gain control over patents
• Thomas Edison: Menlo Park, New Jersey, market guide to innovation, diffuse patents
• Complexity, technological systems and a network of innovations, mergers
• Patent maintenance and patent pooling
• Patent protection became more important as industry adopted more science and complexity

Vertical Integration

• Vertical integration: When a supplier of a product merges with a user
• Vertical integration used to reduce transaction costs and to guarantee supply and fixed prices in expensive R+D intensive industries
• Suppliers of raw materials and users of manufactured products
• Vertical integration: internal demand for purity, volume and variety
• Dupont, war, explosives, dynamite, nitroglycerine and black powder

Conclusion: The “Scientific Revolution” in Industry

• Science in industry at end of 19th century required:
• Control and purchase of patents
• Scientific training for employees
• Large scale industrial scientific R+D
• “Scientific revolution” in industry, corporate and scientific advancement

Science and Technology in the 19th Century is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• slowdown in the development of science in England in the late 17^th century
• Bernal attributes this slowdown primarily to social and economic factors, namely a new class of merchants had arisen who were less enterprising and more interested in secure investments like land
• There are other explanations:
• Newton’s science was close to complete and authoritative, so there was little new work to do and many people spent their time working out his ideas
• The immediate benefits of science had been achieved in navigation, subsequent developments took longer
• The class of manufacturers were not knowledgeable about or interested in scientists like the gentlemen scholars of the early 17^th century
• Scientific societies did emerge in new places, like Sweden, Russia and Prussia

Scientific Developments in the 18^th Century

• Bernal argues that science increased in scope rather than depth in this period
• The study of electricity was increased, originally for tricks and public demonstrations, but later for practical uses
• Botany was also developed, moving away from its primary focus on medicinal uses
• 18^th century scientific work was concerned with working out an accepted worldview (Newton’s), rather than establishing it against existing views
• The primary contribution of scientists in the 17^th century had been to navigation, they added little to manufacturing or agriculture
• Political changes also led to changes in science, for example in France, the Revolution led to changes in weights and measures to introduce the metric system and educational reforms that included science

Science and the Nineteenth Century

• The discovery of aniline artificial dyes in the 19^th century led to an expansion of the textile industry, and the destruction of natural dye economies like India’s
• Improvements in chemistry also led to better fertilizers and the use of anesthetics in medicine
• The nineteenth century saw the rise of specialized scientific societies, disciplines and journals, as well as the embracing of science by the universities
• Science had been transferred from the province of the wealthy amateur to that of the middle class professional
• There were interesting interactions between science and industry in the nineteenth century, for example, thermodynamics expanded through the use of data from steam engine operation
• By the late 19^th century you begin to see many of the outlines of modern industry, the application of science to all areas of production, the appearance of larger firms and conglomerates, the application of science to war on a large scale, and the rise of the industrial research laboratory

Precursors to the Industrial Revolution

• At the beginning of the industrial revolution England had:
• Agricultural technologies that emerged from population and land deficit (plow, horse collar, field rotation, hydraulic engineering), increased surplus, freed up labor for manufacturing
• Started to use pit coal rather than charcoal, which allowed for the development of steam engines
• An intense handicraft industry with division of labour (this predated the use of machinery)
• Established universities, professional organizations, guilds
• Established (poor) road infrastructure (horses & carts) & waterways for transport of goods and people
• A resource base in distant colonies, and the ability to bring resources home (navigation, astronomy, telescopes, ships, nation states)
• Machines (mills, metallurgy, clocks, printing press), individuals skilled with them
• There has been disagreement about the timing, the scope and the magnitude of the industrial revolution, but most historians agree that profound changes occurred in the eighteenth century
• In terms of raw output of manufactured goods, there were huge jumps in the end of the eighteenth century
• The industrial revolution represented a culmination of a long process of growth, one fed by the development of international markets and colonial acquisition of resources.

Part 1: The Industrial Revolution is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Science and technology, colonial expansion
• Capitalism, international trade and European expansion, new resources and land
• Technology (sailing ships, telescopes, clocks) and science (astronomy) and navigation, discovery and conquest, colonialism
  ASIDE: Technology and Navigation
  Mathematical equations: time, distance, angle, longitude or latitude
  Angles (sextants), direction (compass), position (telescopes), time (mechanical clock)
• Trade, conquest and colonization, population shifts, war and disease
• Christopher Columbus, 1492, Francisco Pizzaro, 1532, Cajamarca, Peru
• Inca Emperor Atahuallpa, 168 against 80,000
• Success attributed to efficiency and psychological impact of guns
• 4-1/2 million sq km (Peru + Chile + Mexico + Ecuador), 504,782 sq km Spain
• Europeans advantages: Horses (combat, speed, endurance), steel (weapons and armor), infectious diseases (decimating populations), centralized states (resources for colonization), writing + printing to gain information
• Number and accuracy of guns, decreasing psychological impact
• New world populations eventually adopted horse and guns
• Combat advantages of horses: vantage point, defense of height, speed, maneuverability, armor
• Horse collar, horse, stirrup, cavalry
• Steel weapons versus quilted armor, steel armor
• Smallpox, influenza, typhus and bubonic plague (95% of population)
• Technology, science and sailing ships
• Malaria, yellow fever and Europeans, Africa, India, SE Asia and New Guinea
• Resources of centralized nation states, market wealth
• Writing, inspiration, methods, maps, printing press
• Poor communication, information, misconceptions, speed, precedent

Science, Technology and Colonial Expansion is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Mid-1800’s, oil was found in open ponds in parts of the US
• This oil was taken to chemists for analysis, commercial applications were suggested
• Gasoline was originally a by-product of refining, it was disposed of as it was dangerous
• Early 1900’s, electric lighting replacing kerosene, internal combustion could increase demand for gasoline
• Gasoline: low flash point and a high temperature of combustion, dangerous but perfect for IC engine
• Cracking method needed to produce gasoline from crude oil
• Oil has complex, heavy, long chain molecules, must be “cracked” or broken down to produce lighter kerosene and gasoline
• By 1911, chemists working for oil companies developed methods to crack petroleum using high temperatures and pressures
• Improvements eliminated “knock”, increased efficiency & purity

Gasoline is a post from: The Glaring Facts