TECHNOLOGIES

Technologies of Power

Technologies of Power

Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes
and Agatha Chipley Hughes

edited by Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht

The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England

© 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

Set in Sabon by The MIT Press.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Technologies of power: essays in honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha

Chipley Hughes/edited by Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-262-01184-0 (he: alk. paper)— ISBN 0-262-51124-X (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Technology — History. 2. Technology and state — History. I. Hughes, Thomas

Parke. II. Hughes, Agatha C. III. Allen, Michael Thad. IV. Hecht, Gabrielle.

T19.T36 2001

609— dc21 00-048041

Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Disciplined Imagination: The Life and Work of Tom and Agatha
Hughes ix

John M. Staudenmaier, S.J.

Introduction: Authority, Political Machines, and Technology's
History 1

Gabrielle Hecht and Michael Thad Allen

The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardiner Hubbard and the
Formation of the Middle Class in America, 1875-1880 25
W. Bernard Carlson

Culture and Technology in the City: Opposition to Mechanized Street
Transportation in Late-Nineteenth-Century America 57

Eric Schatzberg

The Hidden Lives of Standards: Technical Prescriptions and the
Transformation of Work in America 95

Amy Slaton and Janet Abbate

Engineering Politics, Technological Eundamentalism, and German Power
Technology, 1900-1936 145

Edmund N. Todd

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 175

Michael Thad Allen

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making: The British
Origins of Operational Research 215

Erik P. Rau

vi Contents

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 253

Gabrielle Hecht

The Neutrality Flagpole: Swedish Neutrality Policy and Technological
Alliances, 1945-1970 295

Hans Weinberger

About the Authors 333
Index 337

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the numerous individuals who aided us in
preparation of this book. We completed the introductory essay while
Michael Thad Allen was on leave at the Zentralinstitut fiir die Geschichte
der Technik at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. An informal seminar
organized by Matthias Heymann provided a lively forum for the discussion
of the guiding ideas around which this book took shape. The authors are
grateful for the comments of Alexander Gall, Jorg Hermann, Jeff Lewis,
Stephan Lindner, Falk Selinger, Mats Fridlund, and Nina Lerman. For their
insightful reviews, we thank David Nye, Ronald Bayor, Brian Balogh,
Douglas Flamming, Kenneth Ledford, Richard Kuisel, Geoff Eley, and
Karen Sawislak. Thanks also to Larry Cohen of The MIT Press for his sup-
port and patience. Our deepest thanks, of course, are reserved for Tom and
Agatha.

Gabrielle Hecht, Ann Arbor
Michael Thad Allen, Munich

Disciplined Imagination: The Life and Work
of Thomas and Agatha Hughes

John M. Staudenmaier, S.J.

Throughout almost fifty years she and I loved deeply and did history together.
— T. Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon, 1998), p. 309

Tom and Agatha Hughes, living together for nearly five decades, modeled
intellectual creativity for those close to them. They make a strong case for
intimacy as the heart of insight and mutuality as an essential condition for
sustained attention to the capricious historical record. They loved to talk
over what each saw in their several worlds — the academy, art, architec-
ture, the political order, their family, and their church. Having been party
to some of those conversations, I understood them to live with the expec-
tation that whatever they perceived, questioned, were annoyed at, or won-
dered about would not devolve into random fragmentary impressions.
Daily hstening wove a continuous fabric of interpretation, with each an
interlocutor for the other. The editors and contributors to this volume have
dedicated it to Agatha and Tom together. When I write about the evolution
of Tom's thought and of his place within the history of technology, the
roots of sustained insight that I witnessed in their relationship are never
far from my mind.

Tom Hughes sought theoretical understanding in densely worked his-
torical evidence, interrogating it and listening for surprises, sticking with
his material until it suggested conceptual themes that made sense of how
things happened. It was not his style to begin with theory so that he could
bring it to bear on evidence — and with good reason. During his early years,
it could be said that the closest thing to a theory of technological change —
a morally idealistic engineering creed combined with a postwar version
of American manifest destiny — was so pervasive that its influence passed

X Staudenmaier

virtually unnoticed. The Cold War ideology, rightly emphasized by
Gabrielle Hecht and Michael Thad Allen in their introduction to this vol-
ume, embodied the belief that science and technology, when well funded
and unfettered by local political interventions, led in a clean line toward
democratic societies; that science, technology, and democratic society
together, uniquely in human history, transcended the superstition, passion,
and vested interests of the traditional political order. It made for thin soup
as a theoretical basis for historical interpretation.

The history of technology emerged as a (barely) visible discipline in the
late 1950s with the founding of the Society for the History of Technology
(SHOT) and its journal Technology and Culture} The founding members —
Tom was one — understood the journal's title as a deliberate step away from
the reigning definition of the field seen in the multi-volume internalist his-
tories then appearing in Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.^ If the series
edited by Singer, Holmyard, Hall, and Williams (Oxford University Press,
1954-1958) was called History of Technology, the new journal's title would
emphasize context — technology and culture. By the end of its first 20 years,
the field showed solid intellectual promise as an emerging community of
discourse. The quality of publications in articles and monographs grew
measurably stronger, so that SHOT entered the 1980s as a small but healthy
and growing subdiscipUne.

We can identify two major generalizations that had become broadly
accepted in SHOT by 1980. First, a host of case studies had established the
bedrock principle that every technology must be understood in terms of the
particularities of its context of origin. Historical actors, understood in terms
of their motives, world views, and resources, make a difference in the out-
come of technological design decisions; so do the ambient social order, its
political and economic character, and its world view.^ Second, these techno-
logical actors have a distinctive cognitive style, a blend of theoretical exper-
tise and experience-based pragmatic judgment. Historians of technology
repeatedly explored the relationship of technological practice with science,
manifesting near unanimity on the core premise that technology is not
"applied science." Technological thinkers, these studies indicate, use sci-
ence as one sort of epistemological equipment among several. Technically
creative actors, principally engineers and inventors, know things that the
larger society needs to know about the nature of technological creativity.

Disciplined Imagination xi

especially the tension between precision and the constraints of the work-
ing world.

By 1980, then, historians of technology had arrived at a consensus that
appeared to flatly contradict the postwar paradigm of unfettered science
and technology driving worldwide development inevitably toward repre-
sentative democracy. They argued that there is no such thing as autono-
mous technological progress, resulting from the application of an equally
autonomous science, operating free from the constraints and complexities
of the human context. What came to be known as "contextualism" had
become mainstream."*

During these same years, however, a number of mostly unstated work-
ing assumptions revealed the latent power of the Cold War model of lin-
ear progress. When we look for patterns among the research topics chosen
by historians of technology during the period and when we consider top-
ics seldom studied and questions rarely asked of the evidentiary base, we
find a shadow consensus that reveals limitations in SHOT's early con-
textualism.

Consider the most sahent of these assumptions: that the term "technol-
ogy," as described by the patterns of research topic choices, was exclusive-
ly Western and was neatly framed by the chronology and geography of
Western Civilization courses taught as a core history requirement in most
universities at the time. Histories of technology concentrated mostly on suc-
cessful strategic actors: the engineers, inventors, investors, laboratory
research teams, and managers whose work was understood as creating and
finalizing the design of technologies and moving them into the world of
ordinary use. Once designed and produced, technologies became less his-
torically interesting, perhaps because they were assumed to maintain a sta-
ble form until rendered obsolete by newer technologies. Technological
success stories appeared much more frequently than failure stories.
Paradigmatically, technological cognition meant defining a goal, marshal-
ing resources to achieve the goal, and responding to obstacles as they turned
up along the way. Other actors — wage workers, product users, non-
Westerners, women — appeared in these accounts, if at all, as deep back-
ground, their voices and influence muted. Finally, historians of technology
were typically male, should probably have had some engineering back-
ground, and lived in the United States or Great Britain.

xii Staudenmaier

These are, to be sure, excessively delineated assertions with exceptions at
every point. Nonetheless, they reveal the profile of the field's inchoate iden-
tity as simultaneously creative and narrow. All the assumptions taken
together fit nicely into the Cold War ideology noted briefly above. The thin
clean line of an apolitical and ideology-free Western science and technolo-
gy leading directly toward Western-style democratic societies legitimized a
mentality that would brush aside the perspective of anyone who did not
hold a seat at the technological design table and treat influences emerging
from outside the design plan as interruptions requiring deft management
rather than as voices requiring a change of concept. The West emerged from
World War II with a fistful of technological and scientific trump cards for
the game of global dominance that followed. Wartime research and devel-
opment experience, especially as seen in the United States, seemed to argue
for giving expert strategic actors as free a hand as possible to design seem-
ingly impossible complex systems to serve domestic markets and national
defense. In view of their field's origins in the engineering education com-
munity, it is hardly surprising that most historians of technology in the
founding generation wrote narratives congruent with the spirit of the time.

Still, the field's near-unanimous focus on the designers and proprietors of
Western technologies carried powerfully subversive seeds embedded in its
central methodological assumption. When SHOT's founders chose
Technology and Culture as the title of the society's journal, they signaled a
break with the predominantly internalist consensus of extant histories of
technology. Their new contextualism required that they situate every tech-
nology within the particularities of its historical context. Opening the con-
textual door to the vagaries of the human endeavor meant in principle that
linear explanations of design outcomes were subject to interrogation and
that technological narrative generally lay open to theoretical interpretation.

Tom participated in SHOT, this emerging community of discourse, as a
local citizen, even as his contextual work began to generate a series of
exceptionally influential conceptual innovations. Tom first appears in
shot's public records as chairman of the Program Committee in 1961. In
the mid 1960s, and again in the early 1970s, he served on the executive
council. During the 1970s, he also chaired the nominating committee and
was elected vice president and then (in 1979) president. In the fall of 1973,
Tom joined the History and Sociology of Science (H&SS) department at

Disciplined Imagination xiii

the University of Pennsylvania. He brought with him a growing reputation.
His first book, Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1971), had won the Texas Institute of Letters' Best Book
in the Fields of General Knowledge prize in 1971 and SHOT's Dexter Prize
in 1972. Tom settled in at Penn, where over more than 20 years he mentored
a steady stream of graduate students, many of them contributors to this
volume. He introduced historians of technology into the mix of scholars
who graced H&SS's prestigious Monday afternoon colloquium, and he was
proactive in early history of technology programming for British and
American television. His second book. Networks of Power: Electrification
in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)
appeared at the end of SHOT's maturing period — a period in which the
field at large, and Tom for the most part, concentrated on the United States
and the United Kingdom.^

What were Tom's principal thematic contributions during these 20
years? Three stand out. The first, his "technological momentum" meta-
phor, appeared in a short classic titled "Technological Momentum:
Hydrogenation in Germany 1900-1933" (Past and Present, August 1969,
pp. 106-132). At first glance, momentum looks to be the straightforward
observation of an obvious pattern: once a technology takes on institutional
life, it becomes hard to stop. But embedded in this simple metaphor were
two ideas that have characterized Tom's thinking ever since and have exert-
ed lasting influence on subsequent scholarship. On the one hand, a "tech-
nology" that acquires momentum reveals itself to be a subtle complex of
linked human and nonhuman agents — some group of experts, research
and production facilities, investment habits, communication networks,
cognitive paradigms, and so on. Twenty years later, particularly in the
"social construction" movement that Tom championed early on, these
same notions would appear under headings such as "heterogeneous engi-
neering" and "actor-networks." On the other hand, by locating his story
of technological momentum in the Weimar Republic, Tom focused atten-
tion on the deeply ambiguous role of the German research and engineer-
ing establishment in the rise of National Socialism. Are technological
experts morally responsible for the uses to which their creations are put?
Can there be any engineering, sponsored in any context, that is morally
neutral?

xiu Staudenmaier

In Elmer Sperry, Tom took a different tack, looking in the life of a single
prolific inventor for models that would explain how creative individuals
negotiate the world of market realities. As with German hydrogenation,
Tom found his narrative thread in a specific class of technological prob-
lems. Sperry's inventions and business initiatives were all variations on his
core insight into feedback control. But Tom also saw Sperry's career as
exemplifying an essential technological theme of the twentieth century: that
technological creativity is more than individual insight and must be under-
stood in terms of the institutional dynamics that call it into existence and
sustain the design work it requires.'

Tom's 1985 Dexter Prize citation, for Networks of Power, introduces
him as a professor at Penn and the Torsten Althin Professor of the History
of Technology and Society at the Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm, the latter a chair he would first occupy in 1986. His involve-
ment with Sweden and his year (1983) at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
serve as career markers for widening geographical and cultural horizons.
Networks of Power reflects the expansion of his transatlantic perspective
and is a culmination of his long-standing interest in Germany, Britain, and
the United States, seen here for the first time as elements within a single
interpretative frame. In contrast with the Sperry biography, the central his-
torical figures in Networks are systems, which, like any historical agent,
must be interpreted in terms of the culturally conditioned complexities of
their contexts. Electrical systems cannot be understood without attention
to the technical constraints governing power generation and distribution
and the economic constraints of their host societies. However, for a thor-
ough understanding of the technological and economic dimensions of a sys-
tem, we must also study the ideological and even the aesthetic predilections
of its key actors. Looking at large technological systems from these sever-
al perspectives shows them to be "evolving cultural artifacts rather than
isolated technologies."^ The systems approach, as articulated in Networks
of Power, remains one of the handful of foundational theories available to
scholars in the field.

It is not surprising that Tom encountered the group of European sociol-
ogists who studied technologies as socially constructed before many of his
American counterparts. Frequent transatlantic travel made him familiar
with emerging trends in Europe. Nor is it surprising that the "social con-

Disciplined Imagination xv

struction" school, with its insistence on the essential heterogeneity of tech-
nological innovation and design, would commend itself to the author of
Sperry and Networks, or that his work would incline social constructivists
to him. Tom's relationship with the group probably helped them catch the
attention of many who could, already by 1980, be called "traditional" his-
torians of technology.^

European relationships also provided a seed bed for Tom's next two
major works, American Genesis and Rescuing Prometheus. American
Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm (Penguin,
1989) uses Tom's earlier published work and material he developed for
courses in American and European history of technology over the previous
30 years to reinterpret American history as technologically centered.' He
tested the American Genesis argument by using it as subject matter of cours-
es he taught to graduate students in engineering at the Royal Institute of
Technology in Stockholm beginning in 1986. To scholars who followed
Tom's thinking. Genesis broke significant new ground primarily in its treat-
ment of European responses to American industrial prowess and American
modernist aesthetics, particularly in architecture and painting. Tom's prin-
cipal innovation, however, and again he proved to be an early harbinger of
a later SHOT trend, was to redefine his audience and recalibrate his rhetoric
accordingly. American Genesis, his first book to be published by a non-
academic press (first Viking, then Penguin), addresses the larger reading
public."' His success in this new venue has been widely acknowledged,
nowhere as notably as in its inclusion in the Pulitzer committee's short list
of finalists for the 1989 Prize.

Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon, 1998) was completed a week before
Agatha's unexpected death in the summer of 1997. That book, more than
any before it, shows the importance of Tom's close relationships with
practicing engineers, especially at MIT and Stanford. It was also stimu-
lated by a series of international conferences on large technological sys-
tems begun in Berlin at the Wissenschaftszentrum and continuing for
nearly 10 years in Germany, the United States, Australia, Sweden, and
France. The sources on which Rescuing Prometheus depends include
interviews with a host of players in the Cold War world of big national
defense projects (SAGE, Atlas, ARPANET) and an equally impressive
array of designers, architects, and political leaders involved in Boston's

xvi Staudenmaier

Central Artery/Tunnel project. Tom's choice of topics shows his growing
conviction that complex systems hold the key to understanding the United
States in the twentieth century.

Rescuing Prometheus resembles Networks of Power more than Amer-
ican Genesis in its concentration on technological matters. Despite the inter-
national influence of the large-technological-systems conferences, Rescuing
Prometheus is notably less transatlantic than either Networks of Power or
American Genesis. Rescuing Prometheus concentrates on the East Coast
and the West Coast as seats of the military-industrial-engineering complex.
Project SAGE (centered at MIT) and the Atlas missile effort (centered in
Southern California) provide case studies of very complex managerial pro-
jects requiring enhanced versions of the systems-engineering and opera-
tions-research techniques that emerged from Allied military practice during
World War II. These projects were led by engineers who had come to respect
the importance of heterogeneity and flexibility in situations where hundreds
of contractors had to work together with ample funding but very tight time
constraints.

Then, in a hinge chapter, these same big-system innovators run aground
during the Johnson administration's attempt to apply systems approaches
to America's urban inequities and its war in Southeast Asia. They learned,
to their intense frustration, that the absence of an anti-Soviet political con-
sensus rendered Atlas-style project management futile. What they faced here
was less problem solving than "managing mess."" SAGE and Atlas, with
their tight lines of control and their need to continually push the current
state of the art to deliver a specified product of enormous complexity, were
high-water marks for modernist engineering. In sharp contrast, Boston's
"Big Dig" and the ARPANET, the topics of the last two major chapters,
represent what Tom calls a postmodern style in which design negotiations
include constituents who are not members of the expert community. It is
no longer sufficient to push the state of the art. ARPANET'S nonhierarchi-
cal management structure can still be detected in the Internet's decentralized
network design. Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel Project is comparable to
the Atlas project in complexity and cost, but not in its participatory charac-
ter. The CA/T Project is "a messily complex embracing of contradictions." '-
Thus, Rescuing Prometheus pulls Tom's earlier work inside out. Instead of
seeing complexity as a necessary interpretative element for the study of crea-

Disciplined Imagination xvii

tivity, he now treats creativity as an important interpretative component
for studying the management of complexity.

What generahzations can we draw from the evolution of Tom's work?
Do his core publications show an engineer-historian who loves the engi-
neering act, its respect for precision, its supple ability to bring order to the
cantankerous vagaries of reality? Or do we see here a scholar acutely aware
of the Janus face of the Western engineering tradition, beautiful with elegant
design while its monstrous complexities open it to moral critique and ironic
teasing? Both, I think. Tom's ironies, he might argue, should not be con-
strued as license to overlook the sheer human achievement we find when-
ever we look closely at technological endeavors. Nor should respect for that
level of achievement distract us from the potential for structured violence
and cultural crudity that we find when systems take on the aura of preter-
natural inevitability.

I find it provocative to wonder how much Agatha's intellectual, aesthetic,
and moral scope influenced the growing complexity of Tom's interpretative
frames of reference. At academic conferences Agatha routinely considered
contextual factors when assessing the content of presentations. Over the
years, I found myself seeking Agatha out at such events, both from long
friendship and because I always learned from her perception of the pro-
ceedings. She could be counted on to interpret the academy with wit and
insight, not dismissing the importance of the formal argument but situa-
ting it in its present context — the physical arrangement of the room, the
social dynamics at work in the audience, even the time of day. She was
a master of integration — that is, of what Tom, in his later books, called
"managing messy complexity."

I will conclude with an anecdote that says a great deal about Tom and
Agatha in another role. Both were committed to the intergenerational
responsibilities involved in mentoring graduate students. Their hospitality
blended superb meals, hving-room warmth, and an understanding ear for
personal troubles with seminar intensity and tough editorial assessment.
When, after some years of research and taxonomy building, I finally pre-
sented Tom with a draft of the first chapter of my dissertation, he read it and
scheduled a conference with me. I noted, as I entered his office, that he did
not rise and take a seat alongside me, as was his usual practice. He faced me
across the large desk and began: "This will be much more difficult than I

xviii Staudenmaier

had thought, and we will be fortunate if we are still on speaking terms when
we are finished." Over the better part of the next hour, he dissected my
draft, arguing with compelling logic that it was intellectual and rhetorical
rubbish. Then he shifted focus, telling me that he did not know what would
be required for me to complete the dissertation. Perhaps I needed to leave
Philadelphia; I almost certainly needed to stop my counseling practice,
because I was "not emotionally engaged" in the project at hand. I left
stunned, but with time I saw the wisdom of his diagnosis. I terminated my
counseling practice and all other working commitments and settled down
for a year's hard writing. Tom gave each chapter meticulous attention, fre-
quently sending me back to work on some still-unclear section. When the
task was complete, I headed off into my professional life. About 15 years
later, over coffee somewhere in Manhattan, Tom reminisced about that ter-
rible encounter across his desktop. "Agatha and I," he recalled, "agonized
for days about what to do with what you had turned in. Clearly, it was ter-
rible, and nothing at all like your earlier seminar papers. But it was not easy
to know how to proceed. You were approaching forty rather than thirty,
and were a close friend. Finally, we decided that I had to take a very hard
line with you. But we didn't find the decision easy at all." Such a lovely
moment, to learn that as a graduate student one was the object of agonized
and careful attention by these two soul friends. As they treated me, so I
think they treated the authors of the essays in this volume and so, most of
all, they treated one another. All of us writing in these pages are very much
in their debt.

Notes

1. Mel Kranzberg took on the lion's share of the work involved in launching SHOT.
For several decades he served both as secretary for the society and as editor-in-chief
of Technology and Culture. It is the near unanimous opinion of SHOT members
that he set the tone of the society. He died in December of 1995. In its July 1996
issue, Technology and Culture published an extensive set of recollections in his
memory.

2. A History of Technology , ed. C. Singer, E. Holmyard, A. Hall, and T. Williams,
5 volumes (Oxford University Press, 1954-1958); Histoire Generale des Tech-
niques, ed. M. Daumas, 3 volumes (Presses Universitaires de France); A. A.
Zvorikine et al., Geschichte der Technik, 2 volumes (Russian edition: 1962; German
translation: Leipzig, 1964).

Disciplined Imagination xix

3. For this last notion, Tom used Zeitgeist in a 1962 article ("British Electrical
Industry Lag: 1882-1888," Technology and Culture 3, no. 1, p. 39): "The [British
electrical] lag came out of a confluence of the legislative, technological, and eco-
nomic — and something more: the Zeitgeist. . . . The British 'spirit of the times' as
manifest in the electrical industry lag was characterized by prudence. American 'go-
aheadness' set off this circumspection and caution in Britain, and the Electric
Lighting Act of 1882 — for one thing — was a symptom of it."

4. For detailed arguments supporting these assertions about contextualism circa
1980, see my book Technology's Storytellers (MIT Press, 1985), especially chapter
2 (on the context of origin of new technologies) and chapter 3 (on the relationship
between science and technology).

5. Tom was not as preoccupied with the US and the UK as was the field generally.
He published his study of technological momentum in Germany 2 years before the
Sperry book. Networks of Foiver would give equal weight to electrification in
Germany, Britain, and the United States.

6. In the words of the Dexter Prize citation (Technology and Culture 14, no. 2,
1973, p. 422): "Professor Hughes has been able to show how, through the life's
work of an outstanding individual, great historical changes can be seen at work:
the transformation of the self-made single-handed inventor into the research devel-
opment team, the institutionalization of the process of invention, the effects of war
in coupling state and private business in a co-operative research effort."

7. Quoted in the Dexter Prize citation (Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (1986),
pp. 566-567) in the following context: "Perhaps the greatest service rendered by
Hughes's scholarship is the emphasis he places upon the human dimensions of tech-
nological history and the considerations that must severely qualify any attempts to
impose theories involving technological autonomy or economic determinism upon
the stubborn facts of cultural and other forms of diversity. It is clear from a reading
of his work that the personal idiosyncrasies of an Oskar von Miller or a Charles
Merz could and did make a difference in the manner in which highly significant
electrical power transmission and distribution systems were conceived and devel-
oped. . . . Such sensitivities contribute measurably to the quality of Hughes's insight
and confirm us in our consciousness that the history of technology is, after all, a
humanist discipline."

8. "SCOT" (Social Construction of Technology) is often, and erroneously, used as
a generic title for a more complex group of social scientists. Within the larger com-
munity of the sociology of technology, social construction is distinguished from
actor-network theory. Together, however, this group of scholars have become a
remarkably influential source of theoretical models in the history of technology. For
an early collection of work as well as an indication of Tom's involvement, see The
Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. W. Bijker, T. Hughes, and T. Pinch
(MIT Press, 1987).

9. "By 1900 they [Americans] had reached the promised land of the technological
world, the world as artifact. In so doing they had acquired traits that have become
characteristically American. A nation of machine makers and system builders, they

XX Staudenmaier

became imbued with a drive for order, and control. . . . Perceptive foreigners are not
so prone to sentimentalize America's founding fathers, frontiersmen, and business
moguls. . . . Foreigners have made the second discovery of America, not as nature's
but as technology's nation." (American Genesis, pp. 1-2)

10. "This book, despite its emphasis on invention, development, and technologi-
cal-system building, is not a history of technology, a work of specialization outside
the mainstream of American history. To the contrary, it is mainstream American
history, an exploration of the American nation involved in its most characteristic
activity." (American Genesis, p. 2)

11. Rescuing Prometheus, p. 194, quoting Tom's interview with Russell Ackoff,
November 4, 1993.

12. Rescuing Prometheus, p. 304.

Technologies of Power

Introduction

Authority, Political Machines, and
Technology's History

Gabrielle Hecht and Michael Thad Allen

We have understood for centuries that technology is an instrument of
power. Scholarly investigations of how technologies reflect, strengthen, per-
form, or change power relationships are, of course, much more recent. Yet
calls for them issued from the best-known historians and social scientists of
the twentieth century. Marc Bloch, soon to face execution at the hands of
his Nazi captors, declared in The Historian's Craft:

Successive technological revolutions have immeasurably widened the psychologi-
cal gap between generations. With some reason, perhaps, the man of the age of
electricity and of the airplane feels himself far removed from his ancestors. With
less wisdom, he has been disposed to conclude that they have ceased to influence
him. . . . [To those with a] machine-dominated mentality, it is easy to think that an
analysis of their antecedents is just as useless for the understanding and solving of
the great human problems of the moment. Without fully recognizing it, the histo-
rians too are caught in this modernist climate.'

Paradoxically, the pace of technological change seemed, then as now, to
render the past more distant while rendering history more essential. Bloch 's
contemporary Helmuth Plessner argued that unprecedented and seemingly
unending changes in the modes of work, communication, and transporta-
tion had made the historian indispensable. He or she had to pick through
the scraps and remainders of the past in order to weave a coherent whole
cloth of national identity. Later generations of historians have been less
enthusiastic about forging national identity but still have engaged in the
task of presenting the past as a composite picture of that which makes us
what we are.^

One need only strike "electricity" from Bloch's sentences and replace it
with "information technology" to give his text a present-day ring.^

2 Hecht and Allen

Constant dynamic industrial change will and must occasion disputes about
cultural, political, and social change. The malleability of technological
power has prompted myriad attempts to make technological changes con-
form to utopianism, or dogma, or virtue, or equality. Though no particu-
lar set of values, political institutions, or cultural expressions necessarily
accompanies technological change, history has shown time and again that
those caught up in that change will always attempt to fix its cultural or
political dimensions. Understanding these persistent yet ever-changing links
between technology and cultural, political, and social power requires strong
voices informed by history.

Among such voices, few have been as influential Thomas Parke Hughes,
whose works were greatly enriched by the contributions of his late wife,
Agatha Chipley Hughes. The corpus of their scholarship has always sought
to explain how political and institutional relationships construct the devel-
opment, and the power, of technology. From his early work on the inven-
tor Elmer Sperry through his investigation of electrification in Europe and
the United States, his study of American technological enthusiasm, and his
latest work on postwar, postmodern technological systems, Hughes has
repeatedly answered the question "Is technology an autonomous force in
society?" with a decisive "No." In developing the notion of "technological
systems" as an analytic tool, he has demonstrated how technological change
both shapes and is shaped by social change. Hence the double meaning of
Networks of Power: electricity drives machines, light bulbs, and tramways,
but at the same time its constant flux in networks reflects and makes tan-
gible the political life of nation-states. Thus electrical networks are
"charged" with corruption in Chicago, with localism in London, and with
centralized Social Democracy in Berlin. While for many years scholars
tended to focus either on the social construction of the technological or on
the technological construction of the social, Hughes always emphasized
both these domains simultaneously.

Hughes has argued convincingly that technology (and those who control
it) can shape history; this shaping, however, must always be understood in
social as well as technological terms. Thus, the endurance of large techno-
logical systems — their "momentum" — stems both from their embedded-
ness in social values and from their materiality. Social choices shape
technological development. But the resulting physical, financial, and insti-

Introduction 3

tutional durability of systems means that, once developed, they — and the
values they uphold — cannot be changed easily. As material manifestations
of human choices, systems acquire momentum. In so doing, they embody,
reinforce, and enact social and political power. Thus, human power rides
upon the history of things. The theoretical force of Hughes's approach to
large technological systems, coupled with his insistence that technology is
not the sole determinant of historical destiny, has led historians (and other
social scientists) to return over and over again to his work.

Hughes's scholarship on technological systems was instrumental to estab-
lishing the history of technology as a field. Yet, never content with discipli-
nary confines, he has continually endeavored to show how insights into the
nature of technological change matter to scholarship — and practice — out-
side the field. For Hughes, the history of technology is human history. In the
metal blades of turbines, the cement, glass, and steel of modern architecture,
and the graphs of electric current loads, he — and Agatha perhaps even more
so — found human passion where so many "general" historians saw only
inert objects. For Hughes, American Genesis is not just a history of tech-
nology but also a history of the United States.

This concern with broad historical questions is the dimension of
Hughes's work that inspired the present volume. Technology is central to
human history; everywhere it shapes and is shaped by political, cultural,
social, and economic change. Yet outside our field few historians have
taken up the challenge of understanding technological change in complex
historical terms. This neglect has gotten worse rather than better in recent
decades. Ironically, the professionalization of our field may have con-
tributed to its marginalization by luring scholars interested in technology
away from larger historical meetings and journals into more specialized
terrain."* But the theoretical and empirical insights that have given our field
its intellectual identity should now compel us to move toward other his-
torians. In 1991 Leo Marx asked "Does it make sense, once historians have
abandoned the internalist method, to segregate the history of technology
from the rest of history?"' Recently our profession has begun to discuss
this question anew, asking how we can make our scholarship more visible
outside the domain of science and technology studies (STS). By addressing
broad historiographic concerns with empirical research on technological
change, the contributors to this volume hope to suggest strategies for how

4 Hecht and Allen

the history of technology can contribute to — and reformulate — some of
the most pressing questions faced by historians today.

We do this in the spirit that marks the many publications on which Tom
and Agatha Hughes labored throughout their lives. Tremendous as their
theoretical contributions (not just to the history of technology, but also to
STS more generally) have been, they have never indulged in theory for its
own sake. The very strength of their theoretical insights has derived from
their meticulous empirical grounding. We strive here to emulate this rigor.
Rather than limit ourselves to general programmatic pronouncements, we
have sought to sketch out how our research illuminates specific historio-
graphic problems: the relationships between expertise and authority, or
those between knowledge and the distribution of labor; the development
of political ideologies; the changing meanings of modernity; the construc-
tion of national identity; the nature of political practices in the Cold War;
and more. We further hope to honor Tom and Agatha by organizing the
contributions in a manner that evokes the evolution of their scholarship
(which John Staudenmaier has outlined above).' The essays are thus orga-
nized topically and in rough chronological and geographical order. They
begin with the late-nineteenth-century United States: W Bernard Carlson
links telephone systems and political ideologies, and Eric Schatzberg
explores streetcars, urban politics, and culture. Amy Slaton and Janet
Abbate then offer a comparison of US labor standards in the building
industry in the early twentieth century with standards in the development
of computer network protocols in the late twentieth century. In two essays
on Germany, Edmund Todd discusses electrification and national politics
in the 1930s Weimar period and Michael Thad Allen explores the mean-
ings of modernity during the Third Reich. Erik Rau, in an essay on Great
Britain during World War II, analyzes the power dynamics of expertise
based on operations research. Next we move on to the Cold War period,
with Gabrielle Hecht's essay on the relationship between nuclear power
and national identity in France. Finally, Hans Weinberger contrasts
Sweden's official neutrality policy with its purchase of military technology
from the United States. The wide range of topics notwithstanding, all these
essays address how technology, power, and authority are mutually consti-
tuted.

Introduction 5

The mutual shaping of technology, power, and authority can seem so
obvious that we sometimes lose sight of how politicians, cultural critics,
policy makers, and other public figures have thought about these rela-
tionships at different historical moments. This is even more true of other
social scientists who study technology. STS scholars can become so focused
on debunking the myths of technological determinism that they ignore or
dismiss ways in which public conceptuahzations of technology themselves
serve political or cultural functions. How public figures articulate the rela-
tionships between technology and society matters on at least two fronts.
First and most important, it matters to the development of technology
itself. Technology may not drive history, but the fact that influential peo-
ple beheve that it does has real consequences. Several of the authors in this
volume trace this historical relationship between ideas and practice, and
we will discuss their insights toward the end of this introductory essay.
Second, the history of these conceptualizations can help to contextualize
and explain why scholarship on technology has become isolated from
other historical endeavors. In order to weave the history of technology
back into history, we must understand more about the broader context of
its isolation.

Indeed, we argue that the Cold War gave a distinctive cast to the multi-
ple ways in which public figures and scholars thought about technology.
Public discourse about the glories of technological progress existed well
before World War II — such discourse, for example, permeated the twin
processes of industrialization and colonialism in the nineteenth century.
To an unprecedented degree, however, ideas about technological develop-
ment became central to state ideologies and policies during the Cold War.
Dramatic increases in the funding of scientific and technological research
ensued, particularly at universities. It is no surprise, therefore, that the his-
tory of technology became increasingly vigorous in this context, acquiring
its own urgency. Ironically, however, the context of the Cold War can also
help explain the relative isolation of the history of technology from non-
STS fields — an isolation supported by the common public conviction that
technology and politics, or technology and culture, must be separate enti-
ties. The next part of this essay, therefore, explores public conceptualiza-
tions of technology during the Cold War in order to elucidate the political

6 Hecht and Allen

meanings of some of the more important epistemological insights of the
history of technology. This history, we hope, can help point us forward.
Whereas the Cold War may have justified separate historical treatment of
technology, the end of the Cold War demands that we draw connections
between our work and that of other historians.

A few caveats are in order. First, the following discussion aims to be sug-
gestive rather than comprehensive. This is not the place to cover the full
range of public discourse about technology during the Cold War. Second,
we focus primarily on the United States. This is because we seek to provide
a context for how our field is positioned relative to the American historical
profession. We hope that these limitations will, if anything, provoke fur-
ther scholarly inquiry into the issues we explore below.

After World War II there could be little doubt that the Allies had triumphed
because of their superior industrial capacity, especially the ability of the
United States to turn its economy into the "arsenal of democracy."^ Shortly
thereafter, as Hughes has argued in Rescuing Prometheus, large-scale,
accelerated, high-technology research projects gained unparalleled pres-
tige — especially those advanced by proponents of Systems Engineering and
Operations Research. This prestige quickly leapt the bounds of "purely
technical" efficacy. For example, Karl Popper, C. P. Snow, David Landes,
and W W Rostow celebrated the supposed connection between the ratio-
nality of science, technology, and industrialization, on the one hand, and
the values of democracy on the other. These intellectuals — a philosopher,
a novelist, a historian, and an economist — had little in common except
their faith in the immanent rationality of scientific endeavor and techno-
logical development.

During the early days of the Cold War, C. P. Snow claimed that scientists
had "the future in their bones" and warned Western democracies to include
them in political decision making at the highest level in order to maintain
resilience in the face of inevitable scientific and technological change.^ But
it may have been the sociologist Robert Merton who most explicitly
asserted that scientific-technological rationality provided the language of
democratic society. Merton did not just celebrate the symbiosis of science
and democracy; he argued that science might serve as an inoculation against
totalitarianism. Authoritarian dogma, he wrote, contradicted the assump-

Introduction 7

tions of modern science to such an extent that true scientists were compelled
to resist nondemocratic regimes. Further, Merton viewed technology as sci-
ence's "respectable sibling" and therefore assumed that it too might but-
tress democracy:

The increasing comforts and conveniences deriving from technology and ultimately
from science invite the social support of scientific research. They also testify to the
integrity of the scientist, since ahstract and difficult theories which cannot be under-
stood or evaluated by the laity are presumably proved in a fashion which can be
understood by all, that is, through their technological applications.'

Technology, here conceived as applied science, thus embodied a kind of
"pure reason" for the masses; it justified the ways of science to the hoi pol-
loi. What could connect a metalworker turning out fasteners in Detroit with
a nuclear physicist or a field biologist? According to Merton and many oth-
ers, the answer was an overarching mental state: the habit of rational think-
ing born of science. Distinguishing this state from superstitious, premodern
world views, they equated it with the habits of freedom.'"

A large and diffuse Hterature on science and technology coalesced around
two themes. First, the history of science and technology could reveal cru-
cial knowledge about the nature of the good society — that is, the Hberal,
democratic, capitalist nation-state. Second, the epistemology of scientists
and engineers could and should guide the thinking of democratic citizens.
Thus, David Landes argued in 1969 that "he who is rational in one area
[i.e., the rational industrial enterprise] is more likely to be rational in oth-
ers" — that is, in pohtics." This intense concern with uncovering and justi-
fying the core habits of thought necessary for Western democracy pervaded
the American historical profession.'^

Yet, as numerous scholars have pointed out, the equation of scientific
and technological thinking with democracy during the Cold War rested
upon the assumption that rationahty was "value neutral."" This assump-
tion that science and technics were value neutral per se was not new to the
Cold War — it went back at least as far as Francis Bacon or the first Royal
Society. Nor were Hnks between science and democracy new to the Cold
War. In the United States, faith in the democratizing spirit of science and
industry had long been embodied in heroic portraits of Benjamin Franklin
and Thomas Jefferson, in glorious narratives about the conquest of the
frontier, and in what David Nye has called the "American technological

8 Hecht and Allen

sublime."" What was new to the Cold War was the subsequent conclu-
sion and its consequences: because democracy was the social expression
of scientific and technical rationality, it was not only value neutral but non-
ideological. Further, the alleged absence of ideology defined the funda-
mental difference between democracy, on the one hand, and fascism and
communism on the other.

According to theories of totahtarianism developed by Hannah Arendt
and other postwar intellectuals, ideology reigned in the Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany because those nation-states based the legitimacy of their rule
upon the presumption to know human nature. This judgment helps to sit-
uate the curious argument advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, which
differentiated between the domain of nature (knowable through rational
scientific truth) and the domain of society and culture (in which any claims
to rational knowledge led toward totalitarianism).''' Like Merton, Popper
believed that democracy could be nurtured by promotion of the mental
habits of scientific thought. At the same time, he warned that truth claims
regarding society and culture led to authoritarianism. Consequently, in
order to preserve his faith in science. Popper had to shear science and tech-
nology away from the political, the social, and the cultural. Within the
terms of this discourse, scientific and technological innovation became the
standard of reason. But this was a peculiar definition of reason, one in
which judgments about human nature were somehow purged and supposed
to play no role. By abstaining from judgments about what human beings are
and how they function socially, culturally, or politically, science and tech-
nology were supposed to provide (strangely enough) the form of thought
appropriate for the one form of governance supposedly free of ideology:
liberal democracy.

In the first 20 years of the Cold War, vilification of ideology spread far
and wide — not just in American politics, but also in social-science scholar-
ship. As Peter Novick has argued, "the disparagement of ideology and the
concomitant celebration of American empiricism were among the forces
which in the postwar years returned historiographic thought in the United
States to older norms of objectivity.""" Popper's argument resonated widely
in the historical community, serving as an epistemological justification for
the possibility of historical objectivity. In view of how central the separation
of science and technology from society was to Popperian reasoning, it is

Introduction 9

not surprising that historians did not subject the inside workings of tech-
nology to scrutiny: its very epistemology supposedly precluded such
scrutiny as a historical project.

The Cold War consensus did, however, necessitate a history of science
and technology that demonstrated the eternal progress of rationality. Such
a demonstration guided the tale of the British industrial revolution,
which — together with its supposed link to the progressive liberalization of
parliamentary government — was taken to be the "paradigm" of all mod-
ern industrialization. This conception of a predictable and necessary path
of technological development had resonance far beyond the confines of
academia (a resonance which in turn helped reinforce academic convic-
tions). It lay at the heart of the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe, and
it was fundamental to the actions of the "World Bank, from its earliest
European projects to its subsequent interventions throughout the world. ^^
In the 1950s and the 1960s, Popperian positivism, coupled with modern-
ization theory, suggested that the discipline of economics might yield
durable laws akin to those of natural science. Bestowed with the legitimacy
of scientific rationality, economics could also yield sound formulas for
democracy — particularly when applied to "Third World" development.'*
Many hoped that economic "modernization" might prompt even "tradi-
tional" dictators to come round to democracy. Witness, for example, A
Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy, put forward in 1957 by the
American policy advisors W W. Rostow and Max Millikan," who were
seeking to make "modern" societies of "developing countries" through
the application of Western economic theory. Practically speaking, the pri-
mary vehicle of these policies would be technological and managerial
know-how: the United States and the World Bank would export industrial
rationality to underdeveloped areas. Ultimately, the aim of modernization
was democratization.

But because both modernization and democracy — by virtue of their foun-
dations in scientific and technical rationality — were construed as nonideo-
logical, aid to the "Third World" enacted through "technical assistance"
was itself portrayed as "neutral with respect to the political issues which
rouse men's passions."'" "Modernizers" intended Western technology to
produce economic growth in a manner that could soar above passion, frac-
tion, and political dispute. In this way, economic and technical aid also

10 Hecht and Allen

served as a powerful weapon in the Cold War fight against communism.^'
Modernization theory justified interventions that might otherwise be con-
strued as neocolonial, providing a means through which the United States
could establish morally impeccable relationships with the "Third World. "^^
In Europe too, "development" provided a rubric under which former colo-
nial powers could transform the "civilizing mission" into programs that
would prove more pohtically palatable in an era of decolonization.^'

Thus, faith in the transformative, democratizing powers of technology
not only provided the logic behind the arms race and the space race, it
also undergirded Cold War geopolitics in its broadest forms. In this sense,
technological determinism was a crucial aspect of the epistemology of US
Cold War politics, which in turn rested upon a progressive view of tech-
nology's history that posited British and then US industrialization as the
universal template. This model assumed that there existed only one true
path for "development," one that culminated in large firms and mass pro-
duction. '"' The geopolitical dominance of North America and Europe —
symbolized by wealth and consumer goods — suggested that this was
indeed the true path.

Perhaps it is no surprise that engineering schools were the first homes for
the history of technology, or that the United States Armed Forces Institute
sponsored the publication of Technology in Western Civilization^ But if the
professionalization of the field benefited from the centrality of technology
as both symbol and motor of the Cold War, the questions posed by histori-
ans of technology challenged that era's determinist epistemology.-'' In explo-
rations of technological systems, the mihtary-industrial complex, and
industrialization, historians of technology demonstrated time and again
that technology did not follow a single path, did not change society of its
own accord, and did not inevitably promote democracy (even in democra-
tic societies). Historians of technology also critiqued the radical techno-
logical determinism of cultural pessimists Uke Jacques Ellul. Technology
did not inevitably lead to an OrwelUan social order, any more than it did
to a democratic Utopia. Hence Melvin Kranzberg's formulation "Tech-
nology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral."

It is also unsurprising that one target audience of that first generation of
historian of technology was engineers. The Cold War helped to shape the
meaning and purpose of the institutional links that historians of technology

Introduction 1 1

forged to engineering education. In one of the ironies of "value-free" science
and its supposed link to civic virtue, professional engineering societies began
to bemoan the inadequate social and political skills of students trained
entirely in the hard sciences and in technical courses. What better way to
produce socially responsible engineers than to teach them technology's his-
tory?

In the 1980s, historians of technology pushed the edges of the discipline
further by reaching toward sociologists of science and technology.
Conversations between historians and sociologists resulted in a method-
ological paradigm that — although it had been emerging for a while — now
came to be known as "social construction of technology," often abbreviated
as SCOT. This acronym glossed over methodological differences among
scholars, but it proved useful in articulating a common program to unpack
the microrelations of technology. As several writers have observed, con-
cluding that technology was socially constructed did not pack the same epis-
temological punch as similar conclusions about science.'^ But SCOT
scholarship did pack political punch in the context of the Cold War. SCOT
literature left readers with tantalizing suggestions that what had been done
might also be undone. Nothing was inevitable about the arms race — or any
other technological development.

Epistemologically, institutionally, and politically, the Cold War thus pro-
vided a compelling context for technology studies. On all these fronts, his-
torians of technology had more than enough to keep them busy. Explicating
the political and cultural construction of technological change proved an
uphill battle, requiring careful attention to technical detail. Unfortunately,
the considerable time that historians of technology spent on such detail
probably contributed to the relative lack of interest exhibited by other his-
torians. Indeed, historians outside the field did not seem to care much about
matters technological. For one thing, they accepted (by and large) the Cold
War premise that the power of technology was easily discernible and need
not be subject to intensive political or cultural scrutiny. This was as true of
economic historians (the only ones who, as a group, included technology in
their analysis) as it was of others. Technical experts had power either
because their knowledge was truly privileged or thanks to institutional
structures (such as universities, professional societies, or government agen-
cies) that produced and legitimated expertise and functioned as conduits

12 Hecht and Allen

for expert power. Either way, expert knowledge and the artifacts it pro-
duced appeared hermetic. This appearance was doubtless exacerbated by
the division of the academy into "techies" and "fuzzies" — what C. P. Snow
more formally called the "two cultures." Humanists allowed themselves to
be intimidated by the disciplinary strategies of scientists and engineers. To
most historians, the content of technology appeared culturally and politi-
cally inscrutable and therefore uninteresting. For another thing, "main-
stream" historians were fighting their own battles, which were also
epistemological and political in character. The middle and late years of the
Cold War saw the rise of social history, a renewed questioning of historical
objectivity, and a splintering of the field such that "every group [acquired]
its own historian."-* Questions about gender, race, and class dominated the
cutting edge of historiography, mobilizing a new generation of historians
against "the old guard." Historiographic battles reached a fever pitch with
the emergence of the "new cultural history," which pitted cultural expla-
nations of historical change against material ones. Disputes were especially
intense among labor historians, who argued fiercely about the relationship
between material life and the emergence of political consciousness and
action. Did the emergence of industrial factory work lead to the creation
and politicization of the working class, or did class consciousness emerge
as the product of intersecting cultural discourses ? Such questions posited the
same divide between the material world and the cultural world that char-
acterized the Cold War in general — a divide that polarized not just labor
historians but many others. In this discipUnary climate, technology as an
object of study was not merely inscrutable; except when viewed in symbolic
terms, it was passe.

Fortunately, times are changing. Increasingly, historians are acknowl-
edging the sterility of the material/cultural divide and recognizing the need
to understand both how the material is cultural and how the cultural is
material. Many still balk when the material side of the question involves
analyzing what appears to be "merely" technical detail. But the growing
interest in achieving a synthesis between material and cultural approaches
leaves the door wide open for historians of technology to step in.-'

Meanwhile, the field of technology studies as a whole is struggling
through a comparable crisis of its own. The waning of Cold War concerns
means that SCOT no longer packs even the political punch it once did.

Introduction 13

Indeed, SCOT has recently come under attack for being "conservative," for
"embracing everything while excluding nothing," and for being part of
"pale-male constructions of the political."'" SCOT has also come under
epistemological fire for being socially determinist.^' No matter how empir-
ically rich, the refutation of technological determinism no longer provides
a satisfying or sufficient conclusion.

These simultaneous disciplinary crises mean that the time is especially
ripe for fruitful dialogue between historians of technology and the rest of
the discipline. Of course, such disciplinary dialogue can revolve around
many different themes, and we cannot pretend to address them all. The
choice of topics here reflects the inspiration of our mentors: we thus focus
primarily on technological systems and the actors who propel them. At the
same time, all the essays treat a theme that has been an abiding subject of
consideration in the historical profession at large: power, its practices, and
its meanings. In one way or another, all the authors consider how a partic-
ular dimension of power relationships — the establishment and performance
of authority — gets constituted by and performed through technological arti-
facts and knowledge.

Of course, "technology" — especially when used narrowly to refer to com-
plex machines — is itself a power-laden term. Going back to the United States
in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, for example, we can see
skills that white middle-class boys developed to design machinery were con-
sidered technogical by educators and the public, while skills developed by
girls (such as sewing or cooking) were not. Similar conceptions endure today,
when — in most contexts and for most people — "technology" denotes the
latest machines and professionally vetted expert knowledge.'- The Amish,
for instance, are popularly portrayed as anti-technological, but we could
more legitimately argue that they enthusiastically embrace Renaissance
technologies. Perhaps more distressing is the way in which popular uses of
"technology" today increasingly refer only to computer-related artifacts
and networks. Such conceptions reveal that what counts as technology
changes all the time, precisely because that designation continues to be an
indicator of power and legitimacy.

As the Cold War continues to recede, we are left to reconsider some burn-
ing questions. What role do technological artifacts and knowledge play in
reifying, reshaping, and performing power relationships? How do they

14 Hecht and Allen

become culturally identified as technological? How are they shaped by
power relationships? What role do they play as agents of political or cul-
tural change? Largely focusing on some dimension of the meanings of
expertise and its relationship with authority, the essays here address these
questions by examining the enactment of power and politics through specif-
ically technological means — not just during the Cold War, but starting in the
late nineteenth century.

One conclusion that emerges clearly from these essays is that the power
of technical knowledge is neither purely cultural, nor purely institutional,
nor purely technological. Rather, expert power is constituted heteroge-
neously and must be understood in hybrid terms. In order to express this
hybridity, Gabrielle Hecht suggests that we think of the performance of
power through technology as "technopoHtics," which she defines as the
strategic practice of designing or using technology to enact political goals.
On the one hand, such practices are not simply poUtics by another name:
their material, artifactual forms matter fundamentally to their success. On
the other hand, calling these artifacts politically constructed technologies
implies a static quality that does not adequately capture the dynamic ways
in which they enact power. Other authors in this volume similarly seek to
capture the hybrid and performative nature of technological power. For
example. Amy Slaton and Janet Abbate show how technical standards per-
form labor relations in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States.
And Hans Weinberger demonstrates how the acquisition of American mil-
itary technology has belied Sweden's claims to neutrality, enacting a quite
different set of national policies.

Of course, technology cannot embody politics in a conceptual or ideo-
logical vacuum. Edmund Todd's essay on electrification in Weimar
Germany and Gabrielle Hecht's essay on nuclear power in postwar France
both argue that the ways in which technologies perform expert power must
be understood with reference to beliefs about how technological change
operates in the world. This requires a shift in how historians approach tech-
nological determinism. Todd and Hecht argue that we should historicize it.
Thus, instead of continuing to ask "Does technology drive history?" we
should ask questions such as "When or why do historical actors beheve or
argue that technology drives history?" Addressing such questions leads us
to view technological determinism — and other beliefs about the relation-

Introduction 15

ships between technology and social change — as political practices. To put
it differently, Todd and Hecht argue that we need to move past evaluating
the validity of ideas about technology and instead analyze these ideas as an
integral part of the social and political life of technologies.

W. Bernard Carlson offers the earliest example in this volume of how
ideas about the relationship between technology and pohtics shapes tech-
nological change, though additional and even earher examples could cer-
tainly be found. His study of Gardiner Hubbard's role in developing the
telephone identifies linkages between specific political ideologies and spe-
cific technological change. Carlson explores how Hubbard's vision of
democracy shaped the technical choices he and Alexander Graham Bell
made. Hubbard believed in the transformative power of technology. He
thought that the telephone could be a direct instrument of democracy for
the average middle-class American citizen. His vision of democracy shaped
the kind of telephone system that he promoted. For him, telecommunica-
tions also required the active intervention of the state, and his conviction
that technology would have a deterministic social and political effect was
instrumental in driving this technological development.

Erik Rau's essay on the emergence of Operational Research as a systems
science provides a more recent example of how ideas about the social and
political relations of technology (and, in this case, science) shape its devel-
opment and its political life. Rau demonstrates that the scientific origins of
Operational Research lay in the Social Relations of Science movement in
1930s and 1940s Britain. Scientists in this movement argued that more
active participation by the scientific elite in Britain's social and miUtary
policies would produce both better policies and better science. To legiti-
mate their claims, they had to prove their worth by managing technolog-
ical systems. Some of them found the opportunity during World War II,
when they were called upon to analyze miHtary tactics and strategies with
a view to using British military forces more effectively. The reception of
scientific recommendations varied a great deal according to local condi-
tions, but in many cases this reception depended on how both scientists
and the mihtary commanders they dealt with conceptualized the appro-
priate role of scientific knowledge in making military decisions. Reading
Rau's essay alongside Carlson's suggests ways in which the professional-
ization of expertise in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

16 Hecht and Allen

reshaped conceptualizations of the relationships between technology and
politics.

Beliefs about the social and political possibilities of technological change
can be chilling, powerful forces in their own right, as Michael Thad Allen
demonstrates in his analysis of Nazi modernity. Nazi leaders believed that
their "one best way" of developing technological systems would inexorably
lead to the best possible society. From among the many changes occasioned
by their rapidly industrializing society. National Sociahsts sought to cele-
brate selective elements as part of a unified "German will." Others they
branded "Jewish," "liberal," or "degenerate." An example is Bauhaus
design, which the Nazis rejected. But that rejection did not make them any
less modern, Allen argues. No less than the Bauhaus, Nazi designers privi-
leged modern mass production, standardized norms, and machine culture.
They merely differed fiercely over the content of that culture. Allen also
argues that the Nazis' principles of modernity guided them toward the
unique technological means of genocide — perhaps the most harrowing
example of their effort to impose National Socialism as the culmination of
German destiny and of all modern history.

Contests over aesthetics, technological change, and the modern social
order have a long history. We can glimpse an earlier instance in Eric
Schatzberg's analysis of debates over how to introduce streetcars into nine-
teenth-century American cities. Schatzberg shows that technological aes-
thetics provided a means for the public — that is, the supposed consumers
of technological change — to shape the nature of that change. Tracing con-
flicts between inventors and ordinary citizens about overhead trolley wires,
Schatzberg shows that urban residents and trolley designers framed their
differences as competing symbols of progress. Each claimed to have a more
compelling vision of modernity. At stake in these disputes was not just the
aesthetic of urban areas, but control over the future of the city.

In all these cases, beliefs about the social or political dimensions of tech-
nological change shaped real social and political change. Statements about
the nature of technology were thus themselves political or cultural strate-
gies. Todd's essay on the Weimar Republic and Allen's on the Third Reich
put in stark relief the fact that claims about the pohtical (or apolitical)
nature of technology cannot be taken as simple statements of truth.
Modernity must be historicized. It must be viewed not as a unitary concept

Introduction 1 7

but rather as a set of multiple and conflicting debates. At their core, these
contestations concern the connections between pohtics, culture, and tech-
nology. Very often, they center on the future of a nation, or even the planet.
And the process of prescribing how technology, modernity, or national iden-
tity do or should relate to one another is itself political; that is, it involves
negotiating and performing power relationships.

In part this is because modernity or claims advanced in the name of
national identity always raise the same question: Who can best lead a soci-
ety toward the future? This is an enduring question for technical experts,
even as the role of experts relative to the state changes according to time and
place. Carlson discusses the role of technical experts in nineteenth-century
America, Todd in early-twentieth-century Germany, Rau in World War II
Britain. Hecht's essay takes us to the postwar period, arguing that French
technologists sought authority by claiming to provide the path to a modern
national future. The need to reinvigorate or even reshape French national
identity was widely agreed upon. By offering the mechanisms for this trans-
formation, technologists secured positions of political power and cultural
authority. In so doing, they sought to dissolve the boundaries between tech-
nology and politics as a way of claiming greater authority within the state.
Their success in blurring these boundaries produced technopolitics; thus,
expert authority within the French state must be understood both in terms
of the technological systems built by those experts and in terms of the con-
scious association or dissociation of those systems with politics. In this case,
technopolitics appears as a distinctive form of state power.

A version of this appears to be true for the Swedish Cold War state as
well. Officially, Sweden's posture in the Cold War was one of neutrality: in
principle, the government claimed, Sweden would respond symmetrically
to any intrusion into its airspace, whether Western or Soviet. Simulta-
neously, Swedes' self-image as neutral mediators between East and West
and as peaceful representatives of a viable Third Way lent their small nation
a powerful sense of its role in world history. But Hans Weinberger shows
that the real policy of the Swedish state cannot be understood in terms of
diplomatic rhetoric. Instead, an examination of technological decisions
shows that, in fact, Sweden's military infrastructure was designed to facil-
itate NATO's physical access to the Soviet Union. Sweden's military tech-
nological systems thus belied the official posture of neutrality. In the

18 Hecht and Allen

Swedish case, as in the French case, technological systems formed de facto
national policy. The parallels go further. In France, technology was explic-
itly conceived as a form of poHtics; this in turn shaped the technopolitical
potential of the nuclear program. In Sweden, decision makers conceived of
technology as neutral; this in turn made it possible for all technological deci-
sions to appear as inherent vehicles of neutrality. In both cases, then, the
way in which decision makers and the public conceptualized the valence of
technology helped to shape the political life of specific technological sys-
tems. In both the French and the Swedish cases, we see a disjuncture
between declared policy (policy as rhetoric) and enacted policy (policy as
practice). In both cases, an understanding of actual technological practice
is necessary in order to view the disjuncture clearly. One might say that tech-
nologies camouflaged actual political practices — except that the camou-
flage metaphor suggests a separation between technological and political
practice that did not exist. A more precise formulation would be that these
technological systems performed national pohtics.

Technopolitics during the Cold War may have had a distinctive flavor,
but hiding political agendas and power relationships in technological arti-
facts, practices, or systems is nothing new. For example, Todd argues that
German engineers in the early twentieth century constructed "shadow his-
tories" with a technologically determinist thrust in order to legitimate their
own choices and discredit those made by other engineers. Some engineers
used shadow histories to justify centralized power grids; others used them
to justify decentrahzed systems. Either way, the histories made the tech-
nologies seem nonpolitical when in fact centralization and decentralization
would create basic differences in the political and social organization of
regions and ultimately the nation. Todd maintains that these shadow his-
tories did more than legitimate particular forms of electric power develop-
ment: they also masked the political negotiations that engineers conducted
with other industrialists and local officials in order to implement their tech-
nological plans. In one case, technological determinism obscured the con-
vergence between National Socialism and the industrial development plans
advocated by a prominent engineer.

Slaton and Abbate also probe the hidden pohtical performances of tech-
nology. Their essay on technical standards compares the early twentieth
century construction industry with the late-twentieth-century computer

Introduction 19

industry in the United States. What roles, they ask, do standards and spec-
ifications play in encoding and performing hierarchies of technological
knowledge? In both of the cases examined, they argue, standards encoded
labor, produced or reproduced distinct relationships between expertise and
authority, and redistributed work among different phases of production
and consumption. Technical standards have a "hidden life," the perfor-
mance of which has concealed effects. In the construction industry, these
included the redistribution of expertise and authority among architects,
materials suppliers, and tradespeople. In the computer industry, network
standards displaced a great deal of labor from the designers of such net-
works onto the users. Viewed on the surface, 1920s construction and
1980s information technology are worlds apart, but in both cases, Slaton
and Abbate maintain, standards constituted a dynamic medium through
which relationships between expertise and authority were renegotiated.
Their analysis thus foregrounds another important theme: the contingent
nature of the relationships between expertise and authority, and the per-
formance of those relationships through technological practices. This
point, we believe, is central to the contribution that the histories of tech-
nology in this volume make to other historical fields. These relationships
cannot be understood simply in institutional or discursive terms: they must
be examined in terms of practice. As Rau also argues, such practices are
always local. The nature and extent of power wielded by experts — within
the state or anywhere else — is always contingent upon local conditions and
negotiations, and must always be understood as the product of tensions
between local and global forces and motivations. This is why we cannot
fully understand the relationship between power and expertise in any given
situation without understanding how both social and material practices
constitute expertise. Many of the essays in this volume point to a central
irony: that experts lay claim to power by blurring, overstepping, or redefin-
ing boundaries drawn by other groups seeking authority. Time and again,
we see that the practices and content of technological change are them-
selves performances. They work out unequal social relations — that is to
say, power dynamics.

In closing, we should reiterate that these contributions represent only a
few of many possible ways in which the history of technology can contribute
to scholarship in other historical fields. The essays all discuss artifacts.

20 Hecht and Allen

knowledge, and systems that are commonly recognized as "technological"
precisely because they have served as instruments of expert power. We hope
that conclusions drawn from this volume can illuminate the exploration of
technology and authority in other areas as well. As scholars in our field
have begun to demonstrate, for example, the technological performance of
power relations involving gender, race, or coloniaHsm is equally important
to understanding these dynamics. The central challenge set by our mentors
has always been that "technology is far too important to leave only to engi-
neers; humanists, social scientists, historians, and citizens should also have
their say."" By opening spaces (however small) in which historians of tech-
nology can contribute to other fields, we hope to meet that challenge.
Technology is, indeed, far too important to be neglected by humanists.

Notes

1. Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (Vintage Books, 1953), p. 36.

2. Helmuth Plessner, Die verspdtete Nation (W. Kohlhammer, 1935; reprinted
1959), esp. pp. 72-82. Compare similar arguments in Ernst Gellner's Nations and
Nationalism (Cornell University Press, 1983).

3. Compare Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (University of
Minnesota Press, 1979), esp. preface and p. 37.

4. We do not mean to imply that no one tried to reach mainstream historians, or
that no one succeeded in doing so. See, for example, Judith McGaw, Most
Wonderful Machine (Princeton University Press, 1987); Philip Scranton, Endless
Novelty (Princeton University Press, 1997); Carroll Pursell, The Machine in America
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); David Nye, Electrifying America (MIT
Press, 1990); Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother (Basic Books, 1983);
Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (Oxford University Press, 1964).

5. Leo Marx credited Hughes as the only one to address this thorny issue, but he
was being modest. Marx too has addressed this question — see his review of In
Context, ed. S. Cutcliffe and R. Post (Technology and Culture 32, 1991: 394-396).

6. We are indebted to David Nye for suggesting this organization in his review of
the volume.

7. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (Norton, 1996).

8. C. P. Snow, Science and Government (Harvard University Press, 1961).

9. Robert Merton, "Science and the Social Order," in The Sociology of Science, ed.
N. Storer (University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 257. See also Robert Merton, "The
Normative Structure of Science" and "The Puritan Spur to Science," in the same
volume. David Hollinger argues that Merton's celebration of the scientific ethos

Introduction 21

holds a position in the history of ideas comparable to that held by Frederick Jackson
Turner's "frontier thesis" in the history of the American West; see his "The Defense
of Democracy and Robert K. Merton's Formulation of the Scientific Ethos,"
Knowledge and Society 4 (1983), p. 11.

10. For technological practice, modern "rational" engineering was distinguished
from "craft" traditions, an equally heterogeneous category in historical fact.
Whereas the mental state of rationality was supposed to tie all modern engineering
together with science, the mental state of "irrationality" or "subjectivity" was sup-
posed to hnk "traditional" practice to the habits of superstition. See David McGee,
"From Craftsmanship to Draftsmanship: Naval Architecture and the Three
Traditions of Early Modern Design," Technology and Culture 40 (1999): 209-236.
On the dangers of stressing "mental states" as analytic categories in history, see
Charles Tilly, B/g Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (Russell Sage
Foundation, 1984).

11. David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge University Press, 1969),
p. 21.

12. For a discussion of historiography during the Cold War, see Peter Novick, That
Noble Dream (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

13. See, for example, Robert N. Proctor, Value-Free Science (Harvard University
Press, 1991). Democratic values were not associated with technology in other
national cultures. See Plessner, Die verspdtete Nation, or Joachim Radkau, Technik
in Deutschland (Suhrkamp, 1989). Sometimes science was overtly associated with
authoritarian regimes — for instance, in Peter the Great's Russia. See Alfred Rieber,
"Politics and Technology in Eighteenth-Century Russia," Science in Context 8
(1995): 341-368.

14. See David Nye, American Technological Sublime (MIT Press, 1994); John
Kasson, Civilizing the Machine (Grossman, 1976); Marx, The Machine in the
Garden.

15. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Harper & Row, 1962), pp.
57-59.

16. Novick, That Noble Dream, pp. 300.

17. Ashraf Ghani, "The World Bank," talk given at Ford Seminar, University of
Michigan International Institute, February 3, 2000.

18. Popper, The Open Society, pp. 32-33, 67.

19. A Proposal appeared just a few years before Rostow popularized his famous
modernization theory in The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist
Manifesto (Cambridge University Press, 1960). Neither Rostow nor Millikan was
a mere theorist; both had gotten their hands dirty in practical foreign policy.
Millikan had worked in several subcommittees of the Marshall Plan; Rostow had
worked as an advisor to the nascent institutions of what would become the
European Community.

20. Rostow and Millikan, A Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy (Harper
& Brothers, 1957), pp. 39^0. On technical assistance, see pp. 54 and 61-63. Under

22 Hecht and Allen

technical assistance, Rostow and Millikan included managerial and administrative
skills, themselves assumed to be transparently rational and thus "neutral."

21. This was the explicit message of Rostow's book The Stages of Economic
Growth, for example.

22. For a discussion of the continuities between colonial ideologies and modern-
ization theory, see the last chapter of Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of
Men (Cornell University Press, 1989). For more on the role of economics in these
dynamics, see Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development (Princeton University
Press, 1995).

23. Frederick Cooper, "Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the
Development Concept," in International Development and the Social Sciences, ed.
F. Cooper and R. Packard (University of California Press, 1997).

24. This view of modern technological history was shared by socialists and com-
munists. See Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Harper,
1942) or Charles Maier, Dissolution (Princeton University Press, 1997).

25. Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll Pursell, eds.. Technology in Western Civilization
(Oxford University Press, 1967); Robert Multhauf, "Some Observations on the
State of the History of Technology," Technology and Culture 15 (1974): 1-12;
Eugene Ferguson, "Toward a Discipline of the History of Technology," Technology
and Culture 15 (1974): 14; Carroll Pursell, correspondence with the authors,
December 6 and 7, 1999. For a history of the institutionalization of the discipline,
see Bruce Seely, "SHOT, the History of Technology, and Engineering Education,"
Technology and Culture 36 (1995), no. 4: Ti3-112. For an overview of its intel-
lectual development, see John Staudenmaier, S.J., Technology's Storytellers (MIT
Press, 1985).

26. Historians of technology were not the only ones to challenge the assumed links
between technology and democracy. Cultural and political critics (among them
Lewis Mumford, Jacques EUul, and Jean Meynaud) also challenged these links,
arguing that the juggernaut of technological change, far from providing the motor
of democracy, threatened its very foundations. Yet such critiques remained, for the
most part, within a technologically determinist framework.

27. See, e.g., the introduction to second edition of The Social Shaping of Tech-
nology, ed. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman (Open University Press, 1999). See also
David Edgerton, "Tilting at Paper Tigers," British journal of the History of Science
16 (1993): 64-75; "De I'innovation aux usages: Dix Theses eclectiques sur I'his-
toire des techniques," Annales 45 (1998): 259-288.

28. For more on these developments, see chapter 14 of Novick, That Noble Dream.

29. For a few examples among cultural historians, see Rethinking Labor History,
ed. L. Berlanstein (University of Illinois Press, 1993); Richard Biernacki, The
Fabrication of Labor (University of California Press, 1995); Laura Lee Downs,
Manufacturing Inequality (Cornell University Press, 1995).

30. See Langdon Winner, "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty:
Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology," in The Technology of

Introduction 23

Discovery and the Discovery of Technology, ed. J. Pitt and E. Lugo (Society for
Philosophy and Technology, 1991); David Hounshell, "Hughesian History of
Technology and Chandlerian Business History: Parallels, Departures, and Critics,"
History and Technology 12 (1995), p. 214. Hillary Rose, "My Enemy's Enemy Is —
Only Perhaps — My Friend," in The Science Wars, ed. A. Ross (Duke University
Press, 1996), p. 93.

31. Thomas Parke Hughes, "Technological Momentum," in Does Technology
Drive History? ed. M. Smith and L. Marx (MIT Press, 1994), p. 104. Leo Marx, in
his review of In Context, ed. S. Cutcliffe and R. Post (Technology and Culture 32
(1991): 394-396), asked whether any justification for the history of technology
remains if all is constructed "in context" and technology is incapable of "deter-
mining" anything. Meanwhile, much of Bruno Latour's work has stressed that the
"social" is a constructed analytic category, and thus cannot be used as an explana-
tion for the "technological" or the "natural" — see Science in Action (Harvard
University Press, 1987) and We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard University
Press, 1993).

32. Judith McGaw, "No Passive Victims, No Separate Spheres," in In Context, ed.
S. Cutcliffe and R. Post; Ruth Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine (Amster-
dam University Press, 1999); Nina Lerman, Children of Progress (manuscript, forth-
coming); special "Gender and Technology" issue of Technology and Culture (1997),
ed. N. Lerman, A. Mohun, and R. Olendziel.

33. Thomas Parke Hughes, "Shaped Technology: An Afterword," Science in
Context 8 (1995), p. 455. This entire issue, edited by Hughes, addressed this very
program.

The Telephone as Pohtical Instrument:
Gardiner Hubbard and the Formation of the
Middle Class in America, 1875-1880

W. Bernard Carlson

"Politics." When I hear that word, I recall fondly one of my undergradu-
ate engineering students, Ken, who used to drop by my office. More often
than not. Ken would find me in deep conversation with a colleague about
the latest departmental intrigue or what was going on in the discipline. After
my colleague had left. Ken would come in, carefully sniff the air for the
nonexistent cigar smoke, and say with a smile "Ah, politics."

With his appreciative sniff, my student demonstrated what many people
know but what historians studying technology often downplay: that most
human activities are essentially political. Whether one is talking about deci-
sions affecting the future of nations, the strategy of giant corporations, the
curriculum of university departments, or even what happens in a family,
the dynamics are often political. We acknowledge that there is power and
there are resources, and then we debate, plan, and scheme about how to
shape the situation to advance our interests. Alhes must be enrolled, bar-
gains struck, campaigns mapped out. In the nostalgic past, these things were
done in the smoke-filled back rooms of city halls. Hence Ken's sniffing for
the nonexistent cigar smoke.

While the cigar smoke was nonexistent in my office, the air was heavy
with ideology. What makes politics interesting is that it involves the clash
of world views. On all levels of human interaction, individuals bring to a
discussion differing notions of what to do and why. Whether we are debat-
ing the degradation of the global environment or who in a university depart-
ment should teach which courses, the discourse is shaped by what we think
constitutes the good society and how we think the good society will be
achieved. The dynamic interplay of beUef and action, I would explain to
Ken, is what makes history — and people — so intriguing.

16 Carlson

As I mentioned a moment ago, I'm not sure that historians studying
technology understand as well as my student the role of politics in the
world of technology. To be fair, historians of technology do look at poli-
tics in the sense of group dynamics. Using either the social-constructivist
approach of Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch or the actor-network frame-
work of Bruno Latour, Michel Gallon, and John Law, some technological
historians have been busy identifying how different groups clash and
shape technological designs in ways that advance their interests.' Equally,
Thomas P. Hughes, in Rescuing Prometheus, introduced us to project
managers who successfully built large-scale technological systems because
they were wilHng to engage in the messy complexity of recruiting politi-
cal allies.- As long as they are talking about politics on the micro level,
inside the firm or system or marketplace, then historians of technology
are comfortable.

But a discussion of micro-politics does not answer the question posed
years ago by the political scientist Langdon Winner: "Do artifacts have pol-
itics?"^ What Winner was asking was whether technological artifacts
embody and carry forward the political ideology of different groups in soci-
ety. Do political beliefs — as well as the profit motive — drive people to pur-
sue one set of technological solutions over another? Bryan Pfaffenberger
argued that the personal computer revolution was an extension of the polit-
ical revolution of the 1960s, but what other technologies mirror political
change?'* I would argue that, for the most part, historians of technology
have focused on economic and social explanations of technological change
and have been reluctant to probe how political beliefs may have informed
the actions of inventors, engineers, and designers. How many historians of
technology are aware that Thomas Edison voted Republican? Even more to
the point, most historians of technology would probably find this fact inter-
esting but irrelevant.

It is unfortunate that many historians of technology have been reluctant
to investigate the interplay between technological design and political ide-
ology, because it isolates them from the issues and ideas that animate other
branches of history. For many historians, the central task is to understand
how different belief systems — arising from religious, ethnic, race, or class
backgrounds — inform the actions of individuals and groups. In their cau-
tion not to invoke political ideology as a way of explaining technological

The Telephone as Political Instrument 27

choices, historians of technology are missing an opportunity to establish
important connections with the rest of the historical profession.

It is important for historians of technology to make these connections
because of the ways in which technology tends to get treated in political
and social history today. In much of the literature of American history, tech-
nology is still treated as an autonomous force in the background.
Periodically new technology appears, and various individuals and groups
then have to alter the social and political order in order to cope with that
new technology. Even though historians of technology believe they have
effectively banished such a deterministic perspective from their narratives,
technology is seldom interpreted in American historical narratives as being
produced simultaneously with the social and political order. ^" Indeed, tech-
nological determinism is alive and well in many American history survey
textbooks.

Consequently, my goals here are threefold. First, I want to tell a story in
which ideology plays a major role in the development of a new technology.
Second, I wish to show historians of technology the importance of bring-
ing political beliefs into their narratives. Third, I want to challenge politi-
cal and social historians to pay attention to technological stories. All too
often, nontechnological historians concentrate on the discourse of ideas and
fail to look at what happens when ideas are manifest in material objects.
Equally, they assume that responses to industrialization and technological
change take place outside the arena of business and technology, and I want
to inquire here how reform could take place inside the world of business
by using technology in new ways. What I want to investigate here is how
attempts to use technology to realize political goals can lead historical
actors in unexpected directions, directions that upset the nice, neat cate-
gories historians use to organize the past.

To bring together technology and political ideology, I will tell a story
about the invention of the telephone in America in the 1870s. Most histo-
ries of the telephone treat its invention and development in purely economic
terms: the telephone was invented because Alexander Graham Bell,
Gardiner Hubbard, and Bell's other backers wanted to make money, and it
was adopted by businesses because it increased efficiency. At the same time,
most histories of America in the 1870s treat the poHtical issues concerning
the rise of big business and the appearance of new technologies such as the

28 Carlson

telephone, the phonograph, and the electric light as two separate phenom-
ena; the product of heroic genius, these new technologies were unsullied by
the political intrigue and corruption of the Gilded Age.'

Yet Bell and Hubbard did not develop the telephone in a political and
social vacuum; indeed, their efforts were strongly shaped by the debates in
the 1870s over the rise of big business, the appropriate role of the state in
regulating business, and the formation of the middle class. I will discuss
Gardiner Hubbard's role in promoting the telephone and how his efforts
were based on his political ideology: that if democracy was to survive in
America, then middle-class Americans had to have ready access to the infor-
mation and technology needed in order to participate in both the political
and economic arenas. In teUing the story of Hubbard's ideology and the
development of the telephone, I want to show that artifacts do have poli-
tics, and conversely that politics have artifacts.

Telegraphy and the Rise of Western Union

To appreciate Hubbard's political ideology and how it shaped his efforts to
promote the telephone, it is necessary first to understand the telegraph
industry in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. Here
we will see how the rise of Western Union prompted Hubbard and others
to think about the role of information in a democratic society.

Western Union had been founded by Hiram Sibley in 1851 as the New
York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. During the
1850s, Sibley built up the firm by taking over smaller telegraph lines until
he had gained control of the telegraph business in the Midwest (hence the
name Western Union). In 1861, Sibley built the first transcontinental line to
California and established Western Union as one of the major firms in the
industry. In 1866, Western Union absorbed its two remaining rivals, US
Telegraph and American Telegraph, achieving, more or less, monopoly con-
trol of the telegraph industry.^

Because of his success in reorganizing US Telegraph, William Orton
(1826-1878) was named president of Western Union in 1867. At once,
Orton began to convert Western Union from a confederation of indepen-
dent companies into a single organization dedicated to a particular market
strategy. Orton noticed that a significant number of the telegrams trans-

The Telephone as Political Instrument 29

mitted by the company were short business messages — market quotes, buy
and sell orders to brokers, and brief instructions to salesmen in the field.
For these messages, business customers chose the telegraph because it was
quick and rehable, and they were not especially concerned about price.*
Assuming that businessmen would send more of these messages as they pur-
sued the new national market made available by the railroad, Orton decid-
ed to have Western Union concentrate on sending business messages
between cities. In doing so, Orton made a distinct choice, since he could
have pursued several other markets. In several European countries, for
example, the bulk of the telegraph messages were either social messages or
government reports. Likewise, Western Union could have also placed news-
paper reports at the center of its strategy. Although he forged an alliance
with the Associated Press, Orton never considered press dispatches as
important as business messages.

To control and expand this business market, Orton took two steps. First,
to secure information from capital and commodity markets for Western
Union's business customers, Orton bought control of the Gold and Stock
Telegraph Company. Gold and Stock had established itself by erecting local
telegraph networks for transmitting prices from the floors of stock and
commodity markets to the offices of brokers and investors. To make its ser-
vice attractive. Gold and Stock encouraged Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray
to develop printing telegraphs or stock tickers which brokers could easily
read.' Because Orton saw Western Union in the long-distance, inter-city
business and Gold and Stock operating in the local, intra-city business, he
left Gold and Stock a separate firm. Control of Gold and Stock was valu-
able to Western Union because it gave Western Union access to the market
information that business customers wanted. Second, in pursuing the short
business message market, Orton invested selectively in new technology.
Although several inventors (including Edison) had developed automatic
telegraph systems that used punched tapes to send and receive messages
more quickly, Orton refused to invest in them. From Orton's view, it was a
waste of time and money to prepare a tape for a short message when an
operator could just send it.'" Instead, Orton encouraged the development
of devices that could send multiple messages over a single wire. By being
able to send two, four, or even more messages over a single wire. Western
Union could increase the volume and speed of messages without having to

30 Carlson

make heavy investments in stringing new lines or hiring more operators.
Consequently, Orton purchased Joseph Stearns's duplex (two message)
patent in 1872 and supported Edison and Prescott's work on a quadruplex
(four-message) system in 1874."

Thanks in part to duplex and quadruplex, Western Union was able to
maintain steady annual profits while increasing the number of messages
and decreasing the cost per message. By 1873, Western Union was con-
ducting 90 percent of the telegraph business in the United States. ^^ However,
this does not mean that it was all smooth sailing for Western Union in the
early 1870s. Simultaneous with his efforts to establish Western Union's
strategy and structure, Orton had to fight off the dangers of a rival network
and a hostile takeover.

One threat came from Wall Street. Sibley and Orton had rapidly built up
Western Union by erecting lines along railroads and placing telegraph
offices in railway stations. However, this meant that, as new transconti-
nental railroads were built, railroad financiers could create their own tele-
graph networks and not ally themselves with Western Union. Jay Gould
pursued this strategy twice, first in 1874-1878 and again in 1879-1881.
In the first episode, Gould used his control of several railroads to help the
Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company quickly build a rival telegraph sys-
tem." To steal business away from Western Union, the Atlantic and Pacific
cut prices in January 1877 and forced Western Union to follow suit.
Unfortunately, while the reduction in prices generated a large volume of
business for Atlantic and Pacific, the firm lacked a sufficient number of lines
to transmit the messages quickly and reliably. To cope with the message vol-
ume, Atlantic and Pacific tried using Georges D'Infreville's crude duplex
and Edison's automatic system. Gould convinced Edison to join the firm
briefly as its Chief Electrician. Despite these steps, Atlantic and Pacific per-
formed poorly (it never paid a dividend), and Orton was able to force a
merger in the spring of 1878.'*

The other major challenge for Western Union came from Washington.
No sooner had Western Union achieved national dominance in 1866 than
individuals such as Gardiner Hubbard began attacking it as a threat to
American democracy. For Hubbard and others. Western Union was the first
national monopoly, and they did not believe that this corporate giant would
exercise any restraint in raising prices or that it would serve the public inter-

The Telephone as Political Instrument 31

est. For these critics, the fact that Western Union was reluctant to cut prices
and indifferent to some inventions (such as automatic telegraphy) suggest-
ed that the firm was pursuing private gain at public expense. Critics were
especially concerned that Western Union had access to both market infor-
mation and private business messages, and that the firm could use this infor-
mation to manipulate markets in its favor and ruin individual businessmen.
Finally, critics were worried that, by transmitting news for the Associated
Press, Western Union could also interfere with freedom of the press. '^

In response to these real and perceived problems, critics of Western Union
attempted to persuade Congress to take action. Some thought that the Post
Office should be permitted to erect its own telegraph lines; they cited the
nationalization of telegraph lines in England, France, and Belgium as pos-
itive examples. In anticipation of possible nationalization. Congress passed
the Telegraph Act of 1866, which gave the federal government the right to
purchase the assets of all telegraph companies (at a mutually agreed upon
price) in 5 years. Others, particularly Hubbard, disagreed with outright
nationalization and instead thought the federal government should guar-
antee competition in the industry by underwriting the creation of a second
telegraph network. ''• (I will say more about this proposed federally subsi-
dized network in a moment when I discuss Hubbard's vision.)

Drawing on his experience in Washington as Commissioner of Internal
Revenue during the Civil War and his ties to the Republican Party, Orton
beat back these threats. To do so, Orton cultivated congressmen and regu-
larly testified on Capitol Hill. In his testimony, Orton used a variety of argu-
ments to defend Western Union, but he frequently returned to two themes.
First, he argued that the need to earn a return on the huge capital investment
made by stockholders drove Western Union to build and operate an effi-
cient telegraph network. Second, he claimed that only a private organiza-
tion could fully discipline its workforce and prevent the violation of private
messages or the misuse of market information. In contrast, he suggested, a
government telegraph system would have operators who were politically
appointed, and this would inevitably lead to mischief.'^ Using arguments
such as these, Orton was able to stymie attempts to either nationalize the
telegraph or create a rival. In doing so, Orton helped establish the general
pattern of telecommunications as a private industry that responds to fed-
eral regulation.

32 Carlson

Orton's arguments can be seen as similar to the ideological position that
Martin Sklar and other historians have come to call corporate liberalism.'^
In the years between the Civil War and World War I, rapid technological
change unleashed a period of unprecedented economic growth. But with
this growth came instability in the forms of unbridled competition, de-
skilling and dislocation of workers, and a cyclical pattern of booms and
recessions. To both businessmen and intellectuals, it seemed that market
forces were exacerbating rather than relieving this instability. In response
to the failure of markets, businessmen sought to eliminate competition, first
through cartels and then by creating larger organizations. To explain their
actions, businessmen and intellectuals drew on the intellectual traditions of
laissez-faire economics and classical liberal political thought to frame a new
ideology: corporate liberalism. If society wanted to reap the benefits of tech-
nological change, businessmen and intellectuals came to argue, then soci-
ety needed to trust business and permit it to create the organizations that
could achieve the economies of scale possible with this new technology.
Decisions about how to best use technology were to be made privately by
owners of the means of production and not by the state, since the owners
of the technology possessed both the motivation and expertise needed to
deploy technology efficiently. The role of the state was to create, through
laws, regulation, and tariffs, an environment that encouraged private enter-
prise to use technology efficiently.

Along with his arguments advocating private control of technology,
Orton employed a range of tactics — price competition, political lobbying,
and hostile takeovers — to beat back the challenges posed by Gould and
Hubbard. In this turbulent environment, a new tactic, technological inno-
vation, came to play an important role. To maintain its dominant position.
Western Union needed to adopt new inventions such as duplex and quadru-
plex. At the same time, the challengers — Gould and Hubbard — also realized
that innovations might be used to gain a foothold in the industry. An edi-
tor of the Telegrapher observed in 1875:

. . . improved apparatus has become of vital importance, and, consequently, tele-
graphic inventors who, for some years past, have been regarded as bores and nui-
sances, suddenly find themselves in favor, and their claims to notice, recognition
and acceptance, listened to with respectful attention. All parties are now desirous
of securing the advantages which may be derived from a development of the greater
capacity of telegraph lines and apparatus. The fact has become recognized that the

The Telephone as Political Instrument 33

party which shall avail itself to these most fully will possess a decided advantage
over its competitor or competitors.

That this state of telegraphic affairs affords the opportunity for the inventive tal-
ent and genius of the country which has hitherto been wanting, is unquestionable."

By the mid 1870s, the combination of Western Union's dominance and
the possibility of launching a rival network created a unique and novel
market for telegraph inventions. In fact, one could argue there was a
demand for "blockbuster" inventions or patents that could be used by
Western Union or its challengers. Thus, as Bell, Gray, and Edison were
investigating devices that would become telephones, they were working
not in a "normal" business environment but in a "hothouse" that favored
a breakthrough.

The breakthrough sought by Orton, Hubbard, and others in the tele-
graph industry was the "next generation" of multiple-message systems. In
the mid 1870s, several inventors in Europe and America began designing
acoustic or harmonic telegraphs. Inspired partly by the work of the German
physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, investigators thought it might be pos-
sible to send and receive several messages by assigning a separate acoustic
tone to each message. Ehsha Gray experimented with an acoustic system
beginning in the winter of 1866-67 and publicly demonstrated a version in
July 1 8 74 in New York. ^° Because Gray was chief electrician for the Western
Electric Manufacturing Company and Western Electric was one of Western
Union's major suppliers, Orton quickly became aware of Gray's work.

In March 1875, Orton learned that another inventor, Alexander Graham
Bell, was working on a similar harmonic scheme. At that moment, Orton
was quite interested in new multiple-message systems since Edison had gone
over to work for Atlantic and Pacific, and it was unclear who actually
owned the quadruplex.-' Orton had Bell demonstrate his apparatus, only
to find Bell's arrangement inferior to Gray's design.-^ Nevertheless, Bell's
work helped convince Orton that harmonic telegraphy might well be the
next breakthrough. Consequently, when Edison sheepishly returned to
work for Western Union in July 1875, Orton asked him to develop an
acoustic telegraph.-^

Although there were technical reasons why Orton turned down Bell in
March 1875, strong personalities also played a part. Bell was promptly (but
politely) escorted out of Orton's office when Orton learned that Bell was

34 Carlson

associated with his nemesis, Hubbard. To understand why the mere men-
tion of Hubbard led Orton to refuse to work with Bell, let us examine
Hubbard's opposition to Western Union.

Hubbard and the Postal Telegraph

Gardiner Greene Hubbard (1822-1897) was born in Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts to an old New England family. He attended Phillips Academy
(Andover), Dartmouth College, and Harvard Law School. After serving as
a junior member of a law partnership with Charles P. and Benjamin R.
Curtis in Boston, Hubbard went into practice for himself in 1848. His prac-
tice included some patent work, and he helped Gordon McKay secure
patent coverage for his shoemaking machinery. -''

Although Hubbard inherited a small fortune from his mother, he lost
most of it speculating on a wheat deal in the late 1840s." To overcome this
financial loss, Hubbard supplemented his legal practice with real estate
development in Cambridge. In 1849, Hubbard purchased about 45 acres
south of Brattle Street, and in 1851 he built an imposing wood-framed
Italianate villa. Although he initially planned this to be only his summer
home, he and his family soon made the Brattle Street house their year-round
residence. Hubbard landscaped the rest of his acreage, which he then sold
as house lots. Hubbard was involved in developing subdivisions elsewhere
in Cambridge, and in 1861 he joined other local businessmen in the East
Cambridge Land Company, which struggled for years to fill in and devel-
op the marshland along the Charles River as industrial property.-'"

Early on, Hubbard realized that his Cambridge real estate ventures would
only succeed if he could help make Cambridge desirable to his fellow mid-
dle-class professionals. To accomplish this, Hubbard turned to technology.
In 1849 he became the first president of the Harvard Branch Railroad,
which provided steam-train service from downtown Boston to the
Cambridge Common. Unfortunately, this commuter railroad was unable
to compete with the horse-drawn omnibus service between Boston and
Cambridge, which ran more frequently and charged lower fares. Ultimately,
the Harvard Branch failed because there were too few passengers to pay off
the substantial debts incurred laying the track. In 1853, Hubbard and his
fellow Cambridge businessmen replaced the steam railroad with a horsecar

The Telephone as Political Instrument 35

line, and their new company, the Union Railway, proved to be a profitable
venture. ^^ In 1852, Hubbard also helped establish the Cambridge Water
Works and the Cambridge Gas Light Company. Although none of
Hubbard's transportation and utility ventures were the first of their kind in
America, it is notable that in the 1850s such systems were generally found
only in major cities, such as New York and Baltimore. It is remarkable that
Hubbard established such services in a small city such as Cambridge, which
had a population of only 15,215 in 1850.^^

Undertaken in such a small city, Hubbard's transportation and utility
ventures were serious economic risks. Just as the Harvard Branch Railroad
failed, there was no guarantee that the populace would embrace the horse-
car or gas lighting and generate sufficient income to pay off the costs of
these systems. Indeed, there was always a gap between Hubbard's vision
and business reality. Recalling Hubbard's contributions to Cambridge, one
local historian wrote:

Mr. Hubbard was one of those forceful men who possessed a vision beyond the
present. . . . Like many such men he made ventures without sufficient capital and
met the difficulties such action is likely to cause. . . . They [i.e., his transportation
and utility companies] all suffered for want of adequate capital in the early days,
the public generally having little confidence in them as a business proposition.-'

Yet, ever optimistic about the future, Hubbard promoted his ventures, con-
fident that they would prove to be successful enterprises in the end.

In 1868, Hubbard moved from the local to the national stage. He turned
his attention to the telegraph industry and to questioning Western Union's
dominance. It is not exactly clear why Hubbard took up this cause, but he
did share with Charles Francis Adams and other Bostonians a suspicion of
large-scale organizations, especially those controlled by New York
financiers.'" As he did with other topics, Hubbard undertook a massive
study of the telegraph business in Europe and America. Through this
research, Hubbard concluded that Western Union was not serving the pub-
lic interest: the company was pursuing only a business market, it was not
using the most up-to-date technology (such as automatic systems), and it
was not reducing its prices.^'

Hubbard was concerned that Western Union was using its technology,
size, and dominant market position to reap excess profits. Even more wor-
risome to Hubbard, Western Union was a threat to American democracy

36 Carlson

because of the firm's control over the dissemination of vital information.
Because Western Union and Gold and Stock controlled the distribution of
prices from stock and commodity markets, these firms exercised tremen-
dous power over individual investors and small businessmen. Moreover,
since Western Union transmitted news for the Associated Press, Hubbard
and other reformers feared that Western Union could interfere with elec-
tions by tampering with the news. For Hubbard, Western Union was a
threat to the power of individual Americans to pursue their own political
and economic destiny.

For Hubbard, the solution to the problems created by Western Union's
monopoly power involved two changes: first, one had to rethink the mar-
ket for the telegraph; second, one needed to invent a new kind of organi-
zation which should serve that market. In Europe, telegraph networks
handled a substantial volume of social messages and government reports;
why not build a system to serve these markets as well as businessmen? To
reach these additional groups, Hubbard proposed that telegraph offices be
located not just in railway stations (Western Union's common practice) but
also in post offices, which were much more convenient for the average cit-
izen. Partly because the telegraph offices would be placed in post offices,
Hubbard called his scheme the postal telegraph plan. Hubbard was confi-
dent that there was an enormous potential market for social and govern-
mental messages and that this demand could be used to lower prices and
expand telegraph service to every town and village in America. In doing so,
Hubbard believed he was creating a telegraph system that would better
serve the needs of the American public and advance democracy.^-

However, for Hubbard it was not enough just to rethink the telegraph
market. Reform would come only if a new type of organization were cre-
ated to serve this market. To create an alternative organization, Hubbard
did not hesitate to seek government support, as he had done with other
causes. In the mid 1860s, concerned that deaf students such as his daugh-
ter Mabel were not receiving adequate public education, he convinced the
Massachusetts legislature to support a school for the deaf. Hence, it is not
surprising that Hubbard took his idea for a postal telegraph system to
Washington and sought funds from Congress in 1868. What Hubbard
asked Congress to provide was the capital for a private corporation which
would build a new telegraph network and in turn enter into a contract with

The Telephone as Political Instrument 37

the Post Office. ^^ This private corporation would be run by Hubbard and
his associates.''*

Viewed from Orton's perspective, Hubbard's postal telegraph scheme
must have seemed puzzling, since the idea of a government-subsidized rival
company denies the basic premise of corporate liberalism: that the private
owners of technology know how to best deploy technology and reap the
greatest good for society. However, for Hubbard it was not a foregone con-
clusion that private interests would necessarily serve the public good.
Drawing on an older discourse that questioned the role of monopolies and
special interests in a republic, Hubbard asked who should be controUing
powerful corporations:

The time will come . . . when the people will rise in their might and crush these
monopolies. It is necessary that the good men of both political parties . . . should
take steps to correct the evil in these corporations, that they may be reformed rather
than destroyed. Stockholders and officers ... do not or will not understand their
true relations to the public. They seem to think that their franchises were granted
by the State solely for their own benefit. . . . They forget that these are not private
but public corporations which have received certain privileges from the state, in
consideration of their promise to perform certain duties to the public in return."

Just as Orton's position can be related to corporate liberalism, so Hubbard's
outlook corresponds to an ideological position that Mary O. Furner termed
"democratic statist." Concerned about the problems posed by rapid indus-
trialization and the rise of big business, many Americans believed that the
solutions lay not in radically restructuring society and the economy but in
experimenting with a variety of new organizations and institutions.^^ With
great energy, Americans in the 1870s and the 1880s experimented with new
organizations — government bureaus (for collecting information and enforc-
ing regulation of the railroads and pubhc health), labor unions (e.g., the
Knights of Labor), movements for farmers (e.g.. Farmers' Alliances), moral
reform efforts (e.g., the Women's Christian Temperance Union), and educa-
tional institutions (e.g., the rise of research universities with professional
schools). ^^ Seen as alternatives to the existing political parties, these new
organizations were the means by which "good men" such as Hubbard
hoped to reform society.'*

To ensure that these organizations had the resources and authority nec-
essary to bring about change, individuals and groups did not hesitate to
turn to the states or to the federal government for support. However, these

38 Carlson

reformers did not believe that the government should simply take over func-
tions performed by the market; rather, they wanted the government to inter-
vene and create a "space" for new organizations and institutions. For
instance, Hubbard was opposed to the federal government's simply taking
over the telegraph system, for he was convinced that nationalization would
create a bureaucracy that would be just as unresponsive as Western Union.
What was needed was a new kind of organization — a federally financed
private corporation — that combined the efficiency of a private business
organization with the authority of a government agency. Hence, I would
argue that Hubbard's postal telegraph plan was part of a larger ideological
movement — democratic statism — that sought to overcome the ills of indus-
triaUzation through the creation of a variety of new organizations, some
private and some state-supported.^'

With great energy, Hubbard lobbied and persuaded congressmen to
introduce bills for a postal telegraph scheme in sessions from 1868 to
1876.'"' Orton vigorously fought back, and the annual hearings for the
postal telegraph bill came to be known as the "Wm. Orton and Gardiner
Hubbard Debating Society.'"*' In many ways, when Hubbard started his
campaign for the postal telegraph, it was a reasonable proposition; after
all, the federal government had just won the Civil War by actively creating
all sorts of new practices and organizations. However, as the economy pros-
pered and then collapsed in the mid 1870s (as a result of overexpansion in
railroad construction), Orton and others came to argue effectively that the
economy worked best when there was the least amount of government
involvement. Although skillfully and repeatedly outflanked by Orton in the
halls of Congress (the postal telegraph bill was never passed), Hubbard
never gave up his belief in the need for an alternative telegraph system, and
he instead looked for other ways to force Western Union to change. To
Hubbard, there had to be other ways to utilize telecommunications to
ensure American democracy.

Hubbard, Bell, and the Telephone

Hubbard found a new way to challenge Western Union in the creative ideas
of Alexander Graham Bell, a young Scotsman who had emigrated with his
parents to North America to help promote his father's system of visible

The Telephone as Political Instrument 39

speech. Visible speech was a system in which the deaf were taught to asso-
ciate different sounds with symbols in order to learn to speak. Anxious to
secure the best possible teaching techniques for his daughter and other deaf
children, Hubbard invited Bell in 1872 to come Massachusetts to teach vis-
ible speech. Bell taught at the state-sponsored school for the deaf, then
secured a professorship at Boston University.

Although a dutiful son. Bell did not wish to devote his life to advancing
his father's system. In 1872, he turned to invention to make his own mark
on the world. Bell may have read how Western Union had purchased
Stearns's duplex, and this may have led him to decide to develop his own
multiple-message telegraph. "*- Drawing on the extensive knowledge of
acoustics he had acquired in teaching visible speech. Bell investigated a har-
monic telegraph.

In the autumn of 1874, after he had begun courting Hubbard's daughter
Mabel, Bell told Hubbard of his telegraph experiments. Hubbard took an
immediate interest in Bell's efforts and encouraged him to perfect his har-
monic scheme as quickly as possible. Hubbard knew that he could use the
invention of a better multiple-message telegraph to bring about change in
the telegraph industry. ''^ With a strong patent for a multiple-message tele-
graph, Hubbard would have several options by which he could force change
on Western Union. He could go back to Congress and argue for federal sup-
port of a new network built around this efficient invention, or he could imi-
tate Gould and use the patent to found a new telegraph company.

Bell tried a dozen different arrangements but was never able to get his
harmonic telegraph to work properly."*'' Bell realized that he lacked the man-
ual skills to implement his ideas; however, rather than give up, he concen-
trated on being a "theoretical inventor" and perfecting the theory behind
his multiple-message telegraph. "'^ In the course of his theoretical musings.
Bell came to be far more interested in the possibility of sending complex
sounds (such as voices) over a wire than in sending individual tones. In
February 1876, Hubbard filed Bell's patent application for a harmonic tele-
graph scheme, and this application included claims for a speaking tele-
graph.'" Six weeks later. Bell succeeded in transmitting the voice and thus
inventing the telephone.*^

Although Hubbard was much more interested in getting Bell to complete
his multiple-message telegraph, he followed Bell's telephone experiments.

40 Carlson

and he arranged for Bell to exhibit his inventions at the Philadelphia
Centennial Exhibition in the summer of 1876. At the Centennial, scientists,
inventors, and other dignitaries were fascinated more by Bell's telephone
than his multiple-message telegraph, and Bell began to focus more atten-
tion on perfecting the telephone. Through the remainder of 1876, Bell test-
ed his telephone on increasingly longer telegraph lines; he also began giving
lectures at which he demonstrated the telephone.'*^ For Bell and other sci-
entifically minded people, the telephone was remarkable in that it illustrated
the relationship between sound and electricity.

For almost a year (March 1876-February 1877), neither Hubbard nor
Bell gave much thought about how to promote the telephone. For his part,
Hubbard was quite busy heading up the Railway Mail Service, a branch of
the Post Office, which had been established to speed up the delivery of mail.
Under Hubbard's leadership, Theodore Vail and others developed special
techniques for sorting the mail on board trains. As Richard John has point-
ed out, Hubbard's experience with the Railway Mail Service further con-
vinced Hubbard of the importance of developing effective communications
systems to foster democratic society.""

In view of his recent efforts with the postal telegraph, one might well
have expected that Hubbard would have gone to Washington to seek some
sort of government support for the telephone, but Hubbard did not do so.
Most curiously, Hubbard at first thought it best to sell Bell's harmonic tele-
graph and telephone to Western Union. Perhaps Hubbard naively believed
that Western Union lacked the technology needed to reform itself, and that
if provided with breakthroughs such as the harmonic telegraph and tele-
phone the company would change. Hubbard may also have wanted to see
his future son-in-law established financially, and may have thought he
could accomplish this by getting a good price for Bell's invention.
Accordingly, in the autumn of 1876, Hubbard offered Bell's patents to
Orton for $100,000.™

Much to the amazement of later historians, Orton turned down
Hubbard's offer. Orton's decision makes sense in terms of his mindset and
the resources he had at his disposal in the autumn of 1876. From Orton's
viewpoint, the telephone was not suitable for Western Union's core busi-
ness of sending short business messages between cities quickly and reliably.
In 1876 Bell's telephone did not work reliably on circuits of more than 20

The Telephone as Political Instrument 41

miles, and transmissions were somewhat muffled and indistinct.^' More-
over, even though Bell invented it while pursuing a multiple-message tele-
graph, the telephone functioned in exactly the opposite way — rather than
permitting several messages to be sent over a single wire, the telephone used
an entire wire for one conversation. Hence, to Orton, the telephone would
have reduced the throughput of his network rather than increasing it.

In the autumn of 1876, Bell's portfolio was also not very impressive: all
that Hubbard could show Orton were a few crude instruments which were
covered by three patents.^' Of course, Orton had seen Bell's harmonic tele-
graph 18 months earlier and had concluded then that Bell's work was infe-
rior to Gray's. Accustomed to the high-quality instruments developed by
Edison, Gray, and other inventors, and knowing the importance of care-
fully phrased patents, Orton probably found it difficult to take Hubbard's
offer seriously. Orton decided that it would not be difficult to have Edison
continue his work on harmonic telegraphy, create a better device, and secure
patents that could beat Bell in court. Consequently, at the end of 1876
Orton asked Edison to step up his investigation of harmonic telegraphy at
Menlo Park. In March 1877, Edison signed a new contract with Western
Union promising to develop new telephone patents.'''

Rejected by Western Union, Hubbard next tried to convince several
wealthy businessmen to form a company that would exploit Bell's patent."
In courting these investors, Hubbard argued that the telephone had the
potential to remake the telegraph industry. Hubbard suggested that, by sub-
stituting the telephone for Morse keys and sounders, telegraph operators
could send and receive messages much more quickly. "An operator by the
Morse instrument ordinarily transmits about fifteen words a minute," he
claimed, "while he can speak & therefore transmit by Telephone from one
hundred & fifty to two hundred."'^" Likewise, Hubbard suggested that the
telephone could be used on private lines to hnk two locations. Hubbard
had already been contacted by several individuals who wanted to set up
telephones between their homes and business establishments or between
downtown offices and outlying factories. On these private lines, Hubbard
believed that the telephone would be cheaper and quicker than printing
telegraphs which often cost $250 each.

The first private-line telephone was purchased by Charles Williams, who
connected his electrical workshop (where Bell had first experimented on

42 Carlson

his telephone) in downtown Boston to his home in the suburb of Somerville
in May 1877. Within a few months, Hubbard was contacted by entrepre-
neurs who wanted hcenses to install similar private lines. Several of these
entrepreneurs wanted to imitate existing messenger, burglar, and fire alarm
telegraph companies and connect all the telephones to a switchboard in a
central office. The first of these exchanges was established in Boston in May
1877 by E. T. Holmes. Holmes had started a burglar alarm network, and
he added telephones as a second service for his customers.^' Holmes found
that his telephone business grew quickly because a portion of his network
served a neighborhood in which many "large grocers, confectioners, and
cookery merchants" were located, and these businessmen found it conve-
nient to use the telephone to conduct transactions among themselves."

With great interest, Hubbard followed the efforts of Holmes and other
local entrepreneurs as they installed telephones on private lines and set up
exchanges. These developments convinced Hubbard in July 1877 to form
the Bell Telephone Company, which was to hold the Bell patents and issue
licenses to individuals who wanted to set up local telephone exchanges.
Named as the company's trustee, Hubbard took it upon himself to pro-
mote the establishment of local telephone companies. ^^ In the summer of
1877, Hubbard traveled across the United States as a member of the
Special Commission on Railway Mail Transportation. He carried two tele-
phones in his suitcase, enthusiastically demonstrating them to business-
men at every stop.

The Telephone as Middle-Class Invention

As Hubbard toured the country and demonstrated the telephone, one won-
ders how he reconciled this new campaign with his larger struggle against
Western Union. How did his emerging market strategy mesh with his polit-
ical ideology? Hubbard's efforts with the telephone make sense if one
thinks of his opposition to Western Union because it mediated the access
of individuals to information. For Hubbard, the success of American
democracy hinged on the abihty for individuals to secure news and mar-
ket prices. The problem with Western Union was that it was so large and
intrusive that it had the potential to prevent people from getting the infor-
mation they needed. One way to minimize the intermediary was to place

The Telephone as Political Instrument 43

the technology squarely in the hands of the user and eliminate the tele-
graph operator, who controlled messages by encoding them. Since the first
telephone was literally in the hands of the user, controlled and manipulat-
ed by him, Hubbard felt that the telephone eliminated the evils of the inter-
mediary/' Moreover, Hubbard also believed that the telephone would be
used for domestic and social purposes, and thus a telephone network
would be more democratic than Western Union's business-oriented tele-
graph system. In his correspondence and his promotional efforts, Hubbard
told of how middle-class and upper-middle-class people would use the tele-
phone to coordinate servants, order groceries, and respond to social invi-
tations. Although Hubbard recognized the business applications for the
telephone, his imagination was fired by the ways in which the middle class
could use the telephone."^"

Hubbard saw the telephone as a device that would allow the middle class
to create a space for itself in a chaotic world. That Hubbard saw the tele-
phone in this way is not surprising when we recall that Hubbard used a
variety of network technologies (gas, water, streetcars) to develop a mid-
dle-class community in Cambridge in 1850s. The telephone, Hubbard
anticipated, would create not a physical community but, as we would say,
a virtual one, since it was a means by which middle-class people could dif-
ferentiate themselves from the poor and from the rich. To appreciate this,
we need only review the typical uses of the telephone before 1880:

• Private lines between office and home connected the domestic (female)
sphere and the (male) world of work while also maintaining protection.

• Private lines between downtown offices and outlying factories main-
tained the distinction between the middle-class owners and the workers.

• In the home, the telephone was used to direct servants and to order goods
from shopkeepers, hence maintaining social distinctions between the mid-
dle class and the working class.

• Telephone exchanges connected middle-class peers across a community
in a technological network that manifested the common set of interests that
middle-class people were trying to define.

One might well ask why Hubbard and the middle class chose to deploy
the telephone in these ways. I would argue that they did so to shore up their
position as American culture underwent a series of traumatic changes in
the ISyOs.'' During that decade, a new rich business elite appeared who

44 Carlson

had made their fortunes on Wall Street by financing the railroads. For
Hubbard and other Boston Brahmins, this new financial elite was especial-
ly troubling because it was based in New York. At the same time that they
were concerned with the appearance of a powerful upper class, middle-class
people were also frightened by the lower orders. Not only was immigra-
tion swelling the ranks of the poor and working classes, but the decade was
marred by labor unrest. Most notably, 1877 was marked by the first nation-
wide railroad strike — a strike that was broken only by calling out the Army.
As the United States celebrated its centennial in 1876, its political institu-
tions were not working very well; the presidential election of that year,
between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, was so close that it was
contested by the Repubhcans and settled only by a special electoral com-
mission. The country was in the grip of an economic recession caused by the
Panic of 1873, federal troops were still occupying the South in the after-
math of the Civil War (the federal occupation ended only in 1877), and
there was the unsettling experience of thousands of people moving to the
Western frontier.

Collectively, these developments may have signaled to middle-class
Americans that progress was not guaranteed. The basic elements of
American society — its political institutions, economy, and social structure —
seemed to them to be either changing or in disarray. It was in this sense that
I would suggest that middle-class Americans were experiencing cultural
trauma — their world was being radically altered.

As they were experiencing this trauma in the 1870s, middle-class
Americans may have shifted their hopes for progress from social and polit-
ical institutions to invention and science. News of Bell's invention of the
telephone, seen as a product of science and genius, may have been reassur-
ing to Americans, suggesting that the mind of man could bring order to the
world. Writing in 1878 about another blockbuster invention, the phono-
graph, a reporter in Scribner's Monthly expressed this view:

The invention has a moral side, a stirring optimistic inspiration. "If this can be
done," we ask, "what is there that cannot be?" We feel that there may, after all, be
a relief for all human ills in the great storehouse of nature. . . . There is an especial
appropriateness, perhaps in its occurring in a time of more than usual discontent.
It is a long step in a series of modern events which give us justly, in the domain of
science, wholesale credulity.'-

The Telephone as Political Instrument 45

Anxious to find some signs of progress, Americans were quick to seize on
several inventions of the late 1870s — the telephone, the phonograph, the
electric light — and to make them into cultural icons.

What is notable about this tendency to celebrate blockbuster inventions
is that Americans did this several years before these inventions had wide-
spread economic impact. In part, this may have been due to the fact that in
early demonstrations the telephone and the phonograph did not always
work, and, instead of reporting such results, reporters wound up speculat-
ing on the invention's potential impact. For example, in the spring of 1877,
during a major lecture in New York's Steinway Hall, Bell was unable to get
his telephone to operate; the reporters described how unruly the crowd
became and then proceeded to speculate on the telephone's wonderful social
potential. Practical applications did not exist, so cultural meanings took
shape in this way.

This cultural framing was central to the development of the telephone
because it was through this process that it acquired a set of positive attrib-
utes which made it attractive to businessmen and investors. Because the
telephone promised to permit the middle class to create a social space for
itself, it was an appealing investment. Consequently, the telephone "took
off" as a commercial technology. By early 1880 there were approximately
300 telephone exchanges. By then, only nine American cities with popula-
tions over 10,000 did not have telephone exchanges." Of course, as Claude
Fischer argued in America Calling, the telephone only became a widespread
consumer or domestic technology in the twentieth century.'^'' My point here,
however, is that the telephone acquired its basic political and social mean-
ings before 1880, and that these meanings informed the commercial devel-
opment of the telephone through the remainder of the nineteenth century
and into the twentieth.

Conclusion

The development of the telephone was not shaped exclusively by technical
and economic considerations; there were also political factors. In the for-
mative years, before 1880, the Bell telephone acquired its particular char-
acteristics because its principal promoter, Gardiner Hubbard, was deeply

46 Carlson

involved in efforts to reform the telegraph industry. Hubbard, moreover,
believed in using technology to create a space for the middle class.

Generally given short shrift in popular and scholarly accounts of the
development of telecommunications, Hubbard played a pioneering role in
defining the telephone. It was Hubbard who closely monitored Bell's early
experiments and pushed him to patent his inventions. It was Hubbard who
sorted through the marketing possibilities, including selling the patents to
Western Union, building private lines, selling versus leasing telephones, and
establishing exchanges. Hubbard was a classic entrepreneur who coordi-
nated the resources necessary for promoting telephone exchanges. He
recruited local agents, convinced Charles Williams to manufacture tele-
phones, raised capital from other New England businessmen, and helped
found the Bell Telephone Company. Hubbard was endlessly optimistic
about the telephone, and his enthusiasm infected local entrepreneurs and
Boston investors and prepared the way for the Bell group to begin installing
telephones in 1877.

But aside from his organizational contributions, Hubbard shaped the
telephone by linking it to a political and social vision. Unlike Western
Union, which viewed telegraphy exclusively as a technology to be used by
private interests to serve the businessman, Hubbard saw telegraphy as a
technology that should serve the average citizen. He opposed Western
Union because he saw the company coming between citizens and the news
and information they needed. Initially, Hubbard tried to redress the prob-
lems with telegraphy by lobbying Congress to create an alternative tele-
graph system, only to be stopped by Orton. Consequently, Hubbard turned
to a technological solution: the telephone invented by Bell. In the telephone,
Hubbard saw a telecommunications system that would overcome the
defects he saw in Western Union. Literally in the hands of the user, the tele-
phone seemed to eUminate Western Union and its operators as a meddle-
some intermediary. Installed in homes, shops, and offices, the telephone
could be used by individuals for both social and business messages. Finally,
Hubbard encouraged entrepreneurs to set up local exchanges. In doing so,
he may have felt he was aiding democracy by taking a "grass roots"
approach and letting individuals deploy the telephone in ways suitable to
their communities.

The Telephone as Political Instrument 47

Understanding Hubbard's political vision is essential for understanding
the choices that he and Bell made in developing and promoting the tele-
phone. The point for technological historians is that ideology does matter.
Technological artifacts are not "neutral" tools whose design and utiliza-
tion are determined by economic necessity or efficiency. Indeed, artifacts
do have politics, and the telephone came to embody meanings that were
central to the middle class. Anxious to ensure that the businessmen and
entrepreneurs who constituted the emerging middle class had access to the
information they needed, Hubbard both sought to reform Western Union
and promoted the telephone. For Hubbard and others in the middle class,
the telephone was a means for reifying — for manifesting in a concrete
way — their position in society.

Hubbard's experience with the telegraph and the telephone enriches our
understanding of the rise of the middle class in nineteenth-century America.
Several historians, particularly Stuart Blumin and Olivier Zunz, have traced
how individuals formed this class, utilizing work, consumption, residential
location, associations, and family structure to create a place for themselves
in society. "^^ Although Zunz touches on how middle-class executives shaped
the architecture of the office and the skyscraper to manifest their values,
social historians have generally not considered how specific inventions
(such as the telephone) were utilized by the middle class to define who they
were or to manifest their values. Yet, as we have seen here, the telephone
was influenced by Hubbard's vision of the middle class. A similar argument,
I would suggest, might well be made for the rise of other major technolo-
gies of the late nineteenth century, including the phonograph, electric light-
ing, and the automobile. The development and diffusion of these
technologies might well be interpreted in terms of their appropriation by
the middle class. The current explosion of popular interest in the Internet
and the World Wide Web may well be due to the fact that these technolog-
ical developments are now being used by middle-class Americans to define
who they are and what they believe.

Investigating how the middle class was (and continues to be) concerned
with technology also raises the possibility of furthering our understanding
of the political behavior of this class. For the most part, self-conscious polit-
ical action by the middle class seems strangely absent in American history.

48 Carlson

"As ethnocultural political historians point out," Stuart Blumin observed,
"political movements based explicitly on the grievances or aspirations of
intermediate social classes are indeed rare in American society.'"'" The lack
of political action by the middle class is often explained in terms of the para-
dox this class embodies: How can a group that celebrates individualism
exercise collective action? Rather than this standard explanation, howev-
er, perhaps the reason why historians have found so few episodes of mid-
dle-class political action has more to do with where they were looking.
Though the middle class does not necessarily express its aspirations in nor-
mal political channels, it may well do so in other areas such as technology.
The story of Hubbard and the telephone hints that the way to see the mid-
dle class in political action is to pay attention to the ways in which they try
to direct technology. For the middle class, political action through technol-
ogy may be more palatable in the sense that many of the arguments turn on
empowering the individual and hence do not appear to be based on nar-
row class interest. Hubbard certainly made this sort of empowerment argu-
ment for the telephone, yet at the same time he certainly thought that the
telephone should be deployed in ways that maintained social boundaries
between the middle and lower classes. Glancing again at the contemporary
situation, one wonders how much of the Internet "revolution" can be inter-
preted as political action on the part of the middle class.

Hubbard's experience with the telephone raises another point for politi-
cal historians. All too often, scholars concerned with the responses to indus-
trialization in late-nineteenth-century America trace the evolution of ideas
in the writings of politicians and reformers in their efforts to shape legisla-
tion and policy, and in the institutions they help create. ''^ The assumption
is that responses to industrialization must have taken place outside of the
realm of business and that the responses certainly were nontechnological.
Hence, the typical political narrative of Hubbard might focus on his postal
telegraph articles and his lobbying efforts in Congress, and it would treat
his efforts in promoting the telephone as something entirely different and
even irrelevant. ''^ Surely, according to typical thinking, political reform and
business entrepreneurship are two separate activities, the first concerned
with the good of society and the second with the good of the individual.
But, as we have seen here, Hubbard did not separate his political and tech-
nological efforts but rather saw both as integral to his efforts to reform

The Telephone as Political Instrument 49

democratic society. Thus, it is important not to limit our investigation of
individuals such as Hubbard to an analysis of either their political or their
technological efforts; rather, we need to follow their actions wherever they
lead and seek explanations that connect them. Indeed, Hubbard challenges
the basic assumption that Americans coped with industriahzation exclu-
sively by changing the government (through regulation and new agencies)
or by creating non-business institutions (such as schools, hospitals, foun-
dations); perhaps we should enlarge our understanding of late-nineteenth-
century America by looking at how reformers such as Hubbard participated
in the business world.

A final lesson that may be drawn from Hubbard's efforts concerns the
pervasive role of the state. Throughout his struggle with Western Union and
his efforts to introduce the telephone, Hubbard employed different elements
of the state. He lobbied Congress for his postal telegraph scheme, promot-
ed the telephone while travehng on government business, and, of course,
resorted to the courts to protect Bell's patent monopoly. Significantly,
Hubbard saw the government not as an externality with which he had to
cope but rather as a set of resources which he could partly control and direct
toward his goals. Although it is tempting to see nineteenth-century America
as an unregulated, free-market paradise in which heroic individuals built
great technological systems and business empires without interference from
the government, the early development of the telephone reveals that major
technological changes were intimately bound up with the evolving political
and legal environment.'^' Consequently, if we are to understand how inven-
tors and entrepreneurs created the technology of the second industrial rev-
olution, we must pay more attention to how entrepreneurs interacted with
the state.

For social and political historians, then, the message is that technology
matters. If we wish to fully appreciate the political beliefs of different groups
in society, then we need to inquire about how material objects illustrate and
confirm these beliefs. Political ideology should not be explored merely in the
realm of ideas.

As the twenty-first century dawns, Americans often wish their society
were as creative as it was at the end of the nineteenth century. In doing so,
Americans fantasize that individuals driven by personal ambition should
somehow come up with new technologies that will automatically make

50 Carlson

American business more efficient and competitive in the global economy.
However, I would caution Americans against assuming that personal ambi-
tion and greed are the only factors driving technological change. We need
to recognize that the stories of technology in America are genuine political
stories, stories in which we see how different groups and individuals used
technology to shape their identities. Only when we are able to fully grasp
the ways in which groups used technology to manifest their political ide-
ologies will we complete the task posed to us by Thomas Hughes in
American Genesis: to understand how America went from being nature's
nation to being technology's.^"

Acknowledgments

The research used for this essay was supported by fellowships at the Dibner
Library at the Smithsonian Institution, the Dibner Institute for the History
of Science and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the
Commonwealth Center for Cultural and Literary Change at the University
of Virginia. Previous versions were presented at the Business History
Conference, at the annual meeting of the Organization of American
Historians, and to the History of Science Unit at the University of
Manchester, and I am grateful to the audiences on those occasions for their
comments and suggestions. I wish to thank Michael Allen, Brian Balogh,
Jane Fewster, Gabrielle Hecht, and Richard John for advice on how to
strengthen the argument.

Notes

1. Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch, "The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts:
Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit
Each Other," in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. W. Bijker et
al. (MIT Press, 1987); Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France (Harvard
University Press, 1988); Michel Gallon, "Some Elements of a Sociology of
Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and Fishermen of the St. Brieuc Bay," in
Power, Action, and Belief, ed. J. Law (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); John Law
and Michel Gallon, "The Life and Death of an Aircraft: A Network Analysis of
Technical Ghange," in Shaping Technology/Building Society, ed. W. Bijker and J.
Law (MIT Press, 1992).

2. Thomas P. Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon, 1998).

The Telephone as Political Instrument 51

3. Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" in Winner, The Whale and the
Reactor (University of Chicago Press, 1986).

4. Bryan Pfaffenberger, "The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why
the PC Revolution Was No Revolution," Anthropological Quarterly 61(1988):
39-47.

5. Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds.. Does Technology Drive History? (MIT
Press, 1994).

6. For an example of how politics and technological developments can be treated
as separate phenomena in American history, see Page Smith, The Rise of Industrial
America (McGraw-Hill, 1984).

7. For the early history of Western Union, see Robert Luther Thompson, Wiring a
Continent (Princeton University Press, 1947). One has to be careful in claiming
Western Union had complete monopoly control of the telegraph industry. First, like
dominant firms in other industries. Western Union found it useful to permit a few
small firms to exist (for example the Franklin Telegraph Company). Second, as we
shall see, it was possible for new rivals to spring up by building new hues along
major railroads.

8. Paul Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992), p. 129.

9. Ibid., pp. 125-127.

10. Edison's efforts to develop an automatic telegraphic are documented in volume
1 of The Papers of Thomas Edison, ed. R. Jenkins et al. (Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1989). On Orton's opposition to automatic telegraphy, see Israel, From
Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory, pp. 132-134.

11. Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory, pp. 135-140.

12. Michael E Wolff, "The Marriage That Almost Was," IEEE Spectrum 13
(February 1976), p. 41.

13. Gould was apparently especially motivated in attacking Western Union because
it was controlled by his rival William H. Vanderbilt. See Matthew Josephson, The
Robber Barons (Harcourt, Brace, 1934), pp. 205-206; Maury Klein, The Life and
Legend of fay Gould (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 197-205 and

277-282.

14. James D. Reid, The Telegraph in America (New York, 1879), pp. 586-587;
Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory, pp. 146-147.

15. Charles A. Sumner, The Postal Telegraph (San Francisco, 1879).

16. Lester G. Lindley, The Constitution Faces Technology (Arno, 1975).

17. David A. Wells, The Relation of the Government to the Telegraph (New York,
1873); [William Orton], Argument of William Orton on the Postal Telegraph Bill
(New York, 1 874), Box 3, Western Union Telegraph Company Collection, Archives
Center, National Museum of American History, Washington.

18. Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism,
1890-1916 (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

52 Carlson

19. "The Progress of the Telegraphic Contest," Telegrapher 11(30 January 1 875),
p. 28.

20. For a detailed discussion of Gray's work on the harmonic telegraph, see Michael
E. Gorman, M. E. Mehalik, W. B. Carlson, and M. Obion, "Alexander Graham
Bell, Elisha Gray, and the Speaking Telegraph," History of Technology 15 (1993):
1-56. See also David A. Hounshell, "Bell and Gray: Contrasts in Style, Politics and
Etiquette," Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (1976), 1305-1314; "Elisha Gray and the
Telephone: On the Disadvantages of Being an Expert," Technology and Culture 16
(1975): 133-161; "TwoPaths to the Telephone," Scientific American 2AA (January
1981): 156-163.

21. Edison's work on the quadruplex and his complex relationships with Western
Union and Atlantic and Pacific are documented in volume 2 of The Papers of
Thomas A. Edison, ed. R. Rosenberg et al. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

22. Bell to Papa and Mama, 5 March and 22 March 1875, Box 5, Bell Family
Papers, Library of Congress, Washington.

23. Edison, "Reis Telephone Drawings" [July 1875], in The Papers of Thomas A.
Edison, volume 2, pp. 524-526.

24. [Biographical Sketch of Gardiner Hubbard], n.d., Box 16, Hubbard Family
Papers, Library of Congress, Washington.

25. [Mabel Bell], undated reminiscence in files of Cambridge Historical
Commission.

26. Samuel Atkins Eliot, A History of Cambridge, Massachusetts (1630-1913)
(Cambridge Tribune, 1913), pp. 117-119; Bainbridge Bunting, "Brattle Street: A
Resume of American Residential Architecture," Cambridge Historical Society
Proceedings 43 (1973-1975), pp. 45-46; Lois Lilley Howe, "Dr. Estes Howe: A
Citizen of Cambridge," Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings 25 (1938-39),
pp. 139-140.

27. It actually took Hubbard and his Cambridge associates two attempts to estab-
lish a successful horsecar line. Their first company, the Cambridge Railroad, was
formed in 1853 and was only able to raise enough capital to lay track between
Cambridge and Boston. Their second company, the Union Railway, was organized
in 1855, and it leased the Cambridge Railroad's track.

28. Robert W Lovett, "The Harvard Branch Railroad, 1849-1855," Cambridge
Historical Society Proceedings 38 (1959-60): 23-50; The Cambridge of Eighteen
Hundred and Ninety -Six, ed. A. Gilman (Riverside, 1896), pp. 380, 396-399; Foster
M. Palmer, "Horsecar, Trolley, and Subway," Cambridge Historical Society
Proceedings 39 (1961-1963): 78-107; Harding U. Greene, "The History of the
Utilities in Cambridge," Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings A2 (1970-1972):
7-13. Partly as a consequence of these improvements in transportation and utili-
ties, the population of Cambridge nearly doubled in the 1850s; in 1860 the city
boasted 26,060 inhabitants.

29. George Greer Wright, "Gleanings from Early Cambridge Directories,"
Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings 15 (1920-21), p. 39. Hubbard recalled

The Telephone as Political Instrument S3

local opposition to his utility and transportation ventures in "A Comprehensive
Plan. . . . An Interesting Interview with Mr. Gardner [sic\ G. Hubbard" (Cambridge
Tribune, 14 August 1886, p. 1; in files of Cambridge Historical Commission).

30. Hubbard linked his concerns about Western Union with Adams's efforts to
reform the railroad industry on p. 84 of "The Proposed Changes in the Telegraphic
System," North American Review 117 (July 1873), 180-107. On Charles Francis
Adams's concerns about railroads and large-scale organizations, see Thomas K.
McCraw, Prophets of Regulation (Harvard University Press 1984), pp. 1-56. For a
discussion of the concerns of other Bostonians in the post-Civil War era, see Peter
Dobkin Hall, The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900 (New York
University Press, 1984), pp. 261-270.

3 1 . Gardiner G. Hubbard, Letter to the Postmaster General on the European and Amer-
ican Systems of Telegraph, with Remedy for the Present High Rates (Boston, 1868).

32. Gardiner G. Hubbard, Postal Telegraph. An Address Delivered by the Hon.
Gardiner G. Hubbard, before the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New- York,
April 3, 1890 (Box 11, Hubbard Papers).

33. Just as the Post Office contracted with private railroads, reasoned Hubbard,
so the Post Office could contract with his new company to transmit telegrams.

34. In proposing that the federal government provide the capital for his company,
Hubbard comes across as a genuinely puzzling character — as both a grasping entre-
preneur and high-minded reformer. Somehow he was perfectly comfortable com-
bining a crusade for the public good (fighting the Western Union monopoly) with
pursuing private gain (establishing a private for-profit company). It is as if one com-
bined Ralph Nader with Lee laccoca. Elsewhere, Hubbard has been seen solely as
a grasping entrepreneur and his reform efforts as insincere; see Lindley, The
Constitution Faces Technology.

35. Hubbard, "Proposed Changes in the Telegraphic System," p. 82.

36. Mary O. Furner "The Republican Tradition and the New Liberalism: Social
Investigation, State Building, and Social Learning in the Gilded Age," in The State
and Social Investigation in Britain and the United States, ed. M. Lacey and M.
Furner (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1993). See
also Louis Galambos, "Theodore N. Vail and the Role of Innovation in the Modern
Bell System," Business History Review 66 (1992): 95-126.

37. Richard L. McCormick, "Public Life in Industrial America, 1877-1917," in
The New Arnerican History, ed. E. Foner (Temple University Press, 1990); William
R. Brock, Investigation and Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 1984);
Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (University of
Chicago Press, 1965).

38. John G. Sproat, The Best Men (Oxford University Press, 1968).

39. Indeed, what is interesting and new about locating Hubbard within this ideo-
logical movement is that Furner and others tend to assume that democratic statism
took shape in the 1880s; what Hubbard reveals is that this response to industrial-
ization may have started 10 years earlier.

54 Carlson

40. Lindley, The Constitution Faces Technology.

41. "Congress and the Telegraph," Telegrapher 10 (6 June 1875), p. 135.

42. Robert Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude
(Little, Brown, 1973), p. 93.

43. Ibid., pp. 125-127.

44. Gorman et al., "Bell, Gray, and the Speaking Telegraph," pp. 5-14.

45. Alexander Graham Bell, The Multiple Telegraph (Boston, 1876), Box 274, Bell
Family Papers, p. 8.

46. Alexander Graham Bell, "Improvement in Telegraphy," US Patent 174,465
(filed 14 February 1876, granted 7 March 1876).

47. Alexander Graham Bell, Entry for 8 March 1876, Notebook, "Experiments
made by A. Graham Bell (Vol. I)," Box 258, Bell Family Papers.

48. Bruce, Be//, pp. 188-214.

49. Richard John, "Theodore N. Vail and the Civic Origins of Universal Service,"
presented at Business History Conference, Chapel Hill, March 1999.

50. Hubbard's efforts to interest Western Union in Bell's inventions are mentioned
in two letters to his wife, Gertrude, 16 Oct. and 16 Dec. 1876, Hubbard Papers. In
these letters, Hubbard spoke of taking Bell's "inventions" to Western Union, mean-
ing presumably both his harmonic telegraph and his telephone. These letters do not
mention specifically that Hubbard offered Bell's patent for $100,000; this figure
comes from Thomas A. Watson's recollections; see Exploring Life: The Autobiog-
raphy of Thomas A. Watson (New York, 1926), p. 107. See also Bruce, Bell, p. 229.

51. Hubbard described using Bell's telephone as follows: "Conversations can be
easily carried on after slight practice and with the occasional repetition of a word
or sentence. On first listening to the Telephone, though the sound is perfectly audi-
ble, the articulation seems to be indistinct; but after a few trials the ear becomes
accustomed to the peculiar sounds and finds little difficulty in understanding the
words." (Source: "The Telephone," printed handbill. May 1877, Box 1097, AT&T
Historical Collections, AT&T Archives, Warren, New Jersey).

52. The crude nature of Bell's early telephones in comparison with Edison's tele-
graph devices was made apparent to Mike Gorman and me in the course of study-
ing artifacts from both inventors in the AT&T Historical Collections. In the autumn
of 1876, Hubbard would have had three patents to offer Orton: Bell's US patent
for harmonic telegraph and telephone (174,465); "Improvements in Transmitters
and Receivers for Electric Telegraphs," US Patent 161,739 (filed 6 March 1875,
granted 6 April 1875); and "Telephonic Telegraph Receivers," US Patent 178,399
(filed 8 April 1876, granted 6 June 1876).

53. Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory, p. 141.

54. Bruce, Be//, p. 29.

55. Hubbard to John Ponton, 21 February 1877, Ponton Collection, AT&T
Archives, Warren, NJ. See also Hubbard to Bell, 22 February 1877, Hubbard Family
Papers.

The Telephone as Political Instrument 55

56. Frederick Leland Rhodes, Beginnings of Telephony (Harper, 1929), pp.
147-148.

57. Gertrude M. Hubbard to Mabel [Bell], 19 Oct. 1877, Hubbard Family Papers.

58. American Telephone and Telegraph Co., "The Early Corporate Development
of the Telephone," printed pamphlet, [dated after 1935], Box 71, Western Union
Telegraph Company Collection, pp. 8-12.

59. Clearly as telephone exchanges grew in terms of the number of subscribers in
the early 1880s, it was necessary to hire telephone operators. However, in this early
period (1876-1879), it was generally assumed that the user would be directly con-
nected by a single wire to another location and that there was no operator involved.

60. For an early discussion of the domestic and social uses of the telephone, see
Kate Field, The History of Bell's Telephone (London, 1878).

61. Robert Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence (Bobbs-Merrill, 1959; Ivan R. Dee, 1989);
Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the
Gilded Age (Hill & Wang, 1982).

62. "A Night with Edison," Scribner's Monthly 17 (1878), November, p. 88.

63. To be sure, the development of telephone exchanges in the late 1870s and the
early 1880s was influenced not only by this cultural framing but also by the fact
that Bell Telephone won a significant legal victory over Western Union in 1879 in
the Dowd case. For a discussion of this landmark decision and its impact on the
development of the telephone industry, see W Bernard Carlson, "Entrepreneurship
in the Early Development of the Telephone: How did William Orton and Gardiner
Hubbard Conceptualize this New Technology?" Business and Economic History
23 (1994): 161-192.

64. Claude Fischer, America Calling (University of California Press, 1992).

65. Stuart Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class (Cambridge University
Press, 1989); Olivier Zunz, Making America Corporate, 1870-1920 (University of
Chicago Press, 1990).

66. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class, p. 9.

67. Morton Keller, Affairs of State (Harvard University Press, 1977); Samuel P.
Hays, The Response to Industrialism, 1885-1914 (University of Chicago Press,
1957); The Gilded Age, ed. H. Morgan (Syracuse University Press, 1970).

68. Lindley, The Constitution Paces Technology.

69. Richard John, Spreading the News (Harvard University Press, 1995);
"Governmental Institutions as Agents of Change: Rethinking American Political
Development in the Early Repubhc, 1787-1835," Studies in American Political
Development \\ (1997): 347-380.

70. Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis (Knopf, 1989).

Culture and Technology in the City:
Opposition to Mechanized Street
Transportation in Late-Nineteenth-Century
America

Eric Schatzberg

Between 1888 and 1898, Americans mechanized urban street transporta-
tion, converting thousands of miles of horse-drawn street railroads to the
new electric trolleys. Perhaps no other modern innovation has diffused as
rapidly as the electric streetcar. Electric lighting, in contrast, faced deter-
mined competition from gas and reached only a minority of urban homes
well into the twentieth century.' More than any other product of the early
electric power industry, the trolley demonstrated the practical impact of
electricity on daily life.

Yet this rapid diffusion was not accomplished without opposition. In
America's largest cities, urban residents waged a brief but vigorous cam-
paign against the most common form of the electric streetcar, the trolley
powered by overhead electric wires. Opponents objected to the environ-
mental consequences of the new streetcars, especially the aesthetics of over-
head wires. This opposition encompassed broad segments of an increasingly
diverse urban community, bringing together civic reformers, small shop-
keepers, and residents of the affected streets.

Opposition to overhead trolley wires shows that the American public did
not always acquiesce to the onslaught of technological progress. But most
history of technology is written from the victors' viewpoint. The widespread
opposition to overhead wires was quickly forgotten and has received little
attention from historians, at least with regard to the United States.^ Indeed,
this opposition had little long-term impact; ultimately, it failed to halt the
adoption of overhead trolley wires except in Manhattan and in central
Washington DC.

The history of opposition to the overhead trolley has a significance
beyond its direct influence on a particular transportation technology. This

58 Schatzberg

controversy illustrates how the methodological insights developed by his-
torians of technology can enrich other areas of history, especially American
urban history. Many of the pivotal events of American history have tech-
nological issues at their core, especially in the late nineteenth and the early
twentieth century, when Americans experienced the rise of corporate cap-
italism, the resulting bitter labor struggles, the Populist revolt, the urban
reform movements of the Progressive Era, and the emergence of American
imperial entanglements.

Historians of technology inspired by the path-breaking work of Thomas
P. Hughes bring a fundamental insight to these events: refusing to take tech-
nology as a given, they insist on viewing it as a malleable product of human
history, no more and no less given than culture or politics. Although few his-
torians would quibble with this view of technology, historians have been
slow to change their practices, continuing the tendency to treat technology
as an external factor that sets the stage for the more proper subjects of schol-
arship. Historians of technology, in contrast, provide concrete examples of
how to treat technological change as a consequence as well as a cause of
historical conflicts. When historians are sensitized to the historical contin-
gency of technology, numerous political and social conflicts reveal them-
selves to involve struggles over technological choices. From this perspective,
Progressivism is to be seen not as a "response to industrialism" but rather
as a struggle over who would bear the costs and reap the benefits of tech-
nological change.^ By their very nature, struggles over costs and benefits
involved questions of technological choice, directly shaping the develop-
ment and diffusion of specific technologies. The controversy over trolley
wires was precisely this sort of struggle to control a new technology.

Historians of technology have more to offer than an exhortation to treat
technology as a historical product, however. In the past 20 years, historians
and sociologists of technology have elucidated the complex web of social
factors shaping technological change, building on Hughes's comparative
study of electric power systems."* More recently, historians of technology
have brought culture into the causal equation, demonstrating how cultural
values and symbohc meanings influence technological choice.' Yet histori-
ans of technology have not been content to expose technology as a social
and cultural construct. To make technology an integral part of mainstream
history, historians must also acknowledge technology's power to transform

Culture and Technology in the City 59

social relationships and culture. Much recent work has done just that, espe-
cially in the cultural history of technology, where historians have demon-
strated the complex and contested ways in which new technologies gain
cultural significance. ''

Full integration of technology into mainstream history requires a syn-
thesis of both these insights: the idea of technology as a contingent histor-
ical product and as a powerful factor shaping history. Historians can
achieve such a synthesis by acknowledging that all technological change
involves two distinct but simultaneous processes, the mutual production of
material artifacts and cultural meanings.

My analysis of trolley wires provides one example of this type of syn-
thesis. Most fundamentally, the struggle over trolley wires demonstrates the
simultaneous shaping of technology and culture through the mediation of
politics, a process that transformed both the material technology and its
cultural meanings. Opposition to overhead wires shaped streetcar technol-
ogy by encouraging inventors to develop underground-conduit systems for
electric streetcars, systems that were adopted in Washington, New York,
and a good number of European cities. At the same time, the debates over
trolley wires illustrate the malleability of culture. Both proponents and
opponents of overhead wires struggled to possess the symbolism of
progress, each side seeking to identify its solutions as the most modern. The
entire battle was fought on the terrain of urban politics, a terrain that
favored the trolley companies despite strong stirrings of early Progressive
Era opposition to the unchecked power of publicly sanctioned monopolies.

History of Technology and Urban History

The struggle over trolley wires provides methodological lessons for both
urban historians and historians of technology. For urban historians, this
story suggests a way to integrate the cultural history of cities with the his-
tory of urban infrastructure. For historians of technology, this story demon-
strates how culture can shape the development of a new technology through
explicitly political processes.

With the possible exception of business history, no historical field has
been more receptive to history of technology in the past 20 years than
American urban history. Lewis Mumford stressed the essential link

60 Schatzberg

between technology, culture, and urban form in the 1930s, but Mumford's
urban writings suffered much the same fate as his earlier Technics and
Civilization, provoking much comment but few scholarly imitators. In the
1960s, urban historians embraced the new social history exemplified by
the work of Sam Bass Warner, perhaps the most influential postwar
American author in the field of urban history. Although technology was
not central to most of these works, the new social history did clarify the
centrality of urban infrastructure to everyday life in the city. Warner in par-
ticular provided clear quantitative evidence of the relationship between
patterns of urban settlement and the diffusion of new transportation tech-
nologies in the nineteenth century, along with a critical assessment of the
resulting urban pathologies. But Warner paid Uttle attention to the tech-
nology itself, treating it like a machina ex deus that almost magically
remade the structure of the city.^

In the 1970s, a number of historians began to delve deeper into the sig-
nificance of technology for urban history, quite self-consciously forging
links between urban history and history of technology. These urban his-
torians moved beyond "impact" studies like Warner's to adopt the con-
textual approach advocated by historians of technology, demonstrating
how social interests and political processes have molded urban transit,
sewer systems, housing patterns, and other aspects of urban life.'^ For his-
torians of urban infrastructure, the work of Thomas Hughes has been par-
ticularly influential, especially his comparative study of electrification in
Berlin, Chicago, and London.' By the 1980s, no historian of urban tech-
nology could safely neglect the centrality of technological systems.'"

When it comes to integrating the history of urban technology and urban
culture, however, urban historians have made little progress. In most stud-
ies of urban infrastructure, culture plays no role as an explanatory variable,
even in works that feature "culture" in their titles." Moreover, when urban
historians do invoke culture to explain the development of urban form, cul-
ture is viewed as an autonomous agent that shapes technology and urban
form from the outside. This tendency is particularly strong in works that
seek to explain the distinctive structure of American cities, with their
sprawling suburbs and their dependence on the automobile. This urban pat-
tern is often explained by reference to some innate American cultural pref-
erence for individual over collective action.'- In this type of argument.

Culture and Technology in the City 61

autonomous culture replaces autonomous technology as the main explana-
tory factor. As Gabrielle Hecht has recently argued, neither culture nor tech-
nology can function as autonomous historical agents; both are in fact
mutually produced in the process of technological change."

While urban historians can benefit from the history of technology, his-
torians of technology can learn much from urban history. The city pro-
vides historians of technology with an ideal site for examining the
interaction of technology, culture, and politics. Cities have long nurtured
technical innovation. Aspiring young inventors in nineteenth-century
America flocked to the cities, although a majority of Americans continued
to live in rural areas." Even when Edison removed his inventive activities
from the city, he retained close ties with the metropolis, situating his Menlo
Park and West Orange laboratories only a short railroad trip from Man-
hattan. But even more than a source for invention, cities in the late nine-
teenth and the early twentieth century were prime sites for the diffusion of
new technologies. The technologies of the second industrial revolution —
especially electrical technologies — were largely urban. Whereas the rail-
road and the telegraph facilitated intercourse between cities, the telephone
and electric power operated primarily within cities. "It is largely due to the
development of the modern city," a prominent electrical engineer com-
mented in 1894, "that the electrical inventions of the present century have
been so successful."'^

For historians of technology, cities are ideal research sites not just for the
technologies they encompass but also for what they reveal about the inter-
section of politics, culture, and technological change. Until recently, histo-
rians of technology paid little explicit attention to politics." For historians
of urban infrastructure, however, politics is almost impossible to ignore. In
the rapidly expanding cities of the late nineteenth century, urban techno-
logical choices almost invariably became matters of public policy. Much
Progressive Era reform had its origins in the struggles of urban residents to
regulate the new technologies controlled by private utility companies, none
more so than street railroads.'^ New urban infrastructures almost invari-
ably required the use of public spaces, especially the streets, which made
them subject to the legislative authority of state and municipal govern-
ments. Public debates over the implementation of these new technologies
exposed them to a level of scrutiny rarely faced by other owners of capital.

61 Schatzberg

even when companies bypassed public opposition through bribery of
elected officials. These debates made exphcit the often hidden cultural val-
ues shaping technological choices, especially with regard to how the bene-
fits and costs of new technologies should be distributed. At the same time,
these cultural values themselves became contested. In political struggles
over new infrastructures, both technology and culture were up for grabs;
that is, both the physical technology itself and the cultural meanings
attached to it could be changed in the process. The struggle over trolley
wires produced just such changes, simultaneously shaping both technology
and culture.

New Technologies and Urban Streets before the Trolley

Opposition to overhead wires was part of a long struggle over control of
city streets, a struggle that involved urban residents, manufacturers, small
and large retailers, teamsters, and transportation companies. These groups
entered into a variety of coalitions that fought over everything from meth-
ods of street paving to locations of railroad stations.'^ The struggles often
took the form of opposition to mechanized street transportation, an oppo-
sition that emerged with the first intercity steam railroads. In both the
United States and Europe, almost all large cities banned the new steam loco-
motives from urban streets. Americans enthusiastically embraced the steam
railroad for intercity travel but would not countenance it within the city.
The three largest American cities in the 1830s, New York, Philadelphia,
and Boston, all prohibited steam locomotives from the existing urban areas.
New York at first permitted steam locomotives to operate north of 14th
Street, but as the city grew it expanded the area in which they were pro-
hibited, banning them south of 32nd Street in 1844 and south of 42nd
Street in 1854. Because of the compactness of pre-industrial cities, the dis-
tance from the railroad terminus to the city center was generally short. In
Philadelphia and New York, railroad lines continued into the center of the
city but used horses instead of locomotives." Urban residents sometimes
objected to these lines as well, arguing that they were merely a prelude to
the introduction of steam locomotives. The courts generally sided with
abutting property owners, ruHng that intercity rail travel was an imper-
missible use of city streets.-"

Culture and Technology in the City 63

In retrospect, banning steam locomotives from city streets hardly seems to
require much historical explanation. Steam locomotives were noisy, emitted
large volumes of steam and smoke, and posed dangers of fire and explosion.
They were, in fact, about as objectionable as an urban freeway. Yet even
when companies like the Baldwin Locomotive Works developed environ-
mentally benign steam "dummies" for use on street railroads, these vehicles
remained confined to suburban routes. Furthermore, nineteenth-century
cities were not hygienic paradises, especially with regard to animal wastes,
and conditions worsened as the century progressed. Nevertheless, both
Americans and Europeans remained unwilling to trade the excreta of horses
for the excreta of steam engines.^' This refusal was a direct consequence of
an urban culture that did not blindly embrace the machine.

The technology of the steam railroad did transform urban transporta-
tion after 1850, but through the use of iron rails rather than steam power.
Although cities prohibited steam traction, horse-drawn vehicles could dra-
matically increase their efficiency by using iron rails and flanged wheels.
The standard raised T-rail used by mainHne railroads, however, created a
significant obstruction in city streets, interfering with pedestrians, horses,
and wheeled vehicles. In the 1850s, inventors developed a variety of
grooved rails that lay flush with the street, making street railroads less
objectionable to urban residents. By 1860, most major American cities had
acquired networks of horse railroads, which quickly displaced the horse-
drawn omnibuses that had provided most public transportation. The horse
railroads significantly increased the supply and quality of urban passenger
transportation, which helped promote the growth of the urban area.^^

Thus, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century one finds an interest-
ing irony. Rapid urbanization, which was largely a product of the intercity
steam railroad, led to a huge increase in the use of animal power for travel
within cities. Yet urban steam locomotives remained anathema, despite the
widespread use of stationary steam engines within cities.

Beginning in the early 1860s, inventors developed steam streetcar
engines that produced little smoke, steam, or noise. Although these
"dummy" engines found a significant niche on suburban streets in both
Europe and the United States, they rarely penetrated the urban core. In
England, regulations issued by the Board of Trade in 1875 imposed a rigid
set of requirements on steam streetcars, permitting no visible steam or

64 Schatzberg

smoke — quite a stringent regulation, in view of the relative lack of interest
in controlling other sources of air pollution. Similar regulations were
imposed in Continental Europe and in the United States." Meeting these
regulations raised costs so much that steamcars lost any economic advantage
they may have had over horsecars. In John McKay's analysis, the steamcar
proved unable to meet simultaneously the economic and the environmental-
aesthetic conditions required to replace animal traction.-'' Except for the
New York elevated, cities were willing to tolerate steam-powered transit
only if the steam engine remained stationary, as it did in the cable-car sys-
tems adopted by most large American cities in the 1880s. From a present-
day perspective, it seems that cities imposed much more stringent
environmental requirements on the steam dummy than on the horse. The
electric streetcar, in contrast, would manage to avoid such strict environ-
mental regulation — but not without a struggle.

Before electric streetcars became practical, though, cities became involved
in another fight to regulate electrical technologies in the streets: the fight
against overhead telegraph, telephone, and electric -lighting wires. By the
early 1880s, a haphazard web of overhead wires cluttered the downtown
streets of every large American city. These wires not only disfigured the
street but also interfered with fire departments and building trades.
Overloaded poles sometimes collapsed under the weight of hundreds of
wires. With the spread of high-voltage electric arc lighting in the 1870s,
overhead wires became not only unsightly but deadly. Cities had almost no
regulations to ensure the safety of overhead wires, and broken telegraph
wires often fell across poorly insulated arc-lighting wires, sometimes with
fatal consequences to people in the street below. Beginning in the late 1870s,
city governments began demanding that the telegraph and telephone com-
panies put their wires underground. The companies refused, insisting the
underground wiring was technically unfeasible. ^^

Concern over the proliferation of overhead wires was widespread on
both sides of the Atlantic. In 1883 the trade journal American Architect
approvingly reprinted, under the title "A Nuisance and a Danger," an
English article denouncing the spread of overhead wires. The author con-
demned "the telegraph engineer" as "the spider of modern civilization . . .
ceaselessly weaving his metallic web above our busiest thoroughfares [and]
day by day . . . adding fresh wires to those which already intersect each

Culture and Technology in the City 65

other at all imaginable angles, until it promises to be difficult for a
Londoner to catch a glimpse of sky except through the messes of wire."
The article noted efforts in New York and Continental cities to place all
wires underground, and pronounced overhead wires "doomed. "^^

Opposition to overhead wires was especially strong in New York, which
probably had the largest concentration of such wires in the world. By 1880,
this opposition was sufficient to convince Thomas Edison to use under-
ground wiring for his first central electric-lighting system at Pearl Street in
lower Manhattan. The primitive state of electrical insulation gave Edison
considerable trouble, but by 1882 he had demonstrated that electrical
power could be rehably transmitted through underground cables. ^^

Throughout the 1880s, urban reformers continued to demand under-
ground wires in urban areas, with increasing success. Chicago began requir-
ing some companies to use underground cables by 1882, and in 1885 New
York estabhshed an Electrical Subways Commission with the power to
compel companies to put overhead wires in city-owned conduits.
Nevertheless, technical problems and political corruption slowed the
removal of overhead wires in New York and other cities. In March 1888,
a snowstorm in New York brought down so many wires that "the metrop-
olis of this country was entirely cut off from all communication with the
rest of the country"^^ for several days, prompting renewed demands for
underground wires. After the gruesome electrocution of a lineman the fol-
lowing year (caused by faulty overhead wires). New York authorities moved
decisively, obtaining legal permission to chop down hundreds of unsafe
poles. In 1892, a presidential commission recommended that all electrical
wires in Washington be placed underground in city-owned conduits. By the
early 1890s, most large American cities had plans to eliminate overhead
wires from their urban centers.^' But these plans were threatened by
demands for overhead wires to power the new electric trolley.

Origins of the Electric Streetcar

The development of electric traction goes back to experiments with battery-
powered vehicles in the 1830s. A major conceptual advance occurred in the
1840s, when inventors realized that they could keep the power source sta-
tionary and transmit current to the cars through wires. ^^ The main difficulty

66 Schatzberg

then became the design of a reliable system for maintaining electrical con-
tact between a moving streetcar and a stationary wire. Beginning in the
early 1880s, inventors worked hard to solve this problem. They developed
three main types of systems: overhead, third-rail, and underground. Other
inventors continued to experiment with battery-powered streetcars.

Of the three systems using wires, the third-rail system was suited only to
segregated rights-of-way, because the exposed ground-level conductor
posed an obvious hazard to people and animals. For street railroads, the
bare conductor had to be out of reach, whatever one's opinions on the dan-
ger of electricity. The earliest systems used overhead conductors connected
to the car through a pole or a traiHng wire. By the mid 1880s, there were a
number of overhead systems, some using a single wire, some with two
wires, some with sliding contacts, others with rolling contacts, some with
contacts riding on top of the wire, and others with contacts pressing up on
the underside of the wire.^' None of these systems proved particularly reli-
able until 1888, when Frank Sprague completed what was then the world's
largest electric streetcar system, in Richmond, Virginia. Sprague's system
used an underrunning trolley, a small grooved wheel that rode along the
underside of the overhead wire while attached to a pole on top of the street-
car. A strong spring on the trolley pole kept the wheel firmly in contact with
the overhead wire. The apparent success of the Richmond installation
encouraged many street railroads in small cities and suburban areas to
adopt the overhead trolley. By 1890, electric street railways, almost all using
overhead conductors, accounted for 16 percent of street-railway mileage
in the United States^-

Despite the promise of overhead-conductor systems, many inventors con-
tinued to develop streetcars that drew power from underground conduits
or batteries. These inventors were motivated in part by technical consider-
ations but mainly by the widespread opposition to overhead wires, which
convinced many of them that cities would never permit overhead conduc-
tors for streetcars. In 1882, an editorial in American Architect noted the
problem posed by overhead conductors while commenting on the trial of a
prototype electric streetcar in Pittsburgh: "The main objection to this, as
to all street railways operated by electricity, would naturally be the obstruc-
tion caused by the line of posts which carry the main conducting wire; and
in most cases such an objection would prevent even the consideration of

Culture and Technology in the City 67

the plan."^^ Even Sprague initially believed that few large cities in the United
States would permit the overhead system, and that this system was simply
out of the question in cities where opposition to overhead wires had already
developed.^''

Because of the intense public objections to overhead wires, underground-
conduit systems remained popular among inventors, accounting for a large
percentage of electric streetcar patents well into the 1890s.^'' The first com-
mercially operated electric street railroad in the United States, installed in
1884 by the Bently-Knight Railway Company in Cleveland, used an under-
ground conduit.^"^ In a typical conduit system, a small device called a plow
hung from the bottom of the car into the conduit through a narrow slot in
the street. The conduit contained two bare wires mounted on insulators. The
plow had contacts that slid along the wires, thus completing the circuit from
the streetcar motor to the dynamo. As early as 1888, there was considerable
technical evidence that underground-conduit systems would be feasible,
although they would be considerably more expensive than overhead systems
because of the need to excavate the street for the conduit. In 1890, the city
of Budapest opened the first successful conduit system in Europe, using a
system developed by Siemens and Halske. By 1892 the Budapest system had
proved itself profitable, and American inventors soon developed similar sys-
tems. In the early 1890s, opponents of the trolley frequently pointed to the
Budapest system as a viable alternative to overhead wires."

Battery systems provided another alternative to the overhead trolley. In
these systems, each car contained its own batteries, which were typically
recharged at a central power station. The battery system gave each car inde-
pendent operation, making system-wide failures unlikely. Battery systems
could often use existing horsecar tracks without the need for an expensive
network of trolley wires or conduits. Alexander Julien, a Belgian engineer,
installed a battery-powered streetcar line in Brussels in the mid 1880s. In
1886 he visited the United States to promote his system, and he convinced
a number of street-railway companies to equip routes with battery-powered
cars.'^

Despite these attempts to develop alternatives to the trolley, by about
1890 American streetcar companies had come to view battery and conduit
systems with disfavor. In their view, the trolley had definite technical advan-
tages over the alternatives. In battery systems, each car typically carried

68 Schatzberg

over 3000 pounds of batteries, reducing acceleration and ability to climb
hills. The batteries themselves proved expensive and short-lived, requiring
replacement after 2 years or less.^' Conduit systems suffered from a differ-
ent set of costly problems. Conduit systems cost much more to build than
overhead systems because they required major excavation of the street.
Overhead wires also provided much easier access for maintenance in case
of broken wires. The conduit systems had to have excellent drainage to keep
water off the bare wires, and the conduits also tended to accumulate dirt
and mud, which interfered with the operation of the plow."*" But the prin-
cipal objection to the conduit system was clearly its higher first cost.

Debating the Trolley

Beginning in 1888, overhead trolleys spread rapidly in smaller American
cities. But except for Boston, large cities were reluctant to become early
adopters of the new technology. By 1890, the electric trolley appeared to
have demonstrated substantial savings over horse traction in terms of oper-
ating costs, at least for routes in smaller cities and suburbs.'*' Street-railroad
companies in large cities sahvated over the potential profits to be gained
from electrification, which included new opportunities for stock watering
and insider construction contracts. Urban residents also demanded
improved transportation, as continued urban growth overburdened the
existing horse railroads.

Under such conditions, one would think that electrification would serve
both public need and private greed. Street railroads, however, were natural
monopolies, and market mechanisms could not ensure the congruence of
need and greed. Because the street railroads operated on public property
with governmental consent, their technical choices were mediated by poli-
tics as well as by the market. When the companies entered the political
arena to obtain approval for electrification, they found that a substantial
portion of the public did not feel that the potential benefits of the new tech-
nology outweighed its objectionable aspects.''^

Whether street railroads needed governmental permission to convert to
electricity depended on the language of their charters. In most large cities,
companies required the approval of the municipal government before they
could install the trolley system, although ultimate authority lay with the

Culture and Technology in the City 69

state legislature.'*^ In nearly every large city in the country, the proposal to
install the trolley system sparked vigorous debate, including angry editori-
als in reform-minded newspapers, pubhc hearings, and petition drives. In
the early 1890s, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Washing-
ton all experienced major campaigns against the introduction of the trolley.

The opposition to overhead wires arose principally from residents of the
urban core, who were motivated by aesthetics, concerns over safety and
noise, and general distrust of the petty robber barons of the street railways.
Aesthetic arguments provided the strongest objections to the overhead trol-
ley. Opponents rarely articulated their objections in clear terms, in part
because almost everyone agreed that the wires were unattractive. Shop-
keepers, homeowners, and US senators insisted that the poles and wires
were unsightly. Even engineers accepted the aesthetic objection to overhead
wires. In Richmond, for example, the city engineer had nothing but praise
for Sprague's system, "with the exception of the unsightly appearance of
poles and wires." The electrical engineer M. B. Leonard, also from
Richmond, denounced Sprague's overhead trolley as a "grievous eyesore,"
although Leonard approved of Sprague's technical accomplishments in gen-
eral. In Richmond and other small cities, the street railways commonly
installed inexpensive wooden poles that began to fail under the weight of
the wires. Even the staunchly pro-industry Street Railway Journal recog-
nized this problem, noting that "a glance along a street where wooden poles
have been in use any length of time often reveals them pointing in all man-
ner of angles, Hke a file of tipsy soldiers."'*'' This opposition appears to have
been based on the same aesthetic values as opposition to earlier overhead
wires: dishke of the visual clutter introduced by poles and wires. Because
these values were widely shared, they were rarely made explicit. In the early
1890s, dislike of visual clutter in cities was growing with early stirrings of
the City Beautiful movement, which was in part inspired by Baron
Hausmann's transformation of Paris. Overhead wires had no place in the
grand avenues of Paris or their American counterparts.'*'

Manufacturers of trolley systems took a number of steps to deflect aes-
thetic objections. Sprague and other manufacturers developed a number of
designs for ornamental poles made of cast iron rather than wood. In nar-
row streets, trolley companies often attached cross-wires directly to the
sides of buildings, avoiding the use of poles altogether.'"' Yet photographic

70 Schatzberg

evidence does show that trolley wires, even when well designed, did con-
tribute to visual clutter. New York's Third Avenue line, for example, used
an underground-conduit system in Manhattan below 125th Street but
switched to an overhead trolley in the Bronx. Photographs of the streetcars
below 125th Street reveal broad boulevards unobstructed by poles and
wires; photographs of the Bronx clearly show a cluttered maze of overhead
trolley wires. '^^

The second major objection concerned safety, both with regard to the
overhead electric wire and the mechanized streetcar itself. The urban pub-
lic naturally feared the dangers of a bare trolley wire carrying 500 volts
above their heads. Electricity was still relatively unfamiliar, and its dangers
not well known. In addition, the first execution using the electric chair had
occurred in August 1890; it was the culmination of a campaign by associ-
ates of Thomas Edison to discredit the higher voltages used by the
Westinghouse lighting system."** Newspapers in Chicago, New York, and
Philadelphia denounced the dangers of overhead wires. "" The US Senate
debated the safety of the system for Washington, and one senator described
the wires as "demoniac" in the "constant menace that they present to life
and limb."™

Electrical "experts" often belittled the public's fear of electricity, label-
ing it irrational and superstitious. Many historians have uncritically echoed
this viewpoint.^' Yet the public's fear concerning the safety of the overhead
wire was quite legitimate. A number of horses were killed by downed wires
from early trolley systems. Telegraph and telephone wires would often fall
over the trolley wires and then become charged with 500 volts. Fallen wires
frequently got hot enough to cause fires. The overhead wires also interfered
with the ability of firemen to fight fires in tall buildings. Manufacturers
endeavored to improve the safety of their systems by adding guard wires
above the trolley wire to protect it from falling telegraph or telephone wires,
implicitly acknowledging the danger."

In the 1890s, very little was known about the physiological effects of elec-
tricity. Despite this ignorance, prominent electrical experts did not hesitate
to pronounce the 500-volt trolley wires safe. Through the early 1890s, they
insisted that there was no documented case of a fatality caused by a trolley
wire. Many leading engineers claimed to have taken the full 500 volts

Culture and Technology in the City 71

numerous times with no ill effects, although none would demonstrate the
experience in public. According to modern research, direct current is, as
Edison claimed, significantly safer than 60-Hz alternating current, requir-
ing approximately three times more current to induce fatality. But a bare
500-volt direct-current conductor is still very dangerous and can certainly
deliver a fatal current."

Another major concern of trolley opponents was the safety of pedestri-
ans. Even the Street Railtuay Journal condemned the epidemic of injuries to
people (both pedestrians and passengers) who fell under the wheels of
streetcars. These fears applied to all types of streetcars, but the greater speed
of the trolley cars increased the danger. The Street Raihcay Journal urged
the companies to develop safety devices to reduce the carnage, such as
improved fenders, but the street railroads resisted such measures for
decades. ^''

A third objection involved the noise of the trolley cars. Although mod-
ern electric streetcars are fairly quiet, the early trolley cars were quite noisy.
In 1891, Elihu Thomson of Thomson-Houston, one of the largest suppli-
ers of trolley systems, complained that the noise of the Thomson-Houston
trolley cars was "simply appaUing." Early trolleys emitted a loud, high-
pitched whine from the double-reduction gearing used almost universally
on trolley cars before 1892. Not until these gears were sealed in oil -filled
cases and replaced with single-reduction gearing was the noise pollution
significantly reduced. ^^

Another strong source of anti-trolley sentiment was the hostility of
reform-minded groups to the rapacity and corruption of the street-railway
companies. These urban reformers often did not object to the trolley per
se, but merely to the granting of a highly remunerative use of municipal
property (that is, the city streets), while the city obtained nothing in return.
Electrification promised major cost savings to the owners of street railroads,
but the companies refused to pass these savings on in the form of lower
fares or increased payments to the city. When public anger threatened to
block electrification, the street railroads frequently resorted to bribery
of elected officials. In effect, many opponents of the trolley were fighting to
control how mechanization's benefits were to be distributed, as well as
to minimize its negative effects.^'

71 Schatzberg

The anger of these groups was augmented by the very real arrogance of
the street-railroad companies, which remained unmoved by pubhc protest.
Spokesmen for the companies insisted that street railroads had the right to
define what technology was best. For example, an editorial in the Street
Railway Journal denounced opposition to overhead wires as unreasonable,
claiming that the public demanded perfection but was unwilling to pay for
it. In fact, the journal insisted, the street-railroad companies shared the
interests of the community; therefore, "the public should let them alone,
and leave them free to follow their own best judgment." The journal's edi-
tors denied that the public had any role in the choice of transportation tech-
nology: "So we say hands off; let a company put in any system they like,
provided they are willing to bear the expense. "^^

Spokesmen for the street-railroad industry insisted that cities would gain
moral benefits from electrification, which supposedly would give the work-
ing classes access to open spaces in the suburbs.^* But in fact this reformist
rhetoric concealed a strategy to expand investment opportunities in the
suburbs while refusing to pass on lower costs to residents of the urban cen-
ter. In 1890 the electrical engineer T C. Martin made this strategy explicit.
According to Martin, the trolley created a great investment opportunity
by reducing costs as much as 50 percent. But this saving was not to be
passed on in the form of lower fares: "The public is intelligent enough to
know that other things are more necessary." Instead of lowering fares,
Martin argued for building "hundreds of new roads" into suburban dis-
tricts. Such a strategy, Martin argued, would blunt radicalism among the
working class while aiding capitalists by forestalling the tendency of the
rate of profit to fall by opening up new land for profitable investments.^'
In fact, this strategy disproportionately benefited the middle-class families
who could afford to move to the suburbs and who paid the same 5-cent
fare for their long commute as did urban workers for short trips within
the city."^"

Supporters of the streetcar companies were not just cynically manipu-
lating reformist rhetoric to hide their rapacity; they embraced electrifica-
tion in part because it symbohzed technological progress. David Nye has
ably documented the powerful enthusiasm and Utopian expectations that
accompanied electrification." But this fascination was perhaps greatest
among those who expected to profit from its use. One would think that

Culture and Technology in the City 73

street-railway men of the 1880s, comfortable with the world of horses, iron
rails, and cobblestone paving, would have approached electricity with con-
siderable skepticism, demanding proof of its economy and reliability before
risking an investment in the new technology. Some such skepticism existed,
especially before 1888, but it was overshadowed by palpable excitement
over the potential of electric traction and by widespread belief in the cer-
tainty of its application to street railroads. In 1883, the president of the
American Street Railway Association ( ASRA) insisted that the steam engine
and the telephone had "ceased to be classed as wonders," and that "the last
and greatest discovery of the century" would be "electricity as a motive
power."'- The following year, Calvin A. Richards, manager of the
Metropohtan Railroad of Boston, likened electric traction to an infant,
"which the Creator desires to confer as a new blessing on the world."" In
the next decade, the street-railway press continued to insist that electric
traction was more progressive than steam: "Electricity is constantly knock-
ing at the door of the domain so long ruled with undisputed sway by the
steam engine, and while the locomotive still snorts in derision, electricity is
hopeful and progressive."" Such faith gave street-railway promoters the
moral certainty they needed to defy public opposition to the trolley.

This identification of electrification with progress did much to structure
the debate over the trolley's introduction. Proponents of the trolley drew
on the symbolism of progress to cast the struggle as one between tradition
and modernity, castigating opponents as technically ignorant, narrow-
minded traditionalists bent on protecting narrow interests. As early as
1887, when no electric streetcar system had yet demonstrated rehable oper-
ation, proponents of electric traction denounced a "spirit of conservatism"
for slowing its adoption. ''^" Other supporters of the trolley ridiculed the
"many and odd" objections to the electric streetcar as based on "ignorance
or prejudice."*'''

But opponents of the trolley in Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere
did not simply cede the symbols of progress to the street railways. Instead,
these opponents directly attacked the association of overhead wires with
progress. They insisted that other paths to mechanized urban transit, such
as underground-conduit systems, subways, or battery cars, were more "pro-
gressive" than the trolley. Nowhere was this struggle over the meanings of
progress more evident than in Philadelphia.

74 Schatzberg

Philadelphia versus the Trolley

All the elements in the trolley debate were present in Philadelphia in the
spring of 1892. The city had one of the largest streetcar systems in the
United States, most of it controlled by the politically powerful Philadelphia
Traction Company headed by the Peter Widener and William Elkins/'"
Under the prodding of the PTC, the city councils began holding hearings in
March 1892 on legislation to permit installation of the trolley system.

Opposition to overhead wires in Philadelphia was well established by
1892. The city had banned overhead electric wires in the early 1880s, but
the ordinance contained many loopholes and the wires prohferated any-
way. Philadelphians also had little love for the city's street railroads, which
fixed prices, distributed stock to politicians, and fought bitterly in the courts
against the limited obligations required of them, such as street paving.*'*

When the city councils began active consideration of the trolley ordi-
nances, a number of groups immediately mobilized and formed a "Union
Committee" to coordinate opposition. The Union Committee brought
together of a wide variety of groups, including urban reform organizations
like the Municipal League, small-business trade associations such as the
Master Builders, the Lumbermen, the Druggists, and the Grocers, and the
Board of Trade, predecessor to the Chamber of Commerce. Another found-
ing member was the Wheelmen's Street Improvement Association, an orga-
nization of bicycle enthusiasts.'' The Union Committee thus united
patrician reformers and organizations of the old middle class, whose mem-
bers both hved and worked within the urban core. From this base, the
Union Committee collected petitions and organized meetings against the
trolley ordinances, and also presented testimony before the city councils.
The committee collected signatures from more than 7000 people living
along proposed trolley routes, including almost all the property holders on
these streets.

Over several days of hearings, which began on March 14, the city coun-
cils heard arguments for and against the trolley. The well-organized oppo-
nents of the trolley marshalled all available arguments against the new
technology, starting with the trolley's objectionable environmental conse-
quences. A group of the city's artists presented a petition "against the dis-
figuration of the streets." The spokesman for the Union Committee noted

Culture and Technology in the City 75

that the trolley would undermine the growing movement for urban beau-
tification in Philadelphia. The Union Committee also obtained letters from
prominent citizens in other cities where the trolley was already in opera-
tion about the dangers of the system and its negative effect on property val-
ues. A lawyer from Pittsburgh declared the noise there "unendurable,"
describing it as "a hissing sound that is especially racking on the nerves."
Two more correspondents from Pittsburgh had similar objections, report-
ing the noise loud enough to prevent conversation while the streetcar
passed.^"

The Union Committee also presented evidence of the dangers of the trol-
ley. It introduced a newspaper report on a recent fall of some trolley wires
in Boston that had shut down the trolleys, endangered pedestrians, and
caused a small fire. Correspondents from Pittsburgh reported that the trol-
ley wires there often broke and fell to the ground. The chief engineer of
Philadelphia's fire bureau, after examining the trolley system in Pittsburgh,
declared the trolley wires a menace to firemen. The Philadelphia Fire
Underwriters' Association also adopted a resolution against the overhead
trolley on grounds of fire safety. Finally, the opponents of the trolley noted
the increase in accidents that accompanied its introduction. For example,
the Massachusetts Board of Railroad Commissioners reported that electric
streetcars in Boston had twice as many accidents per vehicle-mile than
horsecars.^'

Perhaps the greatest opposition, however, derived from the fact that the
trolley ordinances placed almost no conditions on the street-railway com-
panies. In the view of the Union Committee, the city of Philadelphia was
granting the companies a highly profitable use of public property while
demanding no compensation, despite the objectionable aspects of the new
technology. Although electrification was supposed to reduce costs up to one
half, there were no provisions for reducing fares or compensating the city
for this valuable use of the streets. The ordinances did not even require the
companies to pave the streets, an obligation that the city insisted was
already required under existing franchises. The only restriction on the com-
panies was a vague clause giving the Department of Public Safety a role in
ensuring the safety of the system. The city did not even retain a right to
order the poles to be removed in case the city later decided on an alterna-
tive system.''^

76 Schatzberg

The opponents of the trolley did not limit themselves to decrying the
innovation, however. They also endorsed alternative systems of electric trac-
tion, in particular battery systems and the underground conduits. The oppo-
nents admitted that the alternatives were more expensive than the trolley,
but insisted that the absence of overhead wires was worth the higher cost.
They frequently mentioned the conduit system in Budapest, which had been
operating profitably for several years. WilUam D. Marks, the head of the
Edison Electric Light Company of Philadelphia, provided expert testimony
in favor of an underground-conduit system, citing the success of the
Budapest system. Other opponents argued for battery systems after visiting
an apparently successful line in operation in Washington.^'

The Traction Company, represented by its New York lawyers, mobilized
technical arguments in response to the trolley's opponents. The company
presented an impressive list of expert witnesses and testimonials to the ben-
efits of the trolley. These witnesses included George Westinghouse, whose
firm had recently entered the electric-streetcar business, and Oliver T
Crosby, a prominent electrical engineer and the head of the streetcar depart-
ment at Thomson-Houston, one of the largest manufacturers of electric
streetcars. Crosby echoed the industry line on safety, denying that the over-
head wires posed any threat to human life. He also claimed, quite implausi-
bly, that the trolley car made less noise than the horse-drawn streetcar, and
insisted that the trolley posed no fire danger. Westinghouse seconded Crosby
on the safety of the trolley. Crosby and Westinghouse also sought to dis-
credit the alternatives, arguing that batteries remained costly and unreliable
and that the success of the Budapest conduit systems was anomalous. ^''

But the defenders of the trolley did not limit themselves to technical argu-
ments; they also attacked their opponents as enemies of progress, "igno-
rant of the features of the [trolley] system . . . and opposed to any change. "^^
In his testimony, George Westinghouse expressed amazement that the pub-
lic was opposing the trolley, rather than seeking to compel the companies
to introduce it.^*" As part of this progressive image, the trolley's supporters
cast themselves as allies of the working man, a strategy that suggests that
the Union Committee had significant working-class support. For example,
the trolley magnate Peter Widener, in a Saint Patrick's Day dinner speech,
attacked "obstructionists" who wanted to "block progress." Widener's
obstructionists included the well-heeled residents "between Chestnut and

Culture and Technology in the City 77

Pine streets, [who] think themselves better than the rest of the world," as
well as small shopkeepers "who have gotten a little wealth and protest
against everything." Widener denounced the municipal reform groups,
which "seem to resolve against everything. "^^ In a hearing at the mayor's
office, Rufus E. Shapley, a lawyer for Union Traction, echoed Widener's
remarks, branding trolley proponents elitists who would deny improved
transit to workers. "The streets are pubUc highways, and the men who live
in the back alleys have as much right on them as the aristocrats," Shapley
proclaimed. Of course, Shapley was not offering to reduce fares, which
remained too high for daily commuting by the average worker. In the same
hearing, A. K. McClure, editor of the Philadelphia Times, dismissed oppo-
sition to the trolley as typical of "objections usually made against innova-
tions"; similar objection, he claimed, had been raised earher against gas
lighting and horsecars.^*

Opponents of the trolley did not acquiesce to its symbolic association
with progress; rather, they sought to undermine its progressive image.
Leading opponents like Frederick Fraley, president of the Board of Trade,
insisted that they were not opposed to electric traction itself, but rather to
the specific type of system proposed. Opponents argued that the trolley was
an imperfect, transitional system that would soon be replaced by alterna-
tives already in development. In their vision of technological progress, bat-
teries or the conduit system represented the future, not the trolley. The
reform-minded Philadelphia Inquirer, a strong opponent of the trolley,
made this argument repeatedly in its editorials. The trolley system, claimed
the Inquirer, was merely cheap, not progressive. It was not even a recent
invention but rather "an already out-of-date system that will very shortly
be swept out of existence in the progressive cities of the land."^' To install
the trolley system would be "a step backwards — a step into the dark ages
of old Philadelphia and not a progressive movement."*" The Inquirer's edi-
tors even argued that the streets could never provide real rapid transit,
implying that elevated or underground trains were preferable.

For the trolley's opponents, its initial success in smaller cities provided
another set of symbolic associations that contradicted its progressive image.
Opponents viewed the trolley as a provincial technology unworthy of use
in a great metropolis. The Inquirer referred to the trolley as a "country sys-
tem" suited only to "country towns."*' When a supporter of the trolley

78 Schatzberg

claimed that 300 cities had already adopted the system, George Mercer, a
representative of the Union Committee, responded that the United States
did not have 300 places "which deserve the name of cities." The trolley was
suitable only for small towns with wide streets, said Mercer, not for a great
metropolis like New York or a capital city like Washington. "The trolley
system is provincial," concluded Mercer, and "neither the city of
Washington nor any one of the beautiful cities of Europe would ever think
of adopting such a system. "^-

Indeed, neither New York nor Washington ever accepted the trolley in
its most developed urban areas. But Philadelphians did not succeed in stop-
ping the trolley. Although public sentiment seemed overwhelmingly against
the trolley, the city councils voted in favor of the ordinances by a wide mar-
gin. The Philadelphia Inquirer then led an editorial campaign to get Mayor
Edwin S. Stuart to veto the measures, urging its readers to sign a petition
against the trolley, which the newspaper printed on its front page. Other
city newspapers joined the Inquirer in urging the veto, and thousands of
outraged citizens attended meetings against the trolley ordinances. The trol-
ley interests responded to the opposition by offering to pave and light 40
miles of city streets if the mayor signed the bills, but this offer did not pla-
cate opponents. ^^

Mayor Stuart, a reformer, was sympathetic to the trolley's opponents but
had kept silent throughout the controversy. On the last day of March, Stuart
vetoed the trolley bills. In his veto message, the mayor insisted on his sup-
port for improved transit but claimed that he had not been convinced that
the trolley offered the best alternative. Stuart also condemned the lack of
municipal control provided by the trolley ordinances, suggesting that he
would have vetoed the legislation even if he had supported the trolley sys-
tem. The city councils then passed the bills over the Mayor's veto with
almost no debate. The Inquirer hinted at bribery of the council members by
the street-railway companies. Although direct evidence of corruption was
not forthcoming in this case, bribery was a standard practice in obtaining
municipal franchises in the Gilded Age. Furthermore, bribery would explain
the lack of debate by the city councils and the reluctance of council mem-
bers to explain their votes to a hostile public. The disgusted editors of the
Inquirer condemned the "trolley infamy" and called on the voters to defeat
the "traitors" in the city councils who had supported the trolley. *"*

Culture and Technology in the City 79

In the end, the trolley's opponents did receive some slight compensation.
The Traction Company stood by its agreement to pave 40 miles of street
adjacent to its tracks, and other companies did the same when they electri-
fied. This street paving transformed Philadelphia from one of the worst-
paved to one of the best-paved American cities. ^^" Philadelphians also
benefited from improved service and from the extension of lines into out-
lying areas. However, fares remained at 5 cents (owing to the lack of com-
petition), and this permitted the companies to retain much of the money
that the new technology had saved them.

Successful Alternatives in New York, Washington, and Europe

Was the trolley really necessary for electrified transit in large American
cities? Proponents of the trolley, including most electrical engineers, insisted
that the overhead-wire system was the only practical solution. Yet two cities
in the United States, and many more abroad, succeeded in electrifying tran-
sit lines without using overhead wires in central urban districts. These cities
used the underground-conduit system, typically in combination with the
trolley for suburban routes.

The two American cities that partially banned overhead trolley wires
were New York and Washington.'*'^ In both cities, special conditions helped
the opponents to victory. In the early 1890s, when New York began con-
sidering electric streetcars, the city had finally achieved some success in plac-
ing wires underground after 10 years of intense struggle against telegraph,
telephone, lighting and alarm companies. Because of the intense opposition
to overhead wires in Manhattan, New York's first trolley system was
installed in the Bronx (then called the "Annexed District") in 1892, but
even there it generated considerable opposition. A few lines were installed
in upper Manhattan despite protests, but after 1894 the trolley system was
banned in all of Manhattan. Thus, in the early 1890s, when most cities were
installing electric streetcars, Manhattan street-railroad companies contin-
ued to operate and even expand cable railroads. ^^

A similar situation unfolded in Washington, but with an important dif-
ference. In the 1890s, the District of Columbia was governed by the US
Congress. This situation, paradoxically, made Congress more receptive
to popular protest, since congressmen did not depend on the city's local

80 Schatzberg

businessmen and political bosses for electoral support. In addition, many
congressmen took seriously Washington's role as a capital city, and over-
head wires had no place in their aesthetic vision. Congress has requested
information regarding electric traction for the District of Columbia as early
as 1888, and it received a detailed report from Captain Eugene Griffin, an
electrical engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers. Griffin provided a
ringing endorsement of electric traction in general, claiming that "horse-
cars belong to a past era." Yet even Griffin recommended against overhead
wires in the urban part of the District of Columbia.^*

Since the District's street-railroad charters were acts of Congress, changes
in motive power became occasions for congressional debate. The first
debates occurred in 1888 when the District's Commissioners approved a
new streetcar line to be powered by an overhead trolley, defying the spirit
if not the letter of a congressional resolution directing the commissioners to
prohibit further overhead wires. This action prompted a lengthy debate in
the Senate that mirrored later debates in larger cities over the safety and
aesthetics of the overhead-wire system. The Washington Star played the
role of the Philadelphia Inquirer, giving voice to the residents of
Washington who opposed the trolley. The issue came up again in 1890, and
after more debate the Congress voted to prohibit overhead trolley wires
within the city limits of Washington (which at that time included the area
of the District of Columbia south of Boundary Avenue, the present-day
Florida Avenue). Congress was willing to permit electric streetcars, but only
if these used underground wires.**'

It became increasingly clear in the early 1890s that neither New York nor
Washington would relent on overhead wires in order to reap the benefits of
electrification. In both cities, cable railways continued to operate on major
streets, despite the high fixed cost of these systems and frequent service
interruptions due to problems with the cables. Yet even though under-
ground conduits promised cheaper operation and lower capital costs than
cable systems, no major American electrical manufacturer tried to develop
a conduit system. No doubt the manufacturers had little desire to offer cities
an alternative that might have slowed the profitable business of electrifying
street railroads. Not until 1894 did the Metropolitan Street Railroad in
New York begin working closely with the General Electric Company to
develop an underground-conduit system. The Metropolitan Street Railroad

Culture and Technology in the City 81

acquired the services of Fred Stark Pearson, an accomplished electrical engi-
neer who had supervised the construction of Boston's first large-scale trol-
ley system. Pearson traveled to Budapest, where he examined the
Siemens-Halske conduit system. He then returned to the United States,
where he developed a somewhat more robust system suited to New York's
streets. General Electric installed the system on Lenox Avenue in 1895. In
Washington, meanwhile, a number of companies had experimented with
various systems developed by underfinanced inventors, but none had
proved entirely successful. With prodding from Congress, Washington's
MetropoHtan Railroad began installing the General Electric conduit sys-
tem shortly before the New York line went into operation. Both lines began
running in 1895, and both proved successful. By the end of the century,
most of the horsecar and cable-car operations in Washington and in
Manhattan had been converted to the underground-conduit system.'"

The underground-conduit system proved to be a viable alternative to
overhead systems. Although underground conduits cost approximately 4
times as much to install as overhead wires, neither Washington nor New
York appeared to have suffered terribly as a result. Street railroads in both
cities operated convertible streetcars that switched from underground to
overhead systems when passing into suburban districts. The historian
Charles Cheape claims that the ban on the trolley in New York restricted
transit, especially on the less-traveled crosstown routes, because the street
railroads found these too costly to electrify with the conduit system. Instead,
the companies used horses long after they had been abandoned in other
large cities, and later they used unreliable storage-battery cars.'' Yet there
is little evidence that New Yorkers or Washingtonians clamored for the
overhead system so that they could enjoy the supposedly ample transit
available in other cities; both cities stuck with conduits until they replaced
their streetcars with buses after World War II, along with most other
American cities.

Conduit systems were also favored by many European cities, whose res-
idents also opposed the overhead conductors, as John P. McKay has so ably
documented in his multinational study of European mass transportation.
McKay's analysis of Europe in many ways mirrors the approach I have used
for the United States. McKay clearly demonstrates the cultural shaping of
streetcar technology, both in the adoption of the conduit system by many

82 Schatzberg

European cities and in the attempts to minimize the aesthetic impact of
poles and wires. Yet McKay errs when he suggests that greater European
opposition to overhead wires explains both the wider adoption of conduit
systems there and the slower pace of electrification in general.'^ The argu-
ments used against the trolley in Europe were almost identical to those used
in large American cities.'^ In most European states, alternatives to the over-
head trolley were seriously considered only in the capital and a few other
large cities.''' The same situation existed in the United States, where the trol-
ley was banned in both Washington, the capital, and New York, the largest
city. Berlin prohibited the trolley only in a few historic areas, proving more
amenable to it than either New York or Washington. Although European
cities used the conduit system more often than American cities, conduits
were generally required only for short distances in the most crowded or his-
toric parts of the city.'^

The greater use of the conduit system in Europe may simply reflect the
fact that in the late 1890s, when most European street railroads electrified,
that system had already demonstrated its practicality. Also important was
the fact that Europeans cities in the 1890s were much less compliant to the
wishes of private corporations than American cities. But McKay's expla-
nation has another problem. In effect, he essentializes the national differ-
ences between European and American aesthetic perceptions of the trolley.
Differences did exist, but they were not fixed. Rather, they emerged through
a struggle in the public sphere to shape the cultural meanings of the trolley.
Participants in this struggle drew on shared set of symbohc resources, as
demonstrated by the common rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic.
Europeans may well have had stronger aesthetic objections to the overhead-
wire system, but this cultural difference was as much a contingent result of
technological change as were specific design differences between European
and American streetcars. '''

Conclusion

The successful banning of the trolley in Washington, New York, and some
European cities drew little attention from urban Americans, whose cities
had almost all adopted overhead conductors by the early 1890s. In most
cities, the initial opposition was quickly forgotten after the grand civic cele-

Culture and Technology in the City 83

brations that marked the opening of new trolley lines. Ridership on the new
streetcars increased by the millions, and urban residents grew accustomed
to the unsightly wires. Massive investments in new electric lines increased
track mileage roughly five-fold from 1890 to 1903.''^ These new lines gave
middle-class urbanites easy access to bedroom communities that emerged
beyond the edge of the older urban core, and they did much to create the
class-segregated neighborhoods that characterized American cities well
before the arrival of the automobile.'* Urban residents still had many griev-
ances against the trolley companies, but the complaints were mainly about
crowded cars, infrequent service, and high fares, not the aesthetics of over-
head wires.'' Even after New York and Washington proved that the under-
ground-conduit system was practical, other cities did not demand similar
installations. New York and Washington seemed anomalous. New York
because of its unique urban density and Washington because of its status as
the capital and the willingness of its congressional overseers to impose their
aesthetic judgments on the city. From this perspective, opposition to the
overhead-wire system seems merely an epiphenomenon in the history of
technology, a curiosity of interest only to antiquarians.

But such an interpretation would be seriously misguided. In opposing the
trolley, urban residents were not blindly fighting technological change, but
rather demanding that such change be guided by values other than the max-
imization of corporate profits. The fact that opponents succeeded in exclud-
ing the trolley from the United States' capital and its most populous city
was in itself a significant achievement. Even where opponents failed to
restrict the trolley, their efforts forced street railroads to spend more money
on building aesthetically pleasing and safe overhead systems. This opposi-
tion also shaped research and invention in streetcar technology, encourag-
ing the development of underground-conduit systems and quieter gearing.
Finally, opponents were often able to extract significant concessions from
the streetcar companies (for example, street paving in Philadelphia).
Although these changes were not dramatic, they clearly illustrate the shap-
ing of technology by cultural values.

Still, the question remains as to why the public objected so strongly to a
technology that we now regard as environmentally desirable, especially rel-
ative to the automobile. In the late nineteenth century, most American cities
had inadequate sewage systems, offered spotty refuse disposal and street

84 Schatzberg

cleaning, permitted appalling air pollution from coal-burning factories, and
left many streets practically unpaved.'"" Why urban residents should have
objected so strongly to a technology that promised to improve urban trans-
portation while ehminating tons of horse droppings remains puzzling, at
least from a present-day perspective.

In large part, the answer lies in the culture of the street. For the mass of
urban residents, mechanized street transportation threatened to destroy the
traditional function of the streets as spaces for social interaction. In most
nineteenth-century cities, the houses fronted directly onto the streets. Back
yards were often rendered useless by refuse and by leaking privy vaults.
Whenever they could, urban residents used the streets of their neighbor-
hoods for socializing and recreation. The streets were especially important
as play areas for children. Horse-drawn vehicles interfered somewhat with
the social function of the street, but their low speed kept the interference to
tolerable levels. Mechanized street transportation, in contrast, threatened
these social functions. Urban residents spent a great deal of time in the
streets, and thus they had good reason to fear the noise, danger, and aes-
thetic disruptions of electric traction.""

The triumph of the trolley represented a transformation of urban culture
as well as of urban technology — a change in the meaning that city residents
associated with the street. The ascendancy of the trolley was a victory for
the instrumental approach to urban streets: streets came to be viewed pri-
marily as transportation arteries rather than centers of social life. After elec-
trification, reformers demanded that parents keep their children off the
streets to shield them from the lethal dangers of the new technology. Instead
of making the streets safer, reformers now sought to segregate children in
playgrounds, where they would be protected from dismemberment by
streetcars.'"- The triumph of this instrumental view of urban streets trans-
formed urban culture, literally paving the way for urban America's capitu-
lation to the automobile. As an agent of cultural as well as technological
change, the electric streetcar in a sense represents the slippery slope that led
to urban freeways.'"^

The struggle against overhead trolley wires thus illustrates in microcosm
the joint construction of artifact and culture, of the physical technology of
urban transportation and the symbolic meanings that gave it significance.
Even after the triumph of the trolley, both the technology and its meanings

Culture and Technology in the City 85

remained contested within the public sphere of urban poHtics. The pro-
gressive aura of the trolley quickly faded in the early twentieth century as
public opinion turned even more sharply against the arrogant management
of the trolley companies. Between the world wars, the trolley faced both a
cultural and a technological threat from the automobile and the motor bus.
On the cultural plane, the trolley's supporters sought, with little success, to
counteract the perception of the motor bus and the automobile as "mod-
ern" alternatives to the trolley. On a technological plane, trolley manufac-
turers countered the motor bus with improved trolleys — most important,
the PCC car, which entered service in 1936. Ultimately, the trolley's sup-
porters were fighting a losing battle, and after World War II most major
American cities abandoned their trolley systems in favor of motor buses.'"''
Yet as the example of trolley wires implies, the abandonment of the trolley
cannot be understood primarily as the triumph of a superior technology, or
as an expression of some uniquely American set of cultural values, or as an
exercise of political power by particular social groups. Both the trolley's tri-
umph and its demise must be understood as contingent outcomes of polit-
ical and social struggles that simultaneously shaped both physical artifacts
and cultural meanings.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the editors of this volume for their helpful comments, and
also to Jennifer Bannister for letting me use her excellent undergraduate
research paper on opposition to overhead wires in New York and
Washington. Portions of this research were conducted while I was a post-
doctoral fellow at the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering. This
material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under grants 9311124 and 9601371.

Notes

1. David E. Nye, Electrifying America (MIT Press, 1990), p. 239; Historical
Statistics of the United States (US Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 510. On
the competition between gas and electric lighting, see Wolfgang Schivelbusch,
Disenchanted Night (University of California Press, 1988), pp. 48-50.

86 Schatzberg

2. In a neglected classic in the history of urban technology, Tramways and Trolleys
(Princeton University Press, 1976), John P. McKay provides an excellent analysis of
this opposition in Europe, although he slights its significance in the United States.
It was McKay's work that drew my attention to the similar circumstances in the
United States. Charles W. Cheape mentions this opposition on pp. 62, 119-120,
172-173 of Moving the Masses (Harvard University Press, 1980), but his
Chandlerian framework prevents him from recognizing its significance.

3. For a balanced overview of Progressive historiography, see Arthur S. Link and
Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism (Harlan Davidson, 1983). The quote is a
reference to Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism (University of Chicago
Press, 1957). Applying insights from the history of technology could cast new light
on the history of Progressivism, especially by undermining the technological deter-
minism implicit in both the organizational-synthesis thesis and the corporate-liber-
alism thesis. For the classic statement of the organizational synthesis, see Louis
Galambos, "The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History,"
Business History Review 44 (1970): 279-290.

4. For a collection of essays marking the arrival of this new historiography, see The
Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. W. Bijker et al. (MIT Press, 1987).

5. For a discussion, see my Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal (Princeton University
Press, 1999), pp. 5-21.

6. In the 1990s, three exemplary works in this genre received SHOT's Dexter Prize
for the best book in the history of technology: Donald Reid's Paris Sewers and
Sewermen (Harvard University Press, 1991), Claude S. Fischer's America Calling
(University of California Press, 1992), and David Nye's Electrifying America (MIT
Press, 1990).

7. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (Harcourt Brace, 1938); Mumford, The
City in History (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961); Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar
Suburbs (Harvard University Press, 1962). On Warner's influence, see Carl Abbott,
"Reading Urban History: Influential Books and Historians," journal of Urban
History 11 (1994): 33-34.

8. Josef W Konvits, Mark H. Rose, and Joel A. Tarr, "Technology and the City,"
Technology and Culture 31 (1990): 284-294.

9. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983),
pp. 175-261.

10. Two representative works are Technology and the Rise of the Networked City
in Europe and America, ed. J. Tarr and G. Dupuy (Temple University Press, 1988)
and Mark H. Rose's Cities of Eight and Heat (Pennsylvania State University Press,
1995).

11. See, for example, an otherwise excellent study by Stanley K. Schultz,
Constructing Urban Culture (Temple University Press, 1989). For critical reviews
that emphasize the importance of integrating urban technology and urban culture,
see Bill Luckin, "Sites, Cities, and Technologies," journal of Urban History 17
(1991): 426-433; Julie Johnson-McGrath, "Who Built the Built Environment:

Culture and Technology in the City 87

Artifacts, Politics, and Urban Technology," Technology and Culture 38 (1997):
690-696.

12. This is the essence of Scott Bottles's argument in Los Angeles and the
Automobile (University of California Press, 1987). Ruth Schwartz Cowan makes a
similar argument when she attributes the failure of housework alternatives to a gen-
eral preference "for privacy and autonomy over technical efficiency and commu-
nity interest" (More Work For Mother, Basic Books, 1984, p. 150). Clay McShane,
in a much more nuanced account of urban automobility (Down the Asphalt Path,
Columbia University Press, 1994), argues that urban culture both shaped and was
shaped by changes in transportation technology. For a general critique of simplis-
tic cultural explanations of the differences between American and European cities,
see Moshe Adler, "Ideology and the Structure of American and European Cities,"
Journal of Urban History 21 (1995): 691-715.

13. See Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France (MIT Press, 1998), esp. pp. 8-11.
Charles Tilly has criticized urban historians for their reliance on such "unhistoricist"
explanations as "prevailing national attitudes" ("What Good Is Urban History,"
Journal of Urban History 22 (1996), p. 709). On the mutual construction of tech-
nology and culture from the perspective of cultural studies, see Paul du Gay et al.,
Doing Cultural Studies (Sage, 1997).

14. For evidence of the urban orientation of inventors in this period, see Hughes,
American Genesis (Viking Penguin, 1989), pp. 24^7. Although Hughes suggests
that inventors sought to avoid entanglements in the day-to-day business of the large
companies who funded them, sometimes by moving to rural areas, the vast major-
ity continued to work in close proximity to major urban centers.

15. Thomas Commerford Martin, "Electricity in the Modern City," Journal of the
Franklin Institute 138 (1894), September, p. 199.

16. Mark H. Rose, "Machine Politics: The Historiography of Technology and
Public Policy," The Public Historian 10 (1988), spring: 27-47. Rose cites Hughes's
analysis of the diffusion of electric power systems in Networks of Power as an
exception to this neglect of politics.

17. See e.g. Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit (Temple University
Press, 1983); Clay McShane, Technology and Reform (State Historical Society of
Wisconsin, 1974), chapter 7.

18. My analysis of the role of streets relies heavily on Clay McShane's
"Transforming the Use of Urban Space: A Look at the Revolution in Street
Pavements, 1880-1924," Journal of Urban History 5 (1979): 279-307.

19. George Rogers Taylor, "The Beginnings of Mass Transportation in America,
Part I," Smithsonian Journal of History 1 (1966), autumn, pp. 34, 38; Harry J.
Carman, The Street Surface Railway Franchises of New York City (Columbia
University, 1919), pp. 19, 25-27. New York did grant exceptions to its ban on steam
below 42nd Street.

20. Philadelphia Committee of Residents and Property Holders, Address and
Remonstrances Against Fifth and Sixth Street Railways (Philadelphia: Crissy &

88 Schatzberg

Markley, 1857); Philadelphia Citizens, Memorial to the Legislature of the State of
Pennsylvania, Against the Navy Yard, Broad Street and Pairmount Rail Road
Company, Against a Freight, Baggage and Passenger Rail Road on Broad Street
(Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1863); Edward Q. Keasbey, "Poles and Wires in the
Streets for the Electric Railway," Harvard Law Review 4 (1891): 245-270.

21. Historians writing on the condition of urban streets often apply twentieth-
century standards of cleanliness, which fail to explain why urban residents would
oppose mechanical forms of transportation that promised to eliminate large vol-
umes of animal wastes from city streets. See Stanley K. Schultz, Constructing
Urban Culture (Temple University Press, 1989), 117-118; Joel A. Tarr, "The
Horse — Polluter of the City," in The Search for the Ultimate Sink (University of
Akron Press, 1996), pp. 323-333; Jon C. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), pp. 231-232. On steam dummies, see
below.

22. Taylor, "The Beginnings of Mass Transportation in America, Part II,"
Smithsonian Journal of History 1 (1966), fall: 39-52; Warner, Streetcar Suburbs.

23. John H. White, "Grice and Long: Steam-Car Builders," Prospects 2 (1976):
25-39; McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, pp. 27-30; Richard Clere Parsons, "The
Working of Tramways by Steam," Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil
Engineers 29 (1885): 99-103; Massachusetts Street Railway Commission, Evidence
before the Street Railway Commissioners (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1864), pp.
89-126; Daniel Kinnear Clark, Tramways, Their Construction and Working
(Lockwood, 1878), pp. -iXl-AU.

24. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, pp. 30-32, 34.

25. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph, p. 231; Joseph P. Sullivan, "Fearing
Electricity: Overhead Wire Panic in New York City," IEEE Technology and Society
Magazine 14 (1995), fall: 8-16; William Orton, A Review of the 'Opinions of
Experts' as to the Necessity for the Poles Now Erected in Tenth Street, in the City
of Philadelphia, by the Western Union Telegraph Company (Russell Brothers,
1876).

26. "ANuisance and a Danger," American Architect and Building News 11 (1882),
17June,p. 284.

27. Robert Friedel and Paul Israel with Bernard Finn, Edison's Electric Light
(Rutgers University Press, 1986), pp. 179, 196-198.

28. Engineering News 19 (1888), March 24, p. 238.

29. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph, p. 231; Sullivan, "Fearing Electricity," pp.
11-13; George F. Swain, "Underground Telegraph- Wires," American Architect and
Building News 16 (1884), December 13: 285-286; "The Electrical Subways,"
Engineering News 16 (1886), September 11: 173-174. For a detailed survey of
efforts to require underground wires, see Report of the Electrical Commission
Appointed to Consider the Location, Arrangement, and Operation of Electric Wires
in the District of Columbia, US Congress, House Exec. Doc. no. 15, Serial Set, vol.
2949 (US Government Printing Office, 1892).

Culture and Technology in the City 89

30. Robert C. Post, "Some Traction Prehistory: Robert Davidson and Charles
Grafton Page," in Pioneers of Electric Railroading, ed. J. Stevens (Electric
Railroaders' Association, 1991), pp. 1, 3.

31. WiUiam D. Middleton, The Time of The Trolley (Golden West Books, 1987),
pp. 52-65.

32. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, pp. 50-51.

33. American Architect and Building News 12 (1882), 26 August, p. 94.

34. "Remarks of Mr. F. J. Sprague on Electricity as a Motive Power," Proceedings
of the American Street-Railway Association 6 (1887), p. 65.

35. Robert David Weber, Rationalizers and Reformers: Chicago Local
Transportation in the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Wisconsin, 1971, p. 07.

36. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, pp. 44-45.

37. Carl Hering, Recent Progress in Electric Railways (W. J. Johnson Co., 1892),
pp. 167-188; H. W. Bartol, "The Electric Railway at Buda Pesth," Journal of the
Franklin Institute 133 (1892), February: 125-130; "The Electric Street Railways
of Budapest: An Object Lesson for American Cities," Review of Reviews 11 (1895),
March: 287-289. For a survey of electric streetcar operations up to 1888, includ-
ing conduit systems, see Letter of the Board of Commissioners of the District of
Columbia . . . on the Subject of Electricity as a Motive Power for Street Cars, US
Congress, Senate Misc. Doc. no. 84, 50th Cong., 1st sess.. Serial Set, vol. 2516 (20
March 1888).

38. Herring, Recent Progress in Electric Railways, 189-206; Alexander Julien, dis-
cussion comment to T C. Martin, "Electric Street Cars," Transactions of the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers 3 (1886): 40^3.

39. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, p. 97; Hering, Recent Progress in Electric
Railways, pp. 192, 196.

40. Hering, Recent Progress in Electric Railways, pp. 168-170; "Safety of
Overhead Electric Wires," Street Railway Journal 5 (1889), May, p. 126.

41. R. J. McCarty, "Special Report Concerning the Relative Cost of Motive Power
for Street-Rail ways," Proceedings of the American Street-Railway Association 9
(1890): 70-74.

42. On the split between pubic and private interests as a political issue in this
period, see Richard L. McCormick, "The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics:
A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism," American Historical Review 86
(1981), p. 257. McCormick sees this issue emerging with the 1893 depression, but
the trolley controversy suggests that the conflict was an important aspect of local
urban debates before the onset of the depression.

43. Edward Quinton Keasbey, The Taw of Electric Wires in Streets and Highways
(Callaghan & Co., 1892), chapter 10.

44. Remarks by Senator Manderson, Congressional Record, 50th Cong., 1st Sess.,
vol. 19, pt. 8 (17 August 1888): 7603 (first and third quotes); M. B. Leonard, "Some

90 Schatzberg

Objections to the Overhead Conductor for Electric Railways," AIEE Transactions
5 (1888), September, p. 404 (second quote); "Metallic Poles for Electric Railways,"
Street Railway journal 5 (September 1889): 254 (fourth quote).

45. Charles Milford Robinson, The Improvement of Towns and Cities, or The
Fractical Basis of Civic Aesthetics (Putnam, 1901), pp. 55-57; Jon A. Peterson,
"The City Beautiful Movement: Forgotten Origins and Lost Meanings," Journal of
Urban History 2 (1976): 415-434.

46. "Some New Styles in Poles," Street Railway Journal 6 (1890), May, pp.
217-218; McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, pp. 100-106. McKay contrasts
European attention to aesthetic concerns with American indifference, but American
street railroads also sought to minimize the aesthetic impact of overhead wires.

47. Compare photographs on pp. 17 and 25 of Frederick A. Kramer's Across New
York by Trolley (Quadrant, 1975). In many of the black-and-white photographs,
however, the overhead wires are barely noticeable.

48. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 107-109.

49. For Chicago see Weber, "Rationalizers and Reformers," pp. 103-105. For New
York see Jennifer B. Bannister, "Opposition to the Overhead Trolley System in New
York City and Washington, D.C.," paper for History Seminar, Rutgers University,
May 5, 1992. For Philadelphia, see below.

50. Remarks by Senator Teller, Congressional Record, 50th Cong., 1st Sess., vol.
19,pt. 8(17Aug. 1888):7654.

51. For example, Cheape, Moving the Masses, p. 119. Cheape states that in
Boston "opposition [to the trolley] stemmed from fear and ignorance," as well as
sentiment against the traction monopolies. For an egregious echoing of the indus-
try's arguments on safety, see Weber, "Rationalizers and Reformers," pp.
105-106, 109. Weber denounces "the irrationality of popular opinion" and "the
unfounded fear of the 'deadly trolley'" for delaying the trolley's introduction in
Chicago (p. 109).

52. John Trowbridge, "Dangers from Electricity," Atlantic Monthly 65 (1890),
March: 413-418; "Safety of Overhead Electric Wires," pp. 125-126; "That
Electricity Does Not Kill," Street Railway Journal 5 (1889), September, p. 266;
"Safety Guard Wire for Overhead Electric Railways," Street Railway Journal 5
(1889), November, p. 367; "The Danger Elements in Electric Traction," Street
Railway Journal 6 (1890), May, p. 232; Henry Morton, "The Dangers of
Electricity," Engineering News 24 (1890), 6 September, pp. 206-207.

53. For a good example of expert testimony insisting on the safety of 500 volt trol-
ley lines, see Evidence before the Massachusetts Committee on Street Railways as
to the Safety of Overhead Electric Wires (Boston: R. H. Blodgett, 1889). For evi-
dence of the limited understanding of electrical injuries into the early twentieth cen-
tury, see Charles Alpheus Lauffer, Electrical Injuries (Wiley, 1912). For a present-day
view of electrical injuries, see Electrical Trauma, ed. R. Lee et al. (Cambridge
University Press, 1992).

Culture and Technology in the City 91

54. "The Frequency of Accidents," Street Railway Journal 5 (1889), September, p.
266; Tom Sitton, "The Los Angeles Fender Fight in the Early 1900s," Southern
California Quarterly 72 (1990): 139-156.

55. Elihu Thomson to E. W. Rice, 20 July 1891, Elihu Thomson Papers, American
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

56. For examples from Philadelphia, see below. For a discussion of Progressive Era
reform of street railroads in Milwaukee, see McShane, Technology and Reform,
chapters 7 and 8.

57. "Opposition to the Introduction of Mechanical Traction," Street Railway
Journal 6 (1890), March, p. 121.

58. See Joel A. Tarr, "From City to Suburb: The Moral Influence of Transportation
Technology," in The Search for the Ultimate Sink.

59. T. C. Martin, "The Social Side of the Electric Railway," Street Railway Journal
6 (1890), April, p. 203.

60. Warner, The Private City, pp. 169-172.

61. ^yt. Electrifying America.

62. H. H. Littell, "Address of the President," ASRA Proceedings 2 (1883), pp. 8-9.

63. Remarks of C. A. Richards, ASRA Proceedings 3 (1884), pp. 138-140.

64. "Electricity vs. Steam, " Street Railway Review, April 15, 1894, p. 234.

65. "Electricity for Street Railroads," Railroad and Engineering Journal 56 (1887),
July, pp. 309-310.

66. "Objections to Electricity," Street Railway Journal 5 (1889), September, p. 266.

67. Cheape, Moving the Masses, pp. 162-165; Harold E. Cox and John F. Meyers,
"The Philadelphia Traction Monopoly and the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1874:
The Prostitution of an Ideal," Pennsylvania History 35 (1968): 411^14.

68. Cheape, Moving the Masses, p. 172; Edmund Stirling, "Competition Soon Gave
Way to Mergers in Car Lines," Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 17 February 1930;
"Address by Mr. John C. Bullitt," in The Overhead Electric Trolley Ordinances
(Philadelphia, March 1892), pp. 7-8; "Traction's Methods Unveiled," Philadelphia
Inquirer, 30 March 1892, p. 1.

69. Cheape, Moving the Masses, pp. 172-173; "Business Men Fight Traction,"
Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 March 1892, p. 4; "Fighting Trolley Wires," Philadelphia
Inquirer, 11 March 1892, p. 5.

70. Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 March 1892, p. 2; 17 March 1892, p. 3; The
Overhead Electric Trolley Ordinances, pp. 12, 27, 55-57, 58.

71. The Overhead Electric Trolley Ordinances, pp. 52, 54, 57, 58, 61.

72. See esp. "Address by Mr. John C. Bullitt," "Address of Mr. Finley Acker," and
"Resolutions Adopted by the Citizens' Municipal Association, of Philadelphia," all
in The Overhead Electric Trolley Ordinances.

92 Schatzberg

73. "Address by Professor William D. Marks," ibid., pp. 35-42; "Use the Storage
Battery System," Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 March 1892, p. 4.

74. "Trolley Battle Fiercely Waged," Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 March 1892, p. 2.

75. "Electric Railway Construction in Philadelphia," Street Railway Journal 10
(1894),January,p. 1.

76. "Trolley Battle Fiercely Waged," Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 March 1892.

77. "Magnate Widener Roasts the '400': The Traction King Creates a Flurry at the
Cloverites' Hibernian Dinner," Philadelphia Inquirer, 18 March 1892.

78. "Urging the Veto," Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 29 March 1892.

79. "Citizens, Can You Stand This?" Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 March 1892 (quote).
See also "The Trolley System Out of Date," ibid., 29 March 1892; "Use the Storage
Battery System," ibid., 9 March 1892; "Opposition to the Trolley," ibid., 11 March
1892; "Marching to the Crack of the Traction Whip," ibid., 18 March 1892.

80. "The Protest Against the Trolleys," Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 March 1892.

81. "Opposition to the Trolley," Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 March 1892.

82. "Citizens Ask the Mayor for His Veto," Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 March 1892

83. "An Outrage and an Insult," Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 March 1892; "An
Outraged Constituency Speaks Out," ibid., 24 March 1892; "Citizens Ask Mayor
Stuart for a Veto," ibid., 25 March 1892; "Traction's Methods Unveiled," 30 March
1892; "Urging the Veto," Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 29 March 1892; "The Short
Road to Rapid Transit," ibid.

84. "Passed Over the Veto," Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 1 April 1892; "The
Trolley Infamy," Philadelphia Inquirer, 2 April 1892. On the general corruption in
late-nineteenth-century cities, see Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City
Government (Praeger, 1974), chapter 8.

85. Edmund Stirling, "New Controversy Attended the Switch to Electricity," Public
Ledger (Philadelphia), 20 February 1930.

86. My analysis of New York and Washington draws heavily on Bannister,
"Opposition to the Overhead Trolley System in New York City and Washington,
D.C."

87. Stearns Morse, "Slots in the Streets," New England Quarterly 24 (1951),
March: 9-1 1; Cheape, Moving the Masses, pp. 61-62; Bannister, "Opposition to the
Overhead Trolley System in New York City and Washington, D.C," pp. 12-14.

88. Letter of the Board of Commissioners, "p. 18.

89. Congressional Record, 5Qt\i Cong., 1st Sess., vol. 19, pt. 8 (16, 17 Aug. 1888):
7601-5, 7650-7660; Bannister, "Opposition to the Overhead Trolley System in
New York City and Washington, D.C," pp. 18-24; LeRoy O. King, 100 Years of
Capital Traction (Taylor, 1972), pp. 17, 31. According to Bannister (p. 24), there
was no single act of Congress forbidding wires below Boundary Avenue; rather, this
provision was placed in the charters of the individual streetcar companies.

Culture and Technology in the City 93

90. Morse, "Slots in the Streets," pp. 8-11; King, 100 Years of Capital Traction, pp.
31-32. For a balanced contemporary discussion, see Dwight Whitney Bowles, "The
Deadly Trolley," Harper's Weekly 36 (1892), November 12, p.l091.

91. Cheape, Moving the Masses, p. 68.

92. McKay does argue that differing aesthetic values are only part of the explana-
tion of the lag in European electrification. He also singles out "differing institutional
arrangements [as the] decisive factor," claiming that "most companies in the United
States were able to electrify their lines . . . without even having to modify existing
franchises," whereas Europeans companies were subject to strict regulation
("Comparative Perspectives on Transit," p. 13). On the contrary, when American
horse railroads converted to electricity they almost invariably had to obtain per-
mission from the city councils, and the courts insisted that this municipal action be
sanctioned under state law, which often explicitly granted street railroads the right
to use electric motors with the approval of the municipality. (Edward Q. Keasbey,
The Law of Electric Wires in Streets and Highways, Callaghan, 1892, pp. 16-23).
McKay is nevertheless quite correct in arguing that American street railroads
enjoyed much more freedom in the choice of motive power because compliant leg-
islatures and city councils rarely opposed the trolley.

93. For McKay's summary of European objections, see Tramways and Trolleys,
pp. 84-89.

94. See McKay's examples from Germany, France, and Great Britain (Tramways
and Trolleys, pp. 95-191).

95. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, pp. 75-76, 99-100, 139-140.

96. Here I am drawing on a concept of culture as a collection of resources (or "tool
kit") that social actors use selectively in concrete situations. See Ann Swidler,
"Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies," American Sociological Review 51
(1986): 273-286.

97. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys, pp. 50-51.

98. This process is described nicely in Warner, Private City.

99. Nye, Electrifying America, pp. 97-102; Scott Bottles, Los Angeles and the
Automobile; Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit.

100. For an overview see Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink.

101. On the social uses of the street, see McShane, "Transforming the Use of Urban
Space," pp. 279-307; Francois Bedarida and Anthony Sutcliffe, "The Street in the
Structure of the City: Reflections on Nineteenth-Century London and Paris,"
Journal of Urban History 6 (1980): 379-396; Penelope J. Corfield, "Walking the
City Streets: The Urban Odyssey in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of Urban
History 16 (1990): 132-174.

102. See Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child (Basic Books, 1985).

103. This analysis draws in part on Clay McShane's Down the Asphalt Path and
"Transforming the Use of Urban Space."

94 Schatzberg

104. The best account of the struggle between streetcar and bus remains David J.
St. Clair, The Motorization of American Cities (Praeger, 1986). On New York see
Zachary M. Schrag, "'The Bus is Young and Honest': Transportation Politics,
Technical Choice, and the Motorization of Manhattan Surface Transit,
1919-1936," Technology and Culture 41 (2000): 51-79. Schrag's fine account pro-
vides plenty of evidence for the role of symbolic meanings in the choice of bus over
streetcar, but he fails to use these meanings as an explanatory resource, thus illus-
trating the need for historians of urban technology to pay more attention to the
causal role of cultural meanings in technological change.

The Hidden Lives of Standards: Technical
Prescriptions and the Transformation of
Work in America

Amy Slaton and Janet Abbate

Standards, specifications, and similar technical protocols have pervaded
scientific and industrial operations for more than a century, but scholars
have only recently noted their tremendous transformative power for
American industry. These bodies of knowledge and practice have largely
maintained their character as "stealth technologies," pervasive but well
below the radar of historical inquiry. In some ways this invisibility is not
difficult to understand. After all, their proponents have generally defined
standards as instruments of reduction: reducing complexity and variety in
products and processes, reducing costs, reducing the time and effort
required for efficient industrial operation. Accordingly, economic historians
have identified standards primarily as by-products of twentieth-century
capitahsts' search for economic control — as incidental though sometimes
potent advances in the process of industrial rationalization. Yet, although
standards have certainly been used to streamline the operations of modern
business, there are also many cases in which they add complexity and even
conflict to the workplaces in which they are used. As instruments that
encode knowledge and order labor relations, standards deserve the atten-
tion of historians of American work. A few historians of labor and tech-
nology have begun the task of locating the myriad implications of standards
for modern management and the experiences of workers, but a great deal
of uncharted territory awaits investigation.'

If we begin simply with the idea that standards bring economic control
to their users, many possibilities for historical inquiry emerge. Control of
revenues and profits suggests control of opportunities and economic advan-
tages; control of the conditions of production also implies the deliberate
design of work processes. Standards emerge from, and direct in powerful

96 Slaton and Abbate

ways, divisions of manual and intellectual labor. In the process, they bring
and eliminate risk, credit, and blame for different participants in the mod-
ern productive sector. They may well be mundane in the sense of dictating
routine procedures, but the very importance of routine in twentieth-cen-
tury production (which many historians have remarked) should be an
immediate clue that standards can offer powerful insights into the nature
of work in modern industry. In addition, standards themselves are a means
of capturing labor — whether physical techniques or "knowledge" work —
and they provide a medium for redistributing the responsibility for this
work among groups of workers, between industry sectors, or between pro-
ducers and consumers. If we look at the larger system of specifying, pro-
ducing, marketing, and using goods and services, we can see that the
adoption of standards may simplify some aspects of the system while cre-
ating a demand for more skilled labor elsewhere. One aim of this article is
to explore how and why such tradeoffs are made.

The overarching value of labor history is that it enables us to understand
the power relations implicit in and supported by systems of production.
Cultivated among social history subdisciplines in the 1960s and the 1970s,
this focus on social conflict and consensus subsequently attracted histori-
ans of technology. For several decades scholars have been striving to depict
the varying impacts that mechanization, mass production, and automa-
tion have had on those who institute technological change in industry and
those who are directed to work with new technologies. The sites where
"machines and people meet" have been subject to rich interpretation by
both historians of labor and historians of technology.^ It seems to us that
some techniques and emphases developed in the latter field might be
brought to bear on projects of the former. Of course, the division of these
works into separate disciplines is to a large degree an artifact of university,
funding, and publication structures, and the exercise of "lending" an
approach from one historical field to another involves some spurious clas-
sifications. However, we can recognize certain directions in studies of work
undertaken by self-described historians of each type. Traditionally, labor
history has defined as its subject activities occurring within certain loca-
tions within the capitahst economy, most often the hteral sites of material
production such as factories, railroads, and mines. In part through the
growth of history of technology, many other sites in which physical labor

The Hidden Lives of Standards 97

is undertaken, including households, the military, and even agricultural
settings, have recently garnered scholars' attention. Historians of technol-
ogy identify "skill" in extremely broad terms, unrestricted by categories
of economic organization, and through these studies previously unnoticed
social negotiations have been newly explicated. The study of standards can
expand the universe of labor studies further, drawing attention to knowl-
edge systems, commercial instruments, and even consumption patterns
that also profoundly affect the lives of persons involved in production. We
want to suggest here some of the richness of these subjects for the study of
social authority and mobility, which have long been major concerns of
labor history.

We have paired case studies of industrial standards and post-industrial
"information age" standards to suggest the range of issues involved and
their persistence over time. Examining early-twentieth-century materials
standards and specifications, we have found that these written regulations
not only ensured efficient technical operations but also instantiated a hier-
archy of technical expertise in production contexts. As written codes of
"best practice," standards and specifications conveyed a particular distri-
bution of labor from a centralized source (a product supplier, government
body, or academic laboratory) to the dispersed sites of industrial produc-
tion. The process of fabricating an elevator or erecting a building occurred
with tasks of design, assembly, and supervision firmly attached to different
levels of personnel. A contrasting set of issues are revealed by a study of
data communications systems of the late twentieth century. In this very dif-
ferent work environment characterized by skilled labor, the focus has been
on ensuring a standardized product rather than on rationalizing the process
of producing computer software. If process standards do not necessarily
make production more "efficient" in the sense of eliminating labor, this is
even more true of product standards. Since they add new constraints on the
product, standards for quahty, safety, or interchangeabihty can add signif-
icantly to the labor required to create it.

Product standards create both a need for more careful production and a
need for evaluation of the finished product, changes that may disrupt exist-
ing work practices. Even more significant, product standards can shift
responsibilities between the creators of the technology and its users, who
must often contribute their own unpaid expertise and effort in order to

98 Slatoti and Abbate

make new technologies fit their needs. This aspect of standardization has
received little attention from historians, because standards have been the
domain of economic rather than labor historians but also because the activ-
ities of end users tend to be classed as "consumption" rather than "work."
In most analyses of the effects of technology on labor conditions, the labor
of users is invisible. Ruth Schwartz Cowan and Lizabeth Cohen have
focused much-needed attention on the work involved in consuming certain
technologies, but labor tradeoffs between users and producers have yet to
be explored.' Users of computer networking products, though they might
characterize their general activities as "research" or "education," were
often also expected to provide the labor needed to install and operate the
network systems they used. Under these circumstances, such expert users
hoped that adopting standardized networking products would minimize
the effort required of themselves. Standards can thus become a means of
negotiating the very nature of the product: What features does the producer
guarantee, and what must the user bring to the technology?

Throughout our case studies, we emphasize that standards and specifi-
cations have multiple performative and legislative functions of interest to
historians. In cases of both blue-collar and white-collar work environments
we find that technical knowledge and authority in commercial exchanges
are inextricably linked. Whether these exchanges are among competing
business concerns, employers and employees, or producers and consumers,
standards and specifications instantiate power as they define and reproduce
practices. In particular, we draw attention to efforts to control the distrib-
ution of technical responsibility among persons of similar standing in the
work environment: technical professionals, business owners, managers. We
argue that these "lateral" negotiations for commercial control, which have
usually been left to business historians to scrutinize as features of commer-
cial competition, are as relevant to labor historians as the more traditional
vertical interactions between management and labor. Professional workers'
use of standards to claim authority and estabHsh expertise brings social
advantage and contributes to the larger system of power relations in the
workplace — issues beyond the scope of most business historians but of cen-
tral concern to historians of labor.*

Our project of finding historical meaning in industrial standards pro-
ceeds along an interdisciplinary path. In part, we follow a challenge, posed

The Hidden Lives of Standards 99

by Phil Scranton in 1988, that is still enticing: to integrate fully the study of
labor and workplace technology.^" While applauding the democratizing
impulses of recent labor history, with its focus on the experiences of work-
ers and the politics of machine use, Scranton notes that the field shows only
a limited understanding of issues of technology diffusion, market conflict,
and standardization. For Scranton, the latter topics subject themselves
nicely to the techniques of history of technology, with its emphasis on how
technical problems are chosen and solved (or not solved), rather than on
reductive economic explanations. Ideally, each disciphne's strengths will
inform the other. We also make use of the conception (developed by John
Law, Tom Hughes, and others) of technology as a heterogeneous intellec-
tual undertaking in which a technical practitioner pursues not merely mate-
rial but also economic and cultural goals, crafting bodies of technical
knowledge to conform to conditions well beyond the laboratory or the shop
floor. For Hughes most famously, the inventor is as much entrepreneur or
reformer as engineer, and to succeed the inventor must approach techno-
logical enterprises as systemic undertakings. We combine these different
strands of inquiry to look for consequences of such "heterogeneous engi-
neering" for workers well below the level of trained technicians, as well as
for the people who use the end products of industry.'

Standards present a remarkably fruitful focus for the project of integra-
ting the history of science, technology, and labor.^ Since standards are
widely used, they attach to broad social patterns. From a methodological
standpoint, because standards are written and published, historical
materials are easily obtained, which helps the historian of industry avoid
reliance on the censored or selective corporate records about which David
Nye warns. ^ Finally, standards are vivid historical markers of social author-
ity being established. At the moment a standard or specification is adopted,
some piece of technical knowledge is granted legitimacy and some person
is granted authority in the workplace or the marketplace, while other
actors find themselves freed — or robbed — of their former responsibilities.
The end is not always predictable: some standards build in flexibility to
accommodate local conditions; others fail when confronted with resistant
users. In the case studies that follow, we offer examples of intertwined
systems of knowledge, labor, and technique within the hidden lives of
standards.'

1 00 Slaton and Abbate

Specifications and the Organization of Modern Construction

Standards and specifications became essential tools of American commerce
with the growth of large-scale industry in the late nineteenth century. As
they grew, manufacturing, food processing, construction, and most other
types of productive enterprises found themselves faced with unprecedented
logistical challenges. Standards and specifications first emerged within
companies seeking to establish uniform procedures and products and soon
became the purview of trade associations and government bodies wishing
to coordinate operations in an ever-larger sphere of technical activity. From
1900 on, the American Society for Testing and Materials, the American
Society of Civil Engineers, the National Bureau of Standards, and individ-
ual city permitting agencies published collections of recommendations
intended to regularize commercial relations. "Standards" generally
addressed the physical characteristics of raw materials or finished goods,
often incorporating scientific data; "specifications" addressed precise
requirements for individual jobs or products or listed testing and inspec-
tion procedures to be used in the execution of a commercial contract. (To
a degree the terms are interchangeable, since each type of document might
incorporate the other.'")

On one level, standards and specifications controlled physical aspects of
production, ensuring the quality of raw materials, the interchangeability of
manufactured parts, or the performance of an engine or a machine. This
kind of control had implications for the ethical status and profitability of
businesses: worker safety and efficiency (on the one hand) and consumer
safety and satisfaction (on the other) improved when written regulations
for industrial operations came into existence. Standards and specifications
also regularized economic relations at the point where the supplier and the
buyer of a service or a product met. They outlined expectations, obhga-
tions, and legal recourses available to parties in commercial exchanges, and
they remain a pervasive feature of commercial exchange today. In many
senses, standards and specifications are texts that communicate and help
to enforce particular behaviors in the marketplace.

As did the systems of reports, memoranda, and statistical analysis
adopted by ambitious turn-of-the-century businesses, standards and spec-
ifications offered means of managing information in an economic environ-

The Hidden Lives of Standards 101

ment of increasing complexity. The logistical and economic aims of these
written instruments include significant controls not just on the material and
fiscal features of commerce, however, but also on organizations of produc-
tive labor and its associated structures of reward." Historians have
described how, as mechanization and routine became by-words of modern
business practice, the range of employment options shrank in many tech-
nical occupations.'^ Industrial employers used standards and specifications
to define work processes and divisions of labor: exactly who did what on
the shop floor or construction site. While ordering a huge and almost infi-
nitely complex array of technical projects for industry, these protocols also
dictated employment opportunities and occupational advantage. We have
written elsewhere on materials standards of this period, such as the
immensely influential body of regulations produced by the ASTM and the
social utility of those standards to the scientists who helped write them. For
many materials experts, standards offered a means of disseminating tech-
nical expertise to a broad clientele without diluting the authority of their
own scientific specialties."

We want to consider here the role played by such written regulations in
a different set of competitive concerns: those that occupied so-called white-
collar technical trades (such as manufacturers, architects, and engineers),
and the skilled occupations (such as machinists, plumbers, electricians)
that worked for them early in the twentieth century. While high-level sci-
entific knowledge brought basic research to bear on routine matters of
manufacturing or construction, a vast body of less esoteric knowledge
kept factories, mines, processing plants, and engineering firms running
smoothly. If science-based standards constituted a sort of idealized code
of best practice for industry, specifications mustered specific, practical
applications of standards or other technical knowledge. From the thick-
ness of plywood to the fineness of flour to maintenance procedures for
electrical turbines, the material details of industry found systematic expres-
sion in specifications that formed the basis of contracts, plans, and orders.
These guidelines for raw materials and finished goods included dimen-
sions, composition, and design features desired by purchasers or — depend-
ing on who was writing the contract — offered to purchasers by suppliers.
The specifications ranged from brief, almost crude invoices casually
exchanged between buyer and seller to elaborate documents intended to

1 02 Slaton and Abbate

provide full financial and legal coverage for both parties. In all cases they
represent delineations of expected technical practice.

The true social power of these commercial instruments is well illustrated
by examples drawn from the construction industry, an ambitiously mod-
ernizing American venue in the period 1900-1920. All but the smallest com-
mercial building concerns in this period showed a growing commitment to
state-of-the-art production and management techniques. The construction
site became a place of streamlined work, often planned and overseen by a
new type of engineering or architectural firm that exercised close control
over every feature of construction work. In their search for efficiency and
economy, these companies exploited the shift in many building materials
from individually fabricated to standardized products manufactured off-site
by specialized companies. By the 1880s, architectural features ranging from
window frames to roofing tiles had ceased to be products only of conven-
tionally skilled workmen operating on a "batch" basis and had become
products of factories in which mass-production techniques were used to
achieve high output. By 1910, staircases, chimneys, and many other larger
architectural elements had joined this list. By the 1920s, entire prefabricated
sheds and warehouses had come on the market, implying an almost com-
plete displacement of traditionally skilled construction workers for such util-
ity buildings." The availability of these reliable and relatively inexpensive
products meant that carpenters, masons, roofers, painters, and many other
long-established trades, steeped in traditional systems of apprenticeship and
broad-based knowledge of building methods, found themselves first in posi-
tions of lowered pay and less autonomy than they had previously known
and then, by the 1920s or the 1930s, excluded from some building sites alto-
gether. The strategic large-scale engineering, architecture, or construction
firm of the twentieth century had little commitment to the highly trained,
relatively highly paid (and often unionized) construction worker, preferring
to hire whenever possible, low-paid workers with either a very narrow set
of technical skills or no building experience at all."

As Gwendolyn Wright and a few other historians have shown, this mod-
ernization of the building industry brought with it a new set of business rela-
tionships. First, as rationalization and economies of scale pervaded the
building industry, suppliers of materials, contractors, engineers, and archi-
tects needed to find ways to garner opportunities and control risks in a highly

The Hidden Lives of Standards 1 03

competitive market. Potential profits for a large-scale construction enter-
prise were steadily growing, but so were risks, and a heavily capitalized com-
pany hoping to thrive beyond a local market had to fight for a secure client
base. Commonly, occupations with related fields of expertise, such as archi-
tects and designing engineers or electrical engineers and electricians, com-
peted for the same customers. At the same time, members of the traditionally
skilled, less ehte building trades, not surprisingly, adopted an adversarial
stance toward the radical economies sought by their employers. Deep rifts
appeared between associations of construction workers and those of the
building industry. Wright has articulated the complex shifts of occupational
identity and allegiance that pervaded the construction industry after 1900."
Specifications, used in business exchanges among all these groups, shed
light on both the origins and the consequences of those shifts. Here we will
briefly discuss three cases, each of which suggests a possible function for
technical specifications in the consolidation of occupational advantage in
modern industry. The first case characterizes the competitive relationships
among producers of building supplies and apparatus; the second addresses
relationships among the skilled occupations vying for work in commercial
building; the third illustrates the general devaluation of craft labor by both
materials suppliers and building designers. In all instances, the formulaic
nature of specifications promised to carry particular visions of the con-
struction process into common practice, reproducing the arrangements of
skill and opportunity desired by their proponents. These written instru-
ments represent not simply the achievement of material and commercial
regularity, but the instantiation of social stratifications.

Specifications for Elevators and Dumbwaiters: Controlling Inter-Firm
Competition

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, elevators and dumb-
waiters passed from the status of intriguing but relatively unusual archi-
tectural features to common use in America's proliferating office buildings,
apartment buildings, hotels, and hospitals. Their origins lay in the simple
horse-powered or hand-powered lifts used in factories and warehouses in
the 1830s. By the 1850s, a number of entrepreneurial inventors had seen
the commercial potential of safe and efficient elevators and investigated
increasingly sophisticated design possibilities, including steam-driven and

1 04 Slaton and Abbate

hydraulically operated passenger elevators. Elisha Gray Otis patented his
pioneering safety brake in 1851, founding a business continued by his heirs
into the profitable era of tall (12-15-story) office buildings late in the cen-
tury. By 1900, engineers had adapted electrical technologies employed in
street railways to elevators, and Otis's company and its competitors were
exploiting and furthering the craze for still taller buildings (which maxi-
mized the status and the rental income of their developers). In less archi-
tecturally dramatic structures, such as hotels, hospitals, and large apartment
buildings, elevators and dumbwaiters fulfilled important logistical func-
tions. As the layout of factories and office buildings of the new century
reflected the carefully planned, labor-saving agendas of modern organiza-
tion, so these other large institutions sought new ways of moving people
and supplies. Elevators and their small-scale counterparts, dumbwaiters,
provided a crucial infrastructural innovation that brought efficiency, and at
times great luxury, to service-centered buildings.'^

If the person commissioning a new building in 1900 or 1910, or the
designer of that building, wished to include an elevator or a dumbwaiter, he
(or occasionally she) turned to a company that specialized in producing and
installing such devices. Otis was one of several large firms with branches
nationwide; many smaller firms worked locally. All modern hoisting
equipment was technologically complex and involved the use of electrical,
mechanical, and structural knowledge. Thus, a firm's experience and rep-
utation were of great concern to those commissioning elevator installations.
However, establishing a commercial reputation is a historically variable
task. Credibility must be constructed from evidence that is meaningful to
potential clienteles, and the nature of such evidence changes over time.^^

Let us look in detail at the actual means by which a successful elevator
company secured customers and at the role of specifications in this process.
First, a word about general arrangements commonly made for building
design and construction in the first quarter of the twentieth century. For
most buildings of significant size, an architect or an engineer designed a
structure to meet the owner's general requirements. The designer would
produce plans and specifications to be given to contractors, who performed
the actual work of erecting a structure. The designer might issue specifica-
tions to a number of speciahzed firms (which would provide foundations,
window frames, water towers, elevators, etc.) or to a "general contractor"

The Hidden Lives of Standards 1 05

(who would coordinate the specialized suppliers). In either case a "super-
vising engineer" in the employ of either the designer or general contractor
usually oversaw all activity on the work site, implementing the owner's or
the architect's instructions and using any specific supply firms that the
designer had requested. Increasingly after 1900, larger commercial build-
ings were erected by firms that employed their own architects, engineers,
and a construction staff, but even these companies brought in outside sup-
pliers for materials and mechanical systems. Only the simplest vernacular
structures (such as small homes or rural buildings) entirely evaded this con-
nection with the multi-layered world of commercial building expertise.

Specifications were a channel by which a designer of buildings commu-
nicated with a contractor about which materials, or which subcontractor,
to use in the erection of a building." The supervising engineer was entrusted
with carrying out the specifications to the letter. Thus, any supplier of build-
ing materials would essentially be selling to the building's designer in an
effort to be included in that designer's general specifications, since that is
how particular products and providers found their way to actual applica-
tion. Catalogs, trade expositions, and appearances in architectural or engi-
neering trade publications (in editorial or advertising matter) all bolstered
the supplier's presence in the market, but a building supply company could
also go further by including its own specifications in such promotional
materials. In so doing, a supplier secured its control of the field conditions
under which its products were disseminated. Beyond simply achieving a
sale and offering convenience to the architects and engineers buying its
products, a supplier could, through specifications, preempt appropriation
of its technical authority.

In a move typical of building supply companies of the period, elevator
and dumbwaiter companies solidified their hold on the market by includ-
ing technical specifications in their catalogs and in advertising copy. These
so-called facsimile specifications were intended for reproduction, "boiler-
plate" style, in the general specifications created by architects or designing
engineers for conveyance to contractors. They listed required physical con-
ditions for elevator installation and equipment, and they included both
operational and decorative features. Blanks were left for the architect's
insertion of the exact model number desired or for related points such as
dimensions, speed, and power (figure 1). Not surprisingly, the facsimile

1 06 Slaton and Abbate

BoRfrEl-i-KawTcntTt Mahuj'aCitjrliig Ld. I:);

Specifications forKlrciric Dumbivakers
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Figure 1

Facsimile specifications for electric dumbwaiters in 1914 catalog of Burdett-
Rowntree Manufacturing Co. (Hagley Museum and Library)

The Hidden Lives of Standards 1 07

'B?ii.nTrr-ltu>;ii'HT^p- \rAirirFACTUB.isL; L'lj.

'1 veit.^l- Hi. n rii^TT-- linwKTB r k
fJl. HTi'rt -NrTi;!! Cab.

Figure 2

"Typical 1914 Burdett-Rowntree dumbwaiter car," as shown in 1914 catalog of

Burdett-Rowntree Manufacturing Co. (Hagley Museum and Library)

1 08 Slaton and Abbate

specifications almost always included the name of the company itself, ensur-
ing that a supervising engineer used only that manufacturer's products or
services. But this official mention of a supplier's name should not be taken
as the primary function of such guidelines. In standardizing communica-
tions between an elevator company, its architectural clients, and the people
actually erecting a building, these specifications simplified the transmission
of technical information. They also served to distribute credit in this com-
petitive environment: to package the expertise, and thus the reputation, of
the elevator firm. The specifications can be considered as a way of formal-
izing and thus guaranteeing the supplier's authority to define and control
details of construction. This was a strategy for disseminating a particular
set of technical practices without relinquishing technical expertise.-"

In some respects, the elevator specifications endowed the individual
architect or engineer with discretionary power. The building designer
would select desired decorative features from a company's product lines
to fill in some of the specification's blanks. Through the 1920s, for exam-
ple, the Tyler Elevator Company of Cleveland offered lavishly illustrated
hard-bound catalogs that displayed an array of colors, finishes, and fix-
tures for elevator cars, with facsimile specifications at the back.^' An archi-
tect or a designing engineer could also determine the desired capacity for
an elevator or a dumbwaiter, and could use the catalog to translate that
decision into practical technical form. But from a broader perspective the
inclusion of technical details in Tyler's catalog also can be seen to have put
limits on clients' discretionary powers. The design of the facsimile specifi-
cations encouraged Tyler's provision of all elevator parts and Tyler's con-
trol of the installation itself. Architects using the catalog to prepare
building specifications for contractors were instructed, in a section called
"The Use of This Book," to select desired "Panels," "Transoms," "Jambs,"
"Door Closers," and other parts of the elevator entrance. Keeping all these
elements together, as a single purchase made from Tyler, was emphasized
as the point of the catalog:

To assure dependable, smooth-operating equipment, it is especially essential to
have undivided responsibility: therefore, all of the parts which go to make up the
complete elevator entrance should be included in one specification in one contract
to one company. "

The facsimile specifications at the back of the catalog guided Tyler's clients
into such an approach, discouraging in the process cHents' invocation of

The Hidden Lives of Standards 109

outside (non-Tyler) technical help, parts made by other manufacturers, or
their own discretion on technical matters. Through the publication of such
specifications, Tyler could reduce the likelihood of both technical interfer-
ence and commercial competition.

The published guidelines meant that architects not only did not need a
profound understanding of the elevator technology they requested, but that
Tyler did not wish its clients to pursue or exercise that understanding if they
had it. Not only did these specifications make it legally necessary for the
building's supervising engineer to use Tyler's products and services; once an
order to Tyler was submitted, they actually made it unlikely that the archi-
tect or designing engineer, the supervising engineer, or the workers at the
building site would take any technical initiative. Facsimile specifications
like Tyler's performed a bundling of technical tasks that created something
of a symbiotic relationship between a supplier of mechanical devices or ser-
vices and its clients. We might briefly contrast their function with that of a
simple bill of sale that recorded the exchange of money for product.
Specifications prescribed a whole string of technical actions — parts to be
used, personnel to be employed — to accompany that exchange.

Undoubtedly, securing control of its expertise in such ways was crucial
to a company like Tyler. The geographic dispersal of the sites to which Tyler
sent its products and services and the scale and complexity of construction
operations threatened the safe, efficient application of the company's prod-
ucts, not least because the technical knowledge involved in the installation
of elevators and dumbwaiters was complex and shifting.-' The prolifera-
tion of city building codes for the operation of elevators after 1900 indi-
cates one source of pressure on elevator companies and presents another
understudied area in the history of technology and work.^"* Further, ques-
tions about how many cars, operating at what speed, would optimize a
building's performance could not be answered without thought to safety,
cost, and efficiency. Larger buildings might require faster elevator service,
but their owners might also demand that less potentially rentable space be
consumed by elevator equipment. To fulfill these complicated conditions,
elevator companies constantly introduced new types of motors and safety
brakes. All these technical challenges were exacerbated by the acute anxiety
about passenger safety in elevators. Engineering News-Record published
countless reports of accidents and infractions.-^ Specifications that encap-
sulated a firm's technical expertise and discouraged deviation and initiative

110 Slaton and Abbate

by people purchasing technologies helped elevator companies and other
building supphers achieve a measure of reputational predictability in an
extremely unpredictable environment.

If specifications helped elevator manufacturers and like-minded business
owners to represent and reproduce their technical expertise, and thus to
garner new customers, they also helped to regulate relations among the
technical occupations that performed the work of building. When the Tyler
Elevator Company noted that its catalog specifications guaranteed "undi-
vided responsibility" for elevator installation, it meant not only that Tyler's
personnel alone would oversee the work, but that responsibility would
remain in the hands of technical experts — it would not be delegated to the
legions of mechanics, electricians, or other technicians contracted to work
on a building site. In 1900, electrical engineers, machinists, and other expe-
rienced personnel might reasonably have claimed some knowledge of ele-
vator or dumbwaiter technology. As elevators and dumbwaiters became
more popular, it is likely that building maintenance staffs also became famil-
iar with their mechanical workings. In this context, Tyler's specifications
served the professional ambitions of architects and engineers — two groups
that, in 1900, were eager to distinguish their services from those of the
skilled building trades. The relationship between the architects and engi-
neers who designed buildings and the many types of practitioners who con-
tracted to erect the buildings was shaped by a range of conflicting interests.
Financial goals interwove with technical agendas, and both sets of concerns
enveloped ideologies about the world of business, labor, and culture.
Specifications could be crafted by suppliers to favor architects and engi-
neers to the detriment of skilled tradespeople. Here we find a second set of
"lateral" negotiations among accomplished technical practitioners, but
now based in inter-occupation rather than inter-firm contestations.

Specifications for Refrigerators: Facing Competition among Skilled
Occupations

The story of another popular new feature of early-twentieth-century build-
ings, refrigerators, illuminates this connection between technical specifica-
tions and the experiences of modern industrial workers. As did the
proliferation of elevators, the arrival of refrigerators in American homes
and institutions followed a broad set of technical and cultural developments

The Hidden Lives of Standards 111

at the end of the nineteenth century. Commercial ice making, particularly
for the benefit of brewing and other food-processing operations, emerged
as a viable industry in the 1860s. Cold-storage warehouses and refrigerated
railroad cars soon followed, bringing the possibility of long-term storage
and long-distance transport of many types of food and, for many
Americans, a diet based on mass-produced and commercially distributed
foods. The icebox, based on the large-scale production and home dehvery
of ice, helped this new variety of foodstuffs (fresh and packaged) find a
place on the American table. A number of other changes, including shifts
in the organization of middle-class households (fewer servants and unmar-
ried female relations to contribute to food preparation) and fashions in diet
(a greater variety and complexity to middle-class meals), paved the way for
the popularity of mechanized refrigeration technologies. With the expan-
sion of utilities providing gas, and then electricity, to homes, the possibility
of high-profit, mass-marketing of home refrigerators was virtually
ensured.-*" As Ruth Cowan and others have shown. General Electric, already
a prosperous firm experienced at marketing electrical technologies, aggres-
sively marketed the refrigerator after 1900 as a means of modernizing the
American kitchen and promoting the consumption of electricity.^^

The first refrigerators were expensive and not infrequently came into a
new home as part of the kitchen design, entering many affluent homes not
as a retail purchase made by consumers but under the auspices of the archi-
tect or engineer designing the home. Certainly institutions, such as hotels
and hospitals, had kitchens designed and equipped by architects.^* GE
understood that architects constituted a significant market for its products
and published facsimile specifications in its catalogs that architects could
reproduce in their own plans and building specifications. Recognizing the
architects' own concerns with occupational self-identity, GE designed its
refrigerator specifications to appeal to a prestigious, almost scientific, stand-
ing for architects among the building occupations. By reinforcing architects'
claims to a distinctly modern, technology-based body of knowledge, spec-
ifications aligned suppliers and architects in a mutually beneficial relation-
ship, at the expense of tradespeople. GE's "sample specifications for
architects, engineers and others," pubhshed in its catalogs of the 1920s and
the 1930s, convey a hierarchical division of labor to the building site, with
building designers holding a top position in that hierarchy.

112 Slaton and Abbate

In part, the specifications performed this function by implicitly invoking
the architects' technical authority. One such feature echoes the Tyler
Elevator Company's inclusion of highly detailed technical matter in its cat-
alog specifications for architects. GE's 1931 specifications, as provided in
"long form" in a catalog of home refrigerators, include such facts of refrig-
erator construction as the conductivity of cabinet insulation ("not greater
than .31 Btu per degree F per hour per square foot per inch of thickness")
and inner finish ("one blue ground coat and two white finish coats of vit-
reous porcelain enamel").-' This information may seem intended to pro-
vide a degree of precision to architects' plans and contracts. Remember,
however, that these refrigerators were factory made, and the details of their
construction could not have been altered by the architects or anyone else on
the building site. So why, we might ask, include such technical matter in
catalog specifications? Why not merely mention the supplier's name and
the appropriate model number? Like the elevator company, GE conveyed
with such documents the depth of its technical expertise. The firm grounded
its status in part on the general reputation of the mechanical refrigerator as
a high-tech replacement for the icebox — as an ultra-modern appliance that
could bring the best science had to offer to a woman's care of her family.^"
GE then offered that reputation to the architects who specified GE refrig-
erators. The GE specifications gave architects direct evidence of the com-
pany's own modernity and reliability, but also let architects "borrow" that
credibility by inserting the very detailed, esoteric refrigerator specifications
in their own plans.

GE's specifications bolstered the dominant position of architects among
the construction trades in an explicit fashion too. The 1931 refrigerator
catalog notes that, in using the company's products, "the architect has the
assurance that he is specifying an electrical product that will give satisfac-
tion. He eliminates unnecessary work. No plumbing or extra wiring is
needed."^' The intimation was of convenience and reliability, but these
were to be achieved by the omission of plumbers and most electricians
from the installation process. This is, of course, a case of the streamlining
of labor so common to early-twentieth-century industries. But the design
of refrigerators and the use of GE's specifications in building plans had
occupational impacts of particular consequence to architects. ^^ In the realm
of home design, American architects were competing with professional

The Hidden Lives of Standards 113

plumbers, who in this period were also trying to align themselves with
applications of esoteric knowledge. For some time, plumbers' professional
associations had claimed an affinity with medical doctors and a vital role
in city sanitation. With the new popular interest in "scientizing" the
American kitchen and bathroom — replacing outdated technologies with
modern appliances and waste systems — plumbers might have challenged
architects as the preeminent designers of these spaces. ^^ As we argued
above, the attribution of technical authority is a fluid process, and in 1910
plumbers could reasonably have sought the exalted social status afforded
to the "professions" through claims of scientific or other culturally
esteemed types of knowledge. In retrospect, we know that plumbers
achieved no such status, while Americans were willing to grant architects
an enduring occupational prestige. That prestige was constituted of both
the traditional cultural stewardship attributed to fine-arts enterprises and
the celebrated modernity of cutting-edge technical achievements. In a
sense, architecture capitalized on two apparently (but only apparently)
contradictory sources of intellectual status — the rearguard and the forward-
looking — and, in the marketplace of services, rose above the "merely"
technical. A company hke GE could contribute to the construction of this
status hierarchy by wedding the use of its product to the presence of archi-
tects while excluding plumbers.

The success of architects in distinguishing their abilities from those of
other occupations after 1900 was due, of course, to a range of profes-
sionalizing efforts, including aggressive licensing and educational initia-
tives.^'' This was a period of self-conscious and concerted organization for
many professions in America, each contending, by 1910 or so, with the
wholesale conversion of productive labor to systems of divided, largely de-
skilled tasks. In many respects, technical reputations were themselves com-
modities, to be exchanged among practitioners or enterprises. Perhaps a
company like GE enhanced its own reputation through its association with
architects. At least one other refrigerator company of the day featured exte-
rior views of elegant homes in its advertisements, rather than images of
refrigerators alone. ^^ Elevator companies frequently advertised their instal-
lations with pictures of skyscrapers, rather than of the elevators them-
selves.^'^ These gestures by building supply companies suggest an intriguing
confluence of interests. Commerce may have been competitive by nature.

114 Slaton and Abbate

but a certain cultural consensus could bring a shared status to producers
and their clients.

The third case of turn-of-the-century building supply we will discuss here
looks at a portion of the industrial sector that denied any such consensus.
On the work site, the relationship between producers of building materials
and the large body of laborers who did the actual work of erecting build-
ings was characterized by a divergence of interest, if not by outright conflict.
Here, specifications play another powerful, but very different, role in dis-
tribution the opportunities of industry.

Specifications for Prefabricated Concrete Reinforcement: "Skilled" vs.
"Unskilled" Labor

As specifications for elevators and refrigerators demonstrate, the competi-
tive circumstances of the building industry after 1900 generated a hierarchy
of skills and opportunities of which materials supphers were well aware.
Their specifications followed from and reinforced those hierarchies, dele-
gating tasks and assigning credit for technical know-how in the construc-
tion world. The control made possible by the issuance of specifications
extended down through the interactions of elite professions and circles of
competing suppliers to the "lowest" level of employment — that of the man-
ual workers who carried and assembled the raw materials of building.
Though we now understand that few jobs actually involve a complete
absence of judgment or physical acumen, we can recognize that the world
of construction work in the early part of this century did involve a great deal
of simple physical activity. Mechanization of earth-moving, digging, and lift-
ing equipment was on the rise, but many jobs still focused on individuals
pushing wheelbarrows, pulling ropes, or wielding shovels. This was labor
that required little or no training and that offered very low wages and min-
imal job security. As far as possible, building companies would employ this
kind of labor, instead of the experienced, higher-paid workers (such as stone-
masons) typical of nineteenth-century construction operations. Though this
may seem a "natural" development for a modernizing industry, we can prob-
lematize the exclusion of skilled workers from buildings sites as an aspect of
labor history, as we have problematized the ascendancy of successful con-
struction occupations in this period. Specifications for building materials
again contribute to this historical project. Here we consider specifications

The Hidden Lives of Standards 115

issued by companies that made prefabricated metal reinforcing for concrete,
a medium of dramatically growing popularity in the new century.

Early-twentieth-century concrete construction was based on concerted
efforts to simplify the process of erecting a building, doing away with inef-
ficiencies inherent in such piecemeal operations as bricklaying and car-
pentry. The technological procedures involved in the erection of a
reinforced-concrete building after 1900 may be divided into preparing the
site (by excavation or other means), creating foundations for walls and
columns, erecting wooden forms, placing iron or steel reinforcement in
those forms, mixing concrete and then pouring it into the forms, removing
the forms after the concrete has set, finishing the exposed surfaces, and
installing doors, windows, roof coverings, and sprinkler systems and other
plumbing. The drive to speed up and economize industrial construction
addressed processes and the flow of materials at each of these junctures but
confronted the fact that the technology involved operations of two types. ^^
On one hand, concrete, a pourable medium, could be handled efficiently
on a mass scale: in theory, forms, once erected, could be filled without inter-
ruption. On a well-organized project, pouring could continue on one por-
tion of a building while another portion set. On the other hand, the erection
of wooden forms and the placement of reinforcement could require slow,
precise attention from costly skilled workers. Managers of construction
enterprises sought means of translating the second type of operation into
the first. For example, as one engineer summarized in 1906, the essence of
economy in concrete was to be found in the duplication of forms and the
elimination of architectural details that complicate the construction of
forms. ^^ Concrete construction was greatly expedited when, after 1900, the
construction of forms and the assembly of reinforcing rods increasingly
were taken over by outside suppliers. These auxihary businesses, located
off the construction site, mass produced materials that otherwise had to be
individually fabricated in the course of building. Some intricate types of
forms and reinforcement continued to be fabricated by workmen on the
building site, but enough were standardized and mass produced to provide
substantial economies for builders. These products were often called "sys-
tems" by their promoters.

Commercially produced reinforcement systems first appeared in the
1890s. They capitalized on the idea that reinforcement material could be

116 Slaton and Abbate

bent and assembled by machine in quantity off the construction site. In
1906, Cement Age pubhshed a review of ten commercial systems of rein-
forcement; by 1914, Sweet's Catalog carried advertisements for systems of
preassembled reinforcement from dozens of firms, some placed by promi-
nent building firms that produced reinforcement as a sideline and some by
speciahzed manufacturers. For example, the Clinton System of 1906 fea-
tured "wire cloth" — electrically welded metal fabric produced in 300-foot
rolls. ^^ Other firms offered "unit girder frames" that constituted pre-
assembled reinforcement for entire beams or girders, ready to be set into
place by three or four relatively unskilled workers. The Unit Concrete Steel
Frame Company went so far as to provide sockets that fitted into the bot-
tom of a form to ensure correct placement of the reinforcement unit.''" The
costs of purchasing this kind of fabricated reinforcement were offset by sav-
ings in labor on the construction site and by avoiding the use of more steel
than was necessary. By the early 1910s, mass-produced steel reinforcement
was so affordable that even large construction firms stopped making their
own reinforcing rods.'"

Many manufacturers of reinforcing systems promised high performance
and reduced need for skilled labor to the builder who used their products.
In 1912 the Trussed Concrete Steel Company offered a typical innovation
of this type: "Hy-Rib" sheets of metal lathing, intended to provide rein-
forcement for thin concrete roofs, floors and ceilings. The essence of the
"Hy-Rib" line (which consisted of metal sheets about a foot wide and 6-12
feet long) was to carry the benefits of factory production to the construc-
tion process (figures 3 and 4). By specifying Hy-Rib, the catalog indicated,
the architect or engineer of a building reduced the need for skill or experi-
ence on the part of those placing the reinforcing. Sheets of Hy-Rib could
be spliced together easily and could be easily positioned and secured. If any
cutting had to be done on the construction site, a laborer could do it with
a simple guillotine-style apparatus (figure 5).^^

It was not only Hy-Rib sheeting itself that encouraged the use of low-
skiU labor on the construction site, but also the way in which it was mar-
keted to building designers: through catalogs and prepared facsimile
specifications. Because it was offered in standard sizes, use of Hy-Rib helped
architects and engineers to rapidly design building plans. The specifications
included in a 1912 Hy-Rib catalog required the architect only to write in the

Tnued CiHKir«te StEc! Ko^ DtitOii, Hkti.

THE THREE TYPES OF HY-RIB

^RIB Iiy-EIB. Rilrs IK.-'Ifi ir. Iiigli; Sjfi in., apirt.

a^BXE HY-EIB. ni'31 U.-'lo ia. hirfi ; T bi. Rfitt.

DEEP-ElB HY-ME. E:l>t H^ in. hi|.'h : 7 Lil. iiiMrl.

J tep.li il . Hj-ft* . 33, J1 , or ifi 7"

.X

■Hfl

IK^

14'

ini*i~ii«<Ji.i:itt rnia Bliorter loTirt::.^ mie cuf iiiiii'-iil i:1iA.i-e± liut nor
'•T.i.^cc L;: chj.r^ti^ to th«>, puTiVhd^^r. Hr^Klti a1i<clE Inlerlijc^ ^t HLdfti

Ain; HliiL-: 111 .rll^1Hl'il'lCr. Mil till :i A'M iirf n4%i'] li-^ :maii]H ?or tldC'l&ps HB
rh+i^:^ :ii-i< |e rin-|.' i^l -n 1 1|.^ K7--Ki'b. AI|.>mL- U iniilivH fuj* Hhd ]a.p9 TTl^tPC
i.p'l'.* .ii . iiTK ■•.T.f-r Bi:nij.:irfi- n: ^.cr^■.■!^». f-ljrht Sn.^^i^n

4-»L^ aTid 7^(1^7 H^-KJIV Is fhicofEd liz bnodiE^ ct' El !?l!v«1s; in¥VB-
BJfc Er-Bli'b Ln tiiidJt? •>! ^ nhii-la.

Hs-Sih \i ^u]>p]:cd cLtlitT pB.lD[cd or uncHLliKcd.

Figure 3

"The three types of Hy-Rib" (steel reinforcing for concrete floors, wall, or ceil-
ings), as shown in 1912 catalog of Trussed Concrete Steel Co. (Hagley Museum
and Library)

Hy.Fib-^ Eahn Symem Prodi^t

Hj-Hlt T^uildine at HUnl-niii M.^rr CJar L:i. flaai, DuLnolL Mich

My-Kib bldLngs. {>iiii!kT Gauj FJtcjrl:; fc llEJtinj; Cu„ QuMcy, ]IL
imitfi, jlinclviiiaii -It 0'T"*j Aii-hts.

110

Figure 4

Buildings erected with Hy-Rib reinforcing, as shown in 1912 catalog of Trussed

Concrete Steel Co. (Hagley Museum and Library)

Hy-Eih— A Kahn System PioduCt

SJmaillie a 5ht«E 01 Ily-Eib wth fhe Hy-Eih Diitter.

Figure 5

"Shearing a sheet of Hy-Rib with the Hy-Rib Cutter," from 1912 catalog of
Trussed Concrete Steel Co. Here a worker uses a simple guillotine-style machine
to trim a sheet of Hy-Rib at a construction site. (Hagley Museum and Library)

120 Slaton and Abbate

desired "type" and "gauge." As in the cases of elevators and refrigerators,
we can think of this standardized product or procedure as redistributing
technical expertise. The Trussed Concrete Steel Company had displaced the
task of calculating how much reinforcement might be needed for a wall or
floor of given thickness from the field (i.e., from multiple construction sites)
onto its own premises (the Hy-Rib design department l."*^ Similarly, the prob-
lem of correctly forming reinforcement was solved in a location remote
from the building site. Through the use of the Hy-Rib system, the time it
might take to make such a calculation was saved by the architect, and the
motions required to shape individual pieces of reinforcement by hand were
eliminated. Both tasks were also definitively removed from any workman
on the construction site.

The tradespeople who might have previously expected jobs fabricating
reinforcement were only too conscious of this reassignment of labor. As
early as the 1880s, building trades had organized themselves around this
very issue. The departure of opportunities to use their own judgment on
the construction site, let alone find secure employment, spurred carpenters,
masons, painters, and plasterers to resist the incursion of standardized,
mass-produced construction materials.'*'' By 1910, suppliers had refined
methods of marketing and transmitting information about their products
(such as catalog specifications); this further diminished the discretionary
powers of building laborers. But resistance, in the form of union drives and
strikes, persisted among the building trades, and the use of concrete pre-
sented a difficult challenge in the conflict between old-style and new-style
industrial operations. Unlike building materials such as brick, stone, wood,
and even steel, concrete had only a short history of use in commercial build-
ing. No ancient or solid brotherhood of concrete workers existed to defend
craft traditions. Building firms that used concrete, therefore, encountered
little organized resistance to their management techniques. We can appre-
ciate the organizational appeal of concrete for building firms by noting that
early in the twentieth century concrete was not always cheaper to use than
wood or brick. Rather, it presented a welcome alternative to conventional
methods that were increasingly fraught with labor conflict. As concrete's
popularity grew, its price fell. Material considerations also helped: Concrete
buildings are largely fireproof, their interiors are easy to keep clean, and its
ingredients are readily procured in most parts of the United States. But, as

The Hidden Lives of Standards 121

the Hy-Rib specifications make clear, an important source of concrete's
appeal was that it offered a division of labor — of technical authority — that
was highly compatible with the tenets of modern business operation. As in
the cases of elevators and refrigerators, specifications expressed ideologies
of workplace organization and helped put those ideologies into action.''^

Computer Network Standards and the Displacement of Labor

At first glance, the work setting of late-twentieth-century computer net-
work providers might seem to have little in common with the early-twen-
tieth-century building industry. However, standards performed similar
functions as instruments for redistributing work, skill, and power in these
two cases. White-collar occupations have received their share of attention
from labor historians, including a number of works that focus specifically
on the rationalization of computer programming, but most of these analy-
ses treat standards as a means of de-skilling labor — a tool in the hands of
managers intent on reducing the salaries and the autonomy of their techni-
cal employees.'"' To see the full range of labor implications of standards, it
is necessary to look at the actual processes involved in putting standards to
use. By uncovering the labor required of the people who implement, test,
and deploy standardized products, this study demonstrates how standards
can, in some instances, become a means of intensifying white-collar labor
and an opportunity for self-made experts to assert authority.

Our examples here come from the development of the Internet in the
United States.''^ Standards have been of paramount importance to the data
communications industry.'** Standardized functions and interfaces make it
possible to combine individual components such as cables, circuit boards,
and software programs into large communications systems. The alterna-
tive to standardization would be to have each network use its own tech-
niques, with no expectation of being able to communicate across different
types of networks. This was roughly the situation until the mid 1970s.
Various government and academic computing centers in the United States
and in other industrialized countries had built their own one-of-a-kind
experimental networks, and computer manufacturers such as IBM supplied
their customers with network software that worked only with the com-
pany's own hne of computers. Connecting different networks, a process

1 22 Slaton and Abbate

known as internetworking, was so difficult as to be almost unheard of.
Standardization had been the norm for at least a century in international
telecommunications (which was almost entirely the province of national
monopolies), but agreeing on standards was much harder in the much
younger and more competitive computer industry. By the early 1970s, how-
ever, computer professionals in the United States, France, the United
Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and other countries were beginning to address
the compatibility problem by developing common techniques for operating
data networks.'" Today it has become almost inconceivable to design a net-
work that uses locally defined rather than nationally or globally standard-
ized procedures.

We begin with an episode from the history of the Internet that illustrates
how the introduction of new standards dramatically intensified the work of
the researchers responsible for operating that network's computers. The
design and implementation of a particular set of standard protocols, known
as TCP/IP, was one of the technical innovations responsible for the success
of the Internet. The TCP (later TCP/IP) protocol is the basis of communi-
cation on today's Internet and World Wide Web. The development of
TCP/IP, like that of the Internet as a whole, was sponsored by the US gov-
ernment, and this standard was designed and implemented by computer
scientists working as government contractors. Though the contributions of
the individuals who designed the various Internet standards have been
widely recognized, the skills and efforts of those who implemented the stan-
dards have gone largely unrecorded. Yet their software implementations
eventually provided the basis for the commercialized off-the-shelf TCP/IP
products that made possible the popularization of the Internet in the late
1980s. In this sense, the adoption of the TCP/IP standard captured the labor
of these experts and passed it on to a future generation of computer own-
ers and users.'"

Unhke the tradesmen described above, skilled computer professionals
have rarely viewed standardization as a labor issue. Instead, they have
described the effects of standards in terms of technical performance, noting
that standards increase the compatibihty, efficiency, and reliability of data
networks. Computer scientists have tended to regard the extra work they
are required to do to support standardization as a necessary evil. A typical
statement of this philosophy came from Jon Postel, a computer scientist at

The Hidden Lives of Standards 123

the University of Southern CaHfornia who helped create and test software
standards for the Internet: "You can't have internetworking without stan-
dards. It is not a question of more or less work, but rather a question of
existence vs. non-existence."^"' Yet the computer experts who built the
Internet faced arduous and unavoidable labor when it came to putting the
new TCP standard in place.

Consider the work required to adopt a set of "protocols," as the specifi-
cations for networking standards are called. Different protocols define how
various network activities, such as setting up a connection between two com-
puters or transferring a data file, should be performed. In order for a net-
work to operate properly, all the computers connected to it must share a
core set of protocols. In the early one-of-a-kind network projects, computer
scientists had to design and implement their own network protocols.
Implementing a protocol meant creating hardware interfaces and/or soft-
ware programs that performed the functions specified by the standard. (The
physical labor involved in managing computer systems — building interfaces,
installing circuit boards, laying cables — is often overlooked, and this reminds
us once again that distinctions between "manual" and "intellectual" occu-
pations say more about social status than about actual work processes.)
Once standard protocols became available, it was no longer necessary to
design protocols from scratch, and the required hardware could usually be
bought off the shelf; however, in the early years it was still necessary to write
software that would perform the functions specified by the protocols.
Indeed, this task was often more difficult than before, because the standard
protocols tended to be more complex (for reasons discussed below).

Internet standards also have a "quality control" aspect: the testing of
TCP/IP software implementations to ensure that they meet specifications.
In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, network experts invented novel ways
to demonstrate standards compliance, including competitive tests and high-
profile trade shows. By making it easier for customers to evaluate, com-
pare, and combine network products, verification activities became a means
of transferring labor from the user to the producer of standardized prod-
ucts. (Here a typical user might be the administrator of a computer center,
a paid programmer, or a university scientist or student using computer sys-
tems in a research project.) In addition to the effort required to install and
operate the network's hardware and software, the process of selecting these

1 24 Slaton and Abbate

products was itself labor intensive, demanding knowledge of local equip-
ment configurations and of the features and limitations of the products on
offer. When making a purchasing decision, the prospective user of a net-
work system would want to be sure that all the components would work
together, since a technical diagnosis of "incompatibility between network
products" translated into a social cost of "more work for users.""

The adoption of standards by the computer industry, including mecha-
nisms for verifying those standards, was one means of easing the burden
on computer users — at the cost of creating more work for vendors. More
generally, we argue that standardizing a technology such as network soft-
ware is not merely a process of "rationahzation" that alters labor condi-
tions as a side effect; rather, standardization can sometimes be a means to
the end of redistributing work, knowledge, and authority among produc-
ers or between producers and the users of their products. In examining
aspects of the introduction of computer network standards, we will ask:
Who bears the responsibility for meeting the labor demands generated by
standards? How have standards activities been used to challenge or
increase the authority of participants? In what ways do standards shift
work from users to producers, and to what extent do these labor effects
motivate the choice to adopt particular standards? Our examples of the
labor issues and the symbolic importance surrounding Internet standards
demonstrate how these protocols have been employed as social as well as
technical instruments.

"I Survived the TCP Transition": Standardization as Labor

To historians familiar with the complexities of technological systems, it may
seem self-evident that putting a standard into practice often requires large
amounts of expert work. The people who work with the technology are
sure to need new knowledge or training; machines, materials, and work
practices may have to be realigned. But most accounts of the development
of computer systems omit this part of the process entirely. They simply note
how the standards came to be specified, as if implementation of the speci-
fication were an easy and automatic sequel — an assumption that reinforces
the perception of standards as knowledge rather than practice." One way
to recover the labor dimension of standards — and of "knowledge work"
more generally — is to observe how and why the introduction of standards

The Hidden Lives of Standards 125

creates conflicts among the people building a technological system. A strik-
ing example of this comes from the development of the Internet.

The Internet's predecessor, the ARPANET, had been developed between
1969 and 1972 by the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research
Projects Agency. ARPA's role in the Department of Defense was to identify
and develop cutting-edge technologies with possible military value, and the
agency had been funding computer science at American universities since
the early 1960s. The ARPANET was intended to provide data communi-
cations among the agency's many research sites. The ARPANET began as
a single network, but in the early 1970s ARPA managers decided to connect
it to some of the agency's newer experimental networks. The resulting set
of interconnected networks become the Internet.

ARPA program managers Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn devised a tech-
nical framework for internetworking that included a new protocol, called
TCP, that would provide a common language for all the networks in the
Internet. For their design, which has proved remarkably adaptable in the
face of rapid growth, Cerf and Kahn have been celebrated in popular cul-
ture as "fathers of the Internet." Yet the introduction of TCP as a standard
for the ARPANET was not necessarily welcomed by the programmers and
system administrators who maintained the network's computers. In fact,
though this episode is seldom discussed in the popular histories, the intro-
duction of TCP as a standard for the ARPANET was a traumatic and dis-
ruptive experience for many members of the network community.

The ARPANET contractors were mostly university scientists and their
graduate students, and ARPA's managers came from this same world. These
managers interacted with their contractors as colleagues and preferred con-
sensus-style decision making. Yet, although computer science researchers
and their government funders may not fit our usual conception of "labor"
and "management," work issues had been a cause of some tension from
the beginning of the project. The ARPA contractors were skilled profes-
sionals who wished to focus their efforts on projects that met their own
interests, but they were ultimately beholden to their financial backers.
(During the 1960s, the Department of Defense's spending on computing
research was far greater than the universities' budgets for computer sci-
ence.) When the idea of building the ARPANET had been announced at a
1967 meeting of ARPA contractors, many of those present had been critical

126 Slaton and Abbate

of the idea, in part because they did not want to commit their efforts to the
formidable task of building the network; the threat of losing their ARPA
funding helped persuade them to join the project. During the course of the
network-building effort, ARPA's managers occasionally felt it necessary to
break out of their collegial mode of management and prod reluctant con-
tractors to do the work necessary to get their computers on the network/''

The adoption of TCP as a Department of Defense standard in 1980 once
again brought this tension out into the open. The ARPANET had an exist-
ing protocol called the Network Control Program (NCP), which had been
providing satisfactory service since the early 1970s. But NCP was specifi-
cally designed for the ARPANET and would not adapt well to the diverse
set of networks that were to be included in the new Internet. So in the early
1970s Cerf and Kahn began designing a new standard, called the
Transmission Control Protocol. (Subsequently some of the functions of
TCP were split off into an Internet Protocol, and the pair became known
as TCP/IP) Experimental versions of TCP were tested in the late 1970s, and
in 1980 the Office of the Secretary of Defense formally adopted the ARPA
protocols as military standards. Cerf and Kahn were ready to switch the
ARPANET from NCP to TCP, a move they saw as serving ARPA's overall
plan to create a multi-network data communications system. But many of
the agency's contractors at the various network sites were hesitant to adopt
TCP; they were satisfied with NCP, and since most of them were not plan-
ning to use ARPA's other networks they saw no immediate reason to adopt
a new protocol. Managers of computer systems were naturally reluctant to
do the work of implementing a complex new standard when they did not
expect to benefit from it.

In this situation, the ARPA research community's usual consensus mode
broke down and underlying power relations came to the fore. Official mem-
oranda from the Department of Defense reiterated that the new protocol
would become the ARPANET standard. Defense managers set a timetable
for the transition and threatened sanctions (denial of access to the network)
for noncompliance. This series of measures forced the reluctant contrac-
tors to implement the new standard in a relatively short period of time.
Though the computer scientists had no real way to reject the standard if
they hoped to continue receiving Defense funding, newsletters circulated
by Defense administrators during this process repeatedly chided contrac-

The Hidden Lives of Standards 127

tors for being slow to implement the new protocols, hinting at passive resis-
tance from their expert labor force.

The contractors' resistance to the new standard was based on a realistic
appraisal of the magnitude of the work that would be required of them.
Each computer had to have TCP software provided for it; since TCP per-
formed a number of complex functions, writing this software was a chal-
lenging task that might take even an experienced programmer 1 8 months
or more. In addition to implementing TCP, the computer system managers
had to rewrite all their network applications (such as file transfer, electronic
mail, and remote log-in programs) to work with the new procedures and
data formats required by TCP, and they had to replace their old network
interface hardware. Programmers and system managers at the various sites
recalled that it required an enormous and protracted effort for them to meet
the deadline for the adoption of TCP, which had been set for January 1,
1983. One participant recalled that "the transition from NCP to TCP was
done in a great rush, occupying virtually everyone's time 100% in the year
1982. ... It was a major painful ordeal." Another contractor agreed that
there had been a "mad rush at the end of 1982." The official ARPANET
newsletter warned contractors in September 1982, "If you have NOT
implemented TCP/IP, the end of the world is near! " Dan Lynch, a computer
systems manager at SRI (Stanford Research International), recalled:
"Dozens of us system managers found ourselves on a New Year's Eve try-
ing to pull off this massive cutover. We had been working on it for over a
year. There were hundreds of programs at hundreds of sites that had to be
developed and debugged." Lynch made up buttons that read "I Survived
the TCP Transition" and passed them out to his colleagues.^''

Although the adoption of TCP was a technical milestone that cleared the
way for the rapid expansion of the Internet in the 1980s and the 1990s,
participants' accounts remind us that it also represented a significant appro-
priation of labor. This incident illustrates how a focus on standards can
highlight hidden labor conflicts. ARPA, an organization that normally
relied on informal, consensus-based management, suddenly reverted to top-
down control for the very reason that standards, by their nature, require
system-wide conformity and often impose significant labor costs. Ironically,
the high professional status of ARPA's academic computer scientists and
their students, which freed them from hourly wage labor, also made the

128 Slaton and Abbate

intensification of their work invisible: long nights spent in the machine
room did not produce such obvious signs as higher labor costs or protest
actions.

We have noted that the adoption of TCP required significant amounts of
skilled labor because of the complexity of the protocol. The reason TCP
was much more complex than its predecessor was that the change in pro-
tocols was explicitly designed to displace labor and responsibility from one
area of the system to another. The ARPANET can be thought of as having
two parts: a set of "host" computers at the various research sites and a com-
munications network that connected these sites. With the old NCP proto-
col, the communications network did most of the work of setting up and
managing a connection between host computers at different sites; the hosts
themselves had a relatively small role. (An analogy would be the telephone
system, where the machines at the endpoints — telephone sets — are simple
devices, whereas the communications network that connects them is quite
complex. ) But, unlike the ARPANET, ARPA's other experimental networks
were not able to support the level of internal complexity demanded by the
NCP design. So Cerf and Kahn determined that the new protocol, TCP,
should minimize the demands made on the communications network by
transferring most of the work to the endpoints of the network — the host
computers at ARPA's research sites.

This brings us to our second observation: that the redistribution of work
within the ARPANET system was fundamental, not incidental, to the design
of the TCP standard. It is true that "work" in this case refers primarily to
the functions performed by computers; however, the protocol designers
were also conscious that tasks done by a machine translated into work that
had to be done by the people maintaining that machine. This is a point that
critics of TCP made clear. For instance, proponents of a rival networking
standard called X.25 claimed that their system was superior to TCP because
it required much less effort from individual computer operators."' The
ARPANET community was aware of this displacement of labor from the
center to the periphery of the system, but it had little choice in the matter.
With ARPA holding the purse strings, those who wanted the privilege of
working with expensive computing machines were ultimately willing to
make the effort required to switch to TCP, however much they may have
grumbled.

The Hidden Lives of Standards 129

Excelling at "Bake Offs": Testing as the Performance of Authority

We have seen that implementing standards can involve significant labor.
Verifying that an implementation actually conforms to the relevant stan-
dard is also a challenging task, particularly in the case of complex net-
working software. Starting in the late 1970s, members of the Internet
community began organizing large-scale protocol testing events to address
this problem. The evolution of test procedures reveals how standards were
bound up with authority in the workplace. For ARPA contractors devel-
oping the first TCP implementations, the interpretation of standards tests
depended in part on the credibility of the participants. Later, when the pro-
tocols were commercialized, computer experts would be able to translate
their knowledge of protocol standards into professional power.

Networking protocols are so complex that it is almost impossible to ver-
ify an implementation directly. Demonstrating mathematically that a soft-
ware program will behave in a particular way is notoriously difficult, and
this sort of testing has rarely been attempted in the history of software."
In theory, an implementation can be tested against a benchmark program,
but in the early stages of protocol development such programs are not yet
available. Therefore, protocol developers have tended to adopt an empir-
ical method, testing all the available implementations against one another.
This provides an opportunity to observe each program under a wide range
of conditions as it interacts with the other programs, no two of which are
identical. A program that passes all the tests is assumed to comply with
the specification.

This method of testing obviously requires that the individuals developing
protocol software coordinate their efforts. Two who took on major organi-
zational and leadership roles in establishing such tests for the Internet pro-
tocols were Jon Postel and Dan Lynch. In the 1980s both were ARPA
contractors at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences
Institute; Postel was a researcher at ISI and Lynch was director of the com-
puter center. As early as 1978, a few years after TCP was first specified,
Postel had begun organizing the sites that had implemented TCP to run a
series of tests on the software. Some of these tests could be done in isolation,
but most involved exchanging data with programs at other sites, which were
reached through the Internet. The tests were designed to check various fea-
tures of the protocol and to simulate potentially problematic situations. Each

130 Slaton and Abbate

site would report its results to the test coordinator (usually Postel), who
would draw up a chart that showed, for every possible pairing of imple-
mentations, whether or not their interaction had been successful.

Postel dubbed these tests "Bake Offs," in a lighthearted reference to
cooking competitions. Though the analogy has feminine connotations, the
rhetoric surrounding the Bake Offs reflected the more masculine values of
competition and aggression, turning the genteel culinary contest into a pie-
throwing match. Each site participating in the Bake Off was awarded points
if its software correctly performed various actions. But participants did not
simply compare themselves against a positive standard; they also performed
what amounted to destructive tests of one another's software. The written
procedures for the Bake Off invoked a boxing metaphor: progressively dif-
ficult levels of tests as the "featherweight," "middleweight," and "heavy-
weight" divisions. ""^ Many of these tests involved benign operations such as
initializing a connection, sending a message to the computer at the other
end, and closing the connection. But others were adversarial, referring to the
software at the other end of the connection as an "opponent" that the tester
should try to "knock out." For instance, the rules awarded 30 points for
causing the other party's software to crash (a knockout). Participants could
choose to send "Kamikaze packets" or "nastygrams," which were messages
designed to cause trouble by combining unusual options to create a situa-
tion that the "opposing" programmer might not have anticipated. Points
were also awarded to those who could demonstrate that another partici-
pant had implemented the standard incorrectly.

Functionally, the adversarial aspects of the Bake Off provided a way to
test the software's performance under severe conditions. Symbolically, they
also reinforced the competitive culture of the computer programmers, and
they illustrate how authority was constructed in this culture. Success was
relative, and credit could be earned through destructive as well as con-
structive means. Since the measure of an implementation's performance was
relative rather than absolute, test results had to be defended rhetorically.
Postel noted that test results were not definitive or self-explanatory but,
rather, provided a basis for participants to claim that they had met the stan-
dard: "The only way to determine if an implementation was 'correct' was
to test it against other implementations and argue that the results showed
your own implementation to have done the right thing. "^"' Presumably, the

The Hidden Lives of Standards 131

level of authority participants carried within the community colored the
reception of such claims. Reflecting the expectation that test results were
open to interpretation and dispute, the rules for the Bake Off even awarded
"10 points for the best excuse."'^" The incentive for making such excuses
was not only to save face but also to save labor, since if the software failed
the test there would be strong pressure on the programmers to rewrite it.

More radically, participants who failed to meet the standard could argue
that the specification itself was at fault and should be changed. (Again, the
participant's credibility probably influenced whether the fault was judged
to be in the implementation or in the standard itself.) In this way. Bake
Off-style testing did not just measure a product against a static body of
knowledge represented by the standard; it also functioned as a way to gen-
erate new knowledge about how protocols did and should behave, provid-
ing feedback between the processes of designing and implementing the
evolving standard.

"Trust, but Verify": Verification as the Transfer of Labor

As numerous commercial versions of TCP/IP became available in the early
1980s, entrepreneurial standards experts saw an opportunity to develop
large-scale, commercially run testing activities. During these verification
events, vendors would undertake to publicly demonstrate that their prod-
ucts conformed to the standard. Rather than remaining behind the doors of
the manufacturer's workplace, therefore, some aspects of product testing
moved out into a new, symbolically "neutral," highly visible arena. Public
verification activities shifted the labor of evaluating network products from
potential buyers to vendors and third-party experts.

The 1983 changeover from NCP to TCP, though traumatic for many,
also presented opportunities for ambitious systems managers. One of these
was Dan Lynch at ISI, the biggest and most heavily used ARPANET site.
Lynch volunteered to coordinate a large-scale revision of software programs
during the transition to the TCP standard, and this experience established
him as an authority on protocol testing." Like the standards experts at
early-twentieth-century building sites. Lynch set out to use his expertise as
a basis for professional advancement; also hke them, he envisioned himself
occupying a middle ground between the university-based scientists who
specified the standards and the companies that tried to apply them. Noting

132 Slaton and Abbate

that vendors of computer products had difficuhy interpreting the arcane
technical documents created by ARPA's academic researchers, Lynch
beheved he could make his fortune by bridging this gap. He formed a com-
pany and offered to help computer vendors understand TCP/IP and market
it to their customers.

Lynch 's proposed vehicle for promoting TCP/IP was a trade show, which
he called the "TCP/IP Interoperability Conference" or simply "Interop."
Like the TCP Bake Offs, Interop was intended to demonstrate that different
implementations of the Internet protocols could interoperate successfully.
Conference staffers would link computers running various TCP/IP products
into a local network called the InteropNet, which would also be attached to
the Internet. People attending the trade show could log into computers on
the InteropNet and test the network products by trying to communicate with
other machines at the show or elsewhere on the Internet. The vendors would
cover the costs of the trade show, and prospective customers would pay to
attend, generating profits for Lynch's company. The first Interop was held in
Santa Clara, California, in September 1988, with about 50 companies par-
ticipating. It was so popular and profitable that Lynch decided to make it an
annual event. The second Interop featured 100 companies, the third 200.
By 1994 there were 500 exhibitors and many thousands of attendees, and
the show's scope had expanded to test a variety of protocols besides TCP/IP.
Eventually the organizers were running two Interops per year in the United
States and annual shows in six other countries. '"'

To reinforce the image of Interop as a source of authoritative information
about standardized products. Lynch and his successors used rhetorical
strategies that presented the event as an opportunity for users to gain reli-
able, unmediated knowledge of networking products. Typical Interop press
releases referred to the InteropNet as "a real-world scenario" and claimed
that the trade show "gives exhibitors and attendees the opportunity to per-
sonally experience the melding of different technologies and equipment."
The engineer in charge of one year's InteropNet claimed: "Our network
marks the place where talk and hype move to the sidelines, and performance
takes center stage. """^ There is, however, a certain paradox in offering a
"hands-on" demonstration of networking, since the flow of electronic
information is impossible to observe directly. Lynch himself was aware of

The Hidden Lives of Standards 133

this problem when he began the Interops. To make the experience seem
more "real" to attendees, he made a point of keeping the infrastructure vis-
ible — cables and network switches were exposed to view, allowing atten-
dees to see how the various computers were connected. A skeptical user
who wanted to make sure the whole thing was not a hoax or a simulation
could perform an impromptu test, such as unplugging a cable and noting
the effect of this on the network. Once Interop had gained some credibil-
ity, however, the symbolism of the visible hardware was no longer needed.
Interop did not necessarily free potential buyers from having to take stan-
dardization claims on faith; rather, it gave them the option of placing their
trust in the Interop staffers — ^who were billed as disinterested experts — and
the event itself, rather than the vendors.

The Interop phenomenon illustrates two ways in which technical stan-
dards can function as a means for redistributing power and authority
among skilled workers.

On the one hand. Lynch was able to create a lucrative and respected posi-
tion for himself based on his credibility as a standards arbiter. His credibil-
ity rested not only on his personal expertise but also on his assumption of a
position of neutrality with respect to the commercial interests and, above
all, on the fact that he invited potential buyers to test the products them-
selves. By appealing to the users' expertise. Lynch solidified his own author-
ity, since every attendee who tried the InteropNet and was satisfied with its
performance confirmed Lynch 's judgment in championing TCP/IP. Like the
early-twentieth-century architects who were able to "borrow" an aura of
expertise from General Electric by adopting its refrigerator specifications.
Lynch was able to profit by his association with a well-regarded standard.

On the other hand, the Interops shifted a burden from their target audi-
ence: the owners and operators of computer systems, who were potential
buyers of TCP/IP products. The insight for labor history here is that these
"consumers" of network products were workers in their own right. The
users of network products did not simply consume hardware and software;
they also produced network services in their own workplaces, which
required both skill and labor. The purchaser of a network product had to
perform tasks that could include evaluating the performance of the product
and its compatibility with the user's existing systems; installing, testing, and

134 Slaton and Abbate

debugging software and hardware; establishing new systems-maintenance
routines; and retraining network administrators. The appeal of Interops, we
argue, was that they redistributed some of this labor from consumers to pro-
ducers. By encouraging companies to create interoperable products (so that
they would have something to demonstrate at the show), Interops promoted
standardization, which reheved computer users of the need to cope with
incompatible systems. Interops also guaranteed potential buyers that spe-
cific products would work as advertised. For the price of admission, atten-
dees could quickly and easily obtain the information they needed to make
purchasing decisions; the conference fee was an exchange for the labor they
would otherwise have had to expend on evaluating products and making
them work together. Interops altered the balance of power between buyers
and sellers by providing consumers with reliable knowledge about the worth
of the products on offer.

Much of the work displaced from customers now fell instead on the sup-
pliers, who had to ensure that their products met the standards required by
the demonstrations; companies also paid to participate in Interop and con-
tributed equipment and skilled personnel to help design and build the
InteropNet. From the vendors' point of view, Interop justified this invest-
ment by serving several purposes. First, it provided a laboratory for testing
their products; such testing was mostly done in advance of the show as vol-
unteers from various companies put together the InteropNet. (This resulted
in a secondary displacement of labor within the companies making network
products: the engineers did extra work to prepare for Interop, but because
of their efforts the company's products were more likely to meet customers'
expectations — which meant less work down the line for the customer ser-
vice department.) Second and most important, Interop was a marketing
opportunity, in which the authority of Lynch and his successors as neutral
experts — as well as the evidence of the customer's own eyes — served to bol-
ster the vendor's claims. Finally, in addition to demonstrating the merits of
individual products, Interops promoted TCP/IP as an industry standard
against the alternatives of adopting some other standard or having no com-
mon standard at all.'"'' In the early years of TCP/IP, potential customers who
had been using products from IBM or other sources had to be convinced
this new protocol would work at all. Lynch recalled seeing two engineers

The Hidden Lives of Standards 135

from Ford taking their manager to observe a demonstration of TCP/IP. One
of the engineers pointed to the display and said, "See, it works! Now will
you sign the purchase order?" The boss agreed.'^ Every user who switched
to the TCP/IP standard was a potential customer for a company's particu-
lar TCP/IP products. As with the earlier case of construction specifications,
the status of the product and that of the producer rose together.

Bake Offs and Interops highlight the performative nature of standards.
As public spectacles, these events implicitly asserted the importance of stan-
dardization itself. In addition, such practices helped establish particular
standards within the industry. Widespread industry adoption of TCP/IP was
not based solely on a "rational" assessment by companies of their techni-
cal requirements; it was actively promoted by third parties, such as Lynch,
who not only believed in the technical superiority of TCP/IP but also saw
standards activities as a way to advance their own careers. Public tests also
focused consumers' attention selectively on certain aspects of the stan-
dard — in this case, interoperability — at the expense of other possible con-
cerns. Alternative demonstration methods could have been devised that
emphasized different features of network software, such as speed or relia-
bility; but the Interop demonstration perpetuated the idea that compatibil-
ity between different vendors' products should be the main seUing point.
At the level of the individual product, the very definition of "standard"
became contextualized rather than absolute: the measure of a product's
compliance was how well it interacted with other products and with users.

Because standardized products embody labor (the work of specifying,
implementing, and testing the standard), standards can serve as a medium
for transferring labor between different types of workers or between pro-
ducers and consumers. Protocol standards, for instance, free the user from
the labor of fitting incompatible components together, while verification
activities free consumers from the labor of evaluating vendors' claims. In
some cases, this displacement of labor is simply a by-product of the stan-
dards effort, as with the work involved in the 1983 adoption of TCP for
the ARPANET; in other cases, it is the primary goal of standardization. In
either case, examining the labor implications of product standards can alert
historians to previously unsuspected changes in the distribution of respon-
sibility, skill, and authority in the workplace.

136 Slaton and Abbate

Conclusions

By now it should be apparent that standards and specifications, whether
for concrete or computer code, are neither simplifying nor uniform in their
effects. Some guidelines do eliminate work or intellectual complexity in
industrial enterprises, but many have just the opposite effect, displacing or
creating labor as they increase the productivity of a technology or a com-
pany. What all standards and specifications do have in common is their
dynamic nature. We expect such technical protocols to bring fixity to mate-
rial activity, but closer examination reveals the conditions brought by indus-
trial standards to be relatively short-lived and by no means universal. It is
far more useful to conceive of standards not as stable or stabilizing entities
but as mediums for exchange: a non-economic means of negotiation among
the many actors seeking to produce, use, or profit from industrial tech-
nologies. Standards convey not only control of materials and techniques
but also opportunities for control of markets and workplaces, whether by
administrative or reputational means. At times, standards and specifica-
tions lend that power to those who create them (elevator companies, pro-
tocol designers); at other times, they bolster the credibility and authority of
those who use the guidelines (architects, computer owners). Most interest-
ing for us are the moments when the interests of the two groups either coin-
cide or radically diverge: these are the points when standards and
specifications reveal their currency in the world of commercial exchange.
We have hinted at the significant difference between prescribing a tech-
nical practice (as the standard and specifications writers clearly intend) and
enforcing the desired practice. How can we know if people actually follow
directions or use conventional designs in their work? This is a complex his-
torical problem that involves tracking some of the truly hidden features of
industrial operation: What happens when a contractor finds he has bought
too little reinforcement for a building that is already behind schedule? What
happens when a programmer prefers to find a "good excuse" rather than
rewrite a piece of software? These questions highlight one of the most
intriguing features of standards and specifications: their intention to wed
word and deed. Written standards must be defended by actions (new work-
place organizations, verification events). In turn, making practical use of a
standard often involves further rhetorical strategies (arguing that a proto-

The Hidden Lives of Standards 137

col should be redesigned, writing an article that calls attention to accidents
involving your competitors' elevators). It is in such escalating attempts to
regulate the performance of activities that the conflict and much of the sig-
nificance of standards lies.

Notes

1. For an overview of the economic functions of standards, see Samuel Krislov,
How Nations Choose Product Standards and Standards Change Nations
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997). Considerations of standards that address the
nature of industrial labor are discussed below, but it should be noted that David
Noble's America by Design (Oxford University Press, 1977) remains the most com-
prehensive of such works. A number of now-classic community and company stud-
ies have offered a basis for our study by describing processes of industrial
standardization (if not the history of written standards and specifications them-
selves). Among these are the following: Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory
and the New Technology (Cornell University Press, 1977); David Hounshell, Vrom
the American System to Mass Production, 1800 to 1932 (Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1984), and Mary Blewett, Men, Women, and Work (University of Illinois
Press, 1988). More recently. Ken Alder (Engineering the Revolution, Princeton
University Press, 1997) has probed the political and social origins and impacts of
standardization with particular acuity.

2. See Philip Scranton, "None-Too-Porous Boundaries: Labor History and the
History of Technology," Technology and Culture 29 (1988): 722-743; Sean
Wilentz, Chants Democratic (Oxford University Press, 1984); Judith McGaw, Most
Wonderful Machine (Princeton University Press, 1987); Larry D. Lankton, Cradle
to Grave (Oxford University Press, 1991); Jacqueline Hall et al.. Like a Family
(University of North Carolina Press, 1987). Scranton's article surveys progress in
this interdisciplinary effort since the 1960s.

3. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, "The Consumption Junction," in The Social
Construction of Technological Systems, ed. W. Bijker et al. (MIT Press, 1987):
261-280; Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal (Cambridge University Press,
1990). See also Ronald Edsforth, Class Conflict and Cultural Consensus (Rutgers
University Press, 1987); Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds.. The
Culture of Consumption (Pantheon, 1986).

4. Historians of science offer additional important models here. Simon Schaffer,
Theodore Porter, and Graeme Gooday locate elaborate and self-conscious institu-
tional and occupational agendas in apparently mundane "by-products" of scien-
tific inquiry such as scientific constants, methods of caUbration, and statistical
systems — see Schaffer, "Accurate Measurement is an English Science," Porter,
"Precision and Trust: Early Victorian Insurance and the Politics of Calculation,"
and Gooday, "The Morals of Energy Metering: Constructing and Deconstructing
the Precision of the Victorian Electrical Engineer's Ammeter and Voltmeter," all in

138 Slaton and Abbate

The Value of Precision, ed. M. Wise (Princeton University Press, 1995); see also
Porter, Trust in Numbers (Princeton University Press, 1995).

5. Scranton, "None-Too-Porous Boundaries."

6. Thomas P. Hughes, "The Evolution of Large Technological Systems" and John
Law, "Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese
Expansion," both in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. Bijker
etal.

7. Like Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison's work on the shifting definition of
"objectivity" over the last two centuries ("The Image of Objectivity,"
Representations 40, 1992: 81-128), our study finds that technical authority, like
scientific certitude, has a social basis. The content of standards reveals what those
in authority wish to advance as "best practice." We argue that, like laboratory stan-
dards, industrial standards are historically contingent and exhibit tensions between
the globalizing programs of those who create standards and the local conditions
experienced by those who use them. On the historical connection of moral virtue
and the reliance on faculties of judgment in science, see Peter Galison, "Judgment
Against Objectivity," in Picturing Science, Presenting Art, ed. P. Galison and C.
Jones (Routledge, 1998). See also Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, "Visual Representation
and Post-Constructivist History of Medicine," Historical Studies in the Physical
and Biological Sciences 1% (1997): 139-171.

8. David E. Nye, Image Worlds (MIT Press, 1985).

9. Stefan Timmermans and Marc Berg, "Standardization in Action: Achieving
Local Universality through Medical Protocols," Social Studies of Science 47 (1997):
273-305; Linda F. Hogle, "Standardization Across Non-Standard Domains: The
Case of Organ Procurement," Science, Technology and Human Values 20 (1995):
482-500; Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out (MIT Press,
1999); Warwick Anderson, "The Reasoning of the Strongest: The Polemics of Skill
and Science in Medical Diagnosis," Social Studies of Science 22 (1992): 653-684;
Karen Rader, "'The Mouse People': Murine Genetics Work at the Bussey Institution,
1909-1936," Journal of the History of Biology 31 (1998): 327-354.

10. Daniel J. Hauer, "Specifications," in Handbook of Building Construction, vol-
ume 2, ed. G. Hool and N. Johnson (McGraw-Hill, 1920), pp. 1075-1076; Richard
Shelton Kirby, The Elements of Specification Writing (Wiley, 1935), pp. 1-8,
80-106; John C. Ostrup, Standard Specifications for Structure Steel — Timber —
Concrete — Reinforced Concrete (McGraw-Hill, 1911). See also Krislov, How
Nations Choose Product Standards and Standards Change Nations.

11. Historians have recently turned their attention in greater numbers toward the
function of written materials in the operation of industry; two exceptionally help-
ful works are JoAnne Yates's Control through Communication (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989) and Geoffrey Bowker's Science on the Run (MIT Press,
1994).

12. For an overview of this effort, see Scranton, "None-Too-Porous Boundaries."
In addition to Noble's America by Design, foundational works in this area include

The Hidden Lives of Standards 139

the following: Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (Monthly Review
Press, 1974); David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America (Cambridge
University Press, 1979); Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers (University of
Wisconsin Press, 1975); David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich,
Segmented Work, Divided Workers (Cambridge University Press, 1982). Many
company and community studies have augmented this work; one of these is Stephen
Meyer, The Five Dollar Day (SUNY Press, 1981).

13. Amy Slaton, "'As Near as Practicable': Precision, Ambiguity, and the Social
Features of Industrial Quality Control," Technology and Culture (forthcoming).

14. E. M. Haas, "Standardization of Buildings," Railway Age 64 (February 8,
1918), pp. 287-298; H. Ward Jandl et al.. Yesterday's Houses of Tomorrow
(Preservation Press, 1991); Twentieth-Century Building Materials, ed. T. Jester
(McGraw-Hill, 1995); Cecil ElUott, Technics and Architecture (MIT Press, 1992),
pp. 82-83, 192-193.

15. The idea that the routinization of construction work might actually benefit
building workers was expressed by some analysts. Their premise was that lower
costs for building operations would translate into more buildings being erected, and
thus into more jobs for construction workers. See Adolph J. Ackerman and Charles
Locker, Construction Planning and Plant (McGraw-Hill, 1940), pp. 365-367.

16. Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home (University of Chicago
Press, 1980), pp. 192-190, 198; Marc Silver, Under Construction (SUNY Press,
1986), pp. 1-13; William Haber, Industrial Relations in the Building Industry
(Harvard University Press, 1971 [1930]), pp. 36, 47.

17. Sarah Bradford Landau and Carl W. Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper,
1865-1913 (Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 35-36; H. R Bates, G. H. Cheesman,
and W W Lighthipe, "Elevators," in Handbook of Building Construction, volume
2, ed. Hool and Johnson.

18. A particularly interesting narrative about the construction of an industrial rep-
utation is offered in chapter 3 of Bowker's Science on the Run. See also Nye's Image
Worlds. The literature on how scientific and other "expert" professions achieve
social credibility has grown steadily since the appearance of the following books:
Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton
University Press, 1985); Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions (University of
Chicago Press, 1988); T. Haskell, ed.. The Authority of Experts (Indiana University
Press, 1984); R. Walters, ed.. Scientific Authority and Twentieth-Century America
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

19. For detailed descriptions of the organization of commercial building projects
in this period, see Handbook of Building Construction, volume 2, ed. Hool and
Johnson; Ray J. Reigeluth, Safety and Economy in Heavy Construction (McGraw-
Hill, 1933); Amy Slaton, Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American
Building (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

20. Catalogs of the Tyler Elevator Company, Cleveland (ca. 1927), the Burdett-
Rowntree Manufacturing Company, Chicago (1914), and other catalogs in the
Trade Catalog Collection of the Hagley Museum and Library.

140 Slaton and Abbate

21. Catalog of the Tyler Elevator Company, Cleveland (ca. 1927), in Trade Catalog
Collection of Hagley Museum and Library.

22. Ibid., p. 6.

23. Landau and Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper, p. 256.

24. See for example, John Preston Comer, New York City Building Control,
1800-1941 (Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 58, 72; Edward Van Winkle,
"Elevator Car-Safety Appliances and the Building Code," Engineering News 51
(1903), p. 354.

25. Interestingly, many were authored by employees of elevator firms, clearly post-
ing attacks on competitors, and reports often included evidence of extensive safety
tests conducted by the author's own firm. Typical exchanges of this type appear in
the following articles: "Air Cushion for Elevator Shafts in High Buildings,"
Engineering News 42 (1899), pp. 274-275; "A High Drop Test of an Elevator
Safety Cushion," Engineering News 42, (1902), pp. 295-296; "A Device for Testing
an Elevator Test Cushion," Engineering News 48 (1902), p. 316.

26. Steward T. Smith, "Mechanical Refrigeration," in Handbook of Building
Construction, volume 2, ed. Hool and Johnson; Ruth Schwartz Cowan, "How the
Refrigerator Got Its Hum," in The Social Shaping of Technology, ed. D. MacKenzie
and J. Wajcman (Open University Press, 1985), p. 204; Sigfried Giedion,
Mechanization Takes Command (Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 600-605;
Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics
of Waste (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 11-13.

27. Cowan, "How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum," pp. 207-210.

28. See, for example, Arthur C. Davis, "The St. Regis," Architectural Record 15
(1904),pp. 554, 615.

29. "General Electric Refrigerators for Residences and Apartment Homes," cata-
log produced by General Electric Company: Electric Refrigeration Department, ca.
1931, in Trade Catalog Collection of Hagley Museum and Library.

30. Lupton and Miller, The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste, pp.
48-64. See also additional GE catalogs in the Hagley collection.

31. "General Electric Refrigerators for Residences and Apartment Homes."

32. For a representative discussion of attitudes toward architects held by building
supphers, see C. A. Crane, "The Relation between Engineers and Contractors,"
Proceedings of the American Concrete Institute 13 (1917): 130-142.

33. A telling quote appears on p. 49 of Andrew Young's article "The Relations of
the Plumbers and the Physicians" {Public Health 17, 1903): "Plumbing is no longer
a mere trade. Its importance and value in relation to health, and its requirements
regarding scientific knowledge, have elevated it to a profession."

34. Wright, Moralism and the Model Home, pp. 178-185, 200, 212-213.

35. Again, cultural, technical, and occupational trends were mutually reinforcing.
The domestic refrigerator carried intimations of gentility, in particular embodying
a blend of values of privacy and material accumulation. Efficiency was important.

The Hidden Lives of Standards 141

Many upscale hotels and apartment buildings of the first years of the century main-
tained centralized kitchens and laundries in which the domestic needs of individual
famiUes could be addressed in large-scale, factory-like operations. Yet the extreme
valuation of privacy prevailed: as dumbwaiters discretely carried meals from a cen-
tral kitchen to each apartment's private dining rooms in such buildings, so individ-
ual refrigerators became the norm in each family's kitchen, though far more
expensive and inefficient than would be a shared, institutional refrigerator. Early
refrigerators had mechanical equipment in housing that could be separated from
the cold cabinet itself; many apartment buildings so emphasized private ownership
of appliances that a single refrigeration plant in a basement connected to cabinets
in individual apartments. (Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream (Pantheon,
1981),pp. 138, 147)

36. See, e.g., advertisements by the Otis Elevator Company in Architectural Record
from the 1910s and the 1920s.

37. Amy E. Slaton, Origins of a Modern Form: The Reinforced Concrete Factory
Building in America, 1900-1930, Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania,
1995, pp. 192-261.

38. Ross F. Tucker, "The Progress and Logical Design of Reinforced Concrete,"
Concrete Age 3 (1906), p. 333.

39. Advertisement for Clinton Wire Cloth Company, Sweet's Catalog 1906, p. 96.
Some reinforcement makers were clearly less sophisticated than the large concerns.
The Hinchman-Renton System, for instance, offered reinforcing made from "ordi-
nary barbed wire." But even the simplest product lines offered purchasers economies
of scale based on replacing individually assembled reinforcement with mass-pro-
duced assemblies. The Hinchman-Renton Company was based in Denver, which
may be the reason they considered barbed wire to be "inexpensive and readily
obtained in any quantity" (Walter Mueller, "Reinforced Concrete Construction,"
Concrete Age 3 (1906), p. 325).

40. Mueller, "Reinforced Concrete Construction," pp. 323-324; advertisement for
Unit Concrete Steel Frame Company, Sweet's Catalog, 1906, p. 127.

41. The Aberthaw Construction Company, for example, had purchased patent
rights to Ernest Ransome's twisted steel reinforcement designs in 1896 and manu-
factured reinforcing from them for its own use and for sale. When the patent rights
expired, probably about 1915, Aberthaw found it uneconomical to produce its own
rods given the many "deformed" rods now on the market, especially those of the
Kahn Company. See The Story of Aberthaw (unpublished manuscript in archives of
Aberthaw Construction Company, North Billerica, Massachusetts).

42. Trussed Concrete Steel Company, Detroit, Michigan, "Hy-Rib: Its Application
in Roofs — Floors — Walls — Sidings — Partitions — Ceilings — Furring," 1912, in the
Trade Catalog Collection of the Hagley Museum and Library. The Trussed Concrete
Steel Company was owned by Julius Kahn, brother of the celebrated factory
designer Albert Kahn. Julius Kahn built a vast enterprise on his innovative rein-
forcing system of "trussed steel bars": rolled steel bars of diamond cross-section
with bent up "wings" attached to either side. The wings countered the shearing

1 42 Slaton and Abbate

forces found in concrete beams, adding 20-30 percent to the strength of a beam.
Other reinforcing systems for walls and flat slabs that varied slightly from Hy-Rib
products are described in Mueller, "Reinforced Concrete Construction" (pp.
321-332) and in A.J. Widmer, "Reinforced Concrete Construction," 25th Annual
Report of the Illinois Society of Engineers and Surveyors, 1915 (p. 148).

43. The Trussed Concrete Steel Company had many divisions, including The
Truscon Laboratories of Detroit, and made a point of delineating the expertise of
its own employees from that of its clients. A 1924 Truscon Maintenance Data Book,
intended for "maintenance engineers, building owners, and others interested in the
maintenance and profitable upkeep of buildings and equipment," gathered miscel-
laneous specifications and general advice for the upkeep of industrial plants. It fea-
tured illustrations of white-coated scientists in the company's laboratories, and
celebrated the work of its "graduate engineers" on the problems of "well directed,
intelligent maintenance."

44. See Harry C. Bates, Bricklayers' Century of Craftsmanship (Bricklayers,
Masons and Plasterers International Union of America, 1955).

45. These patterns extend beyond the realm of traditional manufacturing into many
other modernizing work settings of the twentieth century. Warwick Anderson ("The
Reasoning of the Strongest") documented a similar attempt to distribute technical
authority through the creation of written protocols. In his study of computerized
diagnosis systems, Anderson treated "'craft' and 'scientific' representations of diag-
nosis symmetrically, as discursive resources used in the hospital context to legiti-
mate the divergent competencies of . . . two occupational subgroups" (ibid., p. 655).

46. Philip Kraft, "The Routinization of Computer Programming," Sociology of
Work and Occupations 6, no. 2 (1979): 139-155; Philip Kraft and Steven Dubnoff,
"Job Content, Fragmentation, and Control in Computer Software Work,"
Industrial Relations 25, no. 2 (1986): 184-196; Joan Greenbaum, In the Name of
Efficiency (Temple University Press, 1979); Juhet Webster, Shaping Women's Work
(Longman, 1996); Roslyn L. Feldberg and Evelyn Nakano Glenn, "Technology and
Work Degradation: Effects of Office Automation on Women Clerical Workers," In
Machina Ex Dea, ed. J. Rothschild (Pergamon, 1983).

47. For a detailed description of the development of the Internet, see Janet Abbate,
Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999).

48. For an overview of a wide range of standards concerns for the data communi-
cations industry, see Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure, ed. B. Kahin
and J. Abbate (MIT Press, 1995).

49. On compatibility issues in computing and attempts to create international stan-
dards for data networks, see chapters 2 and 5 of Abbate, Inventing the Internet.

50. The TCP/IP implementations used in the ARPANET did not go directly into
the market: the US government (ARPA) sponsored computer manufacturers to
develop commercial TCP/IP products for their computer lines and also paid for
UNIX versions of the protocols. But the commercial and UNIX developers were
able to build on the prior groundbreaking work of the nonprofit ARPANET sites,
and in many cases the same people were involved.

The Hidden Lives of Standards 143

51. Jon Postel, email to Janet Abbate, July 29, 1998.

52. For an account of the difficulties faced by users of early networks, see chapter
3 of Abbate, Inventing the Internet.

53. See, e.g., Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late (Simon
& Schuster, 1996); Arthur L. Norberg and Judy E. O'Neill, Transforming Computer
Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Peter Salus, Casting the Net
(Addison-Wesley, 1995).

54. For a discussion of tensions within the ARPANET community, see chapter 2 of
Abbate, Inventing the Internet.

55. These accounts are drawn from documents archived at the library of Bolt,
Beranek and Newman, a computer firm and one of the main ARPANET contrac-
tors. Eighteen months was the implementation time reported by a programmer at
BBN, whose staff had already had considerable experience writing TCP software
(John Sax, email to Alex McKenzie, May 20, 1991). The quotations are from the
following, respectively: Mark Crisping, message to newsgroup comp.protocols.tcp-
ip, June 21, 1991; Alex McKenzie, message to comp. protocols. tcp-ip, June 24,
1991; ARPANET Newsletter no. 16, September 30, 1982; Dan Lynch, message to
comp. protocols.tcp-ip, June 23, 1991.

56. Abbate, Inventing the Internet, chapter 5.

57. "Any kind of formal verification [i.e., proving mathematically that a program
does what it is supposed to] is a great deal more work than the bakeoff style of test-
ing. So from the developer's point of view, getting things working together in a bake-
off is by far preferable to formal verification." (Jon Postel, email to Janet Abbate,
July 29, 1998)

58. ARPANET Request For Comments (RFC) #1025, pp. 2-3.

59. Ibid., p. 1.

60. Ibid., p. 4.

61 . Most of the information in this section is from an interview with Dan Lynch by
Janet Abbate on July 23, 1998.

62. See the Interop web page (http: //www.interop.com).

63. Interop web site, 1998 press release (http://www.interop.com/Press_Releases/
ni_042798.html).

64. Both of these were real possibilities. Many computer manufacturers had devel-
oped their own proprietary protocols that they could have used instead of TCP/IP;
there was also an international standard called OSI that was a serious rival to the
ARPA protocols.

65. Interview with Dan Lynch by Janet Abbate, July 23, 1998.

Engineering Politics, Technological
Fundamentalism, and German Power
Technology, 1900-1936

Edmund N. Todd

Standard histories of electrification describe technology's moving almost
inexorably from small, independent stations through block, central, and
overland stations to a national system.' However, Thomas P. Hughes argues
that there were regional and national differences in the development of elec-
tric power systems. He and other historians of technology no longer give
technology an independent role in history- Nevertheless, specialists in other
kinds of history continue to present technology as autonomous, as did many
engineers and other commentators from the 1880s to the 1930s. But even
successful engineers did not identify the same trends. Georg Klingenberg
promoted giant electric power stations and a national system in the 1910s,
Arthur Koepchen defended regional systems in the 1920s, and Wilhelm Stiel
recommended independent power stations for textile mills in the 1930s.^
They had to struggle to create their technological systems. Though it is
understandable that these engineers would represent their efforts in terms
acceptable early in the twentieth century, it is curious that historians would
ignore a rich body of literature concerning technology, one of their central
historical forces. Instead of culture lagging behind technology, as William
F. Ogburn claimed, we see a lag in historiography.''

Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel provide a focus for investigating rep-
resentations of technology and technological change. Like their contempo-
raries, they presented technology as an exogenous factor driving social,
legal, and political developments. Technology was changing Germany from
an agricultural to an industrial nation, promoting urbanization, and dri-
ving a transformation in the scale of corporations. Klingenberg, Koepchen,
and Stiel participated in those changes. Klingenberg (1870-1925), after
receiving a doctorate in Rostock and qualifying to teach at the Technical

146 Todd

University of Berlin, taught power-plant design from 1898 to 1909. In
1902, he became director of power-plant construction and operations at
the electrical manufacturing firm Allgemeine Elektrizitatsgesellschaft
(AEG).' Koepchen (1878-1954) graduated from the Technical University in
Karlsruhe and worked for 2 years in the electro-technical division of Felten
&C Guilleaume in Miilheim, near Cologne. In 1906, he was hired as techni-
cal director for a subsidiary of the Rheinisch-Westfalisches Elektrizitatswerk
(RWE), based in Essen. In 1914, he became an acting member of the RWE's
Vorstand (managing committee); in 1917 he became a full member.' During
the 1920s, with a doctorate in engineering, Stiel (1878-1936) directed a
department responsible for textiles, paper, cellulose, and leather at the elec-
trical manufacturing firm Siemens-Schuckert in Berlin.^

These individuals can be called technological fundamentalists. First, they
sought to make technology fundamental to decisions. Using the determin-
ist language of their time, they presented their views as straightforward,
factual ways of resolving problems. Widely accepted, determinism was a
"social fact."' Second, unlike "realist," "determinist," or even "techno-
crat," the word "fundamentalist" stresses the role of belief. Technological
fundamentalists believed they had a "revealed truth" that identified a real
trend toward a proper future that could be rationally achieved.
"Technocratic" faith in "realism" and "determinism" made them much
like religious fundamentalists, who believe that they have the correct
"God's-eye view" of the world.'

Faith alone was not enough. Although believing that technology was on
their side,'" the three engineers did not promote Utopian schemes. To imple-
ment their visions of proper change, they had to deal with various levels of
government, different corporations, and each other. They avoided "party
politics," but they engaged in "engineering politics" as they sought to make
their visions of proper change "technically and politically feasible."" To
create a national system, Klingenberg sought support from the Reich
against the "political" positions of his opponents. To build his regional sys-
tem, Koepchen lined up allies among representatives from cities, counties
(Landkreise), and corporations against the "political" actions of Reich offi-
cials, electrical manufacturers, and other opponents. To create independent
stations for textile mills, Stiel opposed "political" systems deployed by
directors of power companies. They made local concessions without giv-

Engineering Politics 147

ing up their fundamentalism. With dire consequences, these three "states-
men of technology" refused to legitimize the negotiations and compro-
mises — a politics of contending interests — in which they participated. '-

Historiographic Artifacts

Change in science and technology does not explain change in general.
Laboratories and shop floors involve contingency and choice. Theory does
not always guide experiment, and science does not always guide technology.
Causal lines often run in the other direction.'^ Nor are disciplines all the
same. Peter Galison refers to them as subcultures, the members of which,
given appropriate contexts, may work out their differences locally without
giving up disciplinary commitments. Knowledge and skills often work only
in institutions, laboratories, or technological systems in which members of
subcultures have adjusted theory, apparatus, and analysis to one another.
For instance, not until the 1930s did electric power systems in Germany
work well enough to support an academic disciphne of power-system eco-
nomics." Thus, rather than assuming that science and technology are
autonomous, it may be fruitful to investigate "distributions of knowledge"
in social systems and to follow productive actors around to see what prob-
lems they face and how they resolve them.'"' As Hughes has demonstrated,
those building technological systems need to resolve technical, social, polit-
ical, economic, and even cultural problems."^

Because scientists and engineers struggle to create order and meaning,'^
nature and technology do not mysteriously arrive to provide a God's-eye
"view from nowhere."^* Nevertheless, scientists and engineers often write
"shadow histories" that present science and technology as nonpolitical,
higher forms of rationality. As they reconstruct histories leading to pre-
ferred futures, they hide and even forget the social effort that was neces-
sary to shift knowledge and social structure. Even if recognized as
historically inaccurate, shadow histories allow authors to move on to top-
ics that they wish to investigate thoroughly.'' However, scientists and engi-
neers seem to believe their historical reconstructions.^" By using their
versions of history to pass on values, establish a sense of time, and project
a future, scientists and engineers create meaning and impose order on them-
selves and the world in which they live.-' Thus, history provides a terrain

148 Todd

in which those fighting to make development follow their preferred paths
retroactively seek to establish trends supporting their projections of an
appropriate future.-^ Promoting a God's-eye view makes technology fun-
damental in these histories.^'

Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel wrote shadow histories identifying
"proper" lines of development. For Klingenberg, the logic of history had led
to large power stations and would lead to a national grid. Combining large
stations would create steady use of equipment and reduce the cost of
installed capacity as engineers resolved remaining technical problems. ^'' For
Koepchen, technology had driven development from "local stations," not
to Klingenberg's national grid, but to the RWE's regional, "long-distance
supply" system. Koepchen deployed history to buttress his argument: the
"development of this large integrated system [was] beginning rather than
ending." Although some small stations were seeking autonomy and
expanding, "in the long run economic rationality [would] succeed."
Combining North German thermal plants with South German hydroelec-
tricity would produce "a rational balance" and allow "complete use of the
varying availability of water power energy. "^^" For Stiel, the logic of tech-
nological development was leading to independent stations, not to a
national grid or regional systems. Whereas steam had earlier promoted cen-
tralization, electricity was decentralizing textile mills, which would gener-
ate their own power and control their own independent technological
systems. ^''

Leading historians also present technology as driving change. Their
shadow histories may set up topics that they find more interesting. For
instance, Hans Mommsen notes the important impact of "rapid modern-
ization," but he focuses on "political decision-making" and "the structure
of social, economic, and pohtical interests. "^^ Others give technology a
larger role. Mainly concerned with the impact of cycles of boom and bust
produced by the "Imperial German growth machine," Hans-Ulrich Wehler
writes that "innovations drove their number regularly upward" as part of
a self-creating and self-implementing secular trend. For instance, he pre-
sents electrical technology as growing inexorably from small to large.-*
Disagreeing with much of Wehler's interpretation of German history, David
Blackbourn may be more willing to recognize contingency and choice,
except in technology.^' Presenting technology as growing bigger, faster, more

Engineering Politics 149

rationalized, Blackbourn notes that "by the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, a recognizably modern corporate structure had established itself in
industry," although more in "electrics" than in textiles. One could be pes-
simistic or optimistic, but "the trend was general" during this "classic era
of mass production."'"

Historians of professions also use shadow histories that simplify and
shorten narratives. For instance, several legal historians treat technology —
for them a vague part of industrialization — as shaping Germany. They eval-
uate the professional and legal adjustments made in response to
industrialization. Kenneth F. Ledford notes that after 1871 lawyers pro-
moted procedural reform as an "Archimedean point" in order to make
themselves member of a "General Estate." Michael John investigates the
development of a new civil code. He argues that industrialists and mer-
chants were more interested in legal unity than in the specific content of the
new civil code, passed in 1896.^' Curiously, many historians of engineers use
similar shadow histories. They investigate career structures and professional
organizations, rather than looking at engineers thinking or acting on shop
floors or inside design bureaus, laboratories, and technological systems.
They analyze engineers who discussed political, social, and economic
change and who struggled to improve engineering education, status, and
income. These studies present technology as a "black box," neither opened
nor investigated. In these shadow histories, technology happened to engi-
neers, who, like others, struggled to adjust. ^'

Shadow histories of technology use machine images without analyzing
their uses. They also draw on other images. Historians of the Kaiserreich
and Weimar Germany often turn to Max Weber and his "Iron Cage" of
rationalization, associated with capitalism and bureaucracy." Blackbourn
argues that bureaucracy was "the true common element" linking aspects
of Wilhelmine Germany together and notes the prevalence of "machine"
images. According to Blackbourn, Weber had a "double-sided perspective"
in which, although "the bureaucratic machine was rational, essential, a
motor for good," it "also threatened to confine humans in an 'iron cage'."
Weber admired "American dynamism" and promoted "capitalism and
technical rationality," but he believed that rationahzation was replacing an
"enchanted world" full of meaning with "the grey forces of regimentation. "
Thus, Blackbourn ties together pessimism and optimism, irrationalism and

150 Todd

rationalism, and subjectivity and objectivity from the Kaiserreich to the
Third Reich.'"

In the guise of the "Iron Cage," shadow histories of technology become
not figures of speech shortening narratives but artifacts requiring explana-
tions and responses. Jeffrey Herf separates politics from technology and
then investigates how "German thinkers who rejected Enlightenment rea-
son" combined "irrationality" (Nazism) with "the most obvious manifes-
tation of means-ends rationality" (technology).'^ Rolf Sieferle explores
"conservative" responses to "technological civilization as an objective
process.""^ These shadow histories support "cultural pessimists" who
believed that technology was coercively restructuring Germany and that
political action was useless.'^ A way out of the "Iron Cage" might then be
necessary. Lawrence Scaff sees "a series of continuing assaults on the socio-
cultural world by means-specific instrumentahties that have their true
sources and rationale in the production of technologies and in economic
modes of action." Technology and technical means have been replacing val-
ues, value conflicts, and politics, but Scaff wants a politics "beyond both
instrumental rationality and aesthetic experience."'* John P. McCormick
follows a similar path in reviving Carl Schmitt's criticism of turning politics
into a technology." Without looking inside technological change, these
scholars reify machine images. Herf wants to live in the "Iron Cage"; Scaff
and McCormick seek to escape it.

Fundamentalism in Context

Both historians and engineers have closed off investigations of technology
and history as contested terrain. Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel had good
reasons for doing so. In presenting their quite different "ends and choices"
as determined by technology (which was fundamental), Klingenberg,
Koepchen, and Stiel themselves used a Weberian language suggesting the
"pure Platonic interest of the technologist."'"' They based their thinking,
acting, and representing on the belief that technological change followed
its own logic. This was also an appropriate rhetorical strategy. They chose
modes of representation that were useful in promoting change — social,
political, and technical — from the 1890s to the 1930s. Presenting technol-
ogy as transcendent — as following a natural logic — made processes of gen-

Engineering Politics 1 51

esis, justification, and implementation of technological change politically
and technically feasible.'*' The "Iron Cage" cast a deep shadow.

A determinist view of technological change was widely shared in the
Kaiserreich and in the Weimar Republic. Many Germans believed that tech-
nology was rationalizing, leveling, and homogenizing German "culture."
Pessimists thought nothing could be done to reverse the trend, while oth-
ers sought ways to preserve "culture."'*' Enthusiasm was common.'*' A few
intellectuals interpreted technological change as consistent with "conserv-
ative" agendas.'*'* Werner Siemens announced that "research and invention
[were] leading humans to higher cultural levels,"*^" while Hugo Stinnes
sought ways of scaling up and integrating technological systems. Landrate
(county commissioners), powerful local members of the Prussian bureau-
cracy, promoted regional infrastructural development to prevent mayors
and industrialists from pursuing narrow interests that encouraged urban-
ization and industrial concentration.'*''

Many scholars in the Kaiserreich drew boundaries between the techni-
cal and the poHtical.*^ They faced a common problem. Representatives of
sciences and technologies that have policy relevance need most acutely to
appear above politics. In seeking to mechanize choice, they develop meth-
ods of quantification and sets of rules, protocols, and procedures to pro-
tect "experts" from the outside. As Theodore Porter notes, "not Science,
but politics, demands narrow rigor.""*^ For example, after 1871, the Verein
fiir Sozialpolitik (Association for Social Policy) tied political economy
closely to policy development. In addition, German Social Democrats
claimed that sociology meant socialism. In a "value-judgment fight" that
broke out in 1909, Max Weber and others distanced themselves from the
association and from socialism by asserting that facts and values were sep-
arate issues. Whereas sociology (science) could establish the facts, only
politics could establish what ought to be.*' In jurisprudence, "statute pos-
itivists" focused on law that had been properly created. They separated
the formal system from politics and applications. In his attack on statute
positivism, published in 1911, Hans Kelsen promoted a theory of "pure"
law that separated "is" from "ought."™ Private lawyers thought that
proper procedures would make them members of a general estate repre-
senting general interests.^' State officials presented themselves as neutral,
nonpolitical rule followers. ^^

152 Todd

Dissatisfied with the party and interest-group politics of the 1890s, which
they did not think dealt adequately with problems of industrial, economic,
social, and cultural change, some middle-class theorists also suggested an
aesthetics based on Sachlichkeit (objectivity or matter-of-factness). In
1907, stressing "functionalism" and "efficiency," they established a new
direction in industrial design by establishing the Werkbund. Scientific and
technical progress would replace a lost faith in political progress. A sach-
lich (realistic) appraisal of machines and materials would provide proper
design, while functionalism in architecture and engineering would help
integrate society. Klingenberg promoted similar views. He argued that
architecture should reflect "the purpose of the building" and allow one to
imagine that "inside are housed heavy masses with solid foundations."
He rejected ornament — "friezes" — that could "never suit the form of the
machines.""

During the 1920s, as Germans constructed a new state and suffered
through inflation, stabilization, then depression, politics fell even further
into disrepute. A common figure of speech equated politics with the
Kuhhandel (shady business) found in the traditional marketplace. Attacks
on science and technology increased. Although leading physicists lost faith
in reason and causality, other Germans retained their faith in Sachlichkeit.''''
Presenting technology as fundamental allowed proponents of different ways
of organizing state and society to appear as nonpolitical agents of "proper"
change. Many industrialists, trade union officials, engineers, and politicians
supported economic and industrial "rationalization" based on American
technology and production. They envisioned quite different impacts, and
each group believed that political machinations might divert the natural
logic of rationalization.^"'' Promoting "technocracy," one group of engineers
sought to separate technology from capital, so that technology would no
longer narrowly serve profit. ^"^ Of course, some scientists and engineers
found "professional dignity" not in controlling the uses of their expertise
but simply in making things work.^^

Scholars believed that following procedures and rules circumvented val-
ues and politics. German historians of the "historicist" school envisioned
scientists as using "abstract, classificatory methods" to study nature, which
was "the scene of the eternally recurring, of phenomena themselves devoid
of conscious purpose." Historicists wanted to use "intuitive understand-

Engineering Politics 1 53

ing" to study "unique and unduplicable human acts, filled with volition
and intent. "^^ Karl Mannheim believed that following rules placed one
beyond social influences." Hans Kelsen created a vision of "pure law" that
placed sovereignty in the legal system's "logical unity," whereas Carl
Schmitt identified the head of state as the sovereign "source of 'objective'
decisions — those 'above' parties."*^" Schmitt thought that technology was
penetrating the legal profession by filling it with technicians mechanically
applying rules. Thus, he assumed that technological change was a neutral,
nonpolitical process. A form without content, technology involved only
efficiency and control. These scholars did not investigate what lawyers,
bureaucrats, engineers, and scientists actually did. Daily activities, choices,
and negotiations were irrelevant, perhaps because scholars thought that
they all contributed to the same process — rationalization. '^

Using Fundamentalism

Engineers also participated in German culture. They promoted technolog-
ical fundamentalism as a new "way of life,"" as they sought to make them-
selves significant bearers of German culture." Stressing technology,
nationalism, and industrialization, leaders of the Verein Deutscher
Ingenieure (Association of German Engineers) defined development of the
engineering profession as benefiting German society and the nation. Thus,
the VDI promoted educational reform, safety, and norms to raise the sta-
tus of engineers and promote economic growth. VDI engineers supported
Taylorism to overcome narrow profit concerns of economic liberalism and
presented themselves as neutral mediators between capital and labor. VDI
leaders avoided the key political issues of the day that might have fractured
its heterogeneous membership and instead supported technical and scien-
tific progress to solve general problems and promote the general good.
Their way of resolving social and economic issues was to treat them in a
"scientific," not a "political" manner. Facts would determine choice and
exclude interest conflict. Klingenberg joined his AEG colleagues Wichard
von Moellendorff and Walter Rathenau in representing these claims as max-
imizing rationalization and standardization with the help of Taylorism. In
1927, expressing the fundamentahst view, a VDI curator stressed that tech-
nology had "its own necessities. "''''

154 Todd

Klingenberg agreed. Beginning in 1909, he promoted large power sta-
tions and a national grid,*'"' describing them more fully in 1913. He argued
that issues of "electrical policy" could be resolved only after considering
"the most essential economic questions," which involved generating and
distributing costs. He argued that "the economically most advantageous"
station could be designed because "for each level of load there [was] a par-
ticular organization of machines and a particular distribution of load to
them that [would] produce the smallest costs." Each plant was a "unified
machine" with an "unequivocal managerial direction." Ignoring excep-
tional conditions, he planned only to deal with "fundamental considera-
tions."'^*' After establishing principles, he discussed generating equipment,
boilers, coal transport and storage, ash removal, switching equipment, plant
location, and architecture. His ideas became the basis for developing the
field of power-system economics, which provided generally accepted meth-
ods by the mid 1930s.'"

Koepchen, making technology fundamental, promoted a different vision
of the proper end of technological change: regional systems. In 1920, he
argued that electric power should be reorganized according to "general eco-
nomic principles" independent of "all private-enterprise, communal or
quite political special interests." However, "technical and economic require-
ments" would produce eight regional systems (including his power com-
pany, the RWE), not a national grid.'^ In 1930, Koepchen argued that "the
task of technology" was to use "a minimum of national income to achieve
the economic optimum." Thus, "technological progress" required a safe,
economical, and "steady adjustment of all operations to the actual state of
the technology." For Koepchen, the RWE's efforts to tie Ruhr coal to Alpine
hydroelectricity provided a model of rational, fact-based, nonpolitical, tech-
nology-driven development.'^'

Stiel also made technology fundamental in promoting independent power
stations of an even smaller scale. He argued for the economic benefits of
combining heating and electric generation in paper mills. Georg Siemens
writes that Stiel was "a scientist by nature, who had studied the techno-
logical foundations" of the textile industry."" Stiel wished to provide "the
most appropriate energy supply for factories and their individual machines"
in order to maximize productivity and quality. Setting up an on-site "tex-
tile power station" created the lowest possible costs for facilities and oper-

Engineering Politics 1 55

ations by "tightly matching the needs of the individual factory." Powering
each machine with an electric motor would improve factory operations,
increase production, and improve the quaUty of work. He preferred alter-
nating current because of its "convenient transforming of tension" and
because "cheap, simple, practical" squirrel-cage motors could be used.
Closely involved in implementing textile electrification, Stiel could not
ignore contingency and choice. The "real operating situation" after con-
struction had to be considered as well as "expected changes in operations
in the foreseeable future." Design had to be "flexible" enough to allow
"operational changes and expansions without impairing economy."^'

Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel made technology fundamental to three
different systems. ^^ They could not mechanize choice. In typical funda-
mentalist fashion, they stressed the use of data and experience to bridge
the gap between abstract system and implementation.^' Discerning indi-
viduals would recognize the truth. Klingenberg asserted that "the most
practical design, [concerning] the relative position of boiler, machine, and
switch rooms and the kind of coal storage, [was] to be determined case by
case according to [his] criteria." Stressing experience (Erfahrung) allowed
him to state what was best without discussion and to resolve disputes with-
out appearing to participate in them.^"* For Koepchen, the RWE exempli-
fied the proper adjustment of theory to local conditions, but the RWE often
had to wait while others came to understand the right way.^^" Stiel argued
that electrifying textile manufacturing was possible only "if the special
technological conditions of the textile industry [were] taken into careful
consideration." In addition, the choice of self-generation or drawing
energy from outside depended "entirely on the special conditions of indi-
vidual cases." Although representatives of pubhc power companies had
argued that they could not take electricity from independent power sta-
tions at acceptable rates, experience showed otherwise. ^''

Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel tapped into a consensus — right and left,
pessimists and optimists — that technological change had one logic, both per-
vasive and irresistible. However, facts, logic, experience, and "pure Platonic
interests" were not enough to achieve their different ends. Nor are they for
historians. To avoid charges of subjectivism and relativism, Wehler and other
historians of the Kaiserreich seek objective structures in society. ^^ Making
technology fundamental helps to create "objectivity" by constructing a

156 Todd

realm of causal factors seemingly independent of human choice.^* Never-
theless, historians promote contending interpretations. They may turn to
"academic poUtics."^' Geoff Eley notes that Jiirgen Kocka, in his survey of
the nineteenth-century German bourgeoisie, "pretends that Blackbourn and
Eley did not exist," although they had been arguing against Kocka and
Hans-Ulrich Wehler since the early 1980s. *° In a fine display of academic
rhetoric, Wehler accuses three widely cited authors of an "astounding igno-
rance of historiographical development, academic-political naivete, and
theoretical Philistinism."^' History remains a contested ground for histori-
ans, even when they present technological change as an objective process
creating change in other realms. In addition, shadow histories of technol-
ogy ignore the political efforts necessary to build different systems.

Engineering Politics

Technological fundamentalism provided useful political rhetoric. German
university professors, claiming to be nonpolitical because they separated
facts and values, cloaked their role as state officials serving conservative
states.^^ In addition, separating facts and values allowed these "mandarins"
to promote themselves.**^ Herbert Mehrtens describes the "caste politics"
pursued by German mathematicians, who promoted and protected their
field during the 1920s and the 1930s but who presented their efforts as non-
political.^'' Thus, claiming value neutrality and transcendence, university pro-
fessors, scientists, and engineers served special interests. ^^ Behavior could
undermine rhetoric,**" but technological fundamentalism remained unchal-
lenged, as it does among some historians. Although Klingenberg, Koepchen,
and Stiel promoted their contending solutions in a neutral language of tech-
nical necessity, they still had to find allies to build their different systems.
Although opposition to party politics was widespread, negotiation and com-
promise were necessary to establish consensus among contending interests. ^^
They did not resolve their fundamental differences, but each of them par-
ticipated in engineering politics to implement his plans.

Although Klingenberg made technology fundamental,** he was well
aware of the political efforts that went into building power systems. In
Germany, local governments were sovereign entities in matters of local
infrastructure.*' Towns and counties (Landkreise) could establish their own

Engineering Politics 157

companies or could join mixed public -private corporations that combined
local governments with private capital.'" Thus, in order to build power sta-
tions and distribution systems, Klingenberg and the AEG worked with local
governments." South Africa provided different allies. Slick maneuvering
allowed the AEG to penetrate the British empire after 1906. In order to sell
equipment and technology in South Africa, the AEG purchased a majority
of stock in a power company. Outmaneuvering the city of Johannesburg,
the AEG used its power company, renamed the Victoria Falls and Transvaal
Power Company, to build its own system. Allied with gold-mine owners,
who sought to resolve labor problems and had close connections to the state
in the Transvaal, the AEG gained rights of way and circumvented opposition
on the part of coal-mine owners. Close enough together for existing tech-
nology to connect them in a grid, gold mines purchased more than 95 per-
cent of the energy generated. By 1923, they were consuming more electricity
than London, Birmingham, and Sheffield combined.'^

In Germany, only an alliance with a higher level of government would
allow Khngenberg and the AEG to circumvent local politics. In 1913, the
AEG sought unsuccessfully to form an alliance with the Reich government
to create a national system.'^ In the unique political situation provided by
World War I, Klingenberg designed and directed construction of the Golpa
power station, south of Berlin, which went on line in December 1915. Built
for the Reich, it did not include local governments.'"' In addition, Klingenberg
envisioned a system of large power stations connected over a net of 100-
kilovolt power lines which would produce a savings of "national wealth"
(Nationalvermogen) that, he believed, could not be ignored. Klingenberg
described how Germany would have to be reorganized to suit his vision of
a proper electric supply system. Political boundaries, individual companies,
towns, and counties could no longer interfere in proper development.'^
Klingenberg's vision gained support among engineers and historians.
However, neither Klingenberg nor the Reich government was able to build
a political coalition powerful enough to bypass local, provincial, and state
governments. Neither these political problems nor severe technical problems
could be resolved before World War I, or even in the 1930s.'"'

Local politics was integral to successful power politics. During World
War I, the AEG lost power systems to the province of Brandenburg, the city
of Berlin, and the Reich. '^ While Klingenberg sought support for a national

158 Todd

grid, another group of technological fundamentalists were wiring together
towns and counties, and eventually provinces and states into regional coali-
tions that could protect themselves. Like the AEG, the RWE had to deal
with local governments that exercised sovereignty over infrastructure. In
1908, local officials forced the RWE out of Westphalia. To expand in the
Rhineland, the RWE had already become a mixed company that grew by
exchanging RWE stock for town and county systems. Public officials joined
the RWE's board and provided the RWE with influence necessary for local
expansion and for dealing with state officials concerned with regional
administration, railroads, and canals.'* During World War I, Reich funding
allowed the RWE to expand dramatically. After World War I, the RWE's
coalition of big business, towns, and counties successfully avoided Reich
control and socialization.'' Astute political maneuvering, not the inexorable
logic of history or technology, had made the RWE one of the largest power
companies in Germany.

During the 1920s, the RWE added states to its coaHtion in order to con-
nect Ruhr coal and Alpine hydroelectric stations. The expanding RWE
coalition fought state officials, who were constructing state power systems.
In this "Electrical War," each side defended its own system as being driven
by technology and reason. Unable to defeat each other, the RWE and
Prussia signed the "North-German Electrical Peace" in 1927, although they
continued to line up allies among local governments in the Saarland. Then,
three state-controlled power companies — Prussian, Reich, and Bavarian —
formed a corporation to unify electrification. The RWE and western allies
formed a counter-organization, but negotiations produced compromise.
The reconstitution of the eastern group to include the RWE and its allies
and the "Real Electrical Peace" of 1929 between the RWE and Prussia
resolved political conflict by demarcating territories within which compa-
nies consolidated themselves politically and technologically. In 1930, the
RWE's connection between the Ruhr and the Alps began operating. After
warding off one further attack from Berlin, the RWE devoted the 1930s to
making its expanded system economically viable. Expansion had created
significant overcapacities that would be utiHzed later in the 1930s by tying
the RWE to National Socialist goals.'""

Promoting a regional, west German system, Koepchen provided the main
obstacle, political and technological, for engineers Uke Klingenberg who

Engineering Politics 1 59

wanted a national grid. In addition, Koepchen railed against those who,
without understanding the proper path of development, might build gen-
erating systems in individual factories."" However, another technological
fundamentalist, Stiel, argued that rational technological development
would lead textile mills to exactly the outcome ridiculed by Koepchen.
Statesmen of technology like Klingenberg and Koepchen dealt with gov-
ernment officials and with one another as they built systems, while Stiel,
head of the textile department at Siemens-Schuckert, persuaded mill man-
agers and owners to turn to individual electric drive. Stiel also compared
self-generation with outside power sources. He presented power compa-
nies as political, and plant design as an objective, nonpolitical process that
would benefit from self-generation. Often needing a source of steam, tex-
tile mills could also generate electricity, which would also free them from
labor problems affecting outside sources. In addition, power companies
might regularize their own systems to the detriment of the mills drawing
current from them. For instance, they might seek to get amperes and volts
into phase (expressed as cos(|)) at the expense of mills. Thus, Stiel referred
to the "cose]) politics of power companies.""*^

Presenting textile electrification as a neutral and rational process, Stiel
ignored significant political characteristics of textile regions. Textile pro-
duction took place in areas that Gary Herrigel has termed "decentralized
realms," such as Elberfeld and Barmen in the Wupper valley, Monchen-
gladbach and Krefeld on the left bank of the Rhine, and Thiiringen. Instead
of large, hierarchically organized corporations like Siemens, the AEG, and
the RWE, which characterized "autarchic regions" around Berlin and in
the Ruhr, decentralized realms had small firms that relied on significant
infrastructural support provided by local government. During the 1920s
and the early 1930s, decentralized realms fought to maintain their inde-
pendence from the national government, which, it was feared, might pro-
mote big business. In addition, members of the "old middle class" suffered
severe economic setbacks. National Socialists sought and gained support
from these increasingly politicized groups, as well as from larger, concen-
trated industries. Many historians have denigrated the culture of small
business and of artisan and household production as an anti-modern
impediment to proper capitalist production in increasingly large factories.'"^
Stiel supported small producers without discussing their political values.

160 Todd

Decentralization continued, and after World War II it provided a basis for
flexible production.'"''

Consequences

Representing large corporations, Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel sought
to build different technological systems. They made technology funda-
mental to their different projects, and they represented engineering as apo-
litical. Each believed that technology was on his side and would lead, except
for political opposition, to a proper future rationally arrived at. They
rejected alternatives by referring to their experiences and to shadow histo-
ries that provided bases for projecting their visions of the future. Instead of
conflict, negotiation, contingency, and construction, they wrote about far-
seeing, insightful, all-knowing engineers and managers who recognized how
things should properly be done and who heroically overcame significant
obstacles to build technological systems. Technological progress was a fig-
ure of speech in their narratives, rather than part of a process to be ana-
lyzed. However, only success could fully support claims of transcendence.
Implementing visions for development, which by definition did not yet exist
and which differed from one another, required technical and political
finesse. They negotiated with others as they sought to create a world in
which their assertions would hold true. Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel
were not engineers who had to become political. Rather, they had to engi-
neer politics to be good engineers.

The three engineers factored "engineering politics" out of their rhetoric
because they and other Germans opposed poHtics. Technological funda-
mentalism may not have provided a good basis for compromise.'"^" Perhaps
more important, hiding engineering poHtics meant that commitment to
objectivity (Sachlichkeit) undermined democratic processes."" In the
Weimar Republic, very little worked to promote democracy, negotiation, or
pluralism as organizational necessities. Separating politics from technol-
ogy — values from facts — meant that infrastructural development was not
presented or seen as a successful political process. Instead, success was pre-
sented as the triumph of clear reasoning and facts over politics. Hence, the
process of infrastructural development did not help legitimize politics in the
Weimar Republic. Legitimizing choices in terms of technological necessity

Engineering Politics 161

implied that ending politics could be a viable and constructive step. During
the Weimar Republic, lost faith in political processes eventually benefited
National SociaHsm. A "catch-all -party of protest," the Nazis promised an
end to politics and drew on support from scientists, engineers, techno-
phobes, and many others, "united above all by a profound contempt for
the existing political and economic system."'"^

Though groups opposing urban, technological, and scientific develop-
ments may have helped the National Socialists to power, proponents of tech-
nological fundamentalism made the Third Reich viable. This is the sad story
of scientists and engineers in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Far
from being constitutionally incapable of working under Hitler, scientists and
engineers preserved their castes and systems. Electrical engineers kept power
systems working during World War II by learning how to interconnect them
from Austria to the North Sea. Under the guise of technical and economic
efficiency, and even professional dignity, "nonpolitical" scientists and engi-
neers found it quite possible to serve a variety of masters, from the
Kaiserreich to the Federal Republic. In addition, their "nonpolitical,"
"value-neutral" posture allowed them to deny responsibility.'"^

How the agents of change acted, as well as how they thought, should be
investigated. This strategy involves following the actors around to find out
what they did and thought as they tried to create knowledge and shift soci-
ety. This approach treats actors as aware and calculating but not all-know-
ing or all-powerful members of a social system that is a "distribution of
knowledge."'"' Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel were knowing partici-
pants in the construction of knowledge. Each recognized that opponents
had to be shifted and new social systems constructed as they struggled to
find ways of building systems. Each understood aspects of German society,
engineering, and politics. Each responded to developments beyond his con-
trol, just as other people responded to developments promoted by engineers
like Klingenberg, Koepchen, and Stiel.

Technology did not force them to think and act in a particular way.
Nevertheless, identifying changes in science and technology as contingent
historical processes may offend scholars who present themselves, their cat-
egories, and their thoughts as fundamentally correct. Their belief in their
own objectivity allows them to decide that some actors' categories are time-
lessly true. They may choose sides in past arguments and then make one

162 Todd

side capable of "ice-cold reasoning.""" They may claim that ability for
themselves. That technological fundamentalism continues to find life has
to do with how people think and act and thereby constitute institutions.
"Shadow histories" are, thus, "not attempts at accurate representation, but
rather attempts to forge a moral identity.""^ Forging a moral identity may
be laudable, but so is creating accurate representations. Historians who
treat science and technology as fundamental and exogenous reify shadows
cast by Weber's "Iron Cage" and provide a basis for claims that the solu-
tion to too much objectivity is more subjectivity.''- Presenting technology
as a coercively restructuring and rationalizing agent may be useful for set-
ting up discussions of other topics, but envisioning technology as "con-
gealed pohtics"'" and asking about the material components of social and
political systems may be more useful than investigating shadow impacts of
reified shadows.

Acknowledgments

At SHOT (1993) and ICOHTECH (1996) conferences, I presented parts
of this essay. Members of Yale's History of Medicine workshop made valu-
able suggestions in 1997. 1 would like to thank Mike Allen, Hans-Joachim
Braun, Hanko Dobi, Robert Glen, Gabrielle Hecht, Sharon Traweek, Frank
Trommler, and several anonymous referees for suggestions that shaped this
text.

Notes

1. Rudolf von Miller, "Ein Halbjahrhundert deutsche Stromversorgung aus
offentlichen Elektrizitatswerken," Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Technik und Indus-
trie 15 (1936): 111-125; Georg Boll, Entstehung und Entwicklung des Verbund-
betriebs in der deutschen Elektrizitatswirtschaft bis zum europdischen Yerbund
(Verlags- und Wirtschaftgesellschaft der Elektrizitatswerke m.b.H., 1969).

2. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983);
Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds., Does Technology Drive History? (MIT
Press, 1994).

3. Georg Klingenberg, Bau grofler Elektrizitatswerke (Springer, 1913); A.
Koepchen, "Zur Sozialisierung der Elektrizitatswirtschaft. Ein Gutachten zum
Entwurf des Gesetzes," Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift 41 (1920): 481-485; A.
Koepchen, "Das RWE in der deutschen Elektrizitatswirtschaft (Vortrag, gehalten

Engineering Politics 1 63

im Haus der Technik in Essen am 28. Marz 1930, von A. Koepchen, Essen)," in
RWE, Bericht iiber das Geschdftsjahr 1929/30, pp. 3-12; Wilhelm Stiel, Elektro-
betrieb in der Textilindustrie (Hirzel, 1930).

4. William F. Ogburn (On Culture and Social Change, ed. O. Dudley Duncan,
University of Chicago Press, 1964, pp. xv-xvii and 23-32) argues that different
parts of society could lag behind others, but that from the 1890s into the 1920s
society had to adjust to technological change.

5. Norbert Gilson, "Die Vision der Einheit als Strategie der Krisenbewaltigung?
Georg Klingenbergs Konzeption fiir die Energieversorgung in Deutschland zu
Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts," in Der Optimismus der Ingenieure, ed. H.-L. Dienel
(Franz Steiner, 1998), pp. 57-76; Norbert Gilson, Konzepte von Elektrizitdts-
versorgung und Elektrizitdtswirtschaft (GNT, 1994), p. 411; C. M., "Georg
Klingenberg," Zeitschrift des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 29 (1925): 1613-1618.

6. Gilson, Konzepte, p. 411; Ernst Henke, Das RWE nach seinen Geschdfts-
berichten, 1898-1948 (RWE, 1948), p. 29; Helmut Maier, "Arthur Koepchen
(1878-1954)," in Ingenieure im Ruhrgebiet, ed. W Weber (Aschendorff, 1999), pp.
184-223.

7. "W Stiel," Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift 57 (1936): 350; Georg Siemens, History
of the House of Siemens, volume 2 (Karl Alber, 1957), p. 124; Stiel, Elektrobetrieb.

8. Frank Trommler, "The Avant-Garde and Technology: Toward Technological
Fundamentalism in Turn-of-the-Century Europe," Science in Context 8 (1995):
397-416. Paul Rabinow argues ("Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and
Post-Modernity in Anthropology," in Essays on the Anthropology of Reason,
Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 31) that "different historical conceptions of
truth and falsity . . . are historical and social facts."

9. Richard Rorty {Achieving Our Country, Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 34),
attributes the term "God's-eye view" to Hilary Putnam. Rorty (Philosophy and
Social Hope, Venguin, 1999, pp. 155-157) notes that "scientific realism" and "reh-
gious fundamentalism" both provide absolutes by appealing to "objectivity as
fidelity to something nonhuman. "

10. Bruno Latour {Science in Action, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 94-100)
discusses claims to have nature on one's side in disputes.

1 1 . Robert W. Smith ( "The Biggest Kind of Big Science: Astronomers and the Space
Telescope," in Big Science, ed. P. Galison and B. Hevly, Stanford University Press,
1992) discusses making the telescope "technically and politically feasible."

12. Sharon Traweek (Beamtimes and Lifetimes, Harvard University Press, 1988)
uses the term "statesmen of science" for those senior physicists who deal with Wash-
ington. Because they do, they are seen as tainted by politics. Lynn Hunt {Politics,
Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, University of California Press, 1984,
p. 229) notes that the rhetorical framework developed during the 1790s did not
support development of "liberal politics, politics as the representation of interests. "

13. For various approaches to science and technology, see Handbook of Science
and Technology Studies, ed. S. Jasanoff et al. (Sage, 1995); Bruno Latour and Steve

164 Todd

Woolgar, Laboratory Life, second edition (Princeton University Press, 1986);
Timothy Lenoir, Instituting Science (Stanford University Press, 1997); Wiebe E.
Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds.. The Social Construction of
Technological Systems (MIT Press, 1987); Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds..
Shaping Technology/Building Society (MIT Press, 1992). Waker G. Vincenti {What
Engineers Know and How They Know It, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990)
and Nathan Rosenberg ("How Exogenous is Science," in Inside the Black Box,
Cambridge University Press, 1982) note that engineers resolve many problems
before scientists can explain what engineers are doing. Edward W. Constant II
("Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff: On the Practical Role of Rational
Beliefs," Technology and Culture 40 (1999): 324-357) notes that engineers develop
reliable knowledge that continues to work even if stuff breaks down.

14. Peter Gahson, Image and Logic (University of Chicago Press, 1997). Ian
Hacking ( "The Self- Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences, " in Science as Practice
and Culture, ed. A. Pickering, University of Chicago Press, 1992) argues that ideas,
machines, and data are adjusted to one another to create a mature laboratory sci-
ence. Gilson (Konzepte) describes the development of theory, apparatus, and analy-
sis necessary for power systems economics to become a viable specialty.

15. Barry Barnes (The Nature of Power, University of Illinois Press, 1988) treats
social systems as distributions of knowledge. Robert E. Kohler (Lords of the Fly,
University of Chicago Press, 1994) brackets epistemological questions and stresses
practice as providing a fruitful way of understanding productivity. See also Bruno
Latour, Science in Action (Harvard University Press, 1987) and We Have Never
Been Modern (Harvard University Press, 1993).

16. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)
and Rescuing Prometheus (Pantheon Books, 1998). Whereas Hughes ("Walther
Rathenau: System Builder," in Ein Mann vieler Eigenschaften, ed. T. Buddensieg et
al., Klaus Wagenbach, 1990) presents Rathenau as a systems thinker seeking to
resolve technical, political, financial, and other problems in order to deploy electric
power systems. Hans Dieter Hellige ("Walther Rathenau: Ein Kritiker der Moderne
als Organisator des Kapitalismus: Entgegnung auf T.P. Hughes' systemhistorische
Rathenau-Interpretation," in Ein Mann vieler Eigenschaften, ed. Buddensieg et al.)
argues that Rathenau was not a systems thinker focussing narrowly on technology.
Mikael Hard ("German Regulation: The Integration of Modern Technology into
National Culture," in The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology, ed. M. Hard
and A. Jamison, MIT Press, 1998, p. 51) stresses "the political dimensions of
[Rathenau's] vision."

17. See Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life; Donald MacKenzie, "From
Kwagalein to Armageddon? Testing and the Social Construction of Missile
Accuracy," in The Uses of Experiment, ed. D. Gooding et al. (Cambridge University
Press, 1989); W Henry Lambright, "The Political Construction of Space Satellite
Technology," Science, Technology, and Human Values 19 (1994): 47-69.

18. For discussions of objectivity as a "view from nowhere" see Thomas Nagel,
The View from Nowhere (Oxford University Press, 1986); Richard Rorty, Truth

Engineering Politics 1 65

and Progress, volurae 3 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 98-121; Theodore
M. Porter, "Objectivity as Standardization: The Rhetoric of Impersonality in
Measurement, Statistics, and Cost-Benefit Analysis," in Rethinking Objectivity, ed.
A. Megill (Duke University Press, 1994).

19. For discussions of the uses of history and shadow history, see Rorty, Truth and
Progress, pp. 274-275, 278, and Richard A. Watson, "Shadow History in
Philosophy," journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1993): 95-109. For discus-
sions of the different attitudes of scientists and historians toward history, see Paul
Forman, "Independence, Not Transcendence, for the Historian of Science," Isis 82
(1991): 71-86, and Charles E. Rosenberg, "Woods or Trees? Ideas and Actors in the
History of Science," Isis 79 (1988): 565-570.

20. See The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, ed. T
Soderqvist (Harwood Academic, 1997), and Alfred I. Tauber's review of that book
(Science, Technology, and Human Values 24 (1999): 384^01).

21. See Sharon Traweek, Beamft'mes flw<i Lz/ef/mes, pp. 11-12, 77-78, 86, 93, 151,
and "Big Science and Colonialist Discourse: Building High-Energy Physics in
Japan," in Big Science, ed. 7. Galison and B. Hevly (Stanford University Press, 1992),
pp. 100-128, esp. p. 101. In contrast, Wolfgang J. Mommsen (Imperial Germany
1867-1918, Arnold, 1995, pp. 119-140) treats culture as an independent realm
that influences people.

22. Latour and Woolgar (Laboratory Life) describe how one group reinterpreted
an earlier paper to show that they had done work claimed by another group. Steve
Woolgar ("Some Remarks About Positionism: A Reply to Collins and Yearley," in
Science as Practice and Culture, ed. A. Pickering, University of Chicago Press, pp.
327-342, esp. 328-329) provides a history of the social studies of science in which
his views are more up-to-date than those of his critics. Fritz Ringer (Max Weber's
Methodology, Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 146-147) presents his approach
as new and that of several sociologists of science as old. Harro van Lente (Promising
Technology, WMW, 1993) focuses on expectations in guiding change. Bruno Latour
(Aramis or the Love of Technology, Harvard University Press, 1996) notes fictional
aspects of technological projects that do not yet exist. For discussions of imagined
futures, see Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan, Yesterday's Tomorrows (Smithsonian
Institution, 1984), and Imagining Tomorrow, ed. J. Corn (MIT Press, 1986).

23. Thomas J. Misa discusses the role of historians in helping machines make his-
tory in the following articles: "How Machines Make History, and How Historians
(and Others) Help Them to Do So," Science, Technology, and Human Values 13
(1988): 308-331; "Retrieving Sociotechnical Change from Technological
Determinism," in Does Technology Drive History? ed. M. Smith and L. Marx.

24. Klingenberg, Bau grofier Elektrizitdtswerke, pp. 57-73.

25. Koepchen, "Das RWE," pp. 3-8.

26. Stiel, Elektrobetrieb, pp. v-vi, 1-3, 12-19, 27-35.

27. Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (University of North
Carolina Press, 1996), pp. viii, xi.

166 Todd

28. For a general discussion of his approach, see Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche
Gesellschaftsgeschichte, volume 1: Vom Feudalismus des Alten Retches bis zur
Defensiven Modernisierung der Reformdra, 1700-1815 (Beck, 1987), pp. 6-31.
For the quotations, see Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol-
ume 3: Vow der "Deutschen Doppelr evolution" bis zum Beginn des Ersten Welt-
krieges, 1849-1914 (Beck, 1995), pp. 558, 571, 609, 613. On electrification, see
ibid., pp. 523-524, 601, 607, 612, 617-618, 627. Wehler presents himself as all-
knowing, while "the objective tendencies of growth were for contemporaries not
easily, nor quickly recognized" (ibid., p. 571). He promotes his interpretation with
seemingly exhaustive footnotes, but he does not evaluate different points of view.
Those he recognizes, he condemns. In support of his view of electrification, Wehler
{Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, volume 3, p. 1391) cites Hughes (Networks of
Power), who does not, however, share Wehler's view of technology or of electrifi-
cation.

29. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley's The Peculiarities of German History
(Oxford University Press, 1984) and the earlier German version began a long dis-
cussion with Wehler and his allies about the proper way to approach Imperial
Germany.

30. David Blackbourn (The Long Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press,
1998, pp. xix, xxii, 313-330, esp. pp. 323-325) criticizes "academic enthusiasts
for contemporary 'flexible specialization' in small firms." He cites C. F. Sabel and
J. Zeitlin ("Historical Alternatives to Mass Production," Past and Present 108
(1985), pp. 133-176), who argue, however, that large-scale industry did not follow
naturally from technological change but had to be achieved. For a more recent devel-
opment of this theme, see Gary Herrigel, Industrial Constructions (Cambridge
University Press, 1996). David A. Hounshell (From the American System to Mass
Production, 1800-1932, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984) traces the devel-
opment of the elements of mass production that Henry Ford brought together in
1913. Wolfgang Konig and Wolfhard Weber (Netzwerke, Stahl und Strom, UUstein,
1990, pp. AT7-AA\) discuss "rationalization and mass production" but treat
Americans, especially Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor, as leading the way. Thus,
mass production may have had a classic era in Germany prior to World War I as an
idea, but not as an actuality.

31. See Kenneth F. Ledford, Prom General Estate to Special Interest (Cambridge
University Press, 1996); Michael John, Politics and the Law in Late Nineteenth-
Century Germany (Oxford University Press, 1989); Konrad H. Jarausch, The
Unfree Professions (Oxford University Press, 1990). Bruno Latour ("Give Me a
Laboratory and I Will Raise The World," in Science Observed, ed. K. Knorr Cetina
and M. Mulkay, Sage, 1983) notes the technical and political effort necessary to
make the Archimedean figure of speech plausible in the case of Louis Pasteur's lab-
oratory. Sheila Jasanoff (Science at the Bar, Harvard University Press, 1995) inves-
tigates the interaction of experts from these different realms.

32. Gert Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs (Suhrkamp, 1970); Kees
Gispen, Neiv Profession, Old Order (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Jarausch,

Engineering Politics 167

The Unfree Professions. In contrast, Gary Lee Downey and Juan C. Lucena, noting
the centrality of knowledge and labor in engineering, write that "virtually all
inquiries into engineering find some conceptual position for the content of engi-
neering knowledge" ("Engineering Studies," in Handbook of Science and
Technology Studies, ed. S. Jasanoff et al.. Sage, 1995, p. 169).

33. Max Weber [The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Scribner, 1930,
pp. 181-182) develops this figure of speech, according to which "victorious capi-
talism . . . rests on mechanical foundations." The "Iron Cage" forms the central
image for at least two studies: Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage (Knopf, 1970);
Lawrence A. Scaff, Fleeing the Iron Cage (University of California Press, 1989).

34. Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century, pp. 384-385, 397-399.

35. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp.
1-2. Herf investigates a number of "literati" and gives Heinrich Hardensett promi-
nence among several engineers (pp. 179-187). Stefan Willeke ("Die Technokratie-
bewegung in Deutschland zwischen den Weltkriegen," Technikgeschichte 61 (1995):
22 1-246 ) notes that Hardensett was so committed to his belief in the transcendence
of technology that he eventually opposed the Nazi regime, which, he believed, was
not pursuing technological goals properly.

36. Rolf Peter Sieferle (Die Konservative Revolution, Fischer, 1995, pp. 27, 206)
notes that volkisch (pure German) thinkers thought universalism was the "expres-
sion of the interest or point of view of a foreign people."

37. For a discussion of this process in the US, see Leo Marx, "The Idea of
'Technology' and Postmodern Pessimism," in Does Technology Drive History? ed.
M. Smith and L. Marx (MIT Press, 1994).

38. Scaff, Fleeing the Iron Cage, 233, 166, 239. Jiirgen Kocka ("Max Webers
Bedeutung fiir die Geschichtswissenschaft," in Max Weber, der Historiker, ed. J.
Kocka, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986, pp. 13-27, esp. 15) suggests that Weber
wanted to protect politics from science. Scaff writes about unintended consequences
that are quite different from those investigated by Edward Tenner [Why Things Bite
Back, Vintage, 1996), who sees people constructing complex systems that have
unintended and unforeseen consequences that can be understood case by case rather
than as abstractions interacting with other abstractions and hence, as Scaff would
have it, beyond control.

39. John P. McCormick (Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism, Cambridge
University Press, 1997) presents technology in a determinist form. He finds "an
intensifying fundamentalism" in "attempts to stake secure positions against the
rapidly changing socioeconomic landscape in the supposedly timeless entities of
family, nation, and faith" (p. 313). He should add technology to those entities.

40. Scaff (Fleeing the Iron Cage, p. 29 and note 54) uses these phrases but sug-
gests "the actual domination of human ends and choices ... by techne (or techni-
cal means)." Scaff does not envision the iron cage as an "absolutist ideology" (pp.
175, 231), perhaps because he beheves that it is simply true. This is an example of
fundamentalism.

168 Todd

41 . Latour (Science in Action) demonstrates that genesis and justification can both
be investigated and that treating genesis as coming out of the blue ignores a good
deal of work that goes into creating new ideas. Nevertheless, Ringer (Max Weber's
Methodology) would like to separate genesis and justification.

42. Fritz Ringer (The Decline of the German Mandaritts, Harvard University Press,
1969) describes the reaction of academics to perceived change.

43. Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century, pp. 271-273, 279-283, 394-396.

44. Sieferle (Die Konservative Revolution) discusses five individuals concerned
about the impact of technology.

45. Werner Siemens, "Das naturwissenschaftliche Zeitalter," in Tageblatt der 59.
Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Arzte zu Berlin vom 1 8.-24. September
1 886 (Berlin, 1886), pp. 92-96, as quoted in Gerhard A. Ritter, Gro/Iforschung und
Staat in Deutschland (Beck, 1992), p. 7.

46. Edmund N. Todd, "Electrification in the Ruhr circa 1900," Osiris 5 (1989):
243-259; Todd, "Prussian Landrate and Modern Technology: Electricity as a Source
of Power in the Ruhr, 1900-1915," ICON 2 (1996): 83-107.

47. Separating the pohtical from the technical has a long history. According to
Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Princeton
University Press, 1985), Robert Boyle publicized experiment as a way around the
sectarian struggles of the English Civil War. Hunt (Politics, Culture, and Class in
the French Revolution, p. 229) notes that Bonaparte presented himself as standing
"above party and factions" and ready "to rid the nation of such unseemly political
machinations."

48. Traweek (Beamtimes and Lifetimes) shows that high-energy physicists depend
on face-to-face communication and oral exchanges of information. Individual char-
acter and skill matter. Theodore M. Porter (Trust in Numbers, Princeton University
Press, 1995, pp. 221-223, 230) stresses this aspect of Traweek's argument. Julie
Johnson-McGrath ("Speaking for the Dead: Forensic Pathologists and Criminal
Justice in the United States," Science, Technology, and Human Values 20, no. 4,
autumn 1995: 438^59) describes forensic pathologists' seeking independence from
local politics by establishing proper procedure.

49. Robert N. Proctor, Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge
(Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 85-98. Ringer (Max Weber's Methodology)
argues that facts and values are logically separate. Recognizing the logical distinc-
tion, Loren Graham (Between Science and Values, Columbia University Press, 1981)
investigates several scientists who sought to combine science and values. Bruce
Bimber (The Politics of Expertise in Congress, State University of New York Press,
1996) investigates neutrality as an institutional strategy.

50. Peter C. Caldwell, Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional
Law (Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 4-5, 45-52. Caldwell notes that, because
courts changed significantly during the twentieth century, "Accounts of the major
Weimar theorists of constitutional law, not court decisions, provide the continuity
between Weimar constitutionalism and that of the Federal Republic" (ibid., p. 11).

Engineering Politics 1 69

In electric power, applications appear more lasting than theoretical statements con-
structed to demonstrate paths that must be followed.

51. Ledford, From General Estate to Special Interest.

52. Todd ("Prussian Landrate and Modern Technology") discusses literature con-
cerning bureaucrats and roles played by state officials in constructing electric power
systems.

53. Trommler, "The Avant-Garde and Technology"; Klingenberg, Bau, pp. 51-54.

54. Paul Forman, "Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927:
Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual
Environment," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1971): 1-115. Gerald
Holton {Science and Anti-Science, Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 180-184)
draws a direct connection between "anti-science" and the rise of Nazism in
Germany. Whereas many scholars have traced the origins of Nazism to middle-class
cultural pessimism, Frank Trommler ("The Creation of a Culture of Sachlichkeit,"
in Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1930, ed. G. Eley, University
of Michigan Press, 1996) argues that Sachlichkeit characterized middle-class groups
even more.

55. Mary Nolan {Visions of Modernity, Oxford University Press, 1994) describes
debates concerning American technology and production. Participants seem to have
treated "rationalization" as a neutral process.

56. Willeke, "Die Technokratiebewegung in Deutschland zwischen den Welt-
kriegen."

57. Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker {Science, Technology, and National
Socialism, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 4-17) identify "making things
work" as one aspect of technocracy. They note that representatives of competing
segments of the Nazi system met at the Wannsee conference, but identified "sci-
entific, technological and bureaucratic rationality and efficiency [as] the way to
solve their and Germany's problems, in this case the 'Final Solution of the Jewish
Question.'" Primo Levi ("A Conversation with Primo Levi by Philip Roth," in Levi,
Survival in Auschwitz, Collier Books, 1986, p. 179) describes an Italian bricklayer
who "hated Germans" but built "straight and solid" walls "out of professional
dignity."

58. Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History, revised edition (Wesleyan
University Press, 1983), pp. 5, 14, 271. Iggers (pp. 292-293) does not find the same
level of decency in some German academic rhetoric that Shapin and Schaffer,
Leviathan and the Air-Pump find in Robert Boyle's recommendation that oppo-
nents be treated as possible converts.

59. David Bloor {Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions, Routledge, 1997, pp.
142-144) suggests that Mannheim thought following rules removed social influ-
ence whereas Wittgenstein saw "rules, and the so-called unfolding of meaning, as
themselves social processes."

60. Caldwell, Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law,
pp. 9, 137.

170 Todd

61. Caldwell {Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law)
and McCormick ( Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism) also treat science and tech-
nology as neutral and nonpolitical.

62. For discussions of this concept, see Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-
Pump; and Paul Rabinow, "Severing the Ties: Fragmentation and Dignity in Late
Modernity," in his Essays on the Anthropology of Reason.

63. See Burkhard Dietz, Michael Fessner, and Helmut Maier, eds., Technische
Intelligenz und "Kulturfaktor Technik" (Waxmann, 1996); Hard, "German
Regulation."

64. Lothar Burchardt, "Standespolitik, Sachverstand und Gemeinwohl: Technisch-
wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaftsarbeit 1890 bis 1918," in Technik, Ingenieure und
Gesellschaft, ed. K.-H. Ludwig and W. Konig (VDI, 1981), pp. 167-234, esp. pp.
194-195, 209, 215-216; Wolfgang Konig, "Die Ingenieure und der VDI als
Grofiverein in der wilhelminischen Gesellschaft 1900 bis 1918," ibid., pp. 235-287,
esp. pp. 252, 257, 260; Erwin Viefhaus, "Ingenieure in der Weimarer Repubhk:
Bildungs-, Berufs- und Gesellschaftspolitik 1918 bis 1933," ibid., pp. 289-346, esp.
296-299 and quotation on p. 334. See also Gispen, New Profession, Old Order;
and Dietz et al., Technische Intelligenz und "Kulturfaktor Technik. "

65. Georg Klingenberg, "ElektrizitatsgrofSwirtschaft unter staathcher Mitwirk-
ung," Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift29 (1909): 118; "Elektrizitatswerke undUber-
landszentralen," Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift 34 (1913): 315-317; "Elektrische
GrolSwirtschaft unter staatlicher Mitwirkung," Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift 37
(1916): 314-317, 328-333, 343-348, 714-716.

66. Klingenberg, Bau, pp. iv, 1.

67. Klingenberg described two power-generating systems in the last two-thirds of
his book, and in 1920 he described a third (Bau grofler Elektrizitatswerke, volume
3: Das Kraftwerk Golpa, Springer, 1920). See also Gilson, Konzepte.

68. Koepchen, "Zur Soziahsierung," pp. 481, 483-484.

69. Koepchen, "Das RWE," pp. 3^.

70. "W. Stiel," Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift 57 (1936), p. 350; Siemens, History
of the House of Siemens, volume 2, pp. 124-125.

71. Stiel, Elektrobetrieb, pp. 12, 13, 19, 27-28. See Stiel's comparison of shaft
transmission, electric group drive, and individual drive (pp. 115-143). Stiel devoted
a quarter of his book to energy supply and auxiliary operations and three quarters
to setting up electrical systems and motors in a variety of textile mills. The more
closely historians study shop floors, the more they see contingency and choice — see
Misa, "How Machines Make History" and "Retrieving Sociotechnical Change."

72. Nolan (Visions of Modernity, pp. 40, 245) states that few speculated about
alternatives in Weimar.

73. Rules do not exist for applying rules. Institutions provide a guide. See Bloor,
Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions; and Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think
(Syracuse University Press, 1986).

Engineering Politics 1 71

74. Klingenberg, Bau, pp. 8, 38, 47-50, esp. p. 50; Das Kraftwerk Golpa, pp.
78-79.

75. Koepchen, "Das RWE," pp. 5, 9.

76. Stiel, Elektrobetrieb, pp. v, 12, 17, 27, 79.

77. Richard J. Evans {Rereading German History, Routledge, 1997, pp. 38, 81)
notes that they rely on "American neo-Weberian sociology of the 1950s." Iggers
(The German Conception of History, p. 277) notes that "what confronts the his-
torian is a reality which responds to his questions and which may not be distorted.
In this sense, Wehler and Kocka . . . assumed that the possibility exists to formulate
real, not merely ideal, types by which historical reality can be measured."

78. See Misa, "How Machines Make History"; Misa, "Retrieving Sociotechnical
Change"; Langdon Winner, Autonornous Technology (MIT Press, 1977). Mary
Douglas ("Environments at Risk," in Science in Context, ed. B. Barnes and D. Edge,
MIT Press, 1982) argues that members of groups use accepted conceptions of "time,
money, God, and nature" to persuade each other to behave "properly." David Edge
("Reinventing the Wheel," in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. S.
Jasanoff et al.. Sage, 1995, p. 18) notes the "tenacity" of "the 'old,' positivistic image
of science, as an abstract, timeless search for irrefutable facts — ending the pain of
uncertainty, the burden of dilemma and choice, separable from 'society,' and lead-
ing inexorably to technical innovations for the good of all. " Richard J. Evans (Death
in Hamburg, Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 503-504) demonstrates that tenac-
ity. He suggests that Barry Barnes is wrong in seeking to apply T. S. Kuhn's ideas to
sociology. Barnes does no such thing. Barnes (T.S. Kuhn and Social Science,
Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 115) states that "how far inference and evalu-
ation in science relate to contingencies in the narrow scientific setting, and how far
to macrosociological factors, is a straightforward empirical matter."

79. Rabinow ("Representations Are Social Facts," pp. 47-51) discusses "academic
politics" as integral to knowledge construction.

80. Geoff Eley, "German History and the Contradictions of Modernity: The
Bourgeoisie, the State, and the Mastery of Reform," in Society, Cidture, and the
State in Germany, 1870-1930, ed. G. Eley (University of Michigan Press, 1996), p.
83, note 34. Sharon Traweek (Beamtimes and Lifetimes, Harvard University Press,
1988) discusses novices, training, moities, and ritual avoidance in high-energy
physics, a community of discerning individuals.

81. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, volume 3, p. 1383, note 2.

82. Proctor, Value-Free Science, pp. 85-98.

83. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins.

84. Herbert Mehrtens, "The Social System of Mathematics and National Socialism:
A Survey," in Renneberg, Science, Technology, and National Socialism, pp.
291-311; Herbert Mehrtens, "Irresponsible Purity: The Political and Moral
Structure of Mathematical Sciences in the National Socialist State," ibid., pp.
324-138.

172 Todd

85. Forman ("Independence," pp. 73-77, identifies this as a lack of responsibility,
as does Mehrtens ("Irresponsible Purity"). Dealing with a similar issue, Trommler
("Creation of a Culture of Sachlichkeit," p. 484) writes that "oncemorality is trans-
formed into Sachlichkeit, politics deteriorates into the worst form of ideology."

86. Ledford (From General Estate to Special Interest) demonstrates that lawyers
building their claims to social position as an estate serving the public were increas-
ingly recognized as serving their own interests.

87. Mommsen (Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 191-196) notes that the
parliamentary system in Prussia remained viable during the 1920s in part because
organized interests fought at the national level. He notes that "responsible party
leaders" recognized "the need for political compromise" (p. 195). For a discussion
of building political coalitions as an aspect of constructing technological systems,
see Lambright, "Political Construction of Space Satellite Technology."

8 8 . On the founding of Markisches Elektricitatswerk in 1 909 and the development
of the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company soon thereafter, see
Klingenberg, Bau, pp. 74-75 and 116-119. On the establishment of the Golpa
power station south of Berlin during World War I, see Klingenberg, Das Kraftwerk
Golpa, pp. 1-7, esp. p. 6.

89. Wolfgang R. Krabbe (Die deutsche Stadt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989, p. 92) makes this point.

90. Richard Passow discusses a variety of mixed corporations in Die gemischt pri-
vaten und offentlichen Unternehmungen auf dem Gebiete der Elektrizitdts- und
Gasversorgung und des Straflenbahntvesens (Gustav Fischer, 1912).

91. Das Mdrkische Elektricitatswerk (Berlin: 1934).

92. On the development of Klingenberg's system in South Africa, see Renfrew
Christie, Electricity, Industry and Class in South Africa (State University of New
YorkPress, 1984), pp. 5-^9.

93. Walther Rathenau of AEG was also promoting a national system: see Helga
Nussbaum, " Versuche zur Reichsgesetzlichen Regelung der deutschen Elektrizitats-
wirtschaft und zu ihrer Uberfiihrung in Reichseigentum, 1909 bis 1914," Jahrbuch
fiir Wirtschaftsgeschichte (1968), part 2, pp. 117-203. Hard ("German
Regulation," pp. 46-51) stresses Rathenau's Sachlichkeit and the power industry's
reliance on "scientific technology" as a basis for Rathenau's promotion of a national
reorganization led by the state to assimilate modern technology. Trommler ("The
Creation of a Culture of Sachlichkeit") notes that the new aesthetics did have a pol-
itics: conservatives recognized claims of efficiency and materialism as potent attacks
on the old order, while Social Democrats opposed attempts to construct alternatives
to their own materialism.

94. Boll, Entstehung, pp. 28-30; Klingenberg, Das Kraftwerk Golpa, pp. 3-6.

95. Klingenberg, Bau, pp. 71-73.

96. Boll (Entstehung, pp. 77-102) describes the technical problems between 1933
and 1945. Gilson (Konzepte, p. 189) questions Klingenberg's figures.

Engineering Politics 1 73

97. Das Markische Elektricitdtswerk; Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 198-200,
289.

98. Todd, "Electrification in the Ruhr circa 1900"; Todd, "Prussian Landrate."

99. Koepchen, "Zur Soziahsierung," pp. 483-484; Koepchen, "Das RWE," pp.
3-8. Koepchen fit the RWE into what Gerald D. Feldman (The Great Disorder,
Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 272-305) calls "the Gospel according to
Stinnes." Hugo Stinnes directed the expansion of the RWE from 1902 until 1924.

100. Koepchen, "Das RWE," pp. 10-12. For the views of Prussian officials, see
Jaques, "Preufien und das Reich in der deutschen Elektrizitatswirtschaft," Elektro-
technische Zeitschrift 47 (7 October 1926): 1160-1163. For evaluations of these
developments, see Thomas Herzig, Geschichte der Elektrizitatsversorgung des
Saarlandes unter besonderer Beriicksichtigung der Vereinigten Saar - Elektrizitdts-
AG (Kommissionsverlag, Minerva-Verlag Thinnes & Nolte OHG, 1987), pp.
137-155; Norbert Gilson, "Der Irrtum als Basis des Erfolgs. Das RWE und die
Durchsetzung des okonomischen Kalkiils der Verbundwirtschaft bis in die 1930er
Jahre," in Elektrizitatswirtschaft zwischen Umwelt, Technik und Politik, ed. H.
Maier (TU Bergakademie Freiberg, 1999), pp. 51-88; Helmut Maier, "'National-
wirtschaflicher Musterknabe' ohne Fortune. Entwicklungen der Engergiepolitik und
des RWE im 'Dritten Reich'," ibid.

101. A. Koepchen, "Westdeutsche Elektrizitatswirtschaft, Vortrag gehalten am 3.
Februar 1936," RWE, Bericht Uber das Geschdftsjahr 1935/36, pp. 27-35.

102. Stiel, Elektrobetrieb, pp. v, vi, 1-3, 12-19, and 27-35, esp. 27.

103. Herrigel (Industrial Constructions, pp. 1-32, 61-62, 123-139) describes the
extensive political and economic problems faced by areas supporting decentralized
production in the 1920s and the 1930s. On economic problems and Nazi political
campaigns, see Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter (University of North Carolina
Press, 1983), pp. 64-71, 79-80, 142-144, 151-159, 211-224.

104. In writing about the engineering profession, Jarausch (The Unfree Professions,
pp. 178-181) finds "mass rationalization" dramatically increasing production dur-
ing World War II. Nevertheless, Richard James Overy ( Why the Allies Won, Norton,
1995) finds German officers supporting production of a wide variety of types of
military equipment, quite unlike the Soviet concentration on mass producing a very
few models of required equipment. On postwar developments in decentralized
regions, see Herrigel, Industrial Constructions.

105. Johnson-McGrath ("Speaking for the Dead," p. 455) makes this point about
positivism. Ian Buruma ("Japan: In the Spirit World," New York Review of Books
43, no. 10, p. 33) notes: "Syncretic religions are more likely to foster tolerance than
universalist faiths based on dogma. When beliefs are negotiable, they are less likely
to be imposed."

106. Nolan (Visions of Modernity, pp. 179-205) notes that right-wing efforts to
reshape workers were presented as nonpolitical scientific ways to increase produc-
tivity in firms envisioned as autonomous from society and politics. Themselves tech-
nological determinists. Social Democrats, Communists, and Trade Union officials
were unable to develop successful counter programs.

174 Todd

107. Childers, The Nazi Voter, p. 268.

108. Articles in Renneberg and Walker, Science, Technology and National Socialism
and in Dietz et al., Technische Intelligenz, demonstrate many continuities. By mak-
ing technology fundamental, Boll (Entstehung) presents constructing power sys-
tems during the Third Reich as heroic.

109. Barnes develops this approach in The Nature of Power. Ringer (Max Weber's
Methodology) denigrates the "'strong' relativist program put forward by Barry
Barnes and David Bloor" (p. 147) and hopes to maintain the concept of "ideology"
and "false consciousness" (pp. 142-149).

110. Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, 1 890-1 920, second
edition (University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 434; see also Ringer, Max Weber's
Methodology, pp. 142-149.

111. Rorty, Achieving Our Country, p. 13.

112. Loren R. Graham (The Ghost of the Executed Engineer, Harvard University
Press, 1993, p. 99) refutes the suggestion that the Soviet Union represented too much
scientific objectivity in the form of "arrogant, absolutist reason" (hence the need to
trust subjectivity). Graham stresses the problems that follow from making projects
politically but not technically feasible.

113. Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus, p. 197.

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines
without History

Michael Thad Allen

Walk into a bookstore and pick up any book whose author loosely fits the
label "public intellectual." Many will fit under the broad category of what
is now popularly known as the "Culture Wars": authors such as Alan
Bloom, Jean-Frangois Lyotard, and Richard Rorty. Flip through the index
to the H's. Chances are that you will find a few pages on "Hitler" or
"Holocaust," and if you read them you will find that, despite the bewil-
dering diversity and vituperation, the unique atrocities of Nazism and
"modernity" occupy a prominent place in these authors' historical imagi-
nations. For example, Francis Fukuyama urges us to embrace the shining
truth of modernity, which he defines as the progressive historical imple-
mentation of the Anglo-American Fnlightenment, because a modern United
States vanquished National SociaUsm.' Rorty, on the other hand, admon-
ishes us to seek not the truth because it is authoritarian and leads down a
slippery slope to the gas chambers.^ Not to be outdone, M. Stanton Evans,
who shares Rorty's disquiet over "the ideologies of the modern era,"
informs us that "Hitlerian concepts of unfettered power, genocide against
defenseless people, and eugenic efforts to direct the growth of populations
. . . resulted from the idea that man, severed from his connection to the
absolute, had been assimilated entirely to the world of nature."' To rescue
the West from this distress, he invites us to seek salvation in Jesus Christ.
All perceive the modernity or anti-modernity of the Nazis as a climacteric
of twentieth-century history. At stake is not so much an accurate portrayal
of the Holocaust, but how that past can be fashioned as either a mortal
weapon or impenetrable armor for competing claims to know where World
History should be taking humankind.

176 Allen

In the face of this overwhelming multiplicity, let me state unequivocally
what "the modern," "modernity," and "modernization" mean in the pre-
sent meditation.

First, any claim to modernity or to "modernize" places a stake upon futu-
rity. It seeks to fix the preconditions that must be fulfilled in order to make
that future possible and identifies the patterns of development of these pre-
conditions in history. Thus, to understand "the modern" requires more than
any one idea. It requires comprehending the structure of a debate. This
debate constantly identifies false starts as backward historical developments.
To know what is modern, in contrast, means to hold the key to a new era,
to claim the right to know what is best for the full flowering of human his-
tory and, no less, to herald the creation of a "new man." The primary casu-
alty of this debate is reasonable discussion of first principles, which
"modernity" sacrifices from the outset. To claim that anything is modern is
to claim that it is desirable not because it necessarily represents the good,
the true, or the beautiful but because it represents historical destiny.

Second, to say that "modernity" constitutes a debate does not imply that
all is relative or that what is being debated is a matter of indifference.
"Modernity" is about the power of industrial technology to transform civ-
ihzation. As Reinhardt Koselleck pointed out long ago, the historical imag-
ination has been preoccupied with modernity since the industrial
revolution. Because the industrial revolution in tandem with the French
Revolution inaugurated more than 200 years of continuous, rapid change,
our ability to assimilate the past into the present has become a deep-felt
need which Koselleck attributes to the startling pace of technological
change: "... the more a particular time is experienced as a new temporal-
ity, as 'modernity,' the more demands made on the future increase. . . . this
is certain to be an effect of the technical-industrial modification of a world
that forces upon its inhabitants ever briefer intervals of time in which to
gather new experiences and adapt to changes induced at an accelerating
pace."'' Again, what is at stake is our future. Because of the ongoing indus-
trial transformation of society, nothing can be taken for granted, "the cen-
ter does not hold," and therefore, in order to prepare as well as possible to
muddle through an uncertain tomorrow or even to know who we are, cit-
izens of modernity constantly stare into the past in order to discern patterns

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 1 77

which supposedly propel us forward in space and time (even in futility — like
Walter Benjamin's Angel of History). Most often, this means an attempt to
take charge of the patterns of technological change and claim that they will
define our destiny.

It should be no surprise, in this light, that the special role of science, tech-
nology, and modernity in the Holocaust plays such a large role in the
"Culture "Wars" to which I alluded above.' At the most superficial level,
modern technology defines the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Fatigued and
blinkered as we are, the simple fact of genocide — even large-scale genocide
in the heart of Europe — is less likely to shock us than it shocked those who
believed unequivocally in Western progress at the middle of the twentieth
century. Knowing more of the collectivization campaigns of the Soviet
Union, we are also less likely to count the sheer numbers of dead as a dis-
tinctive sign of evil. In addition, it now seems that quite primitive regimes
such as Serbia and Rwanda are capable of piling up bodies on a vast scale.
What was truly surprising at the end of the twentieth century was that any-
one ever thought this kind of barbarity would ever disappear from human
experience.'^ On the other hand, only the Germans strove to use "assembly-
line" methods. Only the gas chambers enlisted the services of the most
advanced chemical industry in the world and the officious punctuality of the
Reichsbahn. Only the concentration camps statistically managed murder,
and only they built economies of scale and scope into their extermination
systems.^

The National Sociahsts unmistakably turned to modern technology and
science as their means; at the same time, they took Germany's historical
prowess with modern technics as evidence that their achievements could
deliver them to the "End of History," its full unfolding. A brief survey of the
Journal of the Four Year Plan allows some insight into what the Nazis
meant by "modern world" and what technology had to do with it. The
Journal, founded by Hermann Goring, showcased the Third Reich's indus-
trial policy on glossy folio-size pages replete with statements of Nazi futu-
rity. Goring proclaimed in the first issue that National Socialism had divined
the secret to a reborn economy and promised to "fulfill tasks of world-polit-
ical and world-historical proportions."^ Economics Minister Walther Funk
similarly claimed a mandate to direct "tasks which have never before

178 Allen

existed in a highly qualified modern national economy."' A lesser official
declared "We are National Socialists and that gives us duties and tasks for
all future times"'"; likewise, staff writers lauded the Frontarbeiter (Front
Workers) organization as a crucible in which a new man would be forged."
Claims to modernity also took the form of specific artifacts and techno-
logical systems, as when Jakob Werlin wrote of the centralized, hierarchi-
cal management of the Volkswagenwerke and its rigorous insistence on
norms, standardization, and mechanized production.'^

The Nazis' millenarian modernism has caused great discomfort, for
arguments that Hitler had a coherent modern social vision seem to lend
themselves to apology. How can we fault the Nazis if they wanted a "mod-
ern" society just as everybody else did? Some warn us to abandon the dis-
cussion of National Socialist modernity altogether. Hans Mommsen asks,
in near total frustration, "Does anyone earnestly wish to make the fascis-
tic understanding of politics, which touched upon mere mobilization for
the transformation of visionary-utopian goals, into the foundation of a
present day 'modern' society?"" The answer, of course, is that the Nazis
did, which cuts to the quick of a central false dilemma of the modernity
debate. Those who would identify modernity with historical destiny, as
the necessary legislator of the norms of contemporary society implied by
Mommsen, leave scant room for the rational judgment of first principles —
on what primary grounds should we condemn the regime whether it was
modern or not} Too often the "modernity" debate seeks to substitute his-
torical destiny for substantive discussion and, in so doing, strives to dis-
count the actual history of the Nazi regime. Ironically, calls to abandon
the question of "modernity" and National Sociahsm is in many ways anal-
ogous to Marxist debates of the 1960s and the 1970s, which demonstrated
a marked aversion to any discussion of the Nazis' robust anti-capitalism.
But that debate never went away just because its implications were
unpleasant to some historians and other academics.''* Modernity and
National Socialism shows little sign of doing so either. In view of Heinrich
Himmler's enthusiasm for "a completely new, modern concentration camp
for new times, capable of expansion at any moment" the question is not
whether the Nazis were modern or whether we should discuss it.'^" The
question is what Nazi modernity meant and what it implies for us in the
present.

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 1 79
Modernity Is Not the Enlightenment, or Why Nazi Modernity Is Hidden

As I have already noted, a macabre fascination with technology looms large
in debates about the Nazi genocide. What, then, connects modernity, tech-
nology, and the Holocaust? Saul Friedlander has commented upon the feel-
ing of Rausch (inebriation or ecstasy), which, he suggests, seduced Germans
into beheving that the Holocaust was meet and right."" Rausch stresses
human transcendence through existential experience, which invites initi-
ates to "feel the power." Rausch, as described by Friedlander, derives from
terror and confrontation with the incomprehensible, as, for instance, when
genocide sprang all known moral boundaries, requiring "ordinary men"
to act outside any traditionally accepted authority. Nazi leaders were quick
to explain that only Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft could provide the medium
for this Rausch, precisely because National Socialism had made them sub-
ject to a new moraHty and a new historical epoch. They were invited to
"feel" its history-making acts, among them mass murder. This is clear in
Himmler's 1943 speech at Posen, in which, amidst the butchery, he urged
his men to feel proud, empowered, and justified in their transgressions, for
Nazis were masters of their own morality. For this very reason they believed
themselves to stand at the brink of historical destiny, defining modernity's
final and highest expression.'^

This same sense of intoxication also manifests itself in technological
endeavor. '^ Even some who are not historians of technology, such as Modris
Eksteins, have argued that new technology was "a means of escaping from
the confines of reality, a way of Hberating the imagination. "'** Technology
has long been a "religion" in the West, and, as David Noble has recently
observed, we should not forget that this secular deity manifests itself through
history. Noble locates it first in medieval Christianity, in which "technology
. . . became at the same time eschatology."^" Eschatology appealed to the
Nazi mentality, although Hitler's 1000- Year Reich aspired to a racial Utopia
entirely of human making. This too was quintessentially modern, a narra-
tive of human teleology to be fulfilled in this world and not through divine
salvation in the hereafter. This caused no insignificant amount of friction
between organs of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)
and traditional institutions. For example, defense of the modernity of
National Socialism can be found in the censorship bureau of Richard

180 Allen

Walther Darre's Reichsnahrstand (Reich Agricultural Estate) — an institu-
tion often presented as exemplary of Nazi anti-modernity.^' The Catholic
magazine Nature and Culture had upset a certain censor, Dr. Bohmkamp, by
arguing that "natural science can give no answer to the most important
problems of our being and that science is absolutely worthless." The rejec-
tion of evolution in the name of the biblical creation myth seemed to bother
Bohmkamp the most: "We have here the crassest confusion of the confes-
sional church when it comes to modern scientific results, and we must see
this as an attempt to topple the foundations of National Socialist ideology. "^^
Here the author coupled modernity, based in "science," with the funda-
mentals of National Socialism as a secular faith. The specific "science" he
had in mind was the "racial teaching" of eugenics.

Racial science has received increasing attention from historians, includ-
ing Robert Proctor, Henry Friedlander, Gotz Aly, and Michael Burleigh.
Nevertheless, in disproportion to the stress placed upon the Nazis'
"machinery of death," academic discourse has left the unique technology
of the Holocaust almost completely untouched. ^^ Instead, debates about
modernization and National Socialism have entered a seemingly endless
round, which comes full circle about once a decade. In 1972, Henry Ashby
Turner, polemical as ever, suggested that the study of modernization in
Germany could open the phenomenon of Nazism to more useful conclu-
sions than previous analysis of capitalism, fascism, or totalitarianism.
Nearly 15 years later, Thomas Nipperdey suggested roughly the same
thing.-'' Almost 10 years after that, Hans Mommsen titled an article "Yet
One More Time: National Socialism and Modernization."" It is little won-
der that Gerald Feldman remarked disparagingly that "an invitation to con-
sider any historical period from the perspective of modernization theory is
a bit like being invited to climb a mountain in the fog."^'

Technology has always played a crucial role in all definitions of mod-
ernization, and historians and sociologists by no means neglect it in their
analyses. As Ian Kershaw has noted, modernization "implies long-term
change spanning centuries and transforming 'traditional' society . . . into
industrial class society with highly developed industrial technologies."^^ As
Mary Nolan has shown, a preoccupation with modern technology was
common, from right to left, among industrialists, engineers, managers, and
union leaders of the 1920s. ^^ And Ernst Jiinger, with near exaltation, iden-

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 181

tified the same trends that Kershaw would summarize more than 50 years
later: "... the technological engagement of industry, economy, agriculture,
transportation, administration, science, pubhc opinion — in short, each
special substance of modern Ufe in a self-enclosed and elastic space, inside
of which a common character of power manifests itself."-' The "common
character of power" immanent within new technology and organization
that Jiinger celebrated filled the imaginations of ordinary Germans. The
National Socialists were no exception.

The debate continued after 1945, as one might expect. Attempts to pred-
icate historical destiny on "modernity" did not end with Hitler's suicide, and
this has only added to the fog so wryly identified by Feldman. However,
despite the prominence of modern technology in discourse of the 1920s, the
1930s, and the 1940s, after the Third Reich's demise the historical fact of
National Socialism became a new linchpin in bitter struggles over the
Enlightenment. This struggle has involved, essentially, two camps. Immedi-
ately after World War II, self-conscious moderns of the liberal left pointed
to the Third Reich's supposed anti-modernity as the quintessential evil from
which they proposed to rescue history. Later, so-called postmoderns quickly
adopted the same strategy, but by declaring the Nazis to be modern they
have used the Holocaust to discredit liberalism in general. The central theme
common to these otherwise antinomic visions is a determined conflation of
modernity with the Enlightenment, though this was wholly alien to the
National Socialist movement and uncommon in the interwar period.

Very early on, champions of the Enlightenment advanced the erroneous
conclusion that National SociaHsm was "anti-modern." Historians such as
Henry Ashby Turner, joined by intellectual historians such as George Mosse
and Fritz Stern, claimed that, essentially. National Socialism was a revolt of
modernity's losers. Challenged by the progressive transformations
inevitably caused by industrialization, these losers wished to "turn back the
clock."'" Hitler promised to wreak revenge on an isolated social group
which reactionaries associated with everything repugnant about modernity:
the Jews in modern urban areas, modern professions, and modern art move-
ments who had profited from the liberal democracy and egalitarianism of
the Weimar Repubhc." Turner is the only historian of industry to have fol-
lowed this trajectory, which Timothy Mason once pejoratively referred to
as the fixation of intellectual historians only.'- Turner is also one of the few

182 Allen

to have tried to explain the obvious contradiction between the supposed
anti-modernity of Nazi ideology and Germany's startling military and
industrial might. In brief, he argued that the Nazis came to terms with mod-
ern industry out of practical necessity. Hitler needed modern industry to
realize his military pursuit of an atavistic "Lebensraum."^^

The sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf had adopted a similar interpretation of
Nazism in the mid 1960s: "Hitler needed modernity, little as he liked it."^''
Yet Dahrendorf went beyond analysis of industry to argue that, whatever
the Nazis intended, they unwittingly destroyed the bastions of traditional
society. After the war, traumatized as it was, German society could no longer
resist modernization. '' Thus liberal democracy, set equal to modernity, flow-
ered in the Bundesrepublik despite continuities with the Nazi legacy. Several
historians have pressed this point: If the Nazis achieved "modern" creden-
tials, they certainly did not mean to; furthermore, those credentials are them-
selves dubious. So argued the social historian Hans Mommsen: the Nazis
offered only a "vorgetauschte Modernisierung" (feigned modernity) — a
sham unity of the diffuse and disarrayed factions of Weimar.""

The postwar generation of scholars overwhelmingly associated "moder-
nity" with the Enlightenment's legacy of liberal rationalism and with the
ascendance of a politically active bourgeoisie in the cause of democratic gov-
ernment. They made no secret of their own first principles; however, they
advanced them in a curious way, as if the historical destiny of the "modern"
world entailed equality, liberal education, a society open to merit, and the
rule of law as the natural accompaniment to ongoing industrialization. Their
efforts to make this a reality in postwar German society should not be taken
lightly. Many of those who had built the Third Reich were still alive and well
in the 1950s and the 1960s, and the need to discredit their intellectual tra-
ditions was felt keenly and approached in deadly earnest. What better strat-
egy than to label the Nazis as anti-modern — that is, retrograde troglodytes,
or, as Wolfgang Sauer pithily called them, "the Philistine Underground"!^^
The political stakes of this literature help explain the impact of David
Schoenbaum's book The Brown Revolution, which argued that National
Socialism created advantageous conditions for social mobility and political
participation, despite its authoritarianism — perhaps because of it. His book
makes no mention of the modern, modernity, or modernization, but
Schoenbaum was drawn into the modernization debate nonetheless.

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 1 83

By the 1980s, many had begun to express uneasiness with modernity.
Nipperdey, one of the few postwar historians to strike an ambivalent
stance toward modernity, attempted a syncretism by claiming that,
although the Nazis were anti-modern, they were also anti-tradition, and
therefore they were "revolutionary anti-moderns."^^ Mostly younger his-
torians have pursued this argument. Jeffrey Herf, who stands Nipperdey's
point somewhat on its head, argues that the Nazis were "reactionary mod-
erns."^' Yet these authors still abide by the touchstone assumption that the
liberal Enlightenment sets the paradigm for what it is to be "modern,"
something staunch National Socialists would have denied.

For the very reason that the Nazis embraced modernity, other historians
have correspondingly condemned Enlightenment rationalism itself through
guilt by association. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying, I suggest that
Gotz Aly, Susanne Heim, Zygmunt Bauman, Detlev Peukert, and Ronald
Smelser all have uncovered contributions made to "modern" Germany by
the Third Reich and all judge that legacy to be vexed and, at worst, mahg-
nant."*" Peukert, for instance, argued that the Nazis showed the "shadow
side" of modernity."*' If portrayals of the Nazis as a reaction against moder-
nity have explained Hitler's commitment to modern technology as a "com-
promise," we should not be surprised to find that critics of the anti-modern
thesis place Nazi jubilation over modern technology at the center of their
arguments. "*- To Zygmunt Bauman, a straight line runs from the logic of
modern bureaucracy and technology to the killing machinery of the death
camps: "The murderous compound was the work of a typically modern
ambition of social design and engineering mixed with the typically mod-
ern concentration of power, resources, and managerial skill. "''^ The
Holocaust was social engineering with a vengeance that stemmed from
"the Enlightenment" an "enthronement of the new deity, that of Nature,
together with the legitimation of science as its only orthodox cult, and of
scientists as its prophets and priests. "'*'' Partially in support of Bauman's
ideas, Detlev Peukert's last essay warned of the "the genesis of the 'Einal
Solution' from the spirit of science.'"*' Unlike immediate postwar schol-
arship, these historians and sociologists warn us that another event like
the Holocaust may be exactly what we will get if an ascendant bour-
geoisie, modern political economy, science, and industry continue to
develop unrestrained.

184 Allen

Nevertheless, "modernity" remains more or less equated with the
Enlightenment and liberalism. Alan Beyerchen has recently remarked that
the Nazis "were united in their belief that they were fighting against moder-
nity itself, which they called liberalism, democracy, urbanization, parlia-
mentarianism, and other names they abhorred.'""" This last statement shows
the current need to historicize modernity and the Holocaust, for there is no
reason to believe that when the Nazis heaped scorn upon the legacy of lib-
eralism they spoke in codes: they hated hberalism. When they mentioned
modernity, as an architect did regarding the Hermann-Goring Werke of
Salzgitter, they did so alternately with the gusto of crusaders and the dewy
eyes of poets:

Here a model rises into the light that will serve as precedent for private industry for
future building. Here the engineer, the scientist, and the architect have sat down
together and have created in communal labor the ideal modern industrial works,
as rational as it is beautiful, at once a symbol ... of true industrial culture:
Technology, Science, Art.**^

It is difficult to discern abhorrence for "the modern" or its offspring, "mod-
ernization" or "modernity," in this statement, and the Nazis would have
violently rejected the label of "reactionary" or "anti-modern" apphed to
them ahistorically after 1945. Sadly, having chosen to advocate the advance
of "modernity" instead of championing the substantive issues at the heart
of Enhghtenment humanism directly, Uberal scholars such as Mosse, Stern,
Dahrendorf, like many a disillusioned spouse, find that modernity has been
cheating on them. Despite insistence on a "one best way," the modern has
shown httle fidelity to Hberal social and political reform.*** Modernization,
in other words, philanders, and this is nowhere more apparent than among
the historians (predominantly on the new German right) who have set out
to historicize modernity and National Socialism. Far from creating a fresh
consensus, they have polarized debate all the more. They have maintained
the positive valuation of modernity expressed by immediate postwar schol-
arship; on the other hand, they have reversed the long-standing criticism of
Nazi "anti -modernity." To the extent that National Sociahsm made possi-
ble a modern Germany, so argues especially Rainer Zitelmann, those con-
tributions should be judged good and even celebrated as part of German
national identity."" Thus, above all, this "mountain in the fog" of books,
special editions of journals, and review essays demonstrates precisely the

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 1 85

point with which I began this essay: that modernity has always encom-
passed a debate far more than a singular body of consistent political phi-
losophy or a coherent, predictable pathway of historical development.

The Machine in the Fog

Nevertheless, this is a debate about industrial technology. Because of a
wide-ranging consensus after World War II that the Enlightenment and
modern destiny are one and the same, the history of technology has receded
from view, but it is present nonetheless in a curious form. As important as
technology has been to debates about modernity, most scholars usually
equate one and only one technological rationality and one and only one
pathway of industrialization with Enlightenment rationalism. Machines
appear as artifacts without history even to those (e.g., Herf, Koselleck,
Kershaw, Eksteins) who acknowledge the central importance of technol-
ogy in these debates. Undifferentiated, machines have their entrances and
their exits upon the world stage, but no character. But which machines are
modern? Here a more accurate history of technology can play a crucial role.
For if, as I argue, the attempt to associate some kind of destiny with the
change caused by industriahzation defines the "modernity debate," then
selecting a single technological trajectory as the harbinger of that destiny
involves historical choices. This holds whether or not the selection is made
consciously. Some industrial technologies acquired favored status as "mod-
ern" over the course of the 1920s and the 1930s; others, equally new and
equally capable of invoking massive social change, economic growth, and
organizational transformation failed to awaken interest and were in fact
discredited as illegitimate pathways toward future development.

The Nazis were fascinated, for instance, with large-scale industry over
shop production (despite the misimpression that Nazi ideology favored the
old middle class). Gottfried Feder, an engineer and Hitler's early economic
guru, is often taken as the quintessential Nazi "anti-modern" because he
wished to safeguard small shopkeepers from large department stores. He
was also a rabid anti-Semite who blamed the Jews for Germany's economic
troubles during the 1920s. Yet when Feder wrote of the "moral personality"
of the "true entrepreneur" in The Program of the NSDAP, he did not name
butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. He named inventors, "constantly

186 Allen

concerned with innovations and improvements in factory and sales. " And
who did Feder name as the "most prominent and world renowned example
of this kind of entrepreneur?" Henry Ford — hardly an inspiring figure for
anyone seeking to "turn back the clock."™

Yet the 1930s were precisely the decade in which General Motors sur-
passed Ford by introducing more consumer-oriented marketing and more
flexible approaches to serial production. This did not inspire Feder. The
Four Year Plan, the Herman Goring- Werke, Volkswagen, SS concentration-
camp industry, Albert Speer's war production ministry, and the rantings of
Adolf Hitler displayed a consistent fascination with techniques of modern
organization and standardized mass production — in short, for the capital-
intensive, concentrated industry that was new to the twentieth century.

As defined by Thomas Parke Hughes, modern systems are characterized
by centralized hierarchy, with smaller systems subordinate to larger, more
encompassing systems through mechanisms of control both technical and
social. Rather than conflate such systems with an eminent destiny com-
pelled by an all-embracing Enlightenment rationality, however, one should
remember that centrally controlled systems have themselves come under
attack by industrialists and entrepreneurs as irrational. This is due to their
inflexibihty and, not least, their unprofitability." As sociologists of tech-
nology such as Michael Piore and Charles Sabel and historians of technol-
ogy such as Philip Scranton and Jonathan Zeitlin have shown, other, highly
innovative alternatives to mass production presented themselves in the
1920s and the 1930s alongside assembly lines — namely, flexible, all-pur-
pose machine tools and the mass marketing of customized goods through
adaptable means. Nevertheless, specialized machine tools, rigid norms of
design, and assembly lines captured Hitler's fancy. He latched onto them as
an intimation of a future world, not the "old-fashioned" craft modes of
production, the budding "flexible speciaHzation," or the consumer's "free-
dom of expression." Remarking on traditional shop practice. Hitler at times
ridiculed nostalgia for the supposed quahty of non-mass-produced goods:
"One wishes to beheve that it [handmade goods] concerns something
unachievable. That is a bluff. A modern giant press stamps me something
to an exactness that is totally impossible with our craftsmen." Noting the
productivity of Fordist automobile factories. Hitler continued: "The
entirety is the pure work of automatic machines. . . ."^"^

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 187

Hitler's preoccupation for automation, I would argue, was largely if not
wholly aesthetic, for he was no engineer. After all, even in the 1940s only a
few of the world's companies found automated production profitable or
even possible. Nevertheless, the spectacle of these few plants seemed the
prophecy of a new order; they prompted the Swiss historian Sigfried
Giedeon to write Mechanization Takes Command. There are few records
of the same overwhelming experience elicited from other modes of pro-
duction. Whether advocates (such as Aleksei Gastev) dedicated poetry to
the grand machinery of mass production or whether critics (such as Aldous
Huxley) conjured up unparalleled images of barbarism, the continuous flow
of assembly lines stimulated the imagination like no other history of tech-
nological development in the early twentieth century. It seemed unique,
something "man" had wrought for the first time, and it gripped the Nazis
with its existential intoxication as much as with its promise of efficiency
and output. Ernst Jiinger described the mass-production aesthetic as a new
mode of being. A new man had emerged, Jiinger proclaimed, who did not
strive for his essence in individual expression but who took delight in the
massive release of power through collective organization and technological
control: the grander the scale, the more intoxicating it was; the larger the
influx of resources, the greater the complexity, the more naked the tech-
nology, the more titillating it was.

In industrial terms, this aesthetic meant a preference for productivism
over consumption, which both Richard Overy and Mary Nolan have noted
from quite different methodological directions." And here I wish to define
productivism precisely in its relation to Nazi modernity: it meant the ten-
dency to view the purpose of the factory not as economic output in goods
or services but as the production of identity. In this sense. National
Socialism shared with other political movements of its day a central belief
in work as the formative activity of modern collective identity. Whereas dis-
tribution and consumption carried the eye far from the factory system and
tended to emphasize particular, prosaic uses of things, the aesthetic of pro-
ductivism made the assembly line into a symphony of national destiny
whose output could be enjoyed for its own sake. This would also seem to
explain the prevalent fascination with Ford, who stressed extreme vertical
integration and engineering prowess, over CM, which stressed marketing
and sales. It did not hurt that Henry Ford was also an anti-Semite.

Allen

Again material drawn from the Journal of the Four Year Plan is instruc-
tive. First of all, in many of its articles liberal ideals of equality received a
drubbing as old-fashioned and infantile:

[The Fiihrer] does not preach the childish and mocking lecture of the equality of
man and man's equal claim on the distribution of the goods of this earth, but rather
[the Fiihrer] gives you back consciousness of your belonging to a great people. In
the people [Volk] you are bound to decline or prosper and in the people each can
achieve as much as he can according to how he applies his ability and achievements
... so that ability and achievement is the only measure of progress . . . not — what
a Utopia! — to eliminate the inequality of man but the inequality of conditions under
which they work.'''

If enhanced production was not to serve the greater equality of human
beings through the increased gratification of material consumption, what
was the goal of industrial society? Another article assured readers that
industry could now once again serve "the moral and cultural hfe of the
nation." Rather than the mundane output of commodities to satisfy
whimsy, the Four Year Plan set itself the tasks of manufacturing national
identity: "The social question is first solved when all productive [schaf-
fenden] German national comrades reawaken their proud and happy con-
sciousness, fully worthy and responsible to partake of the nation's
providence as well as its cultural and economic goods to the measure of
their productive contribution."^'" This doctrine defined the worth of each
individual according to his or her contribution to the national community,
and in this light factories were supposed to produce more than commodi-
ties; their products were supposed to be Germany's strength, prowess, and
sense of unity.

An article titled "The Future German Economic Order" argued that a
centrally planned economy was not about prosperity but about national
virtue. The author proposed in relatively straightforward terms what I
define here as productivism:

. . . the peacetime economy works for the higher value and power of human life and
brings living human communities to their best development. Once again it is not
economic goals that the economy has to obtain. It is not only the man as consumer
and receiver of economic production ... in much stronger measure the economy
must work for man as producer and provider."

Production was to manufacture the German spirit, a spirit forged as the
maker rather than as the consumer of goods. At the heart of Nazi moder-
nity was the dream of a perfect system — what Charles Maier has called the

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 1 89

"society as factory." But it was to be a system whose overarching output
was supposed to be culture — the New Order of National Socialism.

Modernity and the Holocaust

In the Third Reich, "the New Order" meant something quite specific: the
transformation of Europe into Nazi Germany's "Lebensraum." Gotz Aly
and Susanne Heim speculate that the desire to "modernize" a Greater
Regional Economy (Grossraumwirtschaft) in central Europe fueled the
Nazis' drive to eliminate the Jews, and their book Vordenker der
Yernichtung makes the logic of capitalist expansion in the East a primary
evil. Aly and Heim have been criticized for overdrawing their conclusions
and for bypassing ideological motivations among perpetrators.
Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that the exclusion of Jews from
German society intensified in step with the accelerated armaments drive
and the economic growth of the Four Year Plan.'^ I would argue that the
Nazis' New Order had more to do with productivism than with an exclu-
sively capitaHst "logic" (a logic that many came to associate with "moder-
nity" only after World War II).

I would hke to turn to two examples: the norms and standards of man-
ufacturing intended for Aryan settlements and the "factories of extermina-
tion" designed to eliminate the European Jews. In each case the motivation
to fulfill "destiny" with modern technology had as much to do with the
regime's intentions as with anti-Semitism and racial supremacy. The eastern
territories conquered by the Wehrmacht serve as an excellent illustration.
The SS received a mandate directly from Hitler to "make the East German."
The special SS office of the Reichskommissar fiir die Festigung deutschen
Volkstums (Commissar for the Reinforcement of Germandom) drew up
blueprints for model Aryan settlements, which were supposed to secure the
racial and cultural dominance of Germany over the conquered lands.
Himmler's expert for regional planning adamantly opposed bucolic nos-
talgia in this endeavor:

German agriculture has just begun to overcome the backwardness of the last
decades. The technical and economic criteria for optimal production are still in a
great deal of flux and represent a complex problem, but the organization of new
farmsteads will exclude from the very beginning any romantic or far-fetched fan-
tasies of "bucolic forms. "^''

190 Allen

Thus, the New Order in the East undeniably included dreams of a per-
fectly planned and integrated "modern" economy with an emphasis on
technology (though this was by no means its only dream). For one thing, the
SS proposed to use the captive labor of the concentration camps to mass
produce building materials, furniture, and appliances for its Aryan settle-
ments. These settlements, in turn, were supposed to convert the East into a
"German" landscape. I will return to the means of production the SS wished
to use. Here it is important to note that the SS's conception of moderniza-
tion was also inherently racially motivated. "The Fiihrer himself has set
forth the great outlines for building up the eastern territories," wrote one
manager of the SS's concentration-camp industries. He did not propose to
turn back the clock to craft industrial forms; rather, he referred to the SS's
wish to build up modern factories. In contrast, he criticized the "back-
wardness" of Polish society, in which "habitation worthy of human beings
found absolutely no place."" In Himmler's New Order, modern industry
represented a means of transforming a Polish and Jewish landscape into an
Aryan one; at the same time, the presence of modern machines was a part
of what was supposed to be Aryan about that landscape.

A mundane example of how the SS sought to manufacture its New Order,
the SS company German Noble Furniture, serves to illustrate how these
megalomaniac fantasies became embedded in the minutiae of technologi-
cal detail. Through the lens of productivism, even seemingly banal manu-
facturing standards could acquire the aura of hallowed national symbols.
Like any other artifacts of industrial societies, standards have a history that
accompanies them into daily use, and few regimes have ever taken their cul-
tural imphcations as seriously as Nazi industrial planners did.

German Noble Furniture was one of the SS's "settlement" industries,
founded to supply the New Order. In the summer of 1940, the chief exec-
utive officer of all SS companies, Oswald Pohl, prepared to bid on Emil
Gerstel AG of Prague, a highly valued furniture manufacturer. Emil Gerstel,
the owner, was one among many Jews whom occupation authorities were
forcing to sell out, and his factory had attracted the SS's interest because of
its advanced manufacturing methods. In Prague the SS solicited the help of
a well-positioned officer in private industry. Dr. Kurt May, son of the
Stuttgart furniture manufacturer A. May. In 1932, at the age of 22, Kurt
May had taken over the firm upon his father's death. ''° In the late 1930s, in

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 191

the crusading spirit of an industrial modernizer, he appeared in occupied
Czechoslovakia seeking new investments. A friend of May's described his
methods as follows: "By means of special production of individual parts by
contracting firms, planned mass production, and modern wood-saving
methods, a price level was to be achieved [by May] within the means of the
majority of buyers but which, at the same time, guaranteed sound and taste-
ful work."'^' According to his contemporaries, "Dr. May was . . . concerned
with the creation of culturally valuable household articles," and his vision
included production norms for German culture.'^ His father had founded
the Verband Deutscher Wohnkultur (Society for German Cultural Living),
and May had himself founded the Deutsche Heimgestatlung (German
Home Design Society).

At first, the attempted takeover of the Jewish firm brought Pohl and May
into a fracas with the civil administration of occupied Czechoslovakia. In
the autumn of 1940, Pohl had submitted a bid to Constantin Freiherr von
Neurath, the regional governor of the former Czech lands that the Reich
had not directly annexed (i.e., the Protektorat, encompassing Bohemia and
Moravia). Neurath opposed the SS's goal of technological modernization
because he feared the ensuing standardization of goods might lead to a
"limitation of production to fixed models which threaten free artistic
expression."'^ Thus Neurath was opposing the modern nature of the SS's
business — its preference for mass production and for large-scale, central-
ized organization. The brief conflict is therefore instructive.

First of all, Neurath was hardly representative of the activists in Hitler's
movement. His anti-modernism cannot be equated with any dominant cur-
rent of Nazi ideology. He had made his career as a staid civil servant of the
German diplomatic corps. He was an old-fashioned conservative, and in
the last days of the Weimar Republic he had served Chancellor Franz von
Papen as Foreign Minister. When Hitler became Chancellor, in January of
1933, Neurath remained in his ministerial post. In fact, he remained there
until February of 1938, when Hitler replaced him with Joachim von
Ribbentrop. Because Neurath had left the government before the round of
annexations that began with Austria, he was not closely associated with
either the NSDAP or Hitler's expansionist policies. At times the foreign
press even speculated that Neurath was "anti-Nazi" because of his aris-
tocratic, "cultured" background, and some speculated that Hitler had

192 Allen

appointed him because this "outsider" might elicit some measure of coop-
eration from Czech citizens. From the start, however, much more dedicated
Nazis among the Sudeten-German nationalist movement challenged
Neurath's authority, as did others within his own administration.'''

Because of Neurath's weak position, his efforts to champion a craft- based
economy cannot be considered typical of Nazi policy in the Sudetenland. It
is also important to note that Neurath lost, as anti-moderns repeatedly did
in the Third Reich. To characterize the entire Third Reich as "anti-mod-
ern" is out of all proportion to the weight such voices carried. In addition,
when "anti-moderns" raised objections, they never actually claimed to be
against modernity; unlike those Nazis who championed modernity, people
like Neurath avoided the word. One searches in vain for quotations such as
"We will destroy modernity!" or "I hate modernism!" Instead, Neurath
based his objections on typically smug hypocrisy and cultural pretension
to what rightly counted as "German" design and "artistic expression" —
the very rhetoric mobilized by the Third Reich's modern productivism.

The SS countered that its unified management within Hitler's "National
Community" could ensure that standardized production would ring true.
"If the entire field of design down to the level of the last detail of utility is
seen as a unity and focused on man," explained an engineer who designed
SS furniture at the time, "then the senseless contrast between 'soulless indus-
trial wares' and the exclusive, spiritual quahty of craftsmanship falls
away.""" The SS, by its own admission, strove to enforce a homogeneity of
"cultural" taste, but declared that this very homogeneity expressed the
German will. Neurath remained unconvinced and continued to frustrate
the merger through 1940 and into 1941.

So began a case of true SS industrial espionage. May transferred his
German Home Design Society (an eingetragener Verein — nonprofit soci-
ety) to the SS, which then founded a GmbH (hmited corporation) of the
same name with a high-profile storefront in Berlin's Potsdamer StraEe.
Meanwhile, May posed as a civihan entrepreneur and bid on the coveted
Gerstel factory. In Briinn, he also purchased a 75 percent interest in another
Jewish firm, D. Drucker AG. Several of his partners from Stuttgart simul-
taneously founded Deutsche Meisterwerk GmbH to subsume these indus-
trial properties.'''^ This gave all the dealings the facade of private
entrepreneurship beyond the SS's direct involvement. Pohl quickly began

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 193

negotiations with industrial authorities in the Protektorat to subsume
Deutsche Meisterwerk as a subsidiary. Because Deutsche Meisterwerk was
nominally German owned and run by private citizens, the transfer remained
hidden from Neurath's direct scrutiny. The closure of all transactions took
place in 1941, and thus Pohl deftly manipulated modern organization —
that is, a national corporate bureaucracy — to overcome the merely regional
scope of the Protektorat's authority. The SS created a new affiliate, Deutsche
Edelmobel (German Noble Furniture), to consohdate all furniture manu-
facturing, and May entered as CEO of "wood working industries."*'^ This
poised the SS to furnish its Aryan settlements as a direct supplier.

As furniture design and manufacture came on line for the SS, May proudly
reported among his personal contributions "comprehensive new applica-
tion of modern, specialized machines. "''^ He also helped organize exhibits
of household interiors, with the assistance of an engineer from the Industrial
Arts School of May's native Stuttgart, Diploma Engineer Hermann Gretsch.
Gretsch criticized the tastelessness of past ages and the slavish imitation of
foreign styles, especially those motivated by a mindless liberal capitalism:
". . . if we find so many houses so ugly today, it is because they were made
in the period of beloved mammon! " He then suggested that German values
and race had to be crafted into material artifacts: "Race, heritage, tradition,
and lifestyle are important, but designers completely forgot them. They have
forgotten that they must also satisfy cultural needs. "^^ In this light, such men
had no problem seeing racial supremacy — in whatever form — as "modern";
it resided in the standards of their industrial production.

Gretsch called his own style "Agrarian Objectivity," characterizing it as
a "timeless" aesthetic located in an imagined epoch before capitahst spoli-
ation. He consciously coined the term as a direct attack upon left-leaning
artistic movements associated with "New Objectivity," whose consummate
representative was the Bauhaus of Dessau. The Bauhaus had sought to cre-
ate homes and living spaces as "machines for living" and made ostentatious
use of modern, mass-produced materials such as steel, concrete, and glass.
Its designers strove to strip away flourishes that did not serve practical,
functional needs; this is perhaps best represented by Marcel Breuer's famous
chair made of bent steel tubing and flat-black leather.^"

To those who would define "modernism" by the international style of
architecture and design promoted by the Bauhaus, Gretsch and the SS's

194 Allen

Figure 1

A Marcel Breuer chair. (Bauhaus Archives)

German Home Design undoubtedly seem "anti-modern." Were they not
simply reactionaries who longed to turn back the clock to an imaginary
past? (Gretsch acknowledged his own nostalgia for the epoch of
Biedermeier. ) Gretsch tried to derive racially pure "German" design from
what he considered the eternal virtues of peasants, whose "life-style was
more objective than the so-called New Objectivity." In contrast: "The
Farmer took it for granted that everything he designed had to be practical
as well as beautiful. He obeyed the eternal laws of nature."^' In Gretsch 's
living spaces, the woman's place was unmistakably in the kitchen, prefer-
ably with many children, and Gretsch took care to place a baby carriage in
the "parents' room." Scenes of peasant life hung on the walls of his dis-
plays.^- Again, this would seem to confirm those who view the Nazis as
hopelessly backward-thinking retrogrades. In a survey conducted in 1929,
for instance, Erich Fromm claimed to have discovered an overweening pref-
erence for conventional aesthetics among Nazis, including wall pictures of

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 195

Figure 2

Sketch of a kitchen by Diploma Engineer Hermann Gretsch, from Flanung und

Aufbau im Osten (Deutsche Landbuchhandlung, 1941).

dictators and generals as opposed to progressive, original works of art/^
Gretsch 's taste could not have proved Fromm wrong.

On the other hand, as Mechtild Rossler and Sabina Schleiermacher aptly
note: "The history of the modern is not only the history of international
developments in philosophy, architecture, art, and aesthetics, is not only
the Vienna Circle, the German Werkbund, and the Bauhaus . . . modern
also means a new culture of technology and science. "^* In fact, when it came
to technology and industry, Gretsch shared with Bauhaus design an impulse
to plan domestic spaces as "machines for living." The SS's "German design"
confirms Rossler and Schleiermacher no less than Fromm. Gretsch did not
object to the New Objectivity's spirited idealization of technology; he sim-
ply found Bauhaus designs ugly, pretentious, degenerate, and "un-
German." He too called upon the SS to hammer out norms for functional
dwellings: "The useful is always the beautiful and lends simple, unified prin-
ciples of form. "^^ Furthermore, simple design aided mass production: "We

196 Allen

should not aim for short-term fashion 'hits'; we should aim for standard-
ized designs that are universally viable. Only this will reduce the serial pro-
duction expenses over long term production and thus make designer
furniture profitable. "^^

Unlike the Bauhaus designers, however, Gretsch believed that traditional
materials such as wood suited the "German spirit" better than tube steel.
Kurt May, whose firms specialized in woodworking, intended to adapt
modern production to the values advocated by Gretsch. Their efforts sug-
gests that Nazi modernity had much less to do with fine distinctions of intel-
lectual history than with technology, organization, and their fusion in
production. As Frank Trommler has pointed out, the aesthetics of the
Werkbund and the Bauhaus do not necessarily define modernity; rather,
they often betray the attempts (which had failed by 1933) of high artists
and architects to win the modernity debate — that is, to proclaim the aes-
thetic destiny supposedly immanent in the ascendant technology and orga-
nization of the twentieth century. ^^

Some may object (as do the critics of Aly and Heim) that the active imag-
inations of SS planners seldom amounted to much more than memoranda
filed away in Himmler's desk drawer. And true enough. May's Deutsche
Edelmobel did not produce the New Order; it merely filled minor subcon-
tracts for military suppliers during the war. But the preoccupation with Nazi
industrial norms hardly began and ended with the SS. The Journal of the
Four Year Plan repeatedly advocated the adoption of German mass-pro-
duction standards, and authors of articles in that journal also did so in sec-
tors more suited to fluctuating demand, flexible consumer response, and
open-ended production practices (such as construction, machine-tool build-
ing firms, and textiles). Furniture design was, in fact, a case in point, for
classic mass production has always proved a failure in this industry. ^^ Here
the SS pursued modern production despite its irrationality.

Nothing was more typical of this irrational modernization than the
means the SS developed to murder the European Jews. Here too the regime
sought to combine its fantasies of racial supremacy with modern technol-
ogy. Contemporaries both outside and within Germany immediately rec-
ognized the nature of the SS genocide as "modern," and it was precisely the
modernity of the technology that horrified them. The New York Times
reported on November 26, 1944, that "a new modern crematorium and

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 197

gassing plant was inaugurated at Birkenau."^' At Auschwitz the SS seems
also to have bragged about the tightly coupled integration of gassing and
cremation in one technological system — "the best ever done in this line," as
an SS man instructed one prisoner.*" An adjutant of one of the SS's highest-
ranking generals wrote of his travels to Auschwitz: "The camp Auschwitz
has a special task in the Jewish Question. Here the most modern means
make it possible to carry out the order of the Fiihrer [to exterminate the
Jews] in the shortest period of time without a great deal of sensation."*' He
went on to describe in detail how the system operated, stressing the mod-
ern organization of steady-flow production. Outside Germany this seemed
a new vision of hell; within the SS it often awakened awe and pride.

It is well known that most Jews perished by primitive means and that the
crematoria at Auschwitz broke down repeatedly. What is less well known
is that "modern" kilhng, and by this I mean an integrated system approx-
imating mass production, started relatively late. The Nazi genocide had
proceeded with large-scale gassings since the autumn and winter of 1941.
By early 1942 the SS had erected several installations exclusively to kill vic-
tims with carbon monoxide exhaust. The concentration camps had built
industrial-scale cremation ovens much earlier, in the late 1930s. Never-
theless, these early systems were hardly "modern." The Belzec death camp
simply burned its victims in open pits, and Odilo Globocnik's*- experiments
with the prussic acid agent "Zyklon B" were amateurish. Rudolf Hoss tes-
tified after the war that his assistant at Auschwitz had attempted to use
Zyklon B as early as the autumn of 1941, on some Soviet prisoners of war.
But the basement in which they had locked the prisoners was likely too cold
to activate the gas pellets effectively.*^ After the decision to begin mass
gassing on a larger scale at Auschwitz, the SS staff simply sealed the doors
and windows of existing barracks with felt or paper strips. In another case,
they used two old farmhouses confiscated from Poles, and a low-ranking SS
man teetering on a ladder poured the poison through openings knocked in
the walls. These were the ad hoc experiments of psychopaths, scarcely the
cool, calculating work of "technocrats" or a faceless. Behemoth-like
bureaucratic machine.**

Christopher Browning begins Ordinary Men, his chronicle of one SS
shooting squad, with the poignant observation that the Holocaust was a
short, intense wave of mass murder. In the spring of 1942 the Nazis had

198 Allen

killed only about 20-25 percent of the Holocaust's victims, but by mid
February of 1943 only 20-25 percent of their victims were still among the
living. ^^ Since the invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, and
through 1942, the SS's killing spree proceeded with rudimentary techno-
logical systems. The simple shooting of Jews beside mass graves continued
in the East; in fact, it increased over the course of 1942 even as large-scale
gas chambers came on line.*'* In other words, a crude mixture of ad hoc
technology and outright barbaric killing more than sufficed.

The only killing systems that one might truly describe as modern indus-
trial factories were Crematoria II and III in Birkenau. Here the engineers
and architects of the Central Building Directorate of Auschwitz planned
undressing rooms and gas chambers in the basement and long banks of cre-
mation ovens on the ground floor designed to run from central furnaces,
thus achieving economy of scale. The layout of the buildings accommo-
dated a steady flow of work. Special slave-labor commandos transported
the corpses from the cellar to the cremation ovens on an electric lift, and the
SS had even undertaken plans for semi-automated transport systems to
deliver coal to the furnaces and to remove ashes from collecting bins.^^

But the Central Building Directorate of Auschwitz designed these killing
factories very slowly, over the late autumn and the winter of 1942.
Crematorium II at Birkenau, the first, would not begin full operation until
the spring of 1943. Jean-Claude Pressac notes that from April to October
of 1943 the crematoria at Birkenau ran for only about 2 months at full
capacity. In other words, the Auschwitz camp complex (of which Birkenau
was a part) vastly overbuilt its killing machinery.*^ A graph recording trans-
ports to Auschwitz (figure 3) illustrates this quite well. This graph is based
on the careful analysis of Franciszek Piper. Although the numbers of vic-
tims in transports to Auschwitz are not equal to those killed in the gas
chambers (some prisoners were shunted into slave labor), it is nevertheless
a good measure of activity in the killing camp. After March of 1943, killing
continued on a large scale, but by Auschwitz's standards this period was a
rather long lull. In the spring of 1944, Hungarian Jews started to arrive in
staggering numbers (more than 430,000). At the end of 1942, however,
Hungary, a German ally, still refused to release its Jews to the Nazi geno-
cide. It is highly unlikely that the staff of Auschwitz was planning its capac-
ity for this huge influx (represented by the spike from April to August of

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 199

SSOSKO

a«K»o ■^— — .

i»OM

lODjQCa

BDjOOD -^ —

- ? ^ * * fl ^
* ^ - I I ^

Figure 3

Graph of numbers of Jews transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. (after F. Piper, Die
Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz (Oswiecim: State Archive Press, 1993)

1944) more than a year in advance. Thus, at the beginning of 1943, ironi-
cally, there never was a modern technology more lacking in justification as
a means to an end.

This would seem to lend credence to the argument that the Holocaust
represents the supreme danger inherent in modern industrial development,
which has unleashed technological change without concern for the conse-
quences to humanity. If the machinery of death at Auschwitz was not "tech-
nics out of control," what possibly could be?*'

To answer this question, I would like to look more closely at how and
why the idea of a Zyklon B gas chamber first entered Auschwitz. Rudolf
Hoss testified after the war in his famous confession that mass killings using
gas began in the summer of 1941. We know this cannot be true, for the first
experiments with Zyklon B began no earlier than September. Nevertheless,
Hoss's slip of memory is instructive. SS engineers did plan gas chambers for
Zyklon B in early July of 1941, but they did so as part of an integrated and
partially automated system for the fumigation of clothing. The chemical
firm Degesch marketed machinery for this purpose, and at the beginning of
July some advertising materials arrived at Auschwitz, including a copy of

200 Allen

a scholarly article by the company's chief executive officer, Dr. Gerhard
Peters. Peters discussed the considerable progress made in the use of "blue
acid" or "prussic acid." Both Degesch and the firm Tesch & Stabenow mar-
keted this chemical under the label Zyklon B. At around this same time,
Bruno Tesch, the owner of Tesch & Stabenow, started training courses in
the operation of the Degesch gas chambers at Sachsenhausen and other SS
garrisons. After the war, Gerhard Peters admitted in German courts to hav-
ing discussed the possibility of killing men and women efficiently with the
poison, and several office personnel of Tesch 's firm testified that the SS had
also asked him about the suitability of Zyklon B for killing large numbers
of human beings.'"

In July of 1941, however, murder was not yet the purpose. The modern
technology that Degesch was pushing involved clothing-fumigation cham-
bers, each 10 cubic meters in volume, with specially designed ventilation sys-
tems and automatic devices for introducing Zyklon B pellets. Peters 's article,
still preserved in the files of the construction directorate of Auschwitz, begins
by discussing the "advances in this particular year that have contributed con-
siderably to the modernization of the well-known [gassing] process."" The
chambers could be built in series in a factory-like arrangement: "The oper-
ation is organized so that an undressing room [for prisoners] lies on one side
of the chambers [the "impure" side]. During the delousing of the clothing,
the prisoners can bathe and submit to a general examination until they arrive
at the other side [the "pure" side of the installation] where they receive their
clothing in a dressing room."'^ The SS, Degesch, and Tesch & Stabenow
conceived of these chambers as a means of managing prisoners as "human
material" in a mass-production fashion.

Enthusiasm for such a "modern" system is unmistakable among the con-
struction engineers and architects of Auschwitz. They had long planned a
prisoner-reception building at Auschwitz, including a laundry and delousing
station. The new SS chief of engineers who entered service in June of 1941,
Hans Kammler, gave these buildings top priority. After the SS became aware
of the Degesch system, however, the Central Building Directorate rushed to
modify them. This happened as early as July 14, little more than a fortnight
after Dr. Peter's advertising materials were received. "Without overall plan-
ning there can be no economic and timely installation of technically modern
equipment," wrote one SS engineer in an attempt to spur Auschwitz's sub-

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 201

contractors to more concerted action on the project, and in the SS's eyes
what counted as "modern" about the new Zyklon B reception building was
its approximation of mass production." As early as September of 1941, a
report mentioned that blueprints had been drawn up so that "the floor plan
is so organized in order to make possible an assembly-line operation [Fliel?-
betrieb] such that the flow of work is never interrupted."'"'

This initial enthusiasm was not confined to Auschwitz. The leadership
of the SS's corps of civil engineers in Berlin insisted that "the final means of
all delousing installations ... be geared toward the process with blue
acid."'^ The SS believed it had found the "one best way" to handle sanitary
conditions and insisted upon the Degesch's factory-style chambers, a new
invention, as the standard for all concentration camps. This decision is
peculiar, for these very gas chambers had already failed by the spring of
1942. The SS architect Fritz Ertl marked exclamation points in the margins
of the above-mentioned letter from Berlin, as if to express his exasperation
with the lack of comprehension of the real problems with delousing.
Regional authorities were putting the camp's administration under pres-
sure and complaining that civilian workers were catching diseases when
they worked in proximity to Auschwitz. Epidemics were common there, as
they were at other concentration camps, owing to the atrocious shortages
of shelter, sanitation, food, and potable water. In fact, SS men had also
reported sick with spotted fever. By December of 1942, the chief physician
of Auschwitz, Eduard Wirths, had had to borrow mobile autoclaves from
SS doctors in Kattowitz, and he reported that "the Cyklon-B fumigation
has been completely abandoned, for it has been shown that the success of
this process is not 100% certain.""' The prussic acid only subhmated at rel-
atively warm temperatures — hardly an "efficient" poison in the cold Polish
winter. The reception building, constructed according to principles of an
"assembly line," a building that had once been projected by Auschwitz chief
of engineers to cost 2.7 milHon Reichsmarks, proved a waste of time and
money.

We might therefore return now to the questions posed above: Does the
technology of Auschwitz represent the greatest nightmare in which the
dreams of reason have begotten monsters? Was the mechanized genocide
"less an eruption of the irrational than an extreme form of technocratic
reason?"'^

202 Allen

First of all, the SS was scarcely indulging an unbridled enthusiasm for
Enlightenment rationality when it chose to make a fetish of "assembly
lines," the latest chemical novelties, and complex automated gadgetry.
Zyklon B was a rather unusual choice. Chemical fumigants were a new
technical product that had found their first widespread use after World
War I. As such, they counted as modern, something Dr. Peters of Degesch
labored to point out in his article. Paul Weindling has noted, however, that
other chemical fumigants at this time were much more effective and much
easier to handle. German authorities and German industry — not just the
SS — had adopted fumigation with prussic acid at a time when others were
adopting DDT. The dangers of DDT are well known, but it is hard to
imagine its use in homicidal gas chambers. In contrast, as early as 1915
plaintiffs had brought suits before the German courts because the highly
potent toxins in Zyklon B had led to wrongful death. '^ What could have
been the attraction of Zyklon B? Weindling notes that it had been invented
in Germany and thus seemed to represent the "inventive spirit" of that
nation. In the case of the Degesch fumigation chambers, German firms
had also developed delivery systems to approximate the methods of mass
production.

The reason for the adoption of the Degesch-style chambers at Auschwitz
thus seems to have been unbridled enthusiasm, not for technology generi-
cally, and far less for "reason," but for modern technology. The SS engi-
neers' calculations leapt the bounds of mere "instrumental rationality" such
that modern technology began to be an end it itself. We should not be sur-
prised, therefore, to find that the search for "high-tech" solutions to epi-
demics continued at Auschwitz even after the massive failed investment in
the Degesch chambers. Wirths soon reported that he was experimenting
with radio waves to sterilize clothing. Needless to say, this too proved a dis-
mal failure." The most rational solution to the epidemics of Auschwitz, of
course, would have been to halt the never-ceasing transport of new prison-
ers. The SS failed to do that because killing the Jews was a central focus of
Nazi racial supremacy, not because of some dialectic of the Enlightenment.

A similar history of irrational enthusiasm for mass production accom-
panied the modern "factory of extermination" typified by Crematoria II
and III at Birkenau, for which the Degesch chambers served as predecessor
and model. Here the SS clearly intended to approximate principles of mass

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 203

production with the continuous flow of "human material." SS architects
and engineers designed these two buildings to facilitate forcing prisoners
into the gas chambers at one end, transporting their corpses to the crema-
toria, and burning their bodies in a steady-flow progression. Nevertheless,
the system constantly broke down, not unlike the Zyklon-B fumigation
chambers. Because the SS insisted on cramming the cremation ovens with
too many bodies (four at a time, sometimes more), they burned too hot and
the firebrick soon caved in.'"" In the summer of 1944, when the Hungarian
Jews started to arrive at Auschwitz in large transports, the SS reverted to ad
hoc gas chambers in the storage rooms of Crematoria IV and V, where
Zyklon B was simply shaken in through small windows in the side of the
building. Here the SS engineers and architects never designed a steady-flow,
linear progression of genocide into the building's layout. The SS also began
once more to burn bodies in open pits instead of in the "modern cremato-
ria," which were then largely defunct."" Thus Auschwitz ended its orgy of
murder where it began: with psychopathic improvisation. The personnel
who conceived and carried out these operations were not in thrall to the
monsters of reason; they were simply monsters.

Conclusion

The barbarous Utopia of the SS, which it tried to build into an "assembly
line" for murder, was wholly in keeping with what I have termed produc-
tivism. That is, the National Socialist movement in general identified
modernity with technology as the means of forming national identity in
production. If social engineering was part of this, so too was the irrational
belief that German national identity resided in a destiny tied to modern
machines. Regarding the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, the
leader of one mobile SS killing squad, Erich von dem Bach Zelewski, report-
edly commented that the machinery of Auschwitz was "something the
Russians could not accomplish: it reflected the German gift."'"^ What bet-
ter example of Hitler's productivism might we find: the Nazis consciously
adopted a modern technological system in order to purge Europe of its Jews
and thus sought to manufacture a racial empire in their own image?
Productivism urged Hitler's true believers to seek the wellsprings of national
identity and homogenous community in modern production, and this is

204 Allen

exactly what killing the Jews of Europe was supposed to do: prepare a clean
slate so that the National Socialists could manufacture their New Order, a
Utopia of Nazi values.

Degesch's factory-style Zyklon B chambers were the immediate prede-
cessor and model for Crematoria I and II at Birkenau. That SS men after the
war confused them often enough with the killing chambers is further evi-
dence of this.'"^ Allow me to repeat, however, that I am not arguing that
modern technology "caused" the Holocaust or that anti-Semitism played
no role; in fact, anti-Semites were among the most energetic advocates of
modern technology in the Third Reich. But I do argue that modernity deter-
mined the unique means of the "Final Solution" at Auschwitz. In this sense
the "postmoderns" have been right all along. But it is wrong to see this as
the necessary teleology of Enlightenment rationality. The crassest irra-
tionality and modernization have never contradicted each other, least of all
in the minds of anti-Semites.

The history of technology reveals that a belief that the machine would
"change the world" was central to Nazi modernity, but more than this a
specific kind of technological system — the hierarchically governed, cen-
tralized, mass-production factory new to the early twentieth century.
Wedded to Nazi productivism, the legitimate purpose of the state became
the promotion of industrial growth as a symbol of national strength and
unified identity rather than the wealth, peace, and freedom of citizens.
National Socialism emphasized existential feeling — feelings like Rausch —
through an inevitable fulfillment of destiny by modern technological means.

Hans Mommsen asks: "Does one earnestly wish to make the fascistic
understanding of politics into the foundation of a present day 'modern'
society?" One might answer with another question: What about the moder-
nity of this morbid history could possibly bind us to do so? To reject the
modernity of the Holocaust, however, one must reject the common assump-
tion of Mommsen and many others that modernity is destiny. The SS's
vision of modernity was partial, and cannot be taken as an overarching def-
inition of the modern world. A multitude of values and attitudes have
accompanied the rise of an industrial, scientific, and technological society,
and the Nazis were undeniably selective. Yet still less did Nazi modernity
conform to the many claims made in its name by postwar historiography,
and a selective approach to "modernity" hardly distinguished National

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 205

Socialism. Rather, it seems a central element of the entire "modernity"
debate. Fritz Stern, George Mosse, and Ralf Dahrendorf have all associated
liberal democracy with "modernization." However much one sympathizes
with their political goals rather than with Hitler's, this characterization of
history is hardly less arbitrary. It is the Nazis' participation in the debate,
the effort to present their dogma as historical destiny, that made them
"modern."

We should beware of the moral paralysis that debates over modernity
induce precisely because they render discussion of substantive principles
impossible in the name of an "inevitable" or "inexorable" logic of indus-
trial development. This paralysis was already evident at the time of Hitler's
rise to power. Lyndall Urwick, Director of Geneva's International
Management Institute, warned in 1933: "A machine technology points to
the obvious economies of large-scale units of business control: amalgama-
tions founder because there is widespread ignorance as to the methods of
managing these aggregations." The new technics of the twentieth century
in communication, production, and distribution seemed to outstrip civil
institutions in the 1920s and the 1930s, and Urwick made his own pas-
sionate plea for the world's democracies to adapt more efficiently: "In coun-
try after country liberty of speech and of person are lost, because democratic
institutions fail to devise an administrative structure adapted to the speed
and complexity of social evolution."'"'' In the same year, the Chicago
Century of Progress exposition featured an Art Deco statue with the inscrip-
tion "Science Finds — Industry Applies — Man Conforms."

In such a hght, the ability to force the pace of modern organization and
technology could too easily displace inquiry into the first principles of cit-
izenship, the state, and political economy, which should define social
change. Fascists would condemn democracy directly for institutionalizing
an old-fashioned "cultural lag" behind the dynamic changes of technol-
ogy and organization. Although Urwick deplored the Nazis, he believed
as they did that "modernization" itself was inevitable. Once Hitler could
pose as a master of technological success, even staunch resisters began to
see him as the inevitable product of historical destiny. In the mid 1930s,
when National Socialism achieved real economic growth, visions of
modernity offered slim recourse to anyone who still wished to condemn the
regime.

206 Allen

Notes

1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992), pp.
128-130.

2. Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.
323-326. Here Nazism is condemned (as is Jiirgen Habermas, ironically) for dar-
ing to posit universal theories of social justice. Rorty also attributes the poverty of
metaphysics to the Enlightenment (pp. 317, 321), and argues that, rather than first
principles, "utility" should be the standard of just government. For Jean-Frangois
Lyotard, as for Rorty, "Auschwitz" is the ultimate "differend," the hole in our
understanding that gives the lie to any absolute statements of truth and ultimately
to the Enlightenment itself. See Lyotard, The Differend (University of Minnesota
Press, 1988), pp. 43, 56-57, and 89-110.

3. M. Stanton Evans, The Theme Is Preedom (Regnery, 1994), pp. 15, 52. Evans's
argument is, in fact, the same as Rorty's: the Holocaust and fascism demonstrate the
evil of metaphysical theories of first principles, especially those of the
Enlightenment. Evans merely has a much different answer to this problem.

4. Reinhart Koselleck, Tutures Past (MIT Press, 1985), p. xxiv.

5. Note the enthusiasm for information technology among many so-called post-
moderns. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (University of
Minnesota Press, 1979), pp. xxiv-xxv. For an example of technology and the
Holocaust in the "Culture Wars," see p. 6 of Fukuyama, The End of History. See
also the central themes of John Ralston Saul's Voltaire's Bastards (Vintage Books,
1993).

6. Omer Bartov, Murder in Our Midst (Oxford University Press, 1996), esp. pp.
1-11; Sven Lindquist, "Exterminate All the Brutes" (New Press, 1992).

7. For an array of positions in the "uniqueness" debate, see Alan Rosenbaum, Is the
Holocaust Unique? (Westview, 1996). On technology's role in this uniqueness, see
Christopher Browning, "Barbarous Utopia: The Terrible Uniqueness of the Nazi
State," Times Literary Supplement, March 20, 1992, p. 5.

8. Hermann Goring, "Verantwortliche Wirtschaftsfiihrung," Der Vierjahresplan 1
(1937), p. 66.

9. Wirtschaftsminister Walther Funk, "Die wirtschaftspolitische Aufgabe," Der
Vierjahresplan 2 (1938), p. 140.

10. Staatssekretar Paul Korner, "Leistung des ganzen Volkes," Der Vierjahresplan
3 (1939), p. 4.

11. See "Der Frontarbeiter," Der Vierjahresplan 4 (1940), pp. 366-369. The Front-
arbeiter were militarized work crews not unlike the American "Seabees."

12. Jakob Werlin, "Der wirtschaftliche und soziale Sinn des Volkswagens," Der
Vierjahresplan 2 (1938), pp. 472-473. Werlin visited Henry Ford in the United
States in 1938 and secured the aging industrialist's blessing on the Volkswagen.

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 207

13. Hans Mommsen, "Noch einmal: Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung,"
Geschichte und Gesellschaft 21 (1995), p. 401. See also Dominick La Capra, History
and Memory after Auschwitz (Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 3, 30ff.; Saul
Friedlander, "The Final Solution: On the Unease in Historical Interpretation," in
Lessons and Legacies, ed. P. Hayes (Northwestern University Press, 1991);
"Introduction," in Gerald Fleming, Hitler und die Endlosung (UUstein, 1987);
Thomas Saunders, "Nazism and Social Revolution," in Modern Germany
Reconsidered 1870-1945, ed. G. Mattel (Routledge, 1992), p. 166.

14. See Horst Matzerath and Heinrich Volkmann, "Modernisierungstheorie und
Nationalsozialismus," in Theorien in der Praxis des Historikers, ed. J. Kocka
(Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977).

15. Falk Pingel, Hdftlinge unter SS-Herrschaft. Widerstand, Selbstbehauptung und
Vernichtung im Konzentrationslager (Hoffmann und Campe, 1978), p. 62.

16. Friedlander, "The Final Solution."

17. PS-1919, Himmler's Speech in Posen, 4/11/1943. See also La Capra, History
and Memory after Auschwitz, pp. 25-42.

18. John Kasson, Civilizing the Machine (Grossman, 1976), esp. pp. 137-180; Leo
Marx, The Machine in the Garden (Oxford University Press, 1964); David Nye,
American Technological Sublime (MIT Press, 1994); Paul Florman, The Existential
Pleasures of Engineering (St. Martin's Griffen, 1996).

19. Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring (Anchor Books, 1989), p. 322. Eksteins (ibid.,
pp. 320-321) focuses on the technological means of the Holocaust as its quintes-
sential modernity.

20. David Noble, The Religion of Technology (Knopf, 1997), p. 22.

21. Gustavo Corni and Horst Gies, Brot, Butter, Kanonen (Akademie Verlag,
1997).

22. Dr. Bohmkamp, i.A., Hauptabteilung El, 24/2/38, "Zeitschriften-Vorgutachten
'Natur und Kultur'," Bundesarchiv Lichtefelde, R16/1272.

23. For notable exceptions, see the following: Robert van Pelt and Deborah Dwork,
Auschwitz 1270 to the Present (Norton, 1996); Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz
(Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989) and Die Krematorien von Auschwitz (Piper,
1993).

24. Thomas Nipperdey, "Probleme der Modernisierung in Deutschland," in Nach-
denken iiber die deutsche Geschichte (Beck, 1986); Henry A. Turner, "Fascism and
Modernization," in Reappraisals of Fascism, ed. H. Turner (New Viewpoints,
1975).

25. Mommsen, "Noch einmal."

26. Gerald Feldman, "The Weimar Republic: A Problem of Modernization?"
Archiv fUr Sozialgeschichte 26 (1986), p. 1. Norbert Frei ("Wie Modern war der
Nationalsozialismus?" Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19, 1993: 367-387) also speaks
of this debate as one shrouded in fog.

208 Allen

27. Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship (Edward Arnold, 1989), p. 418 and
"Ideologe und Propagandist. Hitler im Lichte seiner Reden, Schriften und
Anordnungen," Vierteljahrshefte fUr Zeitgeschichte 40 (1992): 263-271. See also
Mark Walker, "Naturwissenschaftler, Techniker und der Nationalsozialismus" in
Ich diente nur der Technik, ed. A. Gottwaldt (Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1995). On the organizational dimensions of modernity in industry, see Alfred
Chandler, The Visible Hand (Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 393-592;
Chandler, Strategy and Structure (MIT Press, 1969); Jiirgen Kocka, "Scale and
Scope: A Review Colloquium," Business History Review 64 (1990): 711-716.

28. Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 1994).

29. Ernst Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, in Werke, Band 6: Essays II (Klett, 1964), p. 318.
On Jiinger, see Jeffry Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge University Press,
1984), pp. 70-108.

30. George Mosse, on p. vii of the 1981 edition of his book The Crisis of German
Ideology (Schocken), withdrew his claim that Nazism was strictly an anti-modern
movement, stating that "the Nazis made use of the most up-to-date technology in
all fields."

31. For one of the earliest developments of this idea, see Talcott Parsons, "Some
Sociological Aspects of the Fascist Movements," in Parsons, Essays in Sociological
Theory (Free Press, 1954). See also Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter (University
of North Carolina Press, 1983); William Brustein, The Logic of Evil (Yale University
Press, 1996).

32. Timothy Mason, "Zur Entstehung des Gesetzes zur Ordnung der nationalen
Arbeit, vom 20. Januar 1934: Ein Versuch iiber das Verhaltnis 'archaischer' und
'moderner' Momente in der neuesten deutschen Geschichte," in Industrielles System
und politische Entivicklung in der Weimarer Republik, ed. H. Mommsen et al.
(Droste, 1974), p. 324.

33. See Henry Ashby Turner, "Fascism and Modernization," in Reappraisals of
Fascism, ed. Turner (Franklin Watts, 1975). Turner claimed that anti-modern
ideology fired the imagination of Adolf Hitler, in whose eyes "modern industrial
society was wholly and unavoidably incompatible with what they held to be the
only true wellspring of social hfe: the folk culture" (ibid., p. 119).

34. Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Norton, 1979), p. 383.

35. David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution (Norton, 1980); Jens Alber,
"Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung," Kolner Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie und
Sozialpsycologie 41 (1989): 346-365; Dietmar Petzina, "Soziale Lage der deutschen
Arbeiter und Probleme des Arbeitseinsatzes wahrend des Zweiten Weltkriegs," in
Zweiter Weltkrieg und sozialer Wandel, ed. W. Dlugoborski (Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1981); Riidiger Hachtmann, Industrie Arbeit im Dritten Reich
(Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), esp. pp. 54-89; Albrecht Ritschl, "Die NS-
Wirtschaftsideologie — Modernisierungsprogramm oder reaktionare Utopie?" in
Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, ed. R. Zitelmann and M. Prinz
(Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991).

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 209

36. Hans Mommsen, "Nationalsozialismus als vorgetauschte Modernisierung," in
Der Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Gesellschaft (Rowolt, 1991).

37. Wolfgang Sauer, "National Socialism: Totalitarianism or Fascism," in
Reappraisals of Fascism, ed. H. Turner (Franklin Watts Inc., 1975), p. 275. See also
Detlev Peukert, "AUtag und Barbarei. Zur Normalitat des Dritten Reiches," in 1st
der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? ed. D. Diner (Fischer, 1987), p. 52;

38. Nipperdey, "Probleme der Modernisierung," pp. 44-59.

39. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernisrn. Herf is doubly exceptional in that he
acknowledges both the Nazis' technological enthusiasm (usually avoided by self-
confessing moderns) and their ferocious anti-Enlightenment bile (usually avoided by
the postmoderns). Yet conflation of the Enlightenment with scientific and techno-
logical "reason" endures in his analysis, so much so that he is forced to postulate a
"crisis of German ideology." German engineers supposedly had to overcome the
contradiction between rejecting Enlightenment humanism and embracing modern
industry, which they did through thinkers who spun a spiritual cult of romanticism
around machines. Compare Ken Alder, Engineering the Revolution (Princeton
University Press, 1997). Alder suggests that engineers at the time of the Enlighten-
ment were more concerned with control than with Enlightened freedoms.

40. Gotz Aly and Susanne Heim, "Die Okonomie der Endlosung: Menchen-
vernichtung und wirtschaftliche Neuordnung," Beitrdge zur nationalsozialistischen
Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik 5 (1987): 11-90; Gotz Aly and Susanne Heim,
Vordenker der Vernichtung (Fischer, 1993); Zygmunt Bauman, Modenity and
Ambivalence (Cornell University Press, 1991); Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and
the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 1989); Detlev Peukert, "The Genesis of the
'Final Solution' from the Spirit of Science," in Reevaluating the Third Reich, ed. T
Childers and J. Caplan (Holmes &Meier, 1993); Detlev Peukert, Inside Nazi
Germany (Yale University Press, 1987); Ronald Smelser, "How 'Modern' were the
Nazis? DAE Social Planning and the Modernization Question," German Studies
Review 12 (1989); Robert Ley, Hitler's Labor Front Leader (Berg, 1988).

41. Detlev Peukert, "AUtag und Barbarei," pp. 51-61. See also Rainer Zitelmann,
"Die totalitare Seite der Moderne," in Nationalzozialimus und Modernisierung, ed.
R. Zitelmann et al. (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991); Geoff Eley, "Die
deutsche Geschichte und die Widerspriiche der Moderne. Das Beispiel des Kaiser-
reichs," in Zivilisation und Barbarei, ed. E Bajohr et al. (Hans Christians Verlag,
1991).

42. Norbert Frei ("Wie Modern war der Nationalsozialismus?" p. 385) claims that
Hitler viewed modern technology "partly with skepticism." As evidence he cites,
with implied criticism, Rainer Zitelmann, whose biography of Hitler nevertheless
contains much contrary evidence drawn from private speeches and other sources.

43. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, p. 77. See Ann Taylor Allen's, David
Lindenfeld's, and Alan Beyerchen's contributions to "The Holocaust and
Modernity," a special issue of Central European History (volume 30, 1997). See
also Geoff Eley, "German History and the Contradictions of Modernity: The

210 Allen

Bourgeoisie, the State, and the Mastery of Reform," in Society, Culture, and the
State in Germany, 1870-1930, ed. G. Eley (University of Michigan Press, 1996).

44. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, p. 68.

45. Peukert, "The Genesis of the 'Final Solution,'" pp. 234-252.

46. Alan Beyerchen, "Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the
Technology of Racism in the Third Reich," Central European History 30 (1997),
p. 390.

47. Wilhelm Ziegler (Riechsministerium fiir Volksaufklarung und Propaganda),
"Zusammentarbeit von Technik, Wissenschaft und Kunst," Der Vierjahresplan 2
(1938), p. 584.

48. Peter Wagner ("Sociological Reflections: The Technology Question during the
First Crisis of Modernity," in The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology, ed. M.
Hard and A. Jamison, MIT Press, 1998) notes the similar impetus to direct the
dynamism of the industrial revolution in the Swedish "Folks Home" movement, in
German National Socialism, in Stalinism, in the New Deal, and in Italian Fascism.

49. Zitelmann, "Die totalitare Seite der Moderne."

50. Gottfried Feder, Das Programm der NSDAP und seine weltanschaulichen
Grundgedanken (Eher, 1932), pp. 46-47.

51. Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power (Johns Hopkins University Press,
1983), p. 6; "Modern and Post-Modern Engineering," Sternwarte-Buch 1 (1998):
256-275.

52. Zitelmann, Hitler, p. 357.

53. Nolan, Visions of Modernity; Richard Overy, "'Blitzkriegswirtschaft'? Finanz-
politik, Lebensstandard und Arbeitseinsatz in deutschland 1939-42," Viertel-
jahreshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 36 (1988): 370-435; Overy, "Mobilization for Total
War in Germany 1939-1941," English Historical Review 88 (1988): 613-639;
Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938 (Cambridge University Press,
1982).

54. Otto Dietrich, Riechspressechef der NSDAP, "Der Fiihrer und der deutsche
Arbeiter," Der Vierjahresplan 1 (1937), p. 214.

55. Erich Gritzbach, "Nationale Kraft dutch neue Lebensgestaltung," Der Vier-
jahresplan 1 (1937), p. 345. See also Wilhelm Zangen, "Dienst an der Nation. Ein
Riickblick iiber zehn Jahre nationalsozialistischer Industriearbeit," Der Vierjahres-
plan? (1943), p. 4.

56. "P.," "Von kiinftiger deutscher Wirtschaftsgestaltung," Der Vierjahresplan 4
(1940), p. 805.

57. Gotz Aly, 'Endlosung' (Fischer, 1995). See also Christopher Browning,
"Vernichtung und Arbeit. Zur Fraktionierung der planenden deutschen Intelligenz
im besetzten Polen," in 'Vernichtungspolitik' , ed. W Schneider and U. Herbert
(Junius, 1991); Ulrich Herbert, "Rassismus und rationales Kalkiil. Zum Stellenwert
utilitaristisch verbramter Legitimationsstrategien in der nationalsozialistischen
'Weltanschauung'," in ibid.; Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance (Cambridge

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 211

University Press, 1994), pp. 98-99; Frei, "Wie Modern war der Nationalsozial-
ismus," pp. 371-374; Avraham Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation (University
Press of New England, 1989), p. 114; Peter Hayes, "Big Business and Aryanization
in Germany, 1933-1939," Jahrbuch ftir Antisemitismusforschung 3 (1994):
254-281. The tendency to identify Jews as a threat to a "modern" industrial econ-
omy was something that German authorities shared with the French. See Wolfgang
Seibel, "Holocaust und wirtschaftliche Verfolgungsmafinahmen — Anlafi zur
Neubewertung der Strukturalismus/Intentionalismus-Debatte? Das Beispeil Frank-
reich, 1 940-1 942, " delivered at Arbeitskreis Unternehmen im Nationalsozialismus
der Gesellschaft fiir Unternehmensgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main-Hochst, January
14,2000.

58. Hauptabteilung Planung und Boden, Stabshauptamt des RKF, Planung und
Aufbau im Osten (Deutsche Landbuchhandlung, 1941), p. 11.

59. NO- 1043, Leo Volk, undated, "Generaltreuhaenders fuer Baustofferzeugungs-
staetten im Ostraum im Jahre 1940."

60. I thank Jan-Eirk Schulte for this biographical information, which he received
from the Kulturamt of the Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart and the Westdeutsche
Wirtschaftschronik.

61. Affidavit of Kurt Brune, Defense Document Books of Hans Hohberg. Karl
Bestle; Karl Neimann, 30/6/43; Kurt May, 23/6/41, "Jahresrechnung des Vorstandes
der Drucker AG, Dampfsagewerke und Holzwarenfabriken in Briinn zur Jahres-
rechnung 1940"; undated, unsigned, "Technische Grundlagen" and op. cit.
"ProtokoU der Aufsichtsratssitzung 1943," US National Archives microfilm T-
976/22. Compare Hounshell on Gunnison homes: David Hounshell, From the
American System to Mass Production (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), pp.
145-146,310-314.

62. Affidavit of Kurt Brune, Defense Document Books of Hans Hohberg,
International Military Tribunal, Case IV vs. Pohl et al.

63. Eno Georg, Die ivirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der SS (Deutsche Verlags-
Anstalt, 1963), pp. 77-79.

G5. Shiela Duff, A German Protectorate (Frank Cass, 1970), pp. 98-102.

65. Alfons Leitl, "Professor Hermann Gretsch/Eine Ausstellung seiner Arbeiten,"
Die Bauwelt 32 (Heft 26, 1941), p. 4.

66. Georg, Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen, p. 81; Dr. Horing, Report of
16/11/41, T-976/22. Later Pohl acquired up to 94% of Drucker's stock.

67. Ibid., p. 80. The DWB recapitalizing Deutsche Meisterwerk with over 800,000
KM. Volk to Pohl, 1/9/41, "Umorganisation der Amter," T-976/35. The chief of the
SS Reich Security Head Office, Reinhard Heydrich, replaced Neurath as Protektor
on Sept. 27, 1941. Heydrich opposed other SS bids for corporations, such as
mineral-water companies, for motives that are not clear, but he did not oppose this
furniture deal.

68. Kurt May, 23/6/41, "Jahresrechnung des Vorstandes der Drucker AG, Dampf-
sagewerke und Holzwarenfabriken in Briinn zur Jahresrechnung 1940, T-976/22.

212 Allen

69. Dipl. Ing. Hermann Gretsch, "ZeitgemaSes Wohnen," Die Bauzeitung 38
(1941), p. 425.

70. See Frank Trommler, "Von Bauhausstuhl zur Kulturpolitik. Die Auseinander-
setzung um die moderne Produktkultur," in Kultur, ed. H. Brackert et al.
(Suhrkamp, 1990).

71. Herman Gretsch, "Vom richtigen Wohnen," 37 (1940), p. 426.

72. Gretsch, "Zeitgemai?es Wohnen," p. 430.

73. Erich Fromm, Arbeiter und Angestellte am Vorabend des Dritten Retches
(Deutsche Verlags-Anstah, 1980), pp. 142-150. Fromm's statistical samples of
NSDAP party members were so small as to render his data unrepresentative. He
also noted, curiously, an overrepresentation of Nazis among admirers of Neue
Sachlichkeit.

74. Mechtild Rossler and Sabine Schleiermacher, "Der Generalplan Ost und die
Modernitat der Grofiraumordnung. Fine Finfiihrung," in Der 'Generalplan Ost',
ed. M. Rossler and S. Schleiermacher (Akademie Verlag, 1993), p. 10.

75. Alfons Leitl, "Professor Hermann Gretsch," p. 4.

76. Gretsch, "Die Stellung des Fntwerfers in der Wirtschaft," Bauen, Siedeln,
Wohnen 19 {1939), p. 7 51

77. Frank Trommler, "The Avant-Garde and Technology: Toward Technological
Fundamentalism in Turn-of-the-Century Furope," Science in Context 8 (1995):
397^16 and "The Creation of a Culture of Sachlichkeit," in Geoff Fley, Society,
Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1930 (University of Michigan Press,
1996), pp. 465^85. Jennifer Jenkins, "The Kitsch Collections and The Spirit in the
Furniture. Cultural Reform and National Culture in Germany," Social History 21
(1996): 123-141.

78. On construction: Fritz Todt, "Regelung der Bauwirtschaft," Der Vierjahresplan
3 (1939): 762-764. Fugen Vogler, "Durch Betriebsrationalisierung zur Leistungs-
steigerung in der Bauwirtschaft," Der Vierjahresplan 3 (1939): 765-769. J. Jb.,
"Rationahsierung im Wohnungsbau," Der Vierjahresplan 4 (1940): 1042-1044.
On craft industries: Josef Free, " Wandlung der Maschinentechnik durch die neuen
Werkstoffe," Der Vierjahresplan 2 (1938): 530-537. Ferdinand Schramm, "Neue
Ausrichtung des Handwerks," Der Vierjahresplan 3 (1939): 461-463.
Annonymous, "Die Betriebsgrofien in kriegswirtschaftlicher Beurteilung," Der
Vierjahresplan 4 (1940): 103-104. Heinrich Krumm, "Wert und Aufgabe der
Konsumgiiterindustrie im Kriege," Der Vierjahresplan 5 (1941): 518-521.

79. The report, by Alfred Wetzler, Walter Rosenberg, Czeslaw Mordowicz, and
Arost Rosin of the Polish resistance, was published by the American War Refugee
Board, Washington D.C., 1944. It has been reprinted in Fnglish and in its French
versions by Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz, p. 461. See also the similar reaction to
the "largest and most efficient technical installations for the extermination of peo-
ple" in Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals (United Nations War Crimes
Commission, 1948), p. 12.

Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 213

80. Memoirs of Dr. Paul Bendel, reprinted and translated from the French
Temoignages sur Auschwitz (Amicale des Dports d'Auschwitz, 1946) in Pressac,
Auschwitz, p. 469. Bendel worked with the Sonderkommandos.

81. Alfred Franke-Gricksch, undated report, "Umsiedlungs-Aktion der Juden,"
reprinted in Pressac, Auschwitz, p. 238.

82. Globocnik was the organizer of the Belzek, Sobibor, and Treblinka death
camps.

83. Rudolf Hoss, "Meine Psyche, Werden, Leben, u. Erleben," autobiography,
Institut fiir Zeitgeschichte (IfZ) 13/4, p. 86. Franciszek Piper, "Estimating the
Number of Deportees to and Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp," Yad
Vashem Studies 21 (1991), p. 87.

84. Vkssac, Auschwitz, "pp. 132, 184.

85. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (Harper Collins, 1992), p. xv.

86. See Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenuerfolgung in Ostgalizien
1 941-1 944. Organisation und Durchfiihung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens
(Oldenbourg, 1996), pp. 241-252. For the liquidation of all remaining Jews in the
Lublin district in November 1943, the concentration camp Lublin chose to resort
to mass shooting even though gassing apparatus was available. See Tomasz Kranz,
"Das KL Lublin — Zwischen Planung und Realisierung," in Die National-
sozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Entwicklung und Struktur, Band 1, ed. U.
Herbert et al. (Wallstein, 1998), pp. 377-378. Christopher Browning, "The
Development and Production of the Nazi Gas Van," in Fateful Months (Holmes &
Meier, 1985). Gas vans had been developed first for use against the handicapped in
operation T-4.

87. Bischoff to Topf & Sohne, 11/2/43, "Krematorium III," repreinted in Pressac,
Auschwitz, p. 360.

88. Fressac, Auschwitz, p. 227.

89. Bauman is the primary representative of this view. See also Langdon Winner,
Autonomous Technology (MIT Press, 1977).

90. Testimony of Dr. Bruno Tesch, British Military Court Hamburg, 4 March 1946,
pp. 18-25. Tesch's gassing specialist, Dr. Joachim Drosihn also visited
Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbruck and admited to having learned of
the gassing of human beings in 1942. Testimony, 3 March 1946, p. 18. Testimony
of Emil Sehm, 1 March 1946: 9-12 claimed that Tesch had worked with the SS to
adopt gassing to killing human beings in the autumn of 1942, exactly when the SS
began developments Crematorium II & III. Regarding Peters, Urteil des
Schwurgerichts Frankfurt, 27/5/55, ZSL VI 439 AR-Z 18a/60: 16-17.

91. Article by Peters and E. Wustinger, "Sachenentlausung in Blausaure-
Kammern," offprint from Zeitschrift fur hygienische Zoologie und Schddlings-
bekdmpfung from 1940, received by the Neubauleitung Auschwitz, 317 I'M, US
Holocaust Memorial Museum microfilm RG-11.001M.03: 42 (502: 1: 332).

214 Allen

92. Firm H. Kori GmbH to Haumptamt CIII of the WVHA, 2/2/43, RG-
11.001M.03: 42 (502: 1: 332). This organization is confirmed on much earher
drawings that are reproduced in Pressac, Auschwitz, pp. 31-38.

93. Hauptabteilung CIII/3, 8/6/42, "Aktennotiz," RG-11.001M.03: 28(502: 1:
138). A weekly report covering the 14th to the 19th of July, 1941 by Karl Bischoff's
predecessor Schlachter, RG-11.001M.03: 34 (502: 1: 214).

94. Unsigned, 12/9/41, "Erlauterungsbericht," RG-11.001M.03: 34 (502: 1: 218).
Also Karl Bischoff, 15/7/42 and 13/3/42, "Erlauterungsberichte," same film (502:
1: 220) and (502: 1: 225) respectively.

95. Chief of Amt AUgemeiner Bauaufgaben to all SS Bauinspektionen, 11/3/42,
"Entlausungsanlagen," RG-11.001M.03: 43 (502: 1: 335). On Degesch chambers
at Lublin, see the Polish article prepared on gas chambers with diagrams for the
Eichmann trial, IfZ Eich 1427.

96. Wirths, 4/12/42, "Besprechung beim Landrat des Kreises Beilitz," RG-
11.001M.03: 43 (502: 1:332).

97. Eley, "German History and the Contradictions of Modernity," p. 103.

98. Paul Weindling, "The Uses and Abuses of Biological Technologies: Zyklon B
and Gas Disinfestation between the First World War and the Holocaust," History
of Technology 11 (1994): 291-298.

99. See Bischoff, 9/5/43, "Aktenvermerk," RG-11.001M.03: 35 (502: 1: 233) and
Wirths to Hans Kammler, 10/8/44, "Bericht uber die Wirksamkeit der
Kurzwellenentlausungsanlage," 11.001M.03: 43 (502: 1: 333).

100. Affidavit of Henryk Tauber, reprinted and translated in Pressac, Auschwitz
(pp. 482-501).

101. Pressac, Auschwitz, pp. 171-181, 380.

102. Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide (Knopf, 1991), p. 204.

103. See for example NO-2368, affidavit of Friedrich Entress.

104. Source of quotes here and above: Lyndall Urwick, "Organization as a
Technical Problem," in Papers on the Science of Administration, ed. L. Urwick
(Institute of Public Administration, 1937), p. 49.

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy
Making: The British Origins of Operational
Research

Erik P. Rau

We live in an age of systems and statistics. In the twentieth century, their
representations migrated from engineering and the sciences to popular cul-
ture. We have come to understand events in everyday life as interrelated
phenomena occurring within abstract structures. Since World War II, oper-
ational research (OR) has been an important instrument by which this dual
proliferation has taken place.' Although the intrusion of statistical and sys-
tems thinking into everyday life has recently attracted attention from his-
torians of technology, science, and mathematics, surprisingly few historians
have examined operational research.^

Operational research is primarily concerned with modeling the behavior
of complex systems — miHtary, regional development, health care — using
statistical and probabilistic methods, with an eye toward increasing effec-
tiveness and predictability. Since its origins in World War II, OR has spread
to most nations, assisting government officials, business executives, and
university and other institutional administrators in coping with complex,
systems-oriented problems. It has exerted significant influence on other sys-
tems methodologies, such as systems analysis and systems engineering.

Virtually the only part of OR's past that has received any attention is its
origins in World War II, primarily because many of its first practitioners
were prolific scientists who either wrote autobiographies or otherwise
wrote extensively about their wartime experiences. But that material fails
to capture much of the significance of OR's origins. In this essay, I argue
that, beyond the problems in military operations that OR helped solve, the
field is significant for the system of patronage that sustained it. How did
operational research become a recognized field of expertise by the end of the
war? Techniques used and problems solved will not reveal the answer;

216 Rau

although they are certainly an important part of the story, they alone can-
not explain the conferral of authority upon a rather diverse — not to say
confused — array of practices. Authority was conferred and a new profes-
sional identity formed through a working relationship between scientists
and military officers within a framework of patronage.

The state (including the miUtary) as patron and promoter of technical
expertise is not a particularly new subject to historians, but much of their
attention has been focused on earlier periods. World War II and its after-
math remain understudied. Yet this period is crucial for understanding the
modern state and recent political culture. Brian Balogh has recently
observed, regarding the American case, that not until World War II did the
federal government and the professions build a regular and permanent part-
nership, the Progressive Era and the New Deal notwithstanding.^

The emerging historical writing on pohtical cultures encourages the
fusion of political history's traditional focus on government and parties with
social history's emphasis on race, ethnicity, class, gender, and other identi-
ties. There is no reason for professional identities to be excluded from this.
Indeed, the formation of new forms of technical expertise during World
War II and the Cold War sheds light on the expansion of the state, for only
through patronage of new forms of expertise was this expansion possible.
In some cases, these new professional identities also play a role in the recent
evolution of political cultures, for political discourse is often framed by
technical knowledge or findings. The Cold War also involved the transfer
of technical knowledge and expertise to allied and client states. In addition,
reconstruction in Japan and Europe and independence in formerly colo-
nized states encouraged the prohferation of new forms of expertise, such
as operational research.''

OR's origins shed light on all these processes — the growth in the state's
(i.e., the military's) capabilities, the framing of strategic debates, and the
sharing of technical expertise between allies. The creation of this new tech-
nical field coincided with scientists' increasing influence on and ambition in
policy making; World War II caused the authority of civilian technical pro-
fessions to be renegotiated. How this process took shape is the focus of this
essay. Why was OR a British invention? What was its nature and how was
it shaped by the constraints of practice? What led to its rapid proliferation?
These questions cannot be answered in strictly technical terms. Nor are they

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 217

of narrow technical interest. They ultimately structure the relationship
between technique and power. I will explore these issues in three sections.

The first section will deal with the Britishness of OR's origins. OR's
British- American roots owe much to the commitment of those two nations
to radar technology. Other combatants during the war supported radar
research, but the British first entrusted their scientists and engineers to help
forge policy on how a radar system should be used as well as how it should
be built. In the beginning, "operational research" referred less to a specific
set of skills (at first there were no disciplinary standards) or a professional
identity than to a relationship of trust established between a military com-
mand and a group of civilian radar researchers attached to it. OR, in other
words, grew out of the institutional and work culture of the prewar British
air defense system.

In the second section, I will explore how operational research developed
its identity as a scientific field between late 1940 and late 1941. The staff of
the first OR groups were primarily engineers interested in the radar system.
They functioned and behaved much like engineering consultants. In con-
trast, Britain's elite scientists were more generally interested in controlling the
integration of civilian technological expertise into the war effort, including
strategic planning and policy making. Their ambitions formed the core of the
Social Relations of Science movement.^" I will argue that these elites, led by
physicist Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, created a disciplinary identity for
operational research on the foundation of the engineers' work.*" They did so
in order to realize their broader objective of influencing military decision
making. Working successively for the Royal Army, the Royal Air Force, and
the Admiralty, Blackett transformed an engineering activity into a field sci-
ence of warfare. Historians of science have recently shown interest in the
field sciences precisely because scientists cannot control the context of their
work to the extent they can in a laboratory. Instead, they must negotiate the
content, procedures, and priorities of their scientific work — even the nature
of their scientific identities — with other social groups who share the same
space.^ This process of negotiation, I will argue, defined operational research
during its early development under Blackett and others. In the absence of
any professional standards or techniques, practitioners from a wide variety
of technical fields fell back on the techniques of their own disciplines, adjust-
ing as necessary to local circumstances and work cultures. Meanwhile, they

218 Rau

negotiated with local commanders over the priority of their work and access
to information and authority. The tools in this bargaining included scien-
tific knowledge of new military technologies and (more important) of sta-
tistics and probability theory. But much also depended upon the personalities
involved. Blackett devoted considerable attention to developing and insti-
tutionalizing a relationship of trust with his military patrons. Patronage, at
least as much as skill with quantitative techniques, provided the basis of
OR's identity during the war years.

In the third section, I will examine OR's rapid proliferation after 1941.
Scientists enthusiastically promoted OR with the support of their patrons
in the services and ministries.* Ironically, despite OR's tendency to reinforce
centralized control, the scientific ehte was unable (and, in some cases,
unwilling) to centralize OR activities under its jurisdiction. Instead, OR
groups accommodated their local military commanders or ministry offi-
cials. OR remained a localized phenomenon, defined by local circum-
stances. Its practice and meaning varied from command to command;
differentiation among OR groups commonly included group structure, per-
sonnel, types of problems, access to information, and work procedures. A
consequence of this localization was that OR groups tended to adopt the
general perspective of their military patrons. This became problematic when
the Western Allies retook the offensive in 1943 and military commanders
debated strategic policies. Uncertainties and genuine differences over how
to proceed often led to competition and even conflict among commanders,
officials, and, by extension, their OR groups and scientific advisors. The
development of bombing policy involved several such incidents.'

Instances of overlapping and competing forms of expertise not only shed
light on the making and implementation of wartime strategic policy; they
also foreshadow some of the problems that haunted attempts at linking
knowledge to power in the later twentieth century. The development of
countercultures and criticisms of technocracy in a variety of industrial states
by the late 1960s indicated a more widespread discontent with the alliances
among government agencies, private institutions, and the professions —
alliances that seemed to preclude popular participation.'"

In the conclusion, I suggest how historical research on operational
research may shed light on postwar state building and its connection to
civilian expertise.

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 219
"Born of Radar"

"Operational research was, in fact, born of radar," remembered Robert
Alexander Watson-Watt after the war." Though Sir Robert was hardly a
disinterested observer (the Scottish engineer had helped manage Britain's
radar development program), he at least correctly identified the context in
which "operational research" arose. Most of the other combatants in World
War n had independently and secretly begun research into the use of radio
waves for detection and location of aircraft by 1939, but only Britain
formed an OR program during these years. The only other nations that
would follow suit during the war were English-speaking countries, and even
these did so primarily in response to British encouragement. '-

What made OR British? Most participants in OR's early years have
tended to pose the question somewhat differently, regarding the lack of
operational research in other nations as an abnormality needing explana-
tion. Some authors have suggested that Germany did not spawn OR groups
because science cannot develop "normally" under totalitarian regimes."
But historical scholarship on scientists, engineers, and physicians in Nazi
Germany, the Soviet Union, and other authoritarian states reveals a range
of responses in expert communities to such political climates, including
accommodation and collusion." Researchers' progressive self-image does
not always mesh well with their historical behavior.'^" What requires expla-
nation is the development of a new form of expertise labeled "operational
research" in Britain, not its absence elsewhere. The latter approach assumes
that the emergence of OR, and by extension any other form of expertise, is
somehow normal. I argue quite the contrary: OR's emergence was due to
peculiarities in the British radar program, in which civilian researchers
enjoyed great influence in shaping air defense policy.

The construction of Britain's air defense during the 1930s was champi-
oned by civihans. Air defense was a goal that citizens across the political
spectrum could embrace. ''' Within the Royal Air Force, however, few offi-
cers supported the cause, in part because the RAF's identity had been
founded on the airplane's potential to wage strategic (i.e., offensive) war-
fare but also because few could imagine effective anti-aircraft measures
against the bigger, faster, longer-range bombers then being designed.'^ In
the aftermath of Japanese air attacks on the East Asian mainland in 1932,

220 Rau

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin gloomily predicted that "the
bomber will always get through."'^ Nevertheless, public calls for defensive
measures swelled after the Nazis' electoral victory in Germany, and they
eventually found an echo within the Air Ministry. There, in late 1934,
Director of Scientific Research Harry E. Wimperis and the meteorologist
Albert Percival Rowe convinced Air Ministry officials to establish a
Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence (CSSAD) consisting of
members drawn from the scientific community." This committee was to
survey scientific and technological developments that seemed promising for
air defense. Besides Wimperis (Rowe served as committee secretary), it
included Sir Henry T Tizard (a chemist and rector of the Imperial College
of Science and Technology with a long history of service to the government
in general and the Air Ministry in particular), Archibald Vivian Hill (a
Nobel Prize-winning physiologist who had spent World War I studying air
defense problems), and Patrick Blackett (a rising star in the physics com-
munity whose previous military experience was a short wartime tour of
duty in the Royal Navy that included the Battle of Jutland). The commit-
tee first convened on January 28, 1935.'"

Winston Churchill, recently installed on the super-ministerial Committee
of Imperial Defence, grumbled that an Air Ministry committee could not be
objective. Yet available evidence suggests that CSSAD was dominated by its
civilian membership, not by the Air Staff.^' This set a pattern that would
continue in the years before the war: civilian scientists and engineers played
a leading role in shaping air defense policy by recommending what would
be built and how it would be used; they shaped the discussion of policy mat-
ters. CSSAD was chaired by Tizard, and it soon became known as the
Tizard Committee. Wimperis also held open the door for other civilian
researchers. Shortly before the committee first convened, Tizard invited
Robert Watson-Watt, then superintendent of the National Physical
Laboratory's Radio Research Department, to explore the potential of using
radio waves as an anti-aircraft weapon.-- Watson-Watt's staff soon dis-
missed the weapons angle, but suggested that radio waves could be used to
detect and locate large aircraft. The British had stumbled across the basis
for radar.

The Tizard Committee immediately seized upon Watson- Watt's idea and
gave its development top priority.^' After a preliminary demonstration in

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 221

February impressed the RAF's top research and development officer, Air
Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the Air Ministry established a development
outpost, first in Orfordness and then at Bawdsey Manor (on the English
coast, near the River Deben).^'' Civilian researchers thus played a critical
role in launching Britain's radar development program. In practice, they
also managed the research program, despite its being formally administered
by the Air Ministry. Watson-Watt was appointed supervisor, and members
of his staff at the National Physical Laboratory formed the initial core of the
research team.

Civilians continued to guide the program in other critical ways.
Possessing gear for the detection and location of aircraft would benefit
Britain only if it were properly integrated into an air defense system that
took full advantage of it. Civilians took early moves to make sure that radar
would be. Although other radar enthusiasts besides Dowding could be
found on the Air Staff, the officers had taken no steps to work on air defense
procedures. Tizard seized the initiative.

Before outlining Tizard's moves, however, I should sketch out the nature
of the early radar technology, for it imposed constraints on and opportu-
nities for the overall system. Among the few who knew of its existence,
radar was regarded as a device that multiplied the effectiveness of fighter
aircraft. Until this point, the Air Ministry, working with limited resources
and under treaty restrictions, supported a building program that empha-
sized bombers as a deterrent against potential enemies. The bankruptcy of
this strategy became apparent as Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe grew. It became
clear that Britain could not produce the number of interceptors needed for
a viable defense in the foreseeable future." Radar was intended to bridge
this viability gap by increasing the potency of the available fighters. This
was a tall order for the relatively primitive equipment designed by the
Bawdsey Manor team. The early sets produced long wavelength signals,
resulting in poor resolution. The sets were also difficult to use. Instead of
the round screen with a circular sweep that is familiar today, the visual out-
put of the early radars consisted of two beams, one displaying the range of
the target and the other showing displacement. Moreover, the early sets
were not terribly accurate. As late as 1938, the equipment could not give
reliable information about enemy altitudes. Finally, radar equipment was
large and bulky. Sets small enough to be installed onboard aircraft would

221 Rau

not come into service until after the war started.^*^ In short, the early gener-
ations of radar equipment were bulky, inconvenient, temperamental, and
extremely limited. Radar was not a technological "quick fix."

Tizard was well aware of these limitations in mid 1936, and he appreci-
ated the need to integrate radar into a system that overcame the new tech-
nologies limitations and accentuated its strengths. To do so, he turned from
technology to policy. Few military officers would have dared to intervene
in the research and development effort, yet Tizard, a senior Air Ministry
scientific advisor, began to intervene in operational matters. According to
his biographer, Tizard encountered no great opposition when he sought the
Air Staff's approval to run a series of unofficial air defense trials.'^ Intended
to last a few weeks, these trials stretched out to well over a year, during
which scientists and officers collaborated freely. The trials were held at the
RAF's station at Biggin Hill, located outside London under the major air
routes connecting the metropolitan area to Central European destinations.
The experiment consisted of a series of mock air battles in which prototype
radar instruments tracked attacking "bombers." Defensive forces
attempted to use the radar data, supplied at regular intervals to a "head-
quarters," to call "fighter" units into action and direct them to their prey
by radio. ^* Dowding, promoted and charged with executing Britain's air
defense, eagerly adopted the procedures that RAF officers (many of whom
were kept ignorant of the exact nature of radar technology) developed in
conjunction with Tizard and the Bawdsey team. The basic techniques and
vocabulary developed at Biggin Hill later formed the basis for air defense
operations under Dowding during the Battle of Britain.^'

Two characteristics of the emerging air defense system deserve closer
attention since they reveal important aspects of civilian authority within
the system's organizational culture. The first is that the air defense system
was centrally controlled and was dependent upon radar equipment.
Centrahzed control constituted something of a departure from traditional
air defense tactics, which left much of the initiative in the hands of squadron
leaders who flew with their patrols. Radar significantly reduced the initia-
tive of these pilots and transferred it to the senior officers on the ground.
Some pilots chafed at this loss of initiative. During the Biggin Hill trials,
Tizard felt compelled to ease the way through frequent interaction with air
crews, acting not as a scientific advisor but as a fellow pilot.^" In the autumn

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 223

of 1940, as German bomber attacks rocked British cities, Dowding's com-
mand was itself rocked by insubordination in the "Big Wing controversy,"
which led to the aging commander's ouster.^' That civilian experts strength-
ened centralized control against local initiative was not lost on the junior
officers.

The second critical aspect of the air defense procedures was its lack of
automation, despite its centralized nature. The novelty of radar and the
popular appeal of fighter aircraft has blinded most observers to the fact that
much of the work of the early British air defense system was done by hand,
on the ground, and out of sight. Radar stations and fighter aircraft (and
their pilots) have received the lion's share of historical attention, but they
were only the inputs and outputs of a vast information-processing system.
This system employed a great number of RAF and Women's Auxiliary Air
Force (WAAF) personnel, who operated the radar and observer stations,
cleaned up the information the stations produced ("filtering"), interpreted
and plotted the results, and then transmitted them to the command centers
("telling"). There the aggregate information was plotted on large map
tables. Senior officers reached decisions, then sent orders to launch defen-
sive strikes back down the hierarchy to field commanders at selected air
bases. Thousands all across Britain were employed in these operations; the
effort expended in organizing, training, and managing them was enor-
mous.'^ Significantly, civiHan researchers enjoyed a great deal of influence
over this effort, which gave rise to operational research.

The air defense system's characteristics — temperamental technology, high
centralization, low automation — allowed civilian experts to invent a role
for themselves within the system's emerging organizational culture. But that
role required an interface that permitted civilians to operate within the hier-
archical confines of a military command. Operational research provided
that interface.

The term "operational research" was first coined to describe the engi-
neering troubleshooting aimed at overcoming radar technology's short-
comings. Before Bawdsey Manor became functional as the first prototype
radar station, in 1937, the Biggin Hill experiment provided the sum total
of everyone's experience with a modern air defense system. No one knew
what to expect as the station powered up. More detailed procedures were
needed for plotting, filtering, and telling, and RAF officers needed training

224 Rau

in operating and managing Bawdsey and other stations as they became
operational. No one had more than a theoretical understanding of how the
whole system would work. Not until this point could specific procedures for
plotting, filtering, and telling radar data be described in detail. RAF officers
also needed training in operating the radar stations. These tasks fell to Eric
C. Williams, a young engineering professor leading a small research group
at Bawdsey Manor. WilUams and his group worked closely with Squadron
Leader Raymund G. Hart, the RAF officer responsible for administering
operational radar stations." Neither side seems to have thought the
arrangement sufficiently unusual to comment on it at the time.

This small civilian foray into military operations became more pro-
nounced as operational issues continued to arise. When the 1937 summer
air exercises revealed that the radar equipment at Bawdsey responded well
but the rest of the control system performed disappointingly, the Williams
team helped to identify and remedy the bottlenecks. ^'' Such work may have
constituted nothing more than standard engineering practice, but it
nonetheless indicated a growing dependence among officers on civilian
technical knowledge. The next summer, during the Munich crisis, the addi-
tion of several radar stations during the air exercises produced confusion
when wildly conflicting data from the different stations overwhelmed the
control system. Wilhams's team responded by proposing alternative meth-
ods of producing, filtering, and transmitting information that bridged over
radar's weaknesses.^^ Finally, during the 1939 summer exercises, Williams's
team was split into two main groups, with Williams managing a section
supervising the radar operations at Fighter Command headquarters at
Stanmore. A telephone engineer, G. A. Roberts, led a roaming contingent
of engineers among the various radar stations. ^"^ A. R Row, the erstwhile
secretary of the Tizard Committee who had succeeded Watson-Watt as
supervisor at Bawdsey,^^ observed that the activities of these groups had
become large enough to be organized as a formal organizational function.
Since Williams and Roberts focused on operations rather than on develop-
ment, Rowe referred to these engineers as the "Operational Research
Section." As Williams himself wryly noted after the war, the title was sim-
ply a bureaucratic convenience.^^

Accepting the civilians' technical authority, Dowding and several mem-
bers of his staff petitioned Rowe to detail a team of Bawdsey engineers to

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 225

Fighter Command. This invitation represented an attempt to tap civilian
expertise for military ends without disrupting their civilian identity.
Dowding did not want to induct the engineers into the military; their value
lay in their hnks to the Bawdsey research community. Rowe obliged
Dowding. For both Dowding and Rowe, the arrangement was simply for
bureaucratic convenience; administrative formality was merely made to
reflect and facilitate what collaborating engineers and officers had already
estabhshed in practice. "Operational research" denoted no recognized skill
at that time. In fact, the name was dropped when William, Roberts, and
others moved to Stanmore; the group was first named the Radar Research
Section, then renamed the Stanmore Research Section in February 1940.
These labels illustrate that the earliest OR activities were identified pri-
marily by technology or by patron, rather than by specific practices.

The specific practices these civilians performed seem almost banal today,
consisting largely of troubleshooting the implementation of a complex tech-
nological regime at Fighter Command.^' Can such humble beginnings alone
reveal how they became the basis for what soon became a recognized and
respective technical field and why this technical field developed in Britain?
What the above suggests is that OR developed in Britain because it proved
to be a convenient interface among the authorities of different kinds of
experts, technical and military. Within a culture that celebrated civil soci-
ety and in which the intermingling of state and civil society has been his-
torically regarded as problematic, the first OR section provided an
institutional solution to the problem of establishing trust between officials
and civilians.'"'

"Scientists at the Operational Level"

During 1940 and 1941, operational research transcended its engineering
origins and was transformed into a science, specifically a field science of
warfare. The shift occurred as members of Britain's scientific elite were agi-
tating for a more prominent role in British military policy making. OR's
transformation stemmed from their ambitions. For their part, military com-
manders accepted civihan OR groups as a hedge against uncertainty, both
technological and organizational. The first commands to adopt OR after
Fighter Command — the Army Anti-Aircraft Command and the RAF

226 Rau

Coastal Command — were also among the commands most besieged by
equipment and personnel shortages, often having to cope with the inade-
quate planning of mihtary superiors or government ministries.'" Perceived
neglect encouraged officers' unorthodox maneuver of appealing to scientific
outsiders for aid. These intersecting interests of officers and scientists held
the potential for the innovative collaborations that later adopted the name
"operational research." This was no simple or linear development from the
arrangement at Fighter Command. The Fighter Command group developed
from the relatively narrow concerns of getting the air defense system to
work. Transformed into a science, OR became part of the scientific elite's
political agenda.

The scientists' ambitions extended directly from the Social Relations of
Science movement, which emerged during the tumultuous years of the
1930s and culminated during the war years. '^^ Economic difficulties at
home and the rise of fascism abroad had politicized Britain's scientific elite
during that decade."" The left wing of the movement — the "scientific social-
ists," including the physicist John Desmond Bernal, the zoologist Lancelot
Hogben, and the biologists J. B. S. Haldane and Joseph Needham — have
received the lion's share of historians' attention.'*'' However, the Social
Relations of Science movement drew members from a wider political spec-
trum.''^ Further toward the political center were Tizard and Hill. Political
convictions did not shape these scientists' approach to their work. Rather,
the converse was true: their political convictions were shaded by hopes
they shared for their profession.""^ From pamphlets and articles published
during this era, it seems clear that many scientists came to politics in the
1930s out of professional frustrations — particularly over the perceived
underutilization of science in the economic (and later military) emergency
that Britain faced. "'^

Tizard, Hill, and Blackett were all of the SRS movement, and the radar
program provided them with an outlet which they fully exploited. Tizard's
influence in RAF research policy, already substantial by the mid 1930s,
continued to rise during the early war years, in part because of radar.
During these years his stature allowed him to help mobilize the scientific
community to lobby for greater influence in the war effort. A. V. Hill was
even more assertive, spearheading a successful drive to attach scientific
and engineering advisory committees to Churchill's war cabinet. In 1942

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 227

he launched an attempt to form a "Scientific General Staff" that would have
the kind of planning and coordinating authority over the scientific com-
munity that the military general staff enjoyed over military forces. Hill envi-
sioned that such a body would also address the war cabinet directly. Hill's
effort in this failed, but his ambition and its broad support in the scientific
community signaled the transition among some scientists from a stance of
apolitical objectivity to an embrace of activism.''* Others active at the inter-
section of research and activism included J. D. Bernal, the zoologist Solly
Zuckerman, Robert Watson- Watt, and Patrick Blackett. Not coincidentally,
all these scientists became early champions of operational research.
Reformulated as a scientific endeavor, OR promised scientists opportuni-
ties in military policy making. Moreover, the insights they gained at the level
of military commands bolstered their confidence and authority in dealing
with political and military leaders in strategic matters. In short, OR formed
an integral part of scientific activists' ambition to colonize warfare.

Yet the process by which OR underwent its transformation began with
surprisingly little premeditation. The program of setting up "scientists at
the operational level," as Blackett put it, was not an outright attempt to
somehow hijack OR from the engineers. Yet by 1942 "operational
research" described scientific undertaking within military commands.
Descriptions of OR became more methodologically prescriptive; more
important, they often alluded to the system of patronage in which OR was
inextricably embedded.

Just how was operational research claimed for science? Patrick Blackett
was one of the leaders in this endeavor. A physicist trained in Ernest
Rutherford's laboratory in Cambridge while a young naval officer at the
end of World War I, Blackett soon developed a reputation as an experi-
mentalist, especially in extracting information about subatomic particles
from cloud chambers. His occupation required familiarity with statistical
methods and probability theory, and it led him to understand modern life —
warfare included — in probabilistic and statistical terms. Blackett was also a
lifelong Fabian socialist, serving at one time as president of the left-leaning
Association of Scientific Workers. Later in life, he served in Harold Wilson's
Labour government as the scientific advisor to the Ministry of Technology.
As Baron Blackett, he spoke in the House of Lords on the importance of
harnessing science to alleviate social problems. Economic development in

228 Rau

the post-colonial world was a favorite theme, as it was for many on the sci-
entific left. Clearly, Blackett, like many others of his generation, saw social
and political activism as complementary, not contradictory, to a scientific
career/'

In 1940, Blackett's contribution to Britain's defense had reached a lull.
Extremely active on the Tizard Committee through the 1930s, he had taken
on a number of studies concerning radar's impact on anti-aircraft tactics.™
The Royal Army's Anti-Aircraft Command (known as "Ack-Ack") provided
close defense of metropolitan areas against the enemy bombers that eluded
Fighter Command. But with the start of the war, the Tizard Committee fell
dormant and Blackett turned his talents to bombsight design for the Royal
Aircraft Establishment at Earnborough.^' This was narrow work, far
removed from the questions of tactics and operating conditions that he had
tackled earlier. As he later wrote, "one might conclude that relatively too
much scientific effort has been expended hitherto in the production of new
devices and too little in the proper use of what we have got."^-

To his friends, it seemed that Blackett was languishing at Earnborough.
One such friend was Hill, who tried to engage his friend in more interest-
ing and important work. Hill knew that Anti-Aircraft Command needed
someone familiar with radar technologies. The command's top officer.
Army General Sir Frederick Pile, struggled with supply and personnel short-
ages, for which he held rival ministry and military officials responsible."
Among his early difficulties was a problem involving gun-laying radar
equipment. Hill met with Pile to discuss his grievances and then suggested
he secure a scientific advisor. Hill arranged a meeting between Blackett and
Pile in August 1940 at which Blackett agreed to serve as Pile's scientific
counsel. ^''

Only scant information is available with which to analyze Pile's and
Blackett's evolving relationship.'' However, we do know roughly what tran-
spired during their association. Blackett retained his civiUan status by
remaining on the Supply Ministry's payroll, yet he took his orders exclu-
sively from Pile and recognized no other authority while in his advisory
capacity. Blackett persuaded Pile to allow him to recruit a team of civihan
scientists on similar terms. Within 6 months the group grew to eleven mem-
bers, including representatives from the physical and biological sciences."'
The reaction of Pile's officers is not clear, except that they understood the

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 229

civilians as a group apart. Formally named the Anti-Aircraft Command
Research Group, the civilians were more commonly referred to by the offi-
cers as "Blackett's Circus."

Blackett exploited the group's anomalous status to craft for it a distinct
and constructive role. He interpreted the group's assignment as a purely sci-
entific venture. In a memorandum he wrote: "... a considerable fraction of
the staff of [the research group] should be of the very highest standing in sci-
ence. . . .The atmosphere required is that of a first-class pure scientific
research institution, and the caliber of the personnel should match this."
As such, its members would not take on "daily routine responsibilities in
relation to the staff work of the headquarters"; the team was to be kept
"free for non-routine investigations and researches. "^^ Their duty, in other
words, was to reflect the work culture of the laboratory, not that of the
engineer or that of the shop floor. Because he constructed the group's duties
as qualitatively different from those of the officers, Blackett anticipated no
intrinsic conflict between the two groups: "... very many war operations
involve considerations with which scientists are specially trained . . . and in
which serving officers are in general not trained."'^ For Blackett, total war
in the modern era was a cooperative venture to which scientists could make
independent contributions.

Of what did these contributions consist? The first problem Blackett's
Circus confronted (presumably the one that had spurred Pile to seek out-
side help) concerned the gun-laying radars that had recently begun arriving
at Ack-Ack. The gun-laying radars were intended to help aim anti-aircraft
guns at German bombers during night attacks. By the late summer of 1940,
British interceptors had thwarted Germany's invasion plans (the Battle of
Britain) and the Luftwaffe had begun considering nighttime raids on met-
ropolitan areas (the Blitz). At that time interceptors were not equipped with
airborne radar, and thus air defense of Britain's cities fell largely to Ack-
Ack. In practice, anti-aircraft guns were aimed slightly ahead of their tar-
gets, since enemy planes moved at great speed and altitude. Anticipating
the future position of the target was achieved with a device called a pre-
dictor. Crews looking through a predictor's rangefinder tracked the aircraft.
The predictor (actually a mechanical calculator) extrapolated the proper
aiming point as its crew plotted the target's course. Night attacks, however,
made visual tracking impossible. For such occasions, the gun-laying radars

230 Rau

would replace the human operators. Unfortunately, an oversight in their
design led to a fatal compatibility problem: the radar sets produced elec-
tronic output, but the predictors relied on mechanical inputs. Blackett
faulted the radar designers for "a certain lack of imaginative insight into
operational realities." With a technological fix not readily available, the
Circus developed methods of plotting radar information manually and
then feeding the data directly into the predictors by hand. They also
designed some easily manufactured plotting devices to help automate the
process.^'

Yet such work was basically engineering, and it resembled what Blackett
considered the "routine investigations and researches" that he wanted to
avoid. Technical problem solving, he insisted, "must be left entirely to the
technical branches of the Service in collaboration with the research and
development establishments and to the manufacturing firms," which his
scientists could assist most appropriately "by interpreting (a) the opera-
tional facts of life to the technical estabhshments, and (b) the technical pos-
sibilities to the operational staff. "'^° Thus Blackett positioned the Circus as
an intermediary between the producers and users of technology. But above
all, they would be scientists. Blackett was far more interested in transferring
the scientists' laboratory skills and methods — close observation, quantita-
tive measurement, critical analysis — to the battlefield. In fact, the detail
work involved in developing plotting methods for the predictors was soon
handed over to a special unit that Blackett persuaded the Ministry of Supply
to create: the Anti-Aircraft Wireless School in Petersham. *■'

Nevertheless, Blackett, far from being doctrinal, adopted a heterodox
approach. He wrote that the Circus "must not copy in detail the technical
methods of any other science, but must work out techniques of its own,
suited to its own special material and problems. "''- Such "material and prob-
lems" were the very stuff of command: determining the best tactics, strategy,
and operations under given constraints. Although the scientists had no expe-
rience in military matters, Blackett believed they could judge the effectiveness
of a particular military operation through analysis. What led him to this con-
clusion was his conviction that the problems of modern warfare were sus-
ceptible to statistical and probabilistic reasoning: "It is clear that an
intelligently controlled operation of war, if repeated often enough with rea-
sonable tactical latitude allowed to the participants, will tend to a state where

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 231

the yield of the operation is a maximum, or the negative yields (losses) a min-
imum. . . . Success in most operations of war ... is due to the sum of a num-
ber of small victories, for each of which the chance of success in a given
operation is small. "^' Not only did Blackett believe in using quantitative
measures to understand the effectiveness of past or present operations, he
also insisted that they could predict the likelihood of success of planned oper-
ations." By developing standards of measurement, precision, observation,
and analysis, Blackett began to establish a field science of warfare.

Adapting scientific practices to a martial setting required a great deal of
negotiation. Blackett's vision of scientific warfare depended upon his sci-
entists' access to battle and intelligence data. Here the scientists necessarily
relied upon the military staffs they served. Access to battle scenes and to
intelligence and operational reports was, of course, highly restricted. The
scientists enjoyed such access only at the pleasure of the commander. That
Blackett could gain access to such information indicates his skill in earning
Pile's trust and/or Pile's willingness to go outside estabhshed military chan-
nels for help. More remarkable still is Blackett's expectation of freedom in
criticizing officers as he saw fit: "... the work of [a scientific group] at a
Command must inevitably involve suggestions for improvement."'^''
Ensuring the trust of officers under such conditions, Blackett realized, was
important to the Circus's effectiveness.

Thus, the relationship that the scientists enjoyed with officers was as cru-
cial to success as the methods they used. In fact, interactions with military
counterparts may have formed an even stronger basis for the Circus's iden-
tity than standards of measurement or precision. The quantitative techniques
that the scientists employed were generic to many scientific fields; effective
application of these hinged on the particular relationship the scientists
enjoyed with the command. Blackett realized that the key to success was
trust, which he scrupulously cultivated with Pile and his staff. He insisted
that "the . . . group must be an integral Part of the Commander-in-Chief's
staff and all the reports or recommendations must be to the C-in-C of the
command." Otherwise, he predicted, Ack-Ack's staff officers "would rightly
feel aggrieved and the intimate collaboration between operational Service
staffs and . . . research workers . . . would become impossible."'''

Through discretion, Blackett's scientists achieved a remarkable level of
access to intelligence reports and were allowed to participate in planning

232 Rau

and policy making at Anti-Aircraft Command. Blackett later summarized
a small number of the group's activities during his 6-month stay at the com-
mand.'^ In one instance, scientists were called in to analyze why coastal bat-
teries were more successful in shooting down German planes than their
inland counterparts. The scientists concluded that these installations were
not more successful; their "success" lay in overoptimistic "kill" claims that
could not be corroborated since the reported hits occurred over water. The
scientists took the opportunity to recommended statistically informed
reporting techniques. In another case, Blackett was invited to suggest how
limited numbers of anti-aircraft guns and radar sets could be distributed to
offer the city of London maximum protection. Using geometrical model-
ing and probability theory, the scientists suggested a configuration that
maximized the protective cover of the guns.'"^

It is difficult to evaluate the Circus's influence in concrete terms, for too
little information is available to link their policy recommendations to suc-
cessful outcomes. The evidence that does exist has tended to be anecdo-
tal, the postwar reminiscences of participants. Some are counterfactual
or inconclusive. For instance, last-minute deliveries of guns and radars
made Blackett's advice on the placement of London's anti-aircraft gun
installations moot. Debating whether or not they would have worked is
strictly an exercise in conjecture, in which Blackett indulged after the war.
Perhaps the best indication of the civilians' value that we currently have
is the Circus's long-term popularity in the army. The Circus eventually
grew into an OR organization for the entire army.''' And when Blackett
was lured away to another command. Pile complained: "They have stolen
my magician."^"

In March 1941, with the German aerial onslaught beginning to ebb,
Blackett seized the opportunity to transfer his analytical methods and orga-
nizational strategies to another military unit. Like the army's Anti-Aircraft
Command, the RAF's Coastal Command suffered supply and personnel
problems due to its relatively low status within its own service. Although
first assigned reconnaissance duty, it soon shouldered the job of U-boat
hunter, for which it was woefully prepared. Its crews had no operational
doctrine, little equipment, and practically no training to counter the U-
boat threat.^' Since the beginning of the war, its effect on German sub-
mariners had been primarily psychological; its "kill rate" stood at only 2

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 233

to 3 percentJ^ Thus, its commander, Air Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill,
had as much incentive as Pile to turn to outside help.

Nevertheless, Blackett's arrival at Coastal Command seems to have been
orchestrated from above. Once again. Hill figured in the chain of events. In
early 1941, he pushed the War Cabinet's Scientific Advisory Committee
(which he had helped create) to recommend the assignment of a scientific
advisor to Bowhill. The committee discussed the matter with the Secretary
of State for Air, Archibald Sinclair, who backed the idea. The Air Staff, on
the other hand, hesitated, in part because Blackett's appointment to Pile
was known to have been a source of embarrassment to the army general
staff. Air Staff resistance finally folded in the face of pressure from Sinclair.
The Secretary of State for Air further dictated the selection of Blackett as
director of the effort. ^^

Sinclair's actions may have been influenced by an idiosyncratic Air Staff
officer. Air Marshal Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferte. Joubert felt little loyalty
to Air Staff's sacred cows or prejudices. He had been, along with Dowding,
an early supporter of radar, especially its application to the anti-submarine
problem. Early in the war, Joubert was named Assistant Chief of the Air
Staff for Radio, and thus the Air Staff's radar champion. He promptly
pushed for the creation of a Development Unit for Coastal Command to
look into anti-submarine applications.^'* In the autumn of 1940, at Joubert's
request, A. P. Rowe assigned John C. Kendrew, a leading chemist, to lead
the unit, bestowing upon him the title Radio Operational Research Officer.
Kendrew's tasks coalesced around educating Coastal Command staff offi-
cers in the intricacies of radar. ^'' It was a hmited role, and both Sinclair and
Joubert wanted to eliminate it in favor of something akin to Blackett's group
at Ack-Ack. It was Joubert who, after Blackett had been lured away, broke
the news to Pile, with the consolation that Blackett would be returned to the
army officer within 6 weeks. ^'^ But Blackett never returned, and within 3
months Joubert joined Blackett at Coastal Command headquarters in
Northwood after relieving the aging Bowhill. Blackett could hardly have
chosen a more receptive patron.

Blackett's arrival at Coastal Command completed the transformation of
operational research into a science of warfare. Until that point, Blackett had
not bothered to give his activities a name — probably because he regarded
them not as the basis for a new discipline but as a vehicle that permitted

234 Rau

scientists to participate more fully in the war effort/^ With Blackett's arrival,
however, Kendrew's position as Radio Operational Research Officer was
abolished and the title assigned to the new group of scientists Blackett
recruited: the Operational Research Section. From that point forward, the
name became inextricably linked to the general study of military operations
by scientists at the command level.

With Joubert at the helm at Coastal Command, the OR Section grew
rapidly, eventually boasting a staff of more than 60. Moreover, the civihan
scientists began to enjoy the right to review most tactics and operations;
later, they would even intervene in strategic matters. Their specific tasks
have been commented on elsewhere. ^'^ The important point is that OR's
identity (if not its practice) remained rooted not to the local pecuUarities of
technique but to the attempt to institutionalize alliances between local com-
manders and civilian scientists.

Blackett tried to set the terms of such alliances in a brief he wrote for the
Admiralty staff in the autumn of 1941. This brief, intended to persuade the
Admiralty to adopt operational research, prescribed how OR groups should
be organized and attached to mihtary commands. Blackett spent far less
energy prescribing the content of the work, which he considered negotiable.
Blackett's brief also appears to have been intended for a broader audience
than just the Admiralty. Despite his later modesty about the memorandum,
its broad prescriptions are indicative of a general blueprint rather than a
specific pitch to a limited audience.^' In fact, within 3 months of Blackett's
presentation, copies of it were circulating not only among Britain's top offi-
cers but also among American military and scientific personnel. Most likely,
he intended it to serve as a primer for a wider audience of military and gov-
ernment officials.^"

"Not as Questioning and Independent as They Could Have Been"

The rapid promotion and proliferation of operational research during 1942
should be seen as part of the more general effort among the scientific elite
to influence policy making in the war effort. That year also saw A. V. Hill
make his bid to establish the "scientific general staff" in the War Cabinet.'*'
Scientific advisors to the Admiralty successfully lobbied for Blackett's
appointment as the Navy's OR expert.^' Charles G. Darwin, grandson of

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 235

the famous Cambridge naturalist, was appointed to oversee OR's expansion
in the army.^^ And in the RAF, nearly every major combat command
adopted an OR section during 1942 or shortly thereafter.^"* The scientific
leaders also promoted OR overseas, encouraging their counterparts in allied
nations to follow suit. An OR service was soon established in the Royal
Canadian Air Force, followed soon thereafter by one each in the
Mediterranean, Indian, and Far Eastern theaters.*' Tizard, Watson-Watt,
and others urged American scientists to take up the cause. Vannevar Bush,
the engineer responsible for mobilizing much of the American research com-
munity for the war, was told by Darwin that OR was "held here [in Britain]
to be far and away the most important application of science to military
affairs, being so much more direct than the technical developments which
have hitherto been the main contribution."**' By 1942, OR enthusiasts had
concluded that scientific expertise could make much broader contributions
to the war effort than simply aiding research and development projects, and
that new weapons might not even be the wisest expenditure of Allied sci-
entific capacities.

The campaign to proliferate operational research proved generally effec-
tive, for it spread among the English-speaking combatants during the rest
of the war. This proliferation also caused some unexpected difficulties.
Ironically, despite its wide adoption, OR remained a locahzed phenome-
non. Blackett himself had encouraged this when he had advised OR scien-
tists to develop methods suited to local circumstances.*^ Their success is
reflected in OR's rapid adoption. Commanders were not compelled to
adopt an OR section, and few officers would have bothered taking on the
scientists if they had not derived value from the association.

OR's malleability reflected the scientists' tendency to adopt the general
terms and goals of their military patrons. To be sure, the scientists did not
uncritically adopt the opinions of their commanders. But almost all those
who served in OR groups and documented their experience after the war
recount episodes of having to win over officers' acceptance. Moreover, their
memoirs often exaggerate the level of independent action or thinking. David
Edgerton has recently suggested that British scientists' postwar image as
loyal patriots but independent and principled opponents to military
excesses does not stand up to historical scrutiny.** Freeman Dyson, for
instance, has railed against the excesses of the strategic bombing campaign

236 Rau

while acknowledging his participation in RAF Bomber Command's OR
Section, which rationalized portions of that campaign.^' The convergence
between OR groups and their commanders is a consequence of the work
environment in which OR practice was carried on. Even things as basic to
a scientific undertaking as data collection were predicated on the system of
patronage that supported OR. OR data was by definition miUtary intelH-
gence, and thus restricted. Without a basic agreement about the mission of
a command, no trust could develop between a command and its OR sec-
tion; without trust, no access to data; without data, no meaningful opera-
tional research.

With local circumstances affecting both the content and the practice of
operational research, variation among OR sections in organization, in per-
sonnel, in practices, and in research agenda became all but inevitable. It is
of no small symbolic weight that members of some OR groups, particularly
those in overseas commands, relinquished their civilian status, took com-
missions, and donned uniforms. Such variation held potential difficulties.
Although none of the scientists advocated standardization of practice, most
recognized that the patronage system under which OR scientists worked
might compromise their control over the field. Starting about 1942, Tizard
and others advocated techniques such as rotating personnel between OR
groups and development programs. Besides acquainting OR practitioners
with the latest weaponry developments, rotation increased scientists' con-
trol over OR. This and other schemes failed to materialize, however, leav-
ing prerogative in the hands of officers.

The provincial outlook of most OR sections held the additional threat
of encouraging conflicts among scientists working for different OR groups.
The potential for such conflicts grew as the Western Allies gradually
reclaimed the initiative from Germany during 1943. The increasing prior-
ity placed on coalition warfare led to competition among commanders,
ministers, and cabinet officials over how the war should be fought and
which commands and missions would receive priority. The establishment
of a Supreme Headquarters for Allied Expeditionary Forces, with US Army
General D wight D. Eisenhower presiding as chief, added a fillip to this
trend. The information produced by OR groups often provided grist for
strategic debates, and occasionally the OR sections themselves participated
in them. In an atmosphere of uncertainty, with access to intelligence lim-

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 237

ited by local circumstances, OR sections often became advocates for their
patrons or partisans for their own strategic views. In any case, the ideal of
objectivity was difficult if not impossible to achieve. Uncertainty created
the possibility of disagreement among scientific advisory bodies, including
OR sections.

The scientists themselves, however, never considered such tensions to be
products of the patronage system under which they worked. Preferring to
see themselves as independent partners of and equals to the officers they
served, they were hard pressed to reconcile the image of objective science
with emerging differences among scientists over strategic policy. Some went
as far as to accuse colleagues of having political motivations or of being
bad scientists. As one scientist put it, "not all scientists . . . were as ques-
tioning and independent in their judgments as they could have been."'"
Ironically, the very patronage system that gave OR its identity precluded
such independence.

The Western Allies' strategic bombing campaign opens a window onto
this situation. The strategic bombing program was planned and carried
out amid great uncertainty surrounding its effectiveness to the Allied cause.
The theory of strategic bombing, to which the RAF largely owed its status
as an independent branch of the British military, promised that air power
could destroy the enemy's capacity to wage war. Just what constituted legit-
imate and effective targets (military positions, industrial areas, worker
housing, national morale), how those targets could best be attacked (by
daylight "precision bombing" or more indiscriminate "area bombing"),
and with what weapons (high explosives, incendiaries, either with fast or
slow fuses) remained under debate for most of the war.'' Military planners
and government officials hoped that operational research groups, together
with other scientific bodies — particularly the Ministry of Home Security's
Department of Research and Experiments — would generate sufficient
empirical data on the effects of bombing to dispel some of the uncertainty.
In view of the variety and magnitude of the stakes invested in the bomb-
ing program, however, the potential for clashes remained high.

As it happened, Britain's first empirical data on the effects of bombing
was extracted not from German ruins but from its own urban rubble, the
result of Germany's bombing attacks. Stricken cities were visited by civil-
ian experts from the Ministry of Home Security's Department of Research

238 Rau

and Experiments (better known by the name of its headquarters, Princes
Risborough). The Princes Risborough group included architects, engi-
neers, physicists, physiologists, insurance actuaries, fire fighters, and oth-
ers. From mountains of debris, these men painstakingly catalogued the
bombs and incendiaries in the German arsenal and assessed their effects —
structural damage, production stops, injuries, subdued morale.'- In the
early war years, the physicist J. D. Bernal and the zoologist Solly
Zuckerman compiled reports on the attacks on Hull and Birmingham,
helping to establish the Princes Risborough group as an authority on
bombing effects. These reports, and the assumptions about industrial
economies that underlay them, formed the basis from which the Western
Allies planned their bombing campaigns against German-occupied
Europe. Not until the postwar strategic bombing surveys were conducted
did it become apparent that the data and the assumptions were often
incomplete and misleading.''

In an effort to conserve bomber aircraft, Britain did not launch a sus-
tained bombing program until the summer of 1941. That August,
Churchill asked his scientific advisor, Frederick Lindemann, to undertake
a study of the progress to date. Lindemann reviewed more than 650 strike
photographs taken during June and July, and his conclusions disturbed the
War Cabinet. He found that, of the 6103 sorties flown in the previous 2
months, only 4065 (roughly two-thirds) actually resulted in an attack on
the designated target; in the remaining sorties, crews never found the tar-
get. Of the bombers that attacked their designated target, only one-third
dropped their load within 5 miles of it.'"* At subsequent War Cabinet meet-
ings, officials and officers debated the merits of the strategic bombing
offensive in light of Lindemann's evidence. Put on the spot, the Bomber
Command's leader. Air Chief Marshal Richard Peirse, immediately estab-
lished his own Operational Research Section in order to investigate his
outfit's poor performance. A. P. Rowe's radar researchers again formed the
early core of the group, which focused primarily on navigation. D. G.
Dickins, who had helped Tizard run the 1936 experiments at Biggin Hill,
assumed leadership of the section. Peirse's conversion to OR, however,
could not save him. The Air Staff relieved him of his responsibilities on
February 22, 1942, preferring the no-nonsense Air Chief Marshal Arthur
Travers ("Bomber") Harris.'^" Harris adopted the now-orphaned OR

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 239

group, first assigning it tasks related to navigation and then broadening
its assignments to cover radar operations, bombing accuracy, defensive
gunnery, and other aspects of bombing missions."" It would seem that by
1942 patronizing an OR group held political appeal as well as technical
utility.

The shakeup at Bomber Command did not end War Cabinet scrutiny,
however. The following February, Lindemann continued his investigations
into bombing effects. In the absence of solid German data, Lindemann
decided to use that of the Princes Risborough team as a proxy. Zuckerman
had not yet worked out conclusions from the collected mass of informa-
tion, but under pressure from Lindemann he handed over the data.
Lindemann then drew his own conclusions.'^ Most important of these was
that bombing missions at night, although too inaccurate to cause signifi-
cant damage to Germany's military or industrial infrastructure, might still
be effective in reducing German morale. This reasoning served as a moral
justification for what was later euphemistically called "area bombing," the
indiscriminate bombing of built-up urban areas under cover of darkness.
Churchill's subsequent support of area bombing stemmed from several
sources, but Lindemann's report was undoubtedly influential. '•* Originally
intended as a temporary measure until precision bombing became feasible,
area bombing became the theoretical backbone of Harris's strategic oper-
ations for the rest of the war.

In April, when Zuckerman finished his report, his conclusions opposed
Lindemann's. Bernal and Zuckerman had found that residents of Hull and
Birmingham suffered no long-term decline in morale from the destruction
visited upon them, and this undermined area bombing's raison d'etre.''
The Air Staff simply shrugged off these conclusions. But because the shift
to area bombing held strategic repercussions for Britain's other two mili-
tary service branches, Churchill turned over the scientist's conclusions to
the army staff and the Admiralty for comment. At the Admiralty, the
Director of Naval Intelligence asked Blackett, newly ensconced as the chief
of naval operational research, to comment on Lindemann's argument,
while the Air Staff referred their copy to Tizard. Both these men reached
separate, but almost identical, estimates of the number of Germans killed
by the area-bombing campaign; these estimates were far below
Lindemann's. Blackett concluded that traffic accidents killed more

240 Rau

Germans per month than the bombing campaign.'"" Faced with this sting-
ing criticism, Lindemann revised his report, this time making housing stock
rather than German Uves the objective. Again, Blackett and Tizard found
his estimates far too optimistic. Regardless, the War Cabinet continued its
support of the area-bombing program.'"' Blackett and Tizard both believed
that British bombers could be more effectively used by Coastal Command
against submarines than by Bomber Command against the German heart-
land. Tizard felt increasingly marginalized by the Air Staff after his criti-
cism of Lindemann was ignored; he eventually withdrew from his advisory
role and returned to academic life as president of Magdalen College at
Oxford.'"- The subsequent feud that developed between Tizard and
Lindemann divided the British scientific community far into the postwar
years.'"'

Blackett would soon suffer a fate similar to Tizard's. Early in 1943, he
was given another chance to present his opinion to the War Cabinet. The
imminent delivery of highly accurate American-made microwave radar sets
had precipitated a debate over their distribution.'"'' Not surprisingly, the
Air Staff and strategic bombing advocates on the War Cabinet wanted them
assigned to Bomber Command, while the Admiralty urged their installa-
tion on Coastal Command's aircraft. Perhaps Joubert, a high-ranking RAF
officer, could have strengthened the case for the Admiralty, but Joubert's
days at Coastal Command were numbered. His ardent support of anti-sub-
marine operations had run afoul of the Air Staff, and he was replaced in
November 1942 by the more conventional and conservative Air Marshal
John Slessor, a stalwart supporter of the bomber offensive.'"^ In late March
1943, Blackett drafted the Admiralty's position on the allocation of
microwave radar sets. Based on kill rates predicted by his former colleagues
at Coastal Command, he argued that a total force of 260 heavy bombers,
rigged as submarine hunters and outfitted with microwave radar, would
strike a mortal blow to the U-boats. This implied not only that the major-
ity of the new radar should be sent to Coastal Command, but also that 190
of Bomber Command's precious aircraft should be transferred to Coastal
Command. '"'' The Admiralty forwarded Blackett's discussion of the issue
directly to the War Cabinet.

In military circles, Blackett's report caused a stir. Slessor was furious
with Blackett for not having vetted the report with him before submitting

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 241

it. Describing Blackett's report as "slide rule strategy of the worst kind,"
Slessor aimed at discrediting the scientist. Reflecting from his retirement,
Slessor carefully praised the use of scientists in the war, but added that
"they must stick to their lasts. "'"^ Blackett may have thought it his pre-
rogative to deny Slessor a first reading, but the air marshal steadfastly
believed that the scientist had overstepped his authority and competence.
In the event, the War Cabinet reached a compromise, transferring 72 of
the heavy bombers to Coastal Command, supplemented by two American
squadrons of B-24 Liberators. These extra planes, along with the com-
bined military and intelligence forces of Britain and the United States, effec-
tively defeated the U-boat threat in the North Atlantic later that autumn.'"^
Like Tizard, Blackett found himself shut out from the inner circle of strate-
gic decision making. He felt that the military ehte had not only conspired
against him and Tizard but had also sullied their reputations as disinter-
ested advisors.'"' Interestingly, Blackett leveled his strongest accusation
against his colleague at Bomber Command. Dickins, Blackett charged, was
guilty of complicity with the air-power conspiracy through his failure to
undermine area bombing. Had "a strong and trusted operational research
section . . . been established at Bomber Command," Blackett later asserted,
then the pro-bombing stalwarts would never have been able to shrug off
Blackett's and Tizard's criticisms. Dickins, Blackett believed, had failed to
stand up to his patron's mistaken assumptions.""

Dickins became a favorite whipping boy for those scientists who, Hke
Blackett, questioned the wisdom of the area-bombing campaign. Another
detractor was Zuckerman, who had in the meantime become the scientific
advisor of Air Marshal Arthur William Tedder, the Allies' commanding air
officer in North Africa and the Mediterranean."' Because of his experi-
ence in analyzing the effects of bombing in Britain, Zuckerman was
recruited by Tedder to examine and critique Allied bombing operations in
the Mediterranean. The scholarly Tedder, somewhat of an outsider among
the Air Staff, got on well with the urbane zoologist. Zuckerman's studies
of the bombing operations against Pantelleria and Sicily convinced Tedder
that air power could be used to strategic effect if applied against railroad
marshaling yards and other transportation targets, which would serve to
harm both the enemy's long-term industrial capacity and his military logis-
tics."^ At the end of 1943, when Tedder was appointed to coordinate

242 Rau

Allied air plans for the impending invasion of Europe (Operation
Overlord), he insisted that Zuckerman return to Britain with him and join
in the planning sessions.

Nothing Zuckerman had experienced before then prepared him for the
raucous debates among British and American airmen and their learned
advisors as they vied for Eisenhower's favor. Despite the mountain of data
that had been collected by 1944, enough uncertainty persisted to spark
heated battles over the deployment of air support for Overlord. Zuckerman,
whose "Transportation Plan" was far from flawless, had to defend his pro-
posals against other advisors, who argued with some justification that the
situation in the Mediterranean did not apply to Central Europe. Zuckerman
later remembered: "I was visited by emissaries [of other advisory groups] .
. . each of whom tried to persuade me that I was misguided in relying on the
results of my analysis of the Mediterranean bomber offensive.""^ For
Dickens, still at Bomber Command and supportive of continuing the area-
bombing campaign, Zuckerman reserved special abuse. It was he who
Zuckerman accused of not being "as questioning and independent" in his
judgment as he might have been. In the end, Zuckerman's "Transportation
Plan" was adopted in a modified form that accommodated certain US and
RAF interests."'*

Accusations such as Zuckerman's and Blackett's grossly oversimplified
the complex web in which operational researchers and other scientific
advisory groups worked. To be sure, obsequiousness was possible within
the system of patronage that sustained OR, but no firm evidence has ever
suggested that any scientist flagrantly abrogated professional conduct.
Scientists' opprobrium against one another indicates primarily their own
insecurity about their role in policy making. Patronage fostered interde-
pendence, not independence. Expecting conclusions to be consistent across
OR groups denied the variation in working conditions and the lack of stan-
dardized methodology that were facts of Hfe for OR practitioners. In fact,
standardizing their methodology might well have prevented scientists'
access to the important technical policy issues they hoped to address
through operational research. Instead, they interpreted OR's success as a
matter of personal integrity and competency, a conclusion that underesti-
mated the effects of local conditions and patronage.

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 243
Conclusion

The British scientific community, particularly its liberal and leftist elites,
developed operational research as an interface between the research com-
munity and military policy makers. Through this interface, they hoped to
control the deployment of wartime technical expertise and to influence mil-
itary policy. Lacking a standardized methodology, OR scientists adapted to
the peculiar conditions and personalities within local mihtary commands.
Military patronage, therefore, became the firmament of OR's early iden-
tity. The enthusiastic response by military commanders and government
ministers encouraged OR's proliferation, creating the possibility that OR
scientists and other scientific advisors might come into conflict once the
defensive concern with tactics shifted toward an offensive preoccupation
with strategy. This possibility became reality in the debates over strategic
bombing.

Few scientists let their spirits be dampened by these squabbles, which
they remembered as a few distasteful instances in an otherwise exciting
period. Unsurprisingly, many members of the wartime elites — Blackett,
Zuckerman, Bernal, and a host of others — continued to promote opera-
tional research after the war."^ These postwar developments are beyond
the scope of this essay, yet some observations suggest how research on OR's
past provides historical insights into the postwar events concerning tech-
nology, science, and political culture.

In Britain, OR promoters built on their postwar success by suggesting
civilian applications for the field. The new Labour government's national-
ization of several major industries provided an opportunity, which several
scientists (particularly Bernal) exploited. OR's early entry in civihan gov-
ernment, however, was rather checkered, and its adoption in industry was
gradual."'^ For this reason, the center of the OR world soon shifted from
Britain to the United States, where the bonds of the Cold War's iron trian-
gle — military, industry, and the academy — continued to provide an abun-
dant source of patronage.

Building on this support, American wartime participants promoted oper-
ational research from within military services, universities, and private non-
profit "think tanks" such as the Rand Corporation. Within 10 years these

244 Rau

promoters constructed major conduits for OR's distribution: OR courses at
major research universities, the Operations Research Society of America
(supported by the National Research Council and the mihtary OR groups),
and OR's adoption by top-flight business consulting agencies."^ Eager mar-
kets for OR emerged in government agencies, large corporations, and ser-
vice organizations, particularly hospitals and philanthropies. By the early
1960s, the governments of the United States and Britain supported attempts
to export OR to other nations — first to Japan and to members of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, then to the developing world. Yet this impres-
sive growth was not without its frictions. Operational research met with
resistance, especially from social scientists (who claimed priority on some
innovations) and from competing fields such as systems analysis and sys-
tems engineering.

OR's postwar proliferation and fate raises a number of issues that tie the
history of technology and science to the study of social and political his-
tory, a connection Thomas Hughes has invited and fostered throughout his
career. OR's spread suggests that, as the twentieth century progressed, pow-
erful interests in Great Britain, the United States, and other industrialized
nations found it attractive to represent the world in terms of interrelated
technological systems whose states and processes, not to mention human
users and makers, could be understood as abstract statistical and proba-
bilistic phenomena. For some physical scientists and engineers, OR seems
to have become a new metaphysics for the systems age, providing the defin-
itive synthetic and technical overview of modern existence. Such a view nat-
urally privileges the role of technical expertise and implies an important
role for experts in policy making. Less speculatively, one may notice, as has
Theodore Porter, that the tools, methods, and procedures of science and
those of administration converged in the twentieth century, emphasizing
greater quantification and precision."^ Some historians of policy, politics,
and political culture, notably Brian Balogh, have suggested links among the
proliferation and specialization of expertise, the sustained growth of gov-
ernment agencies, and the fate of American liberalism in the twentieth cen-
tury."' Undoubtedly, OR's rapid development provides some clues to this
process. Since operational research did not long remain under Anglo-
American stewardship, having quickly spread to societies with strong, cen-
tral states (such as France), and even authoritarian regimes (such as the

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 245

Soviet Union), it affords us comparative insights into how technical exper-
tise and other kinds of authority were reconciled and mutually reinforced
within political cultures of the late twentieth century.

Notes

1. "Operational research" is the British term. In the US, the field is known as "oper-
ations research." Because this chapter treats the British origins of this field, "oper-
ational research" is used throughout.

2. On the spread of systems thinking, see Systems, Experts, and Computers, ed. A.
Hughes and T. Hughes (MIT Press, 2000). For recent work on the spread of statis-
tical and probabilistic thinking, see Gerd Gigerenzer et al.. The Empire of Chance
(Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers
(Princeton University Press, 1995). Most of the literature on OR's past has been
written by practitioners or their sponsors. The British wartime experience is out-
lined in the following works: Air Ministry, The Origins and Development of
Operational Research in the Royal Air Force (Her Majesty's Stationery Office,
1963); P. M. S. Blackett, "Operational Research: Recollections of Problems Studied,
1940^5," in Brassey's Annual (Macmillan, 1953); Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the
Universe (Harper & Row, 1979); Harold Larnder, "The Origin of Operational
Research," in Operational Research '78, ed. K. Haley (North-Holland, 1979);
Jonathan Rosenhead, "Operational Research at the Crossroads: Cecil Gordon and
the Development of Post- War OR," Journal of the Operational Research Society
40 (1989): 3-28; C. H. Waddington, O.R. in World War 2 (Elek Science, 1973); Sir
Robert Watson- Watt, Three Steps to Victory (Odhams, 1957); Solly Zuckerman,
Prom Apes to Warlords (Harper & Row, 1978). American wartime founders
recount their experiences in the following works: John Burchard, QED
(Wiley/Technology Press, 1948); Charles W McArthur, Operations Analysis in the
US Army Eighth Air Porce in World War II (American Mathematical Society, 1990);
Joseph F. McCloskey, "US Operations Research in World War II," Operations
Research 35 (1987): 910-925; Philip M. Morse, In at the Beginnings (MIT Press,
1977); Jaycinto Steinhardt, "Operations Research in the Navy," US Naval Institute
Proceedings 72 (1946): 649-655; Lincoln R. Thiesmeyer and John E. Burchard,
Combat Scientists, ed. A. Waterman (Little, Brown, 1947). Historical work on the
subject is largely of recent vintage. For historians' perspective on the British story,
see M. Kirby and R. Capey, "The Air Defense of Great Britain, 1920-1940: An
Operational Research Perspective," Journal of the Operational Research Society
48 (1997): 555-568; M. Kirby and R. Capey, "The Area Bombing of Germany in
World War II: An Operational Research Perspective," Journal of the Operational
Research Society 48 (1997): 661-677; M. Fortun and S. S. Schweber, "Scientists
and the Legacy of World War II: The Case of Operational Research (OR)," Social
Studies of Science 23 (1993): 595-642. For the American story: Fortun and
Schweber, "Scientists and the Legacy of World War 11"; P. Mirowski, "Cyborg
Agonistes: Economics Meets Operations Research in Mid-Century," Social Studies

246 Rau

of Science 19 (1999): 685-718; Andy Pickering, "Cyborg History and the World
War II Regime," Perspectives on Science 3 (1995): 1-48; Erik P. Rau, Combat
Scientists: The Emergence of Operations Research in the United States during World
War II, PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1999; Robin E. Rider, "Operations
Research and Game Theory: Early Connections," History of Political Economy 24
suppl. (1992): S225-S239; "Operational Research," in Companion Encyclopedia
of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, ed. I. Grattan-Guinness
(Routledge, 1994); Stephen P. Waring, Taylorism Transformed (University of North
Carolina Press, 1991); Waring, "Cold Calculus: The Cold War and Operations
Research," Radical History Review 63 (1995): 28-51.

3. I have found Brian Balogh's writing particularly helpful in thinking about polit-
ical patronage and expertise since 1940. 1 believe his style of analysis transcends its
American subject matter. See "Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis: Federal-
Professional Relations in Modern America," Studies in American Political
Development 5 (1991): 119-172, Chain Reaction (Cambridge University Press,
1991), and the introduction to the Journal of Policy History's special issue on social
policy (8, 1996: 1-33).

4. For a particularly lucid account of the exportation of American expertise to
Japan after World War II, see pp. 159-182 of Olivier Zunz, Why the American
Century? (University of Chicago Press, 1998). International exchange of social pol-
icy expertise and opinion has recently become a field of interest among political and
social historians. An influential work is Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings
(Belknap, 1998). Most of this hterature, however, focuses on the period before
World War II.

5. For more on the Social Relations of Science movement, see William McGucken,
Scientists, Society, and the State (Ohio State University Press, 1984).

6. For more on Blackett, see Sir Bernard Lovell, "Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett,"
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 21 (1975): 1-115.

7. See Henrika Kuklick and Robert E. Kohler, eds.. Science in the Field (University
of Chicago Press, 1996).

8. See Rau, Combat Scientists, especially pp. 77-78 and chapter 2.

9. For more on the uncertainties and disputes concerning the allied strategic bomb-
ing program, see Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War
Economy, 1944-1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 61-85. For
an excellent overview of the Anglo-American development of the strategic bomb-
ing doctrine, see Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power (Yale University
Press, 1987).

10. Balogh, "Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis," pp. 169-170; Balogh,
Chain Reaction, pp. 221-301.

11. Watson- Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 203. Watson- Watt published a second,
more expansive autobiography 2 years later: The Pulse of Radar (Dial, 1959). For
a biographical sketch of this idiosyncratic engineer, see J. A. Ratchffe, "Robert
Alexander Watson-Watt," Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society
21(1975), 549-568.

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 247

12. See Rau, Combat Scientists.

13. Kirby and Capey have used this argument in their accounts.

14. On science, medicine and engineering in the Nazi case, start with the following:
Monika Renneburg and Mark Walker, eds.. Science, Technology, and National
Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War
on Cancer (Princeton University Press, 1999); Franz W. Seidler, Fritz Todt (Herbig,
1986).

15. For a recent exploration on how scientists' behavior can diverge from their
highly touted communitarian ideals, see Daniel J. Kevles, The Baltimore Case
(Norton, 1998).

16. Support for air defense could be found in such politically divergent camps as the
leftist Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group and the conservative nationalists.

17. For a discussion of the Air Staff's strategic thinking and budgetary realities
between the wars, see Neville Jones, The Beginnings of Strategic Air Power (Frank
Cass, 1987); Barry D. Powers, Strategy without Slide-Rule (Croom Helm, 1976);
Malcolm Smith, British Air Strategy between the Wars (Oxford University Press,
1984); John Terraine, The Right of the Line (Hodder and Stoughton, 1985). The
official history of the RAF's rearmament can be found in Sir Charles Webster and
Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939-1945, vol-
ume 1, part 2 (HMSO, 1961). During the early 1930s, the main responses of most
British leaders to air attack was to advocate disarmament or deterrence. Defense
was not considered a feasible option until after the development of radar. See Kirby
and Capey, "The Air Defence of Great Britain," p. 557.

18. Baldwin's comment was delivered to Parliament on November 10, 1932.

19. Ronald W Clark, Tizard (MIT Press, 1965), pp. 105-113.

20. For more on Tizard, Blackett, and Hill, see Clark, Tizard; Lovell, "Blackett";
Sir Bernard Katz, "Archibald Vivian Hill," Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the
Royal Society 24 (1978): 71-149. Clark provides an adequate overview of the
CSSAD's early activities.

21. Clark, Tizard, pp. 1 1 1-1 12, 120-148; Thomas Wilson, Churchill and the Prof
(Cassell, 1995), pp. 34^3. Churchill was assuaged only when his friend and sci-
entific advisor Sir Frederick Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell) was installed on the
CSSAD. This set the stage for numerous disagreements between Lindemann and
the others, which eventually embroiled the entire British scientific community. For
an overview and an analysis of the controversy, see D. E. H. Edgerton, "British
Scientific Intellectuals and the Relations of Science, Technology, and War," in
National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology,
ed. P. Forman and J. Sanchez-Ron (Kluwer, 1996), pp. 20-22. McGucken [Scien-
tists, Society, and the State, pp. TIQ-TIS) recognizes that the bitterness stemmed
not from petty jurisdictional jealousies but rather from very different ambitions
regarding the organization of science for war. Lindemann was later dropped from
the committee, and the ill will generated by this episode created controversy far into
the postwar years.

248 Rau

22. Robert Buderi, The Invention That Changed the World (Simon and Schuster,
1996), pp. 54-59 and 64-76.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Kirby and Capey, "The Air Defence of Great Britain," pp. 557-558.

26. Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World, pp. 78-82.

27. Clark, Tizard, pp. 149-163.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid. (Tizard had learned to fly during his military service in World War I)

31. Terraine, The Right of the Line, pp. 194-205.

32. For a description of the "Dowding System," see ibid., pp. 173-180.

33. E. C. Williams, "The Origin of the Term 'Operational Research' and the Early
Development of the Military Work," Operational Research Quarterly 19 (1968):
111-113; Larnder, "The Origin of Operational Research," pp. 3-12; Air Ministry,
Origins and Development, pp. 1-7.

34. Williams, "The Origin of the Term," pp. 111-113.

35. Ibid.

36. Air Ministry, Origins and Development , pp. 6-7.

37. Watson- Watt was promoted as the Air Ministry's Director of Communication
Development, thus Rowe's boss.

38. Williams, "The Origin of the Term," pp. 111-113.

39. For a detailed description of the kind of tasks the Operational Research Section
undertook, see Air Ministry, Origins and Development , pp. 10-32. This account
is not necessarily chronological and does not provide a sense of how the nature of
this work may have changed over time.

40. Such trust helped to make the (quantitative) findings of this and future OR
groups acceptable and valid. For a discussion on the relationship between quanti-
tative data, their social validity, and the creation of social institutions, see Porter,
Trust in Numbers, pp. 33^8.

41. For more on the RAF Anti- Aircraft Command, see General Sir Frederick Pile,
Ack-Ack (George G. Harrap, 1949). Pile served as Ack-Ack's commander. For more
on the RAF Coastal Command, see John Buckley, The RAP and Trade Defence,
1919-1945 (Keele University Press, 1995).

42. For more on the Social Relations of Science movement, see McGucken,
Scientists, Society, and the State.

43. Ibid., p. 4.

44. The standard work on the "scientific socialists" is Gary Werskey, The Visible
College (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978).

45. McGucken, Scientists, Society, and the State, pp. 357 and 363.

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 249

46. McGucken (ibid., pp. 355-356, 361-362) points out that, after the Social
Relations of Science movement had ensured that scientists would have some access
to government decision makers, many scientists supported a second movement,
Freedom in Science, in order to prevent government planning of science.

47. Pamphlets with titles such as The Frustration of Science (Allen & Unwin, 1935)
speak for themselves. Others include Scientific Research and Social Needs, ed. J.
Huxley (Watts, 1934); What Is Ahead of Us? (Macmillan, 1937); and J. G.
Crowther, The Social Relations of Science (Macmillan, 1942). Blackett, the zoolo-
gist Solly Zuckerman, and the leftist science writer J. G. Crowther collaborated on
several of these.

48. McGucken, Scientists, Society, and the State, pp. 225-230, 248-249.

49. Lovell, "Blackett," pp. 75-85.

50. These studies are catalogued in the finding aid to Blackett's papers deposited at
the Royal Society in London. See Jeannine Alton, Report on Correspondence and
Papers of Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett (1897-1974), nuclear
physicist, 1920-1974 (Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1979).
Blackett's papers are not generally open to the public.

51. Lovell, "Blackett," pp. 53-56.

52. R M. S. Blackett, "Scientists at the Operational Level" (1941), reproduced in
his Studies of War (Hill and Wang, 1962).

53. Pile, Ack-Ack, pp. 69-104.

54. Ibid., p. 114; Lovell, "Blackett," p. 56.

55. Blackett's papers are not yet open to the general public.

56. Joseph F. McCloskey, "The Beginnings of Operations Research: 1934-1941,"
Operations Research 35 (1987), p. 148.

57. Blackett, "Recollections," p. 93.

58. Blackett makes these arguments in "Scientists at the Operational Level." This
memorandum, written for the Admiralty, represents Blackett's mature thinking on
OR. It is widely regarded as a founding document within the OR community.

59. Blackett, "Recollections," pp. 89-90.

60. Ibid., p. 93; "Scientists at the Operational Level," pp. 171-176.

61. J. G. Crowther and R. Whiddington, Science at War (Philosophical Library,
1948), pp. 94-97. Crowther suggests this was set up by physicist J. D. Cockcroft.
Blackett may have nudged the Ministry of Supply to contact Cockcroft.

62. Blackett, "A Note on Certain Aspects," p. 177.

63. Ibid., pp. 178-186.

64. Ibid.

65. Blackett, "Recollections," p. 93.

66. Ibid., p. 93.

67. Ibid., pp. 88-92.

250 Rau

68. Ibid, pp. 90-91.

69. See O. H. Wansbrough-Jones's contribution to "Operational Research in War
and Peace," Advancement of Science 4 (1948), pp. 321-322. This is part of a post-
mortem on British scientists' war experiences hosted by the British Association for
the Advancement of Science held in Dundee in the summer of 1947.

70. Vi\&,Ack-Ack,-p.l\A.

71. Buckley, The RAF and Trade Defence, p. 165. On the war against the U-boat,
compare the official history, Captain S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939-1945
(HMSO, 1954), with the recent revisionist account by Clay Blair, Hitler's U-Boat
War (Random House, 1996 and 1998).

72. Waddmgton, O.R. in World War 2, pp. 213-214.

73. Buckley, The RAT and Trade Defence, pp. 165-173.

74. Ibid.; Air Ministry, Origins and Development, p. 75.

75. Air Ministry, Origins and Development, p. 74

76. Buckley, The RAT and Trade Defence, p. 172.

77. I have found no evidence suggesting that Blackett bothered to give a name to
his activities. In any event, he appears to have been reluctant look upon OR as a
new discipline. Although he supported the founding of the Operational Research
club and its successor after the war, he regarded OR as an interdisciplinary activity
and only reluctantly supported the trend toward professionalization. For early evi-
dence of his attitudes, see R M. S. Blackett, "Operational Research," Operational
Research Quarterly 1 (1950): 3-6.

78. For the present purposes, these tasks are addressed adequately by Waddington.

79. Blackett, Studies of War, pp. 169-170.

80. On the spread of operations research in the US, see Rau, Combat Scientists.

81. See Lovell, "Blackett," pp. 75-85.

82. Ibid., p. 60.

83. Rau, Combat Scientists, pp. 101-102. See also Joseph F. McCloskey, "British
Operational Research in World War II," Operations Research 35 (1987), p. 463.

84. This is made clear in Air Ministry, Origins and Development.

85. Air Ministry, Origins and Development , pp. 125-126, 155-177.

86. Quoted in Rau, Combat Scientists, p. 101.

87. See R M. S. Blackett, "A Note on Certain Aspects of the Methodology of
Operational Research" (1943), reproduced in Studies of War, pp. 176-198.

88. See Edgerton, "British Scientific Intellectuals."

89. Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, pp. 19-32.

90. Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, p. 234.

91 . See Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy; Sherry, The Rise
of American Air Power.

Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making 251

92. For more on some of the activities at Princes Risborogh, see Zuckerman, From
Apes to Warlords, pp. 141, 242. For an American perspective on the doings at
Princes Risborogh, as well as an overview of corresponding American activities, see
J. Burchard, ed.. Rockets, Guns and Target (Little, Brown, 1948).

93. Mierzejewski [The Collapse of the German War Economy, pp. 61-85), better
than most writers, conveys the enormous complexity confronting the allied com-
manders as they struggled to reach a consensus on the air war.

94. Terraine, Right of the Line, pp. 292-298, 459-460; Sir Charles Webster and
Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939-1945
(HMSO, 1961), volume 1, pp. 178-188.

95. Terraine, Right of the Line, p. 460; Air Ministry, Origins and Development ,
pp. 43-46. The Air Ministry history details the tasks the Bomber Command OR
Section undertook and confirms that its origin in August (when the Butt report was
submitted) coincides with the command's heightened interest in navigational aids.

96. For brief summaries of Bomber Command ORS activities, see Air Ministry,
Origins and Development , pp. 46-73.

97. Wilson, Churchill and the Prof, pp. 73-75.

98. Ibid.

99. Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, p. 144.

100. Blackett, "Recollections," pp. 100-101; Studies of War, pp. 109-110.

101. Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, pp. 141-144.

102. Clark, Tizard, pp. 311-316.

103. For an analysis of this debate's conflation of morality and "good" vs. "bad"
science, see Edgerton, "British Scientific Intellectuals."

104. Terraine, Right of the Line, pp. 436-438. For more on the American devel-
opment of radar, see Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World. The official his-
tory is Henry E. Guerlac, Radar in World War II (Tomash, 1987).

105. Philip Joubert de la Ferte, The Fated Sky (Hutchinson, 1952), pp. 238-239;
Buckley, The RAF and Trade Defence, pp. 125-126. Slessor's autobiography, cov-
ering this period, is Sir John Slessor, The Central Blue (Cassell, 1956).

106. Lovell, "Blackett," pp. 62-63.

107. Slessor, The Central Blue, p. 525.

108. Terraine, Right of the Line, pp. 440^52.

109. Blackett, Recollections, p. 102. In this brief essay of his wartime OR activities,
Blackett recalls this episode with a note of bitterness.

110. Blackett, Studies of War, p. 111.

111. For more on Tedder, see Terraine, Right of the Line, p. 339. For evidence of
Tedder's admiration for Zuckerman in his own words, see Lord Tedder, With
Prejudice (Little, Brown, 1966). For Zuckerman's account of their relationship see
Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, pp. 166-215.

252 Rau

112. Xuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, pp. 210-211. For a retrospective on the
relative strengths and weaknesses of Zuckerman's analysis, see Mierzejewski, The
Collapse of the German War Economy, p. 180.

113. Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, p. 221 .

114. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, pp. 101-102.

115. The Operational Research Club was begun immediately after the war, even-
tually morphing into a full-fledged professional society, the Operational Research
Society. Blackett, who presented a paper at the society's inauguration, expressed
unease with operational research as a discipline. For him and others among the first
generation of practitioners, OR served primarily to rationalize policy making and
planning. Blackett and his colleagues continued to call for the social engagement of
scientists. As noted above, Blackett served the Wilson government and, having
earned a peerage for his wartime activities, spoke out on the issues of international
development and science policy. See Lovell, Tizard, pp. 105-106.

116. Rosenhead, "Operational Research at the Crossroads," pp. 24-26.

117. Operational research courses, aimed at graduate students in established sci-
ences, were first taught at MIT, at Johns Hopkins, and at the Case Institute of
Technology. The first two examples grew out of the administrative support that
MIT and Johns Hopkins offered the navy and the army, respectively, which mani-
fested itself in the Operations Evaluation Group (Navy) and the Operations
Research Office (Army). Not to be outdone, the Air Force formed the Rand
Corporation in addition to its in-house Operations Analysis Division even before the
service had gained independence from the army. In the hope of coordinating mili-
tary expenditure on research and development, the Secretary of Defense decided
that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have their own OR group, the Weapons Systems
Evaluation Group. The same scientists who encouraged these developments coaxed
the National Research Council into forming a Committee on Operations Research,
which culminated in the creation of the Operations Research Society of America.
They also encouraged the adoption of OR at consulting firms such as Arthur D.
Little, MacKenzie and Company, and Booz, Allen, Hamilton.

118. See Porter, Trust in Numbers; The Values of Precision, ed. M. Wise (Princeton
University Press, 1995).

119. Balogh, "Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis," pp. 70-172; Balogh,
introduction to Journal of Policy History 8 (1996), pp. 23-28.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in
France

Gabrielle Hecht

What is national identity? How does it form and reform? Why does it mat-
ter? For some time now, such questions have preoccupied cultural theo-
rists — especially historians of modern France, who have examined how
"the nation" was invoked in the French provinces in the pursuit of local
economic and political interests, shown how diverse groups throughout the
country imagined themselves as national citizens, and explored the role of
national identity talk in debates over issues such as Americanization, mod-
ernization, immigration, and colonization.' By and large, however, French
historians have not considered how the discourses and practices of techno-
logical change intervened in conceptions, meanings, and uses of French
national identity.

This absence is particularly glaring — and curious — ^for the post- World War
II period. France witnessed profound technological changes after the war: the
construction of massive hydroelectric and nuclear power plants, the devel-
opment of supersonic jets, the growth of the telephone and railway networks,
the spread of domestic apphances, and much more. These changes were
accompanied, and often fueled, by widespread debates over the meaning of
Frenchness. The changes and the debates came at a time when concern about
France's greatness — a concern driven by decolonization and fears of Ameri-
canization — penetrated all manner of political and cultural debate. Yet most
of the scholarship that addresses French national identity remains focused
on how pre-twentieth-century symbols and events become reconstituted in
French memory- Through its choice of subject matter, the very scholarship
that seeks to demonstrate the continually contested and renegotiated nature
of Frenchness has paradoxically ended up locating the essence of French cul-
ture in chateaux, monuments, hterature, and revolutionary events.

254 Hecht

This inadvertent essentializing, I submit, is but one manifestation of
broader divisions in the humanities and the social sciences that go well
beyond French history: namely, divisions between material and cultural
approaches to historical and social change. This essay proposes one way of
transcending the material/cultural divide by demonstrating how intersec-
tions between technology and national identity are crucial to understand-
ing postwar France. Technologies served as important symbols for national
identity after the war. This much cultural historians have conceded, if not
seriously investigated. More important, though, the relationship between
technological change and the meanings of national identity went both ways.
Technologies did not merely have symbolic importance; they were them-
selves the outcomes of cultural processes in which ideas about national
identity played an important role. Understanding the metaphorical and
physical (re)building of the French nation requires simultaneous attention
to cultural discourse and technological practices.

Whereas cultural historians have been guilty of ignoring technology, his-
torians of technology have been guilty of putting culture in a black box. In
practice, this has meant using culture as an explanation for technological
change rather than a process that itself requires explanation. Historians of
technology have tended to treat national identity as an unproblematic, sec-
ond-order phenomenon. In such treatments, expressions of national iden-
tity might justify large-scale technological development, but they do not
shape that development. They are hood ornaments, not engines. The con-
nection between national identity and technological development thus
appears to be "merely" symbolic. Ironically enough, such a conclusion does
not differ markedly from that reached by cultural historians

Interdisciplinary dialogue thus has much to contribute to theoretical
frameworks in both the history of technology and cultural history. In this
essay I will demonstrate, through a series of three vignettes, how these two
disciplines, broadly construed, might contribute to each other. Following
the principle of close empirical investigation that lies at the core of this vol-
ume, I will focus on the mutual construction of nuclear power and national
identity in France. Through the deployment of a number of theoretical con-
cepts, however, I also propose strategies of analyzing cultural and techno-
logical processes simultaneously — strategies which I hope will benefit those
who pursue other topics. Before proceeding to my empirical material, there-
fore, let me first discuss the concepts that constitute my analytic tools.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 255

National Identity

My conception of "national identity" is inspired by a broad range of schol-
arship on nationhood and nationalism. I ground my treatment in Benedict
Anderson's classic formulation of the nation as an "imagined community."
At the most basic level, this means that nations are not autochthonous social
units but rather communities whose coherence is imagined through politi-
cal and cultural practices. The content and the function of these imaginings
vary according to time and place. However stable a sense of nationhood
may appear, national identity is in fact continually subject to negotiation
and contestation. Ideas about national identity do not grow by themselves.
They must be actively cultivated in order to persist. Further, articulating
and rehearsing these ideas often reformulates them.^ So, I argue, does
grounding these ideas in the material reahties of technological systems.

Discussions of national identity typically refer back to the past. But ulti-
mately, national-identity discourse is not about the past per se or even about
the present. It is about the future. National-identity discourse constructs a
bridge between a mythologized past and a coveted future.'' Nations and
their supposedly essential characteristics are imagined through a telos, in
which the future appears as the inevitable fulfillment of a historically legit-
imated destiny. This process naturalizes change; it makes proposed novel-
ties appear to be logical outgrowths of past achievements. Proponents of
large-scale technological systems might thus justify modernization by plac-
ing their systems in a direct historical lineage with past national achieve-
ments, thereby giving their technologies political and/or cultural legitimacy.
Invocations of national identity are thus not gratuitous acts: this is one rea-
son why historians of technology must take them seriously. Deliberately or
not, people usually invoke the nation to perform political, cultural, and
sometimes even technological work.

Historicizing the Relationship between Technology and Politics

A common site for the invocation and negotiation of national identity is in
the discursive formulation of the relationship between technology and pol-
itics. My next analytic concept, therefore, is best formulated as a question:
How do the historical actors whom we study themselves conceptualize this
relationship?

256 Hecht

Historians have put great effort into examining the ontology of the rela-
tionships between technology and politics. Sociologists have argued that
we cannot decide ahead of time what counts as technology and what counts
as society, insofar as these categories emerge from, rather than precede, the
construction of an artifact or system/ But these scholarly efforts — and
debates over technological determinism more generally — can overlook an
important dimension of the story they seek to tell. Historical actors them-
selves do have a priori ideas about the nature and relationship of technol-
ogy and politics (or society, or culture). Their beliefs — be these behefs in
technological determinism or more complex ideas about how technology
and politics relate — shape their actions and decisions. We must therefore
ask how engineers (and workers, though I do not discuss them in this essay*")
themselves conceptualized such relationships, and we must explore what is
at stake in those conceptualizations. Thus, for example, French state tech-
nologists did not conceive of technology as something radically separate
from politics (or culture, for that matter). Quite the contrary: many of them
saw technology as a thoroughly political entity. Comprehending the rea-
sons behind and the manifestations of this view is absolutely crucial for
understanding the shape of the nuclear program and the political behavior
of the technologists who built it.

I do not mean to deny that we should seek our own understanding of
these relationships. Of course we must. But in doing so, we cannot simply
dismiss the conceptualizations of historical actors.

Technopolitics

The above considerations lead to the next theoretical concept, a notion that
I have termed "technopolitics." I use this term to refer to the strategic prac-
tice of designing or using technology to constitute, embody, or enact polit-
ical goals. Here I define technology broadly to include artifacts as well as
nonphysical, systematic means of making or doing things. Two examples of
technopolitics are nuclear reactors designed with the express goal of creat-
ing and implementing military atomic policy and optimization studies
aimed at shaping industrial policy. From the very beginning, engineers and
administrators consciously conceived of these reactors and these optimiza-
tion studies as hybrids of technology and politics. Many of the criteria that

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 257

shaped their technical choices were deliberately political. Calling these
hybrids "pohtically constructed technologies" is correct; however, it is not
sufficient, because technologists intended them as tools in political negoti-
ations. At the same time, these technologies are not, in and of themselves,
technopolitics. Rather, the practice of using them in political processes
and/or toward poHtical aims constitutes technopohtics.

Why not just call that practice "politics"? The answer lies in the mater-
ial reality of the technologies. These technologies cannot be reduced to pol-
itics. The effectiveness of technologies as objects designed to accomplish
real material purposes matters — among many other reasons, because the
material effectiveness of technologies can affect their political effectiveness.
It is precisely the technological aspect of these hybrids that shapes the kind
of political voice that technologists have — that shapes, in other words, the
nature of expert authority. (Other factors shape that voice too, of course —
especially educational background, institutional provenance, and sociopo-
litical hierarchies.) Technologists did not participate in French political life
as members of a party, or thanks to their clever way with words. They par-
ticipated because they engaged in, or supervised, or organized the design of
material artifacts. Their skills differentiated them from ordinary politicians
and contributed greatly to their authority and their influence. For all these
reasons, "politics" does not fully capture either the nature or the power of
the strategic practices in which experts engaged.

Technopolitical Regimes

The final theoretical concept I develop here is that of technopolitical
regimes. These regimes are grounded in institutions, and they consist of
linked sets of people, engineering and industrial practices, technological
artifacts, political programs, and institutional ideologies which act together
to govern technological development and pursue technopohtics. This con-
cept is anchored in Thomas Hughes's notions of technological system and
technological style. A technological system is a linked network of artifacts,
knowledges, and institutions operating in a coordinated fashion toward a
series of specified material goals. ^ Thus the French nuclear program is a
technological system whose components include state agencies, private
companies, reactors, laboratories, uranium mines, university curricula.

258 Hecht

factories, and portions of the electricity distribution network. The tech-
nopolitical regimes that I examine operate within this system. They
emanate from different institutions, and they have distinct (though some-
times overlapping) goals and ideologies. For convenience, I have labeled
the regime based in the Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique the national-
ist regime and the one based in Electricite de France the nationalized
regime. (These labels are associated with institutional stereotypes, and I
will try to characterize the regimes more subtly in my analyses.) Both
regimes sought to shape the French nuclear system.

I have chosen the "regime" metaphor for three reasons. The first reason
relates to the use of "regime" in political parlance to refer at once to the
people who govern, to their ideologies, and to the various means through
which they exert power. By analogy, "technopolitical regime" is a good
shorthand for the institutions, the people who run them, their guiding
myths and ideologies, the artifacts they produce, and the technopolitics they
pursue. The term aims both to evoke the similarity with political regimes
and to convey the difference that technology makes. Second, "regime" con-
veys the idea of regimen or prescription. The regimes I examine aim,
through the pursuit of technopolitics, to prescribe not just policies and prac-
tices but also broader visions of the sociopolitical order.* Third, "regime"
captures the contested nature of power. The two technopolitical regimes I
examine aimed at governing nuclear development at a national level and at
governing specific technological practices at an institutional level. But these
regimes were not uncontested. Just as national political regimes (democra-
tic or otherwise) must grapple with opposition, these technopolitical
regimes had to contend with varying forms of dissent or resistance, both
from outside and from within the institutions they governed. These regimes
were neither static nor permanent: a technopolitical regime is easier to top-
ple than the technological system within which it operates.

I will now turn to my empirical material in order to suggest ways in which
these concepts and analytic tools can be used to understand the simultane-
ous construction of technology, politics, and national identity. The first and
briefest vignette shows how elite state experts or "technologists" concep-
tualized the relationship between technology and politics. The second
vignette describes the two technopolitical regimes of the nuclear program
and shows how each regime built reactors as forms of technopolitics and

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 259

manifestations of national identity. The final and longest vignette explores
the "war of the systems," a prolonged battle over the future of France's
nuclear program, in order to demonstrate how technopohtics both com-
plicates and elucidates the construction of national identity.

Technologists and the Politics of National Identity

World War II led many French elites to rethink the role of the state in direct-
ing the economy (in general) and industrial, scientific, and technological
development (in particular). Investing in and guiding the modernization of
French industry would help the state revive the economy and restore the
country to greatness. Several state institutions were created to accompUsh
these goals, including the Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique (CEA) and
the nationalized electric utility company Electricite de France (EDF). A
growing class of state experts took charge of these institutions. From their
positions of leadership, these engineers, economists, and professional
administrators vigorously forged their visions of a French technological
identity.

Fundamentally, these processes involved an effort to define the relation-
ship between technology and pohtics. This effort had long historical roots,
from the French revolution to the technocracy movements in the 1920s and
the 1930s.'' In the postwar period, this effort constituted one of the mech-
anisms through which experts sought to participate in state politics and in
debates on the restitution of French greatness. On one front, technologists
tried to articulate an identity for themselves that opposed the one they con-
structed for politicians. More significantly, technologists sought to represent
their creations as essentially French, a representation they pursued by seek-
ing to efface boundaries between technology and pohtics. Let me briefly
outline the first strategy, then examine the second one in more detail.

An essential component of the technologists' identity discourse involved
characterizing politicians as corrupt, dishonest, and ineffective. Consider
this typical remark, made by an alumnus of the Ecole Polytechnique in a
speech titled "The Cardinal Virtues of the High-Class Engineer":

Do we want the best of our engineers to participate, through their acts, their pens,
and their words, in making our economy healthy again? Well then! We must immu-
nize them, from their very first steps, against the disease known as political thinking

260 Hecht

of which Machiavelli was the champion. . . . The Florentine did not hesitate to claim
that the individual should sacrifice to the State not just his fortune and his life, which
is just fine, but also his honesty, which is detestable. ... In the twentieth century, . . .
a democracy cannot accommodate long-standing deception.'"

As had been the case since at least as far back as the French Revolution,
"politicians" who practiced corrupt machinations were thus the "other"
in technologists' identity discourse.

But at a deeper level lay the implication that, because of their values and
knowledge, technologists were ultimately better equipped to pursue polit-
ical activities than politicians were. At this level, politics had to be stripped
of connotations of ideology and corruption and had to take on a broader
meaning that could encompass some of what technologists did and should
do. In this redefinition, technologists sought to efface what they claimed
was an outdated boundary between technology and politics.

One important site for the effacement of the alleged boundary between
technology and politics was the discourse about the role of technology in
the future of France. This discourse attempted both to describe what a
future technological France would look like and to define a specifically
French form of technological and industrial development. Invoking
national identity was thus essential to blurring the boundary between tech-
nology and politics.

The fundamental premise of discussions about a future technological
France was that in the postwar world technological achievements defined
geopohtical power. But this did not mean that technological pursuits all
over the world were identical. Indeed, one of the great dangers of adopting
this standard was the loss of cultural specificity. France's leading technolo-
gists worried about this, declaring in 1965: "From now on our presence in
the world depends on our ability to imprint our mark on this civilization by
means of significant contributions from French technology and French sci-
ence."" Such language fit into a whole discourse about le rayonnement de
la France (the radiance of France). "Radiance" was synonymous with the
grandeur of France; the notion referred back to glorious days past, invok-
ing Louis XIV, Napoleon, and the heyday of French imperialism. French
"radiance" was precisely what postwar geopohtics and decolonization
threatened, exactly what President Charles de Gaulle sought to reestablish
throughout the 1960s. Even in colonial relations, technologists could

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 261

achieve what eluded politicians. Writing just a year after the Algerian cri-
sis that had brought de Gaulle to power, one civil servant remarked: "In
1958, destiny knocked on the door. ... In came the technocrats who would
build the Franco-African industrial community. In them, the science of engi-
neers is united with the will of captains. The new French strategy, French
peace, will be brought to the world. "'^

It might be tempting to take proclamations about French "radiance" as
empty promotional or nationalist rhetoric, but this discourse achieved much
more than that. For technologists, it formed part of a very deliberate strategy
to colonize national politics. By repeatedly associating their technological
achievements with the "radiance" of France, technologists sought to posi-
tion themselves as legitimate actors in a political space. Their abihty to
define and represent French culture could potentially justify other excur-
sions into political life.

This strategy entailed identifying the Frenchness of French technology.
In doing this, technologists often appealed to a general sense of tradition
and history. Demonstrating a historical continuity between past and pres-
ent provided reassurance that technological culture need not imply the loss
of a French essence. For example, one group of technologists wrote that
"the beautiful" was "a traditional export of France." Cultivating the
esthetic dimension of industrial projects would not only define their
Frenchness but also enhance national prestige:

. . . beauty . . . brings prestige because it represents a considerable attraction. . . .
The CEA's installations, which receive numerous foreign visitors, would certainly
gain nothing by being hideous, and the esthetic of certain nuclear reactors, whose
cost is insignificant with respect to [the cost of the] equipment, does more for the
radiance of France than would ten times as many millions spent on propaganda.""

History — incarnated by great men and greater achievements — was another
important tool. A 1957 promotional film'"* about French industrial achieve-
ments opened with shots of Versailles and the words of Jean-Baptiste
Colbert to Louis XIV: "Sire, the grandeur of a State rests on its arts and
manufactures." A 40-minute overview of technological France followed.
The film closed with a view of two nuclear reactors under construction.
The voice-over spoke of "the latest great accomplishment of the century of
the atom, the future's answer" — at this point the film switched to a shot of
the Eiffel Tower — "this other great symbol of French industrial grandeur

262 Hecht

outlined in the sky of Paris." The relationship between modernity and his-
tory exemplified in such attempts to create a new cultural iconography
worked both ways. According to one prominent engineer, "all that subsists
in France in the way of tradition . . . will only have real value, will only be
able to shine, if the nation as a whole is sohdly of our time." Hence, just as
history and tradition were necessary in order to make French technology
truly French, modernity and technology were necessary in order to make
France truly France.

Engineers and planners thus deliberately sought to represent their objects
as political and cultural artifacts. They did not argue that their technolog-
ical achievements were universal, inevitable products of worldwide indus-
trial logic. On the contrary, they aimed at contributing to the national
debate about the future of France and the preservation and modernization
of French culture. Ignoring this debate would have marginalized them. By
contributing something new and demonstrably "French," they carved out
a central position in that debate. In this manner, defining a relationship
between technology and national identity formed the basis of a political
strategy for technologists.

This strategy was not confined to the level of discourse. Technologists
also invoked national identity in the process of building large-scale tech-
nological systems. The next vignette discusses the conflation of technology
and politics in the origins of the French nuclear power program.

Technopolitical Regimes and Technopolitics

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the French nuclear power program was jointly
run by the CEA and EDF. The CEA directed nuclear research and develop-
ment; EDF aimed to develop a national and unified power generation sys-
tem. Institutional goals thus overlapped when it came to developing nuclear
power plants.

In some respects the two institutions had much in common. Both had
been created immediately after the war for the purpose of modernizing
France's scientific and technological infrastructure. Both were state insti-
tutions, directed by ehte state technologists, with a mission to uphold the
national interest. Both were committed to state-directed technological
development, and more specifically to articulating a vision of France's
future and national identity that relied on technological prowess. In both.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 263

engineers and managers sought to direct national policy through their tech-
nological work.

Despite these similarities, however, technologists in each institution had
different visions of what France's future should look like and of how that
future should be attained. In order to characterize these differences, I argue
that distinct technopolitical regimes evolved within each institution.

The CEA was governed by what I call a nationalist technopolitical
regime." Created in 1945, the CEA was originally headed by a Communist
physicist and a Gaulhst administrator; its leaders reported directly to the
prime minister. Communists and Gaullists had both been instrumental in
the Resistance, and that gave them considerable moral legitimacy after the
war. But the Cold War ensured that this shaky partnership did not last long:
by the early 1950s, many Communists had been purged from the CEA. The
new leaders of the CEA were Gaullist nationalists who emphasized national
independence through military might.

This was a tricky position to maintain in the 1950s, a decade of consid-
erable political instability in France. Concerned with rebuilding the nation's
economy, successive governments repeatedly maintained that France was
interested only in peaceful applications of nuclear power. The new leaders
of the CEA, however, believed that France should develop military nuclear
capability, and that their job, as guardians of the French national interest,
was to implement this goal. These convictions shaped their decision in the
early 1950s to pursue gas-graphite reactors rather than another type.

In choosing which type of reactor to develop in the early 1950s, the CEA's
leaders first had to choose a reactor fuel: natural uranium or enriched ura-
nium. They chose natural uranium for two reasons. First, France and its
African colonies had ample natural uranium supplies. Building an enrich-
ment plant was beyond their financial means; buying enriched uranium
from the United States would have contradicted the goal of national inde-
pendence. Second, fission reactions in natural uranium produce, as a by-
product, plutonium that can be used in atomic bombs. Having chosen
natural uranium, the CEA's leaders selected graphite as the moderator and
carbon dioxide gas as the coolant.

The decision to develop gas-graphite reactors was immediately followed
by the appointment of Pierre Guillaumat (a Gaullist and a graduate of the
Ecole des Mines) to the CEA's top administrative post. Together, these

264 Hecht

events signaled the emergence of a Gaullist nationalist technopolitical
regime in the CEA. The CEA's new regime upheld a vision of nationalism
that excluded Communists and valued national grandeur and military
technological prowess. It also valued institutional autonomy and nuclear
expertise.

In subtle contrast, EDF developed a nationalized technopolitical regime.
EDF emerged in 1946 as the product of a consensus between state engi-
neers, labor unions, and representatives of a wide range of poHtical parties.
These men agreed that the new France should have a standardized electri-
cal network run by one public utility. After heated negotiations, they agreed
to create a nationalized institution in which labor representatives would
participate in management."^

Despite the existence of diverging ideological factions within EDF, most
could agree on a few basic issues. Foremost among these was EDF's mission:
to make France energy independent by producing and distributing the most
electricity at the least cost. More generally, the electric distribution network
united France symbohcally as well as technologically: complete electrifica-
tion would enable all French citizens to participate in the modernization of
their nation.'^ Finally, although the implementation of worker participa-
tion provoked some disagreement, few denied its value in principle.
Nationalization thus made room for everyone at EDF to embrace an ethos
of public service. Working for EDF meant apprehending and serving the
entire nation through the production and distribution of electricity. These
values, and the system of producing and distributing electricity in which
they were embedded, drove EDF's technopolitical regime within the nuclear
program.

Thus, two technopolitical regimes guided the development of the nuclear
program. These regimes were closely tied to broader political visions of how
France should modernize — visions that both came from and guided other
arenas of state-directed development. In principle, both the CEA and EDF
reported to higher state authorities, and indeed the ministries responsible
for overseeing these institutions had to approve all major policy decisions.
In practice, however, the institutions also had a great deal of autonomy. The
technopolitics produced by each institution constituted this autonomy and
determined the degree to which each institution shaped national policy,
rather than the other way around.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 265

Though distinct, the two technopolitical regimes in question cannot be
understood as radically opposed: although each regime developed its own
reactor site, limited resources forced them to collaborate on both sites. This
collaboration was fraught with conflict: each regime sought to mold its
reactors into components of its technopolitics. Reactor design and indus-
trial contracting reveals two dimensions of these technopolitics. The first
involved French industrial policy, the second national nuclear policy. I will
briefly address each in turn by comparing two reactor projects: the G2 reac-
tor, developed by the CEA at its Marcoule site beginning in 1953, and the
EDFl reactor, developed by EDF at its Chinon site starting in 1955.

Both regimes considered the question of the relationship between them-
selves (as embodiments of the state) and private industry to be of paramount
importance. Engineers in each institution produced the overall design of their
reactors, but construction had to be contracted to private manufacturers.
How should these contracting relationships be structured? Leaders in both
regimes believed these relationships had prescriptive potential: the prestige
of nuclear development provided the opportunity to set an example for other
large-scale industrial endeavors, and thus to sketch out the nation's indus-
trial future. More was at stake, therefore, than the reactor projects.

The CEA's leaders argued that French companies should not waste time
or resources competing against one another. In order to stand up to increas-
ingly large foreign corporations, French industry needed to consolidate its
resources and develop its strengths. Accordingly, they espoused what they
called a "policy of champions."'^ This involved hand-picking a single com-
pany to design each major reactor component, without issuing a request
for bids. Out of these industrial "champions," one company would be
selected to act as the general contractor for the project. Building G2 would-
n't make the "champions" rich, but it would give them know-how, confi-
dence, and prestige, which would help later in obtaining foreign contracts.
This policy would enhance France's industrial base in the short term and its
economy in the long term. The "policy of champions" hence guided the
contracting of G2's construction and constituted one prescriptive dimen-
sion of the CEA's technopolitical regime.

When it came time to collaborate on the EDFl reactor, the CEA's lead-
ers wanted EDF to pursue the same "policy of champions." But the engi-
neers who headed the EDFl team had different ideas. They espoused the

266 Hecht

anti-capitalist sentiment that had spawned nationalization. By building
EDFl, they were providing a public service. They should therefore opti-
mize the cost and efficiency of the reactor themselves, rather than seek to
promote specific private companies. The best way to keep costs down was
to divide the reactor into components and request bids for each one. EDF
engineers would direct the basic design of each component; private com-
panies would function as competing suppUers, rather than as conceptual-
izers. In EDF's technopolitical regime, the utility would direct nuclear power
development in the best interests of the state; private industry would merely
foUow orders. Overriding the objections of the CEA's furious leaders, EDF
engineers pursued this method in issuing contracts for their EDFl reactor."

What kind of reactor did each regime produce, and how were these tech-
nopolitics?

Figure 1 schematizes the CEA's G2 reactor at Marcoule. The core, con-
tained in a large cylinder, was made up of a stack of graphite bars and ura-
nium fuel rods. When enough rods were loaded into the reactor, the core
went critical, setting off a self-sustaining fission reaction. This fission lib-
erated a great deal of heat. Carbon dioxide gas flowing through the core
absorbed this heat and then traveled to the "energy recuperation installa-
tion," where the heat was converted into electricity.

When talking to prime ministers and other government officials, the
CEA's leaders emphasized the flexibility of G2's design. They acknowledged
that the reactor could produce plutonium, but they emphasized that it was
a prototype for an electricity-generating reactor. France, after all, was not
supposed to be developing military nuclear capabihty. A quick look at two
aspects of G2's design, however, reveals how its electricity-generating func-
tion was relegated to secondary status.

Consider first the "energy recuperation installation." The heat exchang-
ers stood outside the building that housed the reactor. In order to reach the
exchangers, the coolant had to travel through many meters of heat-dissi-
pating pipes, thereby losing a significant amount of the energy generated
by the fission reaction. Clearly, this was not an optimal way to generate
electricity from nuclear power.

Consider next the reactor's fuel loading mechanism (figure 2). Recall that
plutonium is a by-product of fission in natural uranium. In order to get
weapons-grade plutonium, though, operators had to remove the fuel rods

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 267

Raised to
Loading
Position

Control Rods

Figure 7.1

Schematic diagram of G2 (not to scale). Source: Bulletin d' Informations Scien-
tifiques et Techniques du CEA, no. 20 (1958). (drawing by Carlos Martin)

at the right time. If they waited too long, the fission reaction would "poi-
son" the plutonium, making it unfit for use in a bomb. To ensure that the
plutonium in the core would be of weapons grade, and to get enough plu-
tonium for a bomb within the next few years, they needed a mechanism to
remove the fuel rods rapidly. Had G2 been primarily a prototype for an
electricity-producing reactor, engineers would have sought to leave the fuel
in the core as long as possible, in order to extract as much heat as possible.
But such was not the CEA's goal. Engineers therefore chose a continuous
loading system, which could remove and replace fuel rods while the fission
reaction was taking place and thereby expedite the production of weapons-
grade plutonium.^" Thus, although G2 may have appeared to be a prototype
for an electricity-generating reactor, it was in fact optimized for producing
weapons-grade plutonium.

In contrast, EDF's engineers optimized EDFl (schematized in figure 3) for
electricity generation. EDF didn't have the expertise to design a different

268 Hecht

Figure 7.2

The loading machine for the G2 reactor. (CEA/MAH/Jahan)

kind of reactor, so EDFl had some basic features in common with G2: it ran
on natural uranium, was moderated by graphite, and was cooled by carbon
dioxide gas. But EDFl's design looked quite different from G2's. Most obvi-
ously, the heat exchangers were right next to the pressure vessel that con-
tained the core (rather than many meters of energy-losing pipes away), and
they were inside the reactor building (rather than outside). Further, fuel load-
ing took place while the reactor was stopped. Unlike the CEA, EDE wanted
to burn up the fuel rods as much as possible in order to extract the maximum

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 269

alternator turbine

r

psm.

Figure 7.3

A schematic diagram of EDFl (not to scale), (drawing by Jay Slagle; source: EDF,

Rapport de sijrete Chinon Al, 1980)

amount of heat. They did not want to incur the extra expense for a device
that could move rods through the reactor quickly. They also hoped that a
loading device that could be used only when the reactor was off line would
limit how much weapons-grade plutonium the CEA might later demand
from EDFl.-' EDF engineers thus produced a design they felt would make
most efficient use of both fuel rods and investments and would be sufficiently
simple to provide a good basis for future reactors." They had designed a
reactor whose performance and capabilities reflected their regime. They
hoped that in future collaborations the CEA would have to work with their
parameters.

For both regimes, the nuclear program provided a means of recasting
French national identity in technological form. The language with which
engineers described their accomplishments, both to engineers in other indus-
trial sectors and to the general public, makes this clear. Marcoule's director,
for example, repeatedly noted that "the Arc de Triomphe . . . would easily
fit in the vast metallic structure that shelters . . . G2."-^ The prestige that
Marcoule derived from being associated with historical monuments was

270 Hecht

transitive: as a great and uniquely French achievement, Marcoule would
embody and strengthen French greatness. EDF engineers used similar lan-
guage to discuss Chinon, emphasizing that building nuclear reactors ful-
filled their mission of public service to the French state and the French
people. ^''

Both technopolitical regimes thus aimed at tightening the links between
technological (nuclear) prowess and national identity. Both regimes pro-
posed visions of France's political and industrial future and, through this
future, France's identity. They did so not just with their language but also
by building reactors that were hybrids of technology and politics. G2 and
EDFl were neither inevitable products of some inherent technological logic
nor infinitely malleable products of political negotiation. Rather, each
resulted from a seamless blend of pohtical and technological goals and
practices.

The two reactors can thus be understood as technopolitics. CEA and EDF
technologists deliberately — even proudly — sought to make their technolo-
gies instruments and embodiments of politics. Politics and policy making
gave the reactor projects significance, both within each regime and in the
interactions each had with its surroundings. Thus, for example, EDFl was
important not because it would actually produce economically viable elec-
tricity (EDF's first truly commercially viable reactor, EDF4, went on line in
1969) but because it represented the first step in a nationalized nuclear pro-
gram that would enact and strengthen the utility's ideology and its indus-
trial contracting practices. At the same time, the technological form of their
politics mattered. French military nuclear policy in the 1950s did not take
the form of a ministerial decree; it took the shape of G2 (and other related
technologies). This meant, for example, that in 1954 the assurances of the
CEA's leaders that Marcoule reactors were both electricity-generating pro-
totypes and plutonium producers enabled one prime minister to abstain
from deciding about a bomb. Official French state policy declared a purely
peaceful interest in atomic energy, while the CEA's actual technopolitics
performed a military nuclear policy.

The CEA's nationalist technopolitical regime found form in its Marcoule
reactors and in its "policy of champions," which ultimately sought to pro-
mote the consolidation of French industry into a single company per indus-
trial sector. EDF's nationalized technopolitical regime found form in its

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 271

Chinon reactor and in its efforts to micro-manage industrial contracting,
which (somewhat ironically for a nationalized company) sought to preserve
competition between private companies as a means of ensuring cheap elec-
tricity. Both regimes sought to develop prescriptions for governing nuclear
development within their institutions and for directing nuclear and indus-
trial policy on the national stage. Embedding these prescriptions in artifacts
and practices constituted a strategic move in which technology and politics
were deliberately conflated.

The reactors at Marcoule (figure 4) and Chinon (figure 5) thus functioned
as technopolitics in several interconnected ways. Through these reactors,
the two regimes aimed to control both the technological and the political
dimensions of nuclear development. Both regimes claimed the knowledge
and authority to decide what was right for the nation, and to hereby define
aspects of national identity. These claims, in turn, had two purposes: to val-
idate some technopolitical choices with respect to others, and to vahdate
technopolitics as a decision-making process with respect to the state and
the rest of the nation.

The tight connections that each regime drew between its technopolitics
and its vision of France's national future would have lasting effects on the
development of the nuclear program. The effects of these connections

Figure 7.4

G2 and G3 in 1960. (CEA/MAH/Jahan)

Ill

Hecht

Figure 7.5

An aerial view of the Chinon site in 1966. (EDF Phototheque)

became especially visible in the late 1960s, a time of renewed crisis both in
the nuclear program and in the state's consideration of how industrial
change would express and guide the nation's future and identity. In order
to demonstrate this point, let me now turn to the third and final vignette.

The War of the Systems

After the reactors described above, EDF went on to build five more gas-
graphite reactors in France. The CEA, meanwhile, erected three reactors at
Marcoule, built several atomic bombs (mihtary development became offi-
cially sanctioned by the government in 1958), and worked hard on other
aspects of the fuel cycle (mining, manufacturing fuel rods, and processing
spent fuel).

Over the course of the 1960s, however, the leadership of EDF's tech-
nopolitical regime gradually began to shift from engineers to economists,"
and this led to changes in the regime itself. The new leadership had differ-
ent ideas about the meaning of nationalization and public service for the

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 273

regime. They also grew increasingly impatient with the CEA's role in the
development of nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, private companies had
been complaining about EDF's industrial contracting policy, which retained
design control within EDF rather than distributing it to the contractors.
EDF's new managers were considerably more sympathetic to the demands
of private industry than the utility's engineers.

The tensions caused by these rising conflicts over nuclear development
came to a head in 1966-67, when US companies began selling hght-water
reactors on the international market at prices below cost. The American
reactors appeared cheaper than the French gas-graphite reactors, and so
they attracted the interest and attention of EDF's new managers. Purchasing
an American reactor license, they mused, might be a good way to keep
French private companies (who would then build reactors under the license)
happy, and might provide an escape from the CEA's purview'''

But EDF's new economist-managers faced major obstacles to implemen-
tation of this plan. Gas-graphite reactors were so tightly associated with
French national identity that purchasing an American license could be tan-
tamount to an act of treason. Within the nuclear program, engineers from
both the CEA and EDF who had invested their entire professional careers
in the gas-graphite design strenuously objected to a change in course. At
the highest level of government, meanwhile, de Gaulle and some of his advi-
sors firmly believed that the gas-graphite program was absolutely crucial to
the maintenance of France's independence and identity. The biggest prob-
lem now facing EDF's new managers, therefore, was precisely the confla-
tion of technology and politics that had made the program so successful in
the first place. Gas-graphite reactors had become unassailable in large part
because they were technopolitical (not just technical) artifacts. In order to
buy an American license, EDF's managers would have to dissolve the par-
ticular blend of technology and politics that had crystallized around the
question of national identity. This dissolution was no small task: it took
the form of a three-year debate conducted in a wide variety of locations
that came to be known as "the war of the systems."

A series of technical mishaps at Chinon's reactors triggered the start of
this war.^^ I will skip over the details of these mishaps here,-^ but I will note
the bad publicity they attracted in the national press. In Le Monde, Nicolas
Vichney blamed both the private builders and EDF. French technology.

174 Hecht

Vichney wrote, could not meet the high standards demanded by nuclear
plants. Furthermore, EDF had flawed industrial contracting practices.^' The
utility had tried to build something too compHcated too fast, and the tech-
nical abilities of its personnel could not rise to the occasion. The satirical
weekly Le Canard Enchaine interpreted events more bluntly: "In short, our
home-grown nuclear equipment doesn't hold up." Le Canard gleefully
noted de Gaulle's displeasure at the incidents: "Heads will roll, citizens!"^"

Within the nuclear program, the technical mishaps and the publicity they
generated gave EDF's new managers the leverage they needed to propose
redefining the meaning of "public service" within the utility's technopolit-
ical regime. They wanted to serve the public not simply by making elec-
tricity but also by creating a climate congenial to the development of private
industry — which meant reshaping the utility's industrial contracting policy,
and perhaps ultimately changing reactor systems. This outlook worried
labor militants, who wanted to preserve a regime in which EDF would con-
trol industrial development. The proposed change in orientation would
betray EDF's original mission as the model for a new society because it
would rob employees of decision-making powers.^'

Would nationalization continue to entail the contractual and techno-
logical subordination of private industry? Or would it acquire a new,
more ambiguous meaning in which EDF would make national energy pol-
icy by supporting rather than dominating private industry? The war of
the systems provided the terrain on which these questions played them-
selves out.

The war of the systems also became a proving ground for a larger debate
about France's future that had been raging in the upper echelons of the
French state. De Gaulle wanted France to conduct independent industrial
and technological development. His prime minister, Georges Pompidou,
wanted French industry to become economically "competitive" in the
international market: for him, the nation had to forge a distinctive identity
primarily through its economic activity. This meant interdependence with
other nations, not independence from them. The war of the systems mir-
rored these two poles. The technopolitical importance of the nuclear pro-
gram meant that the process and the outcome of this war would carry great
weight in broader debates about France's industrial future and identity.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 275

The first battle in the war was waged in a joint CEA-EDF committee
appointed to study the various reactor systems operating in Europe and
America. Headed by Jules Horowitz of the CEA and Jean Cabanius of
EDF,^^ the committee presented its results in late January 1967. It immedi-
ately became obvious that the effort to smooth over differences by appoint-
ing a joint committee had failed. Though Horowitz and Cabanius agreed
on some basic numbers (such as the capital costs for various reactors), they
differed on the technopolitical meaning of these numbers — so much so that
they produced two separate reports. For my purposes here, the four most
important points of contention between the two reports were ( 1 ) the mean-
ing of public service, particularly with respect to private industry, (2) the
proper criteria for evaluating the performance of the gas-graphite system,
(3) uncertainty in the data, and how to handle it, and (4) the "political"
dimensions of the issue, and who had the responsibihty to analyze these
dimensions. The CEA's report maintained tight links between technology
and pohtics discussed above in order to justify the gas-graphite system.^'
EDF's report severed these links in order to advocate the switch to the light-
water design. In his introduction, Cabanius wrote: "Political considera-
tions, in particular those relating to the acquisition or manufacturing ... of
enriched uranium are up to the pubHc authorities and will not be raised in
this study. The rapporteur has strictly limited himself to the industrial, tech-
nical, and economic side [of the issue]."''*

Cabanius went on to characterize the state of French industry, and in so
doing he expressed a desire to redefine public service within EDF's tech-
nopolitical regime. EDF, he wrote, played the dual role of customer and
supplier to French industry. As a supplier, it had to offer its clients — namely,
the manufacturers (privileged here over the general public) — the cheapest
possible electricity in order to help them compete with foreign companies.
As a customer, it had to help French companies reorganize themselves into
large consortia capable of taking on the massive investments required by
reactor manufacturing. Encouraging these consortia to work under a for-
eign license would further help French industry because the dynamism and
success of the licensers would provide important financial and technical
support for the licensees. ^^ Ostensibly, then, EDF's first priority should be
to strengthen French industry.

17 G Hecht

Horowitz focused his definition of public service on the gas-graphite sys-
tem. He proudly noted that the system had already exceeded expectations
in several ways: the price of natural uranium fuel had dropped faster than
anticipated, the fuel rods had proved technically reliable, and the reactor
cores had performed well. As for system costs, Horowitz argued that these
would have been much lower without the many problems that plagued the
construction and startup of Chinon's reactors. He blamed EDF's technical
incompetence and inconsistent attitude toward private contractors for this
poor performance, rather than the system itself. Marcoule, after all, had
proved that French reactors could run smoothly and efficiently.^'

Cabanius, in contrast, blamed the mishaps not on EDF but on the tech-
nology. The complexity of the gas-graphite system posed particularly deH-
cate construction problems. Yes, Marcoule had performed well, but its
reactors were smaller and less complex than EDF's, and the difficulties of
building gas-graphite reactors increased dramatically with the scale of the
reactor. "The natural uranium-gas-graphite system," wrote Cabanius,
"therefore contains a source of incidents which could have serious conse-
quences. . . ."" The gas-graphite system was inherently flawed. The light-
water system, however, was not. Its capital costs were low. Furthermore,
with so many reactors already on order from the United States, manufac-
turing could be standardized (which would lead to even lower costs and
greater reliability than the gas-graphite system had).'^ Cabanius portrayed
the spread of light-water reactors as inexorable, thereby sowing the seeds
of technological determinism.

Horowitz admitted no such determinism. Yes, American utilities had
ordered a remarkable number of light-water megawatts in the last two
years. Even more amazing, he noted snidely, this enthusiasm was based on
the actual performance of just two 200-megawatt reactors! True, the
American program would probably succeed, thanks to its technical rigor
and the vast resources of its manufacturers. But this did not mean that the
same program would succeed in France. National context mattered deeply.
Insufficient data made good predictions nearly impossible.'' Whereas
Cabanius treated the American numbers as reasonably accurate character-
istics of the technology, Horowitz treated them as rough estimates based
on the context. In Cabanius's analysis, the technology, abstracted from its
context, was the most important variable. For Horowitz, what worked for

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 277

the United States would not necessarily work for France. Technology did
not develop along a single path, irrespective of context.

Despite his skepticism toward the American numbers, Horowitz used
them in his calculations (they were, after all, the only ones available). The
two men thus ended up with similar estimates for the cost of conventional
and nuclear kilowatt-hours.'"' But they handled the uncertainty in the data
differently. Cabanius used quantitative methods, calculating the variation
in the cost of the light-water and gas-graphite kilowatt-hours for different
values in parameters such as fuel burnup rate, capacity factor, and capital
costs. Plotting uncertainty offered a sense of control, suggesting that
because it was quantifiable, it was manageable. Naming and describing
uncertainty, in other words, eliminated the need for qualitative assessment.
For Horowitz, however, uncertainty required qualitative judgment. In the
absence of hard "facts," political acumen had to guide choices. This came
through most clearly in Horowitz's discussion of enriched uranium sup-
plies. Cabanius had dismissed this topic in a single short paragraph: though
light-water plants would initially rely on foreign supplies, eventually France
or Europe would build enrichment plants. Further discussion fell into the
realm of "politics," and therefore beyond Cabanius's self-defined mandate.
Horowitz also saw this as a poHtical issue, but he felt that it fell squarely
within his mandate. Whereas Cabanius had written of foreign "supplies,"
Horowitz wrote of foreign "dependence." "Political reasons" (which he
left unspecified) would make a European enrichment plant impossible, and
France could never afford one on its own. Furthermore, the enriched ura-
nium produced in France or Europe would cost considerably more than
American uranium, thereby negating the cost advantage of the light-water
system.

There were many other differences between the two reports, but these
suffice to demonstrate how each man constructed his argument in terms of
France's national interest. For Horowitz, the gas-graphite system equaled
French independence in the world. Cabanius sidestepped this claim and
redefined French national interest in economic terms, arguing that EDF had
to reshape its regime in a way that would help French industry compete in
world markets. In this regime, pursuing light-water technologies under a
foreign license made national sense. Horowitz did not repudiate the goal
of helping French companies compete internationally; indeed, as we saw in

278 Hecht

the previous section, this had been a goal of the CEA's "policy of champi-
ons." For the CEA, however, industrial "champions" had always meant
French companies building French technology. Abandoning this pursuit
now was folly. In arguing for different systems, the two men promoted dif-
ferent versions of France. Choosing a system was also about shaping the
national future. Technology and politics were thus inseparably entwined
for both men — even if only one of them admitted it.

Although EDF's economist-managers sought to exclude politics from
their analysis, they could not exclude politics from their world. Indeed, their
arguments in favor of economic criteria held little sway with President de
Gaulle, who ultimately had the final say on this matter. The president held
fast in his commitment to French independence and glory, and his close
advisors assured him that these were synonymous with the gas-graphite sys-
tem. But advocates of light-water reactors did not give up the fight. And by
the end of 1967 it had become increasingly clear that positions did not fall
out along neat institutional hues. EDF's top management, private manu-
facturers, and a few of CEA's top officials advocated light-water reactors.
Some CEA employees adopted a middle ground: if it became necessary or
expedient to build light-water reactors, France should develop these itself
rather than buy an American license. Advocates of the gas-graphite system
included labor unions and rank-and-file employees in both institutions who
had devoted their careers to this technology. The impasse was referred to the
PEON commission.

Founded in 1955, PEON (Commission pour la Production d'Electricite
d'Origine Nucleaire) was a government-appointed commission composed
of top EDF and CEA leaders, ministerial officials, and a few industrialists.
Its ostensible purpose was to give the government nuclear advice. It was
not, however, a decision-making body. At least until the late 1960s, pro-
grammatic decisions were negotiated within and between the CEA and
EDF. PEON did Uttle more than discuss and bless such agreements.

The commission's role grew subtler and more complex during the war
of the systems. Amid the contentiousness fueled by technopolitical uncer-
tainty, PEON meetings provided a place for constructing notions of objec-
tive arbitration. Discussions and reports provided a stage on which
members could play hybrid roles: although they were there to represent spe-
cific institutions, their membership in PEON symbolically separated them

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 279

from their institution and gave them a larger constituency — the nation. This
hybridity conflated the self -proclaimed disinterestedness of state technolo-
gists with that of the nation. At least in principle, any PEON conclusion or
document represented an arbitrated negotiation for the greater good of the
nation among otherwise competing interests. When reporting back to their
home institutions, PEON's members carefully nurtured the commission's
status as objective arbiter. The same policy conclusion would carry more
weight all around if reached by PEON.

PEON inherited the Horowitz-Cabanius mission to investigate the rami-
fications of each reactor system and provide a rationale for future pro-
grammatic choices. Many of the reports produced by its members sought
not to define and describe the artifacts directly but rather to define and
describe the context in which they would operate."" For industrial leaders,
this context was the Common Market. This context demanded the pursuit
of nuclear technology regardless of the current price of fuel. One industri-
alist noted slyly: "Just imagine the position of French industry in a Common
Market in which, nuclear power having succeeded, German industry dom-
inated this sector.'"*- Since light-water reactors dominated the world mar-
kets, he continued, the light-water system was the only plausible choice for
this context."*^ Meanwhile, CEA's representatives to PEON sought to limit
the context to national frontiers. Here they met with stubborn resistance
from the industrialists, who apparently refused to discuss matters in these
terms.'*'' PEON's April 1968 report masked these disagreements, instead
seeking to redefine the French context: "It is pointless to hope for total inde-
pendence. . . . The potential for economic independence can be defined as
the capacity to maintain economic competitiveness over the long term and
on the international front. . . ."'*'' France should immediately build one
American-style reactor. And, pending a reevaluation in 1970, no new gas-
graphite reactors should be ordered in the next two years. One industry peri-
odical disingenuously proclaimed these conclusions the result of a "profound
unanimity" stemming from the separation of technology from politics: "men
in good faith . . . were eventually bound to agree over the analysis of such a
complex question from the moment that this [question] was entirely depoliti-
cized and subjected to the objective analysis of the real problems involved. '""*

Ultimately, PEON's 1968 report did not resolve anything. Its main achieve-
ment, rather, was to legitimate two of the main strategies of the supporters

280 Hecht

of light-water reactors: the separation of technology from politics, and the
redefinition of the context of nuclear development as Common Market eco-
nomics. Still, de Gaulle continued to favor the French system. And within
both EDF and the CEA employees remained split. Not everyone agreed that
technology and politics should be separated, or that the right context for the
nuclear program should be primarily economic in nature.

Meanwhile, a new source of consensus was beginning to emerge: the
breeder reactor. As a technology that existed primarily on paper (only one
prototype existed: the CEA's Rapsodie), the breeder was still flexible enough
to fulfill a variety of technopolitical scenarios. Fearing the demise of their
program, gas-graphite enthusiasts began to transfer onto breeders the bur-
den of France's technological glory. The proponents of light- water reactors,
meanwhile, used the vision of a breeder-reactor future to build a stronger
constituency for the American solution.

Some EDF engineers argued that breeders provided the best reason for
maintaining the gas-graphite system, which could supply both the pluto-
nium and the experience required for the development of breeder reactors.
Such a course would ultimately allow France to surpass the United States,
which had no breeder-reactor experience. Horowitz of the CEA enthusias-
tically endorsed this viewpoint. So did EDF board member and labor mil-
itant Claude Tourgeron, who envisioned a socialist future of breeders.
Tourgeron juxtaposed his argument for breeders with an argument for the
"formation of nationalized companies that would free this industry from
the joint pressure of large capitalist monopolies and military manage-
ment.'"*^ These nationalized companies would provide the basis for a true
socialist democracy, which could only lead to national economic growth.
Breeder technology would take some time to mature, though, so France had
to pursue an intermediate system in order to maintain its nuclear knowl-
edge. Only a system based on natural uranium would allow France both to
escape the clutches of American imperialism and to produce plutonium for
the future breeders. And cost calculations that disadvantaged the gas-
graphite system were due to nefarious capitalist practices. In particular, the
latest gas-graphite estimates had been inflated by capitalist monopolies in
their thirst for profit and their desire to tip the balance in favor of the
American design. Thus, gas-graphite's success, breeders, and a socialist
order were mutually dependent."*^ The technopolitical circle was complete.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 281

Proponents of the American system seized on the emerging consensus to
propose a different path to the breeder-reactor future. In February 1969,
EDF's director-general, Marcel Boiteux, sent a memo to the prime minister
in February 1969 in which he argued that France should make every effort
to research and develop breeders, "the system of the future." But he con-
tended that the main road to that future went through the American system.
Using an American license would allow France to recover from the disap-
pointment of the gas-graphite experience and to "catch its breath while
waiting for a new breakthrough — that of the breeders — to which it will
devote all its research and development efforts.'"" Not even the CEA's expe-
rience in designing a light-water reactor for submarines would go to waste.
Instead, this experience would help French teams "mix French intelligence
with American experience to build a 'Frenchified' reactor."™ Thus, they too
transferred the burden of French grandeur over to the breeders. Further, the
nebulous "Frenchifying" of American reactors would preserve French
nuclear know-how (and, presumably, pride). In April 1969, Boiteux and
Hirsch pushed through a "plan of action" that essentially reframed the pro-
posals and arguments of the PEON report by placing them in the context
of a breeder-reactor future.^' Meanwhile, EDF's managers had already
begun to prepare for the first light-water reactor. ^"^

In the mid 1950s, the CEA capitalized on the ambiguity of the gas-
graphite design to move forward with the mihtary atom. In 1969, advo-
cates of light-water reactors capitalized on a variety of ambiguities to move
forward with plans to buy an American license. Each successive step tight-
ened the case for light-water reactors, using a combination of strategies that
involved managing uncertainty, renegotiating the meaning of national inde-
pendence, and defining a place for light-water reactors in the construction
of French identity. With each refinement, American light-water reactors
appeared increasingly necessary for the future of France.

As 1969 wore on, opposition to light-water reactors became increas-
ingly difficult to orchestrate. French advocates of the American system —
who occupied the top administrative positions in the CEA, in EDF, and in
private industry — had developed irreproachable goals: to give France
cheap energy and to make breeders the new symbols of French identity
and independence. And they had not actually proposed terminating the
gas-graphite program. The case was not closed: the government had not

282 Hecht

yet made a decision on the choice of a system. But things looked bad for
gas-graphite. It was clear that EDF management, private industry, and top
CEA officials were poised to buy American. It was equally clear that buy-
ing American would come at the expense of the French system.
Furthermore, by then the one man seen as a guarantee against the purchase
of a foreign license — Charles de Gaulle — had resigned from office. He had
been replaced by Georges Pompidou, who was distinctly sympathetic to
the American system. ^^

By October 1969, rumors had begun to circulate that the CEA's programs
would be cut back and that layoffs would ensue. The CEA's five main labor
unions joined forces to protest the layoffs, the introduction of American
light-water reactors, the implied slurs on their technical competence, and
the incoherence of national nuclear research policy. Unions avidly defended
the performance of the French nuclear program.''' The price of the gas-
graphite kilowatt-hour was already 30-40 percent lower than the most
optimistic estimates of several years earher. The unions demanded a coher-
ent nuclear program whose main criteria of success would be continuity,
independence, and the development of a national electromechanical indus-
try. This policy "must first and foremost be translated into the development
of the gas-graphite system."^""' It would be "stupid" to abandon this and
other national technologies. In a separate statement, the Communist
Confederation Generale du Travail called for the publication of reports that
would "reestablish the truth that is indispensable to the defense of French
atomic energy. . . . The CGT's engineering and white-collar worker section
will not hold back in its efforts to ensure that France remains independent
in the energy sector."^'

The worst fears of the unions were confirmed in mid October. At a press
conference held for the inauguration of the Saint-Laurent 1 reactor (the
pride and joy of the gas-graphite program). Marcel Boiteux congratulated
the site's teams on their success. Too bad, he added, that the gas-graphite
system was not commercially viable. From then on, he said, EDF would be
building light-water reactors under an American license." This announce-
ment sent a shock wave throughout the nuclear program, the government,
and the press. Everyone knew that this was the direction in which the pro-
gram was headed, but no one — not even Pompidou — realized that a deci-
sion had been reached.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 283

Indeed, Boiteux himself emphatically denied reports in the press that he
had announced an actual decision. He had merely stated that because the
economic success of Saint-Laurent was less certain than its technical success,
the future of the gas-graphite system remained uncertain. It was "regret-
table that his words were given the political meaning that they were."^"^
Journalists had misinterpreted his responses to their questions. He had
merely indicated that EDF had a preference for a light-water system.^' The
press had neglected to mention that he had referred all final decisions to the
government.

Disclaimers notwithstanding, Boiteux's statement was widely understood
to signal the end of the gas-graphite program. The layoff of a group of sub-
contracted workers at the CEA seemed to confirm the death knell. Seven
hundred CEA employees launched a series of strikes that would last more
than a month. On October 31, news leaked that the administration planned
to announce another 2000 layoffs. The unions responded by broadening
their demands and intensifying their strike actions. Though they continued
to express outrage on behalf of subcontracted workers, protests now
focused primarily on the issue of nuclear policy. The strikes continued
through the end of November and spread to all the CEA's research and pro-
duction centers.'"

Echoing earlier arguments, strikers denounced the termination of the gas-
graphite program and the threat of an American industrial takeover.^' They
contested the assertion that gas-graphite reactors were not competitive and
argued, furthermore, that "profitability [was] not the only important cri-
terion."" National independence had to count too — especially indepen-
dence from the United States. Never had the threat of American capitalism
loomed larger. "We are," one tract claimed, "in the process of losing our
national independence; we are on the path to under-development and col-
onization."'^' The problem lay in the fact that the government had not han-
dled either industrial or research policy properly. "Such an important
decision . . . should be preceded by consultations with employee represen-
tatives, not announced on the fly by a bureaucrat [Boiteux], no matter how
highly placed he might be."'"* Only the unions had the nation's welfare
firmly in sight: "Our goals are clear. We are in favor . . . of funding research
which will ensure the intellectual, economic, and social future of an entire
people and guarantee its independence."'^

284 Hecht

On November 14, Pompidou formally announced the termination of the
gas-graphite program for the foreseeable future. In response, the CEA
strikes continued to intensify. On November 17, between 4000 and 6000
protesters descended on the Place des Invalides in Paris and marched past
the Eiffel Tower (figure 6).''^

Doubtless realizing that purely political tactics would have little effect
in a debate whose terms were defined by its dominant participants as eco-
nomic and apolitical, a group of union engineers, scientists, and techni-
cians prepared a counter-report on the relative merits of the competing
nuclear systems. One major difference between the union report and those
written by Cabanius and PEON lay in how the reports posited the rela-
tionship between technology and politics. Advocates of the American sys-
tem, as we have seen, sought to remove what they derisively called
"political" considerations from the decision-making process. Building on
Horowitz's earlier arguments, union advocates of the French system sought
to retain such considerations — all the more so because their extended
analysis of the financial calculations conducted by the nuclear industries
in both France and the United States led them to conclude that Pompidou's
decision followed not the logic of an abstract economic rationality (by their
calculations, the gas-graphite system was slightly cheaper for France) but
the logic of politics.'"^

Indeed, the unions saw the decision to terminate the gas-graphite pro-
gram as a capitulation to capitalism — American capitalism in particular.
"Everyone is aware of the concerted offensive launched by American indus-
trial consortia to get hold of the French electromechanical [industry]. "'^^
Pompidou's announcement merely confirmed the "Americanization of the
French electronuclear [program]."*''' But the report did not argue that pol-
itics should have been left out of the decision. Instead, it argued, the wrong
politics had guided policy makers. When the uncertainty of the economic
data was taken fully into account, the resulting estimates were "sufficiently
close for other criteria of choice (currency flow, capitalizing on existing
investments, national independence, full employment) to be considered on
the same plane. "^" In other words, rather than base a decision purely on the
politics of capitalist development, the government should have also taken
the politics of social relations into account. And it should have weighted
other political elements (such as national independence) differently. In

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 285

Figure 7.6

CEA protesters marching past the Eiffel Tower. Photograph by Phihppe Mousseau,
Lumifilms. (courtesy of CFDT archives)

286 Hecht

conclusion, the report called for the creation of a new commission — com-
posed of ministerial officials, EDF and CEA management, and labor
unions — to reexamine the case.

The government never took this report seriously, and in the end the light-
water system triumphed over the gas-graphite one. Though the final door
to this triumph was opened by de Gaulle's resignation and Pompidou 's
ascendance, the triumph itself was the process of long and complex tech-
nopolitical negotiations. State experts, not politicians, determined the terms
of these negotiations.

Between 1970 and 1973, EDF broke ground on four Westinghouse-
licensed reactors — a "modest" number, as prescribed by the 1970 PEON
report. Any impulse to remain modest disappeared during the 1973 oil cri-
sis. In March 1974, Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced a new
energy plan calling for the launch of thirteen 1000-megawatt light-water
reactors in two years. By the time I began my research in 1989, France was
obtaining more than 70 percent of its electricity from pressurized-water
reactors, and engineers were eager to tell me how the light-water system
had become francise — Frenchified.

Conclusion

Advocates of light-water reactors had understood that attacking a system
which continued to incarnate the French nation would lead nowhere. The
only way to break this powerful association was by rhetorically separating
technology from poHtics. Such a separation undermined the links between
gas-graphite technology and the nation. Equally important, excluding pol-
itics from technological choice privileged economic selection criteria.
Admittedly, the data that constituted these criteria were uncertain. But
advocates of light-water reactors subjected this uncertainty to quantitative
analysis in order to claim control over it. Advocates of gas-graphite reac-
tors subjected the uncertainty to qualitative — specifically, political — analy-
sis in order to do the same. As long as de Gaulle remained in power, this
qualitative reasoning held. Once he stepped down, quantitative reasoning
took over. The triumph of the light-water system meant that it came to be
defined as the "economic" system, while gas-graphite became the "politi-
cal" system. Eventually the discourse of national identity crept back into

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 287

the light-water program, as builders and developers began discussing the
"Frenchification" of the system. The emphasis had merely shifted from
making a French technology to making a technology French. Nonetheless,
the triumph of the light-water system signaled that, henceforth, economic
criteria could legitimately participate in the articulation of French national
identity.

Thus, the ways in which technologists discursively and materially con-
structed relationships between technology and politics — and the role of
national identity in those constructions — had real consequences for French
industrial strategy. Different kinds of relationships made possible different
industrial strategies, and different constructions of national identity.

The analysis presented in this essay has, I believe, two impUcations for
cultural historians — one historical, one theoretical. The historical implica-
tion is that in the late twentieth century technological development consti-
tuted an important site for negotiating French national identity. (Indeed, I
suspect that detailed studies would yield a similar conclusion for other times
and places — it is already clear, for example, that technological development
plays a big symbolic role in the construction of American national identity.)
In the case of French cultural history, this is not a trivial point. Indeed, it
provides a way of understanding France's experience of modernity in the
second half of the twentieth century.

Theoretically, this essay suggests one way to transcend sterile dichotomies
between cultural and material analysis. As some historians have already
observed, cultural analysis need not "imply an anti -materialist position."
Instead, it can show how the material world both derives meaning from,
and performs, culture.^' As I have shown here (and other historians and
sociologists of technology have shown elsewhere), technological artifacts
and practices (the supposed epitomes of the material world) are deeply cul-
tural and pohtical. Locating the construction and the performance of cul-
tural forms such as national identity in the practices of technological change
shows how these forms are grounded in the material world. This, in turn,
demonstrates not just the political power of cultural forms but also their
material power. Ultimately, then, the practices of technopolitics reveal that
the political power of culture cannot be separated from its material power.
Only by simultaneously unpacking culture, technology, and politics can his-
torians make this point effectively.

288 Hecht

Notes

1. See, e.g., Peter Sahlins, Boundaries (University of California Press, 1989;
Caroline Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France (Princeton University Press,
1993); Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French (University of California Press, 1993);
Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies (MIT Press, 1995); Gerard Noiriel, "French
and Foreigners," in Realms of Memory, I, ed. P. Nora (Columbia University Press,
1996); Gerard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot (University of Minnesota Press,
1996); Herman Lebovics, True France (Cornell University Press, 1992). For an
overview of debates about how American scholars have treated the concept of
French national identity, see French Historical Studies 19, no. 2 (1995), especially
the following papers: Richard F. Kuisel, "American Historians in Search of France:
Perceptions and Misperceptions" (307-319); Michele Lamont, "National Identity
and National Boundary Patterns in France and in the United States" (349-365);
Eric Fassin, "Fearful Symmetry: Culturalism and Cultural Comparison after
Tocqueville" (451^60).

2. See most of the essays in volume 1 of Realms of Memory.

3. For an overview of how narrative has become a historiographical category, see
Sarah Maza, "Stories in History: Cultural Narratives in Recent Works in European
History," American Historical Review 101 (1996) 5: 1493-1515.

4. For example, in True France Herman Lebovics argues that "searches for France
embody beliefs, values, projets, in short, ideologies of what France should be." In
a different type of scholarly endeavor, Stuart Hall makes a similar point: "Though
they seem to invoke an origin in a historical past with which they continue to cor-
respond, actually identities are about questions of using the resources of history,
language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not 'who we
are' or 'where we came from,' so much as what we might become, how we have
been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. Identities
. . . relate to the invention of tradition as much as to tradition itself. ..." (Questions
of Cultural Identity, ed. S. Hall and P. du Gay, Sage, 1996, p. 4) On mythologizing
the past, see Realms of Memory; see also Robert Gildea, The Past in French History
(Yale University Press, 1994).

5. For examples see Wiebe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds.. The
Social Construction of Technological Systems (MIT Press, 1987); Bruno Latour,
Science in Action (Harvard University Press, 1987).

6. On nuclear workers, see Hecht, The Radiance of France (MIT Press, 1998),
chapters 4, 5, and 8.

7. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

8. This becomes especially clear in an examination of reactor operation. Through
artifacts and work practices, the workplaces in these regimes performed distinct
visions of the sociopolitical order. See Hecht, The Radiance of France, chapter 5.

9. Ken Alder, Engineering the Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1997); Eda
Kranakis, Constructing a Bridge (MIT Press, 1997); Richard F. Kuisel, Capitalism
and the State in Modern France (Cambridge University Press, 1981).

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 289

10. Andre Leaute, "Les Vertus Cardinales de I'Ingenieur de Grande Classe," La
jaune et la Rouge 120 (1958), p. 41.

11. Groupe 1985, Reflexions pour 1985 (La Documentation Frangaise, 1964), pp.
13-14.

12. J. L. Cottier, La Technocratie, Nouveau Pouvoir (Edition du Cerf, 1959), p. 41.

13. Groupe 1985, Reflexions pour 1985, p. 88.

14. Le Grand Oeuvre: Panorama de ITndustrie Prangaise, commissioned by the
Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres. The first phrase in the title, Hterally as "the great
work," also refers to "the philosopher's stone." Two copies were ordered the fol-
lowing year by the Ministere de I'Equipement. Today the film can be viewed at the
videotheque of the Ministere de I'Equipement.

15. The metaphor of "regime" also evokes the dynamics and contestation of power.
Although I cannot examine this dimension of "regime" in a short essay, it is an
important aspect of the story. In the case of the CEA, for example, not everyone
adhered to the nationalist ideologies espoused by agency leaders. Here the point is
that nationalist ideologies governed the CEA, not that they were ubiquitous therein.
I explore contestation to technopolitical regimes in The Radiance of France.

16. As Robert Frost argues in Alternating Currents (Cornell University Press, 1991 ),
this ideal often did not reflect reality. It did, however, reflect official institutional
and labor union ideology, which is my point here.

17. One example among many can be found in "Les prevision du IVe plan:
I'avenir," Contacts A3, (1963): 12-25.

18. Source: interviews conducted by the author. See also Georges Lamiral,
Chronique de Trente Annees d'Equipement Nucleaire a Electricite de France
(Association pour I'histoire de I'electricite en France, 1988).

19. Etude Preliminaire d'une Installation de Recuperation sur EDFl, 1956; Georges
Lamiral, letter (March 4, 1958) to CEA's Direction Industrielle accompanying report
Installations de Recuperation d'Energie G2-G3 (personal papers of Claude
Bienvenu); Programme de centrales nucleaires EDE, DPP 55/505, 29 June 1955 (EU
archives, JG 27/6).

20. A. Ertaud and G. Derome, "Chargement et Dechargement," Bulletin d'infor-
mations scientifiques et techniques 20 (1958): 69-88; P. Passerieux and R. Scalliet,
"Installations de recuperation d'energie," Bulletin d' informations scientifiques et
techniques 20 (1958): 99-114; J. Kieffer, "La centrale de Marcoule: experience,
resultats et enseignements dans le domaine de la production d'electricte," Energie
nucleaire 5 (1963), June.

21. Memo RETN 1, July 25, 1957; Etude des Reacteurs Enegetiques EDF, Projet
d'Organisation dans le cas d'un reacteur du type Uranium Naturel - Graphite - C02,
March 8, 1957 (Bienvenu papers).

22. From my interviews it is quite clear that simplicity of design was a major goal
for EDF engineers. It should be noted here that, while EDF engineers strove for low
cost in designing EDFl, they did not attain that goal (in part because of an unfore-
seen event: the spherical steel containment vessel cracked, and repairing the crack

290 Hecht

added tremendous costs and delays to the project.). But EDFl represented a first
step toward optimizing reactor costs, and the general goal of minimizing costs held
throughout EDF's reactor program.

23. M. de Rouville, "Le Centre de production de plutonium de Marcoule: sa place
dans la chaine industrielle de I'energie nucleaire," Revue de I'lndustrie Nucleaire,
40 (1958), June, p. 486.

24. See, e.g., Yvan Teste, "Les Installations de Production d'Energie de Marcoule
et la Centrale Nucleaire de Chinon," Memoires de la Societe des Ingenieurs Civils
de France, tome 110, fascicule II (mars-avril 1957), p. 75.

25. Frost, Alternating Currents.

26. The idea that France might pursue other reactor technologies did not appear out
of the blue. The research and military branches of the CEA had been investigating
other designs for some time. These included a small light-water submarine reactor
as well as heavy- water, high- temperature, and breeder prototypes. EDF helped the
CEA with some of these prototype efforts, especially on the heavy-water and breeder
reactors. EDF's nuclear division also sought reactor projects not tied to the CEA. In
the late 1950s, the United States concluded an agreement with Euratom that favored
the importing of American reactor designs; reluctantly, the French government
allowed EDF to cooperate with Belgium in the construction of the first such reac-
tor in 1960. These efforts notwithstanding, support for the gas-graphite system held
fast in both technopolitical regimes through the mid 1960s. In 1964, for example,
the PEON commission — a government advisory group composed of officials from
EDF, the CEA, and private industry — issued a report speculating that light-water
reactors might have lower investment costs than gas-graphite reactors; it empha-
sized, however that pursuing the light-water option would mean either depending
on America to supply enriched uranium fuel or building an expensive enrichment
plant that would negate the still uncertain cost advantage of the light-water system.
France, therefore, should stay on the gas-graphite track (Philippe Simmonot, Les
nucleocrates. Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1973, pp. 237-245). In forward-
ing this recommendation to Prime Minister Georges Pompidou, Gaston Palewski
(the minister in charge of atomic affairs) urged him to make a rapid decision to
engage in "massive" development of gas-graphite reactors. The consequences of the
choice, Palewski said, mattered not only for France but also for the rest of Europe.
Were France to give up its native reactors, "the ensuing technical lag would be felt
in our economy and in our policy" (G. Palewski to Georges Pompidou, 4 juillet 64,
CEA archives, box F3-24-25). Pompidou approved the PEON plan.

27. EDF-Conseil d' Administration, no. 244, November 25, 1966; no. 249, March
10, 1967 (EDF archives)

28. For a more complete account of these incidents, see Hecht, The Radiance of
France.

29. Nicholas Vichney, "La centrale nucleaire EDF3 de Chinon est arretee pour six
mois," Le Monde, December 2,1966; Vichney, "Les incidents survenus a la centrale
de Chinon amenent a poser le probleme des rapports entre I'Electricite de France et
le Commissariat atomique," Le Monde, January 24, 1967.

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 291

30. "Le crepage de Chinon," Le Canard Enchaine , December 7, 1966.

31. CFDT, Federation EGF, Direction de I'Equipement: La Situation de
I'Equipement Nucleaire, 5 Mai 67 (Bienvenu papers).

32. Groupe de Travail Commun CEA-EDF sur les Filieres a Uranium Enrichi, 4
mai 66; note from A. Decelle to R. Hirsch, 4 mai 66 (both in Bienvenu papers).

33. J. Horowitz, Examen des filieres electro-nucleaires dans le contexte frangais
actuel (1 Fevrier 1967), p. 1.

34. Jean Cabanius, Rapport du Groupe de Travail Place sous la responsabilite de
Monsieur Cabanius (EDF) (25 Janvier 1967), p. 2.

35. Ibid., pp. 4-5.

36. Horowitz, Examen des filieres electro-nucleaires, passim.

37. Cabanius, Rapport du Groupe de Travail, p. 9.

38. Ibid., p. 10.

39. Horowitz, Examen des filieres electro-nucleaires, p. 10.

40. They gave identical figures for the cost of a conventional kilowatt-hour
(3.35-3.95 centimes, depending on the plant's capacity factor) and the cost of the
pressurized water kilowatt-hour (2.67 centimes). They differed only on the cost of a
gas-graphite kilowatt-hour: Cabanius priced it at 3.14 centimes, Horowitz at 3.04
centimes. The difference occurred because Horowitz was optimistic about experi-
mental data which suggested that the CEA's new fuel rods would yield lower costs,
whereas Cabanius refused to rely on the same data. Horowitz thus emphasized the
paucity of data on actual operating light-water reactors while expressing great con-
fidence in the CEA's equally unconfirmed estimates. Cabanius took the opposite
approach, expressing confidence in the American estimates and skepticism in the
CEA's. They based their calculations of the cost of a pressurized-water kilowatt-hour
on a meeting they had with Framatome, the company that had managed the con-
struction of the Chooz reactor under license to Westinghouse. They had also tried to
get figures for the cost of building a boiling-water reactor, but no French company or
consortium had a license with General Electric yet. Source: Conditions de construc-
tion de centrales a eau ordinaire par I'industrie frangaise. Reunions du 7 juillet avec
Framatome-Westinghouse, du 13 juillet avec Alsthom-GECO, memorandum from
Jules Horowitz to Administrator-General, July 27, 1966 (CEA archives, F 6-13-20).

41 . Commission Consultative pour la Production d'Electricite d'Origine Nucleaire,
Groupe de Travail General, Rapport de Conjoncture (no date); Prix des fuels a
moyen et long terme (dated "9/11/67"); "Hypotheses de travail" (dated "27.9.67");
Hypotheses de travail concernant le developpement nucleaire (dated "8.11.67");
reunion du 15 sept 1967, Compte rendu de I'activite du groupe de travail general
(redige par Jacques Gaussens) (all in CEA archives, F6-13-20). For a full analysis,
see Hecht, The Radiance of France.

42. Letter from Ambroise Roux to Jean Couture, 29 Mars 1968 (also signed by
Baumgartner, Blancard, de Calan, Gaspard, Glasser, Jouven, Malcor), accompany-
ing Note pour la Commission PEON, 28 Mars 1968 (CEA archives, DEDR DIV
219, DPA).

191 Hecht

43. Industrialists added weight to their argument in favor of the hght-water tech-
nology by stipulating that they would offer warranties for it but not for the gas-
graphite technology. The mere act of offering warranties transformed the Ught- water
system into a more reliable technology than the gas-graphite system without any
technological work per se. Reported in Observations sur le Projet de Rapport soumis
a la Commission le 29 fevrier, memorandum, Pierre Tanguy to M. le Directeur des
Piles Atomiques (Jules Horowitz), 28.2.68 (CEA archives, DEDR DIV 219, DPA).

44. Ibid.

45. Quoted in Simmonot, Les nucleocrates, p. 48.

46. "Le Rapport Couture" (editorial). Revue ¥ranqaise de I'Energie 201 (1968),
Mai: 435.

47. Claude Tourgeron, "La production d'electricite d'origine nucleaire en France,"
economic et politique, Janvier 1969, p. 2.

48. Ibid., p. 13.

49. MB/CH, Politique des Reacteurs Nucleaires (Bienvenu papers), p. 6.

50. Ibid., p. 7.

51. Memo, CEA, EDF, Programme d'action dans le domaine des centrales elec-
tronucleaires, 21 April 1969; approved by both Boiteux and Hirsch with identical
letters to each other, dated 24 and 25 April respectively (Bienvenu papers).

52. Memo, Cabanius to Directeur de la RENl, Chef du SEPTEN, Chef du SEGN,
29 nov 68; memo. Direction de I'Equipement to Directeur de la RENl, Chef du
SEPTEN, Chef du SEGN, no date (probably late 1968); SETPEN memo, DG/MGo,
Centrale Nucleaire a Eau Legere, Organisation du travail SEPTEN-RENl, 13 Dec.
1968 (Bienvenu papers).

53. De Gaulle resigned after losing a referendum vote in April 1969; the loss is
widely interpreted as an aftershock of the 1968 strikes. For more on French gov-
ernment politics in this period, see Robert Gildea, France Since 1945 (Oxford
University Press, 1996); Serge Berstein, La France de ['expansion (Seuil, 1989);
Jacques Chapsal, La vie politique sous la Ye Republique (Presses Universitaires de
France, 1981, 1993).

54. CGC, CFDT, CGT, CGT-FO, SPAEN, Pour un Politique Fran^aise de I'Energie
Nucleaire (Declaration des Organisations Syndicales du Commissariat a I'Energie
Atomique), 8 Oct. 1969 (flyer, in personal papers of Bernard Laponche).

55. Ibid.

56. "Un passe qui est un exemple," Le Compagnon d'Energies Nouvelles (Journal
des Ingenieurs et Cadres CGT du CEA) 7 (1969), suppl. 143: 1.

57. A memorandum from Hirsch to the Ministre du Developpement Industriel et
Scientifique (15 oct 1969, CEA archives F3-24-25) provides further confirmation
that Hirsch and Boiteux worked out the American light-water plant together. The
memo outlines their recommendation for how the decision should be shaped and
worded.

58. EDF Conseil d' Administration, 278, 24 October 1969 (EDF archives)

Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 293

59. Ibid.

60. "L'Action dans les Centres," Energies Nouvelles (CGT, FSM, Journal du syn-
dicat national des travailleurs de I'energie atomique), Dec. 1969: 3.

61. CGT CFDT, CGT-FO, Hier a Palaiseau, 1200 Grevistes manifestaient . . . , 31
Oct. 1969; CGT CFDT, CGT-FO, Pourquoi la greve du 6 novembre, 5 Nov. 1969
(tracts, in Laponche papers).

62. CGC CFDT, CGT, CGT-FO, SPAEN, Appel aux cadres du CEA, 17 Nov. 1969
(Laponche papers).

63. CFDT CGT, CGT/FO, Pourquoi I'Energie Atomique en Greve, 6 Nov. 1969
(tract, in Laponche papers).

64. Force-Ouvriere - CFDT, Conference de Presse, Hotel de Ville de Massy
(Essonne), 30 Oct. 1969 (Laponche papers).

65. CGT CFDT, CGT-FO, Pourquoi une greve a I'echelon national au
Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique? Pourquoi cinq agents du CEA en sont aujour-
d'hui a leur onzieme jour de greve de la faim? 1969 (Laponche papers).

66. Strikes continued at CEA sites in the provinces too. See "L'Action dans les
Centres," Energies Nouvelles (CGT, FSM, Journal du syndicat national des tra-
vailleurs de I'energie atomique), Dec. 1969: 3.

67. I discuss their economic analysis at greater length in chapter 8 of The Radiance
of France.

68. CGC, CFDT, CGT, CGT-FO, SPAEN, Comparaisons Economiques et Politique
Industrielle dans le Domaine Electronucleaire, p. 1.

^3. Ibid.

70. Ibid., p. 10.

71. William H. Sewell, "Toward a Post-Materialist Rhetoric for Labor History," in
Rethinking Labor Fiistory, ed. L. Berlanstein (University of Illinois Press, 1993).
For an overview of these debates, see also the other essays in the same volume. The
following works take this "post-materialist" stance: Laura Lee Downs,
Manufacturing Inequality (Cornell University Press, 1995); Richard Biernacki, The
Fabrication of Labor (University of California Press, 1995).

The Neutrality Flagpole: Swedish Neutrality
Policy and Technological Alliances,
1945-1970

Hans Weinberger

In his 1999 presidential address to the Society for Historians of American
Foreign Relations, the diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber acknowledged
surprise at the fact that historians of US foreign relations had dealt so little
with technology while publishing pathbreaking works in other fields.
"Some of these fresh approaches touch on technology," he noted, "but aside
from the enormously important work on the atomic and hydrogen bombs
and the resulting diplomacy, and a few other revealing monographic stud-
ies, the field has only begun to understand this force that has so largely
shaped the past 150 years.'" LaFeber then urged diplomatic historians to
follow the insights of Thomas Parke Hughes and others in the field of the
history of technology who argue for a contextual understanding of tech-
nology, not as artifacts, but as an open system seamlessly integrated with
culture. "By discussing technology," he observed, "we are also discussing
political, economic, and social choices and possible alternatives."^

In this essay I will be following the advice of LaFeber and using the his-
tory of technology to analyze Sweden's neutrality during the Cold War. The
use of such a perspective will expose a different facet of the development
and substance of neutrality. If one looks at the interconnectedness of mili-
tary technology across national borders and the way in which Sweden's
political leaders and high-level military officers have used technology to
give concrete substance to the country's neutrality, one's interpretation of
this neutrality is likely to change.

Sweden's neutrality has had a long tradition, going back to the beginning
of the nineteenth century and the dechne of Sweden as a great power in
Northern Europe. The first declaration of neutrality came in 1834, when
Sweden anticipated a war between England and Russia — a war that never

19G 'Weinberger

took place. And since then Sweden has prospered from peace. The long
period of peace seemed to indicate a rather successful poHtical line and a
strong national tradition. A security policy formed during the early decades
of the nineteenth century had evolved into a military, political, and cultural
foundation of some success and gravity. Much of Sweden's understanding
of its role in the global arena during the Cold War was based on this his-
torical experience. Neutrality seemed to have served Sweden well during a
long period, including two world wars, and it was regarded as being firmly
embraced by a vast majority of Swedes. In addition, neutrality as a national
security policy could be portrayed as a logical outcome of the cultural self-
image of the modern Swede as a peaceful, moderate creature. As many
national and international historians have pointed out though, the country
had, on numerous occasions, avoided being involved in war only by a com-
bination of pragmatic "realpolitik" and historical destiny due to its geopo-
litical position. This observation is vividly illustrated by the events of World
War II, when Sweden made important concessions to Nazi Germany after
Germany's occupation of Denmark and Norway but then cooperated with
Allied forces during the latter part of the war. Sweden also showed a
remarkable ability to withstand German pressure for more concessions.
With the Cold War, Sweden faced the question of continued neutrality or
alignment with the West. As will become evident, the choices made were
far from clear-cut, even to the degree of being partly unknown to most
Swedes.

For obvious reasons, the ideas and concepts of neutrality as well as its
history have mainly attracted scholars from those countries concerned.
Studies dealing with the United States and neutrality during the Cold War
are few in comparison, and fewer still if one discount books on neutralism
in the Third World. In the indexes of books that count as having influenced
US foreign policy, "neutrality" occurs seldom indeed. It is entirely absent
from the large historiography America in the World? One important book
that looks at the United States is Jorg Martin Gabriel's The American
Concept of Neutrality after 1941. Gabriel claims that his book is not a his-
tory of US policy toward neutral countries but rather a history of the
American conception of neutrality.'* Still, since the conception of neutrality
is to be found in the practical implementation of foreign policy, it does con-
tain substantial historical accounts of the United States' relations with

The Neutrality Flagpole 297

Sweden and Switzerland — the two most outspoken neutrals in Europe.
Gabriel writes: "Scholars seem to have lost interest in knowing what the
United States thought about neutrahty" and concludes that one reason for
this has been a mental spillover from a Cold War mindset of American cul-
ture into the academic world/

The lack of references to neutrality in overall accounts of the Cold War
might be well deserved in the grander scheme of things, since neutrality in
this period was tied to smaller European countries not at the heart of the
conflict. But the lack of the concept in general is somewhat more surprising
since the idea of neutrality played such an important role as an alternative,
for instance, in the case of Germany (the country at the heart of the conflict),
as Marc Trachtenberg argues in A Constructed Feace.^ On both sides of the
Iron Curtain, but at different times, the idea of a united, demilitarized, neu-
tral Germany played a role in internal policy discussions. And the European
countries adhering to neutrality in 1956 included Austria, Finland, Ireland,
Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. This was not a large share of the over-
all number of countries, to be sure, but four of them represented geopoliti-
cal wedges separating the two power blocs of the Cold War.

In 1985 a leading Swedish historian characterized the matter of Sweden
and the Cold War as having been neglected by researchers. It is still fair to
ask for more studies of both domestic and foreign policy during the Cold
War.^ While the number of studies has increased, in Sweden political scien-
tists and political historians have focused most on high politics, intention-
ality, and foreign policy declarations. Historians dealing with the Cold War
in Sweden usually adopt one of three perspectives: a power perspective,
which emphasizes the role of credibility and tradeoffs between neutrality
and other issues of foreign relations such as free trade and participation in
international organizations; a ideological perspective, which mainly links
foreign policy to the ideological dimensions of social democracy in the
domestic sphere (the Social Democratic Party having been continuously in
power from 1933 to 1976); and a democratic perspective, which concen-
trates on foreign policy formulation as a domain of expertise and on the
paradigm of consensus within Swedish politics as a way of showing strength
and unity in the international arena.* A few additional studies have dealt
directly with military aspects of neutrality and the reliability of defense in
order to uphold neutrality in war.' Fewer still have dealt with the military

298 Weinberger

cooperation between Sweden and the Western countries during the Cold
War. None have focused on technology or analyzed cooperation from a per-
spective emphasizing the impact of technological choices, design, and stan-
dards on the meaning and conduct of neutrality.'"

Technology and the Cold War

Although it is not difficult to agree with Walter LaFeber's overall judgment,
the issue (or even problem) of technology, science, and diplomatic history
is far from one of simple ignorance or exclusion. Diplomatic history has
been dominated by a focus on high politics, ideology, and the intentional-
ity of actors, but it has also, during recent decades, undergone large changes
in methods and become substantially more heterogeneous, incorporating
new perspectives. Saying that studies that directly address technology and
science are rare is not the same as saying that technology and science do
not play a vital role as an implicit factor in many accounts of the Cold War.
The concepts of military power, balance of power, and national security are
used by scholars to describe and explain the Cold War. All those concepts
are, of course, intimately connected to technology and science. In the same
obvious way, studies linking economy to policy formulation and conduct
address issues of the mihtary-industrial complex and its influences on the
Cold War."

It would be hard to imagine a bipolar world without nuclear weapons
and other miUtary technology. As David Holloway writes, "it was nuclear
weapons above all that made the Soviet Union a superpower."'- In regard
to LaFeber's observation of the lack of interest in technology among diplo-
matic historians, the situation for the history of technology is in certain
ways a mirror-image twin when it comes to the Cold War. Much as science
and technology figure only implicitly in diplomatic history, histories of tech-
nology (with some exceptions) usually relegate the Cold War to a status of
silent implication. Some have addressed the Cold War directly, but Walter
McDougall, Stuart Leslie, Paul Forman, Michael Dennis, and David
Hounshell all describe how the Cold War shaped the content of science and
technology rather than vice versa." One reason for this might be the focus
of the discipline on innovation, on new technologies, and on the method-
ologically sound understanding of technology as a social construct. Arguing

The Neutrality Flagpole 299

for studies of the political, social, and cultural effects of technology too eas-
ily invokes the notion of technological determinism.

But there are exceptions. Paul Edwards shows in The Closed World how
the conditions of the Cold War shaped computers, and how they, seen as
metaphors, helped shape Cold War discourse." Another exception is
Inventing Accuracy, Donald MacKenzie's study of missile guidance, which
clearly illustrates both how technology was socially constructed by the Cold
War and how nuclear strategy was shaped by technology. MacKenzie even
argues that close scrutiny of the development of inertial guidance makes
categories such as politics and technology obsolete.''

MacKenzie is well aware of the limitations of traditional accounts of the
Cold War, especially those of the reaUst school's anthropomorphism in see-
ing the state as a homogenous decision maker. He pertinently calls this polit-
ical determinism, noting the appearance of a direct causaHty between
political decisions, policy, and practice. ''' He identifies at least three differ-
ent levels of policy making, or decision making, and also stresses that these
levels need not be consistent. The first level is the production of "stated pos-
ture" — a declared and official rational description of policy, usually pro-
duced at the highest level of formal political and military power. The stated
posture is usually the outcome of a number of considerations concerning
domestic politics and international relations. The second level is the oper-
ational planning within the military establishment, usually protected from
public scrutiny, not least because of the need for secrecy. This operational
planning is usually carried out in a context of competition among different
branches of the armed services. The third level is the process of deciding
design criteria for specific weapon systems. At this level there is an interplay
between specialized agencies within the mihtary sector and corporations.
These levels interact to produce "bureaucratic politics." In essence, then, as
MacKenzie points out, "'the state,' intends nothing, decides nothing, does
nothing. Policy is not 'decision' . . . but 'outcome.'"'^

My argument then would be that we need to pursue the path suggested
by MacKenzie in a broader and more general way. We must be careful not
to travel the old road of technological determinism, but we should not be
afraid of raising the issue of science and technology as part of the Cold War,
and we must try to see how engineers and technicians within the military
sphere have formed and transformed foreign policy.

300 Weinberger

In the case of Sweden's neutrality, the social construction of technology
has shaped the content of the policy to such a degree that the actual mate-
rial world of the defense systems in fact belied the official policy of Sweden.
The maxim of nonalignment in peace and neutrality in war was effectively
upset by Sweden's technological orientation toward the West.

It was military engineers who turned "neutrality" into something quite
different. This was done secretly, in order to maintain the official picture
of Sweden's neutrality, but also because of the way any military establish-
ment needs to function within a democratic framework, i.e. the conflict
between democratic transparency and the necessary secrecy of military
plans and preparations. In part the secrecy enrolled politicians and the gov-
ernment, in part it excluded them. A small number within the Swedish gov-
ernment, among them the prime minister and the minister of defense, knew
more about the cooperation with the West than other members, among
them the foreign minister. But the exclusion also had to do with what infor-
mation actually was given to the Swedish government from the defense
establishment.

Crucial to this "political" aspect of engineering is the question of ontol-
ogy as presented by the actors involved in shaping Sweden's neutrality. It is
both trivial and necessary to point out that the understanding of techno-
logical decisions differs among various groups of actors, as the theory of
social constructivism tells us. Any particular technology means different
things to different groups, and different groups perceive different conse-
quences in any decision to implement or deploy a certain technology. There
is ample evidence that members of the Swedish government did not see spe-
cific technological decisions as especially important, and that instead they
saw them as mundane and neutral. Those at the political decision-making
locus of Sweden's neutrality policy turned something of a blind eye to tech-
nology. To them technology was not unimportant, but it was merely instru-
mental. On the other hand, the military establishment did not neglect the
importance of technology, but it saw technology as a means of bringing
Sweden's defense system into closer affinity with the West. It is also clear,
however, that the dividing line of interpretation did not follow any simple
social grouping. There was a distinct difference between the ontological
positions of Prime Minister Tage Erlander and those of Minister of Foreign
Affairs Osten Unden in this respect, just as there were distinct differences

The Neutrality Flagpole 301

within the military establishment as to how closely Sweden should be asso-
ciated with the West.

Another methodological consideration of importance for the study of
Sweden's neutrality is the systemic approach of Thomas P. Hughes. It has
had a remarkable impact on the way that historians of technology view
technological development and understand the social fabric of technology.
In his most impressive work, which bears the consciously ambiguous title
Networks of Power, Hughes has not only shown how large technological
systems develop over time and gain momentum, but also how they are
essentially sociotechnical, built as a web of hardly discernible threads of
technological, political, economical, social, and cultural forces.'^ A num-
ber of very different actors — inventors, entrepreneurs, financiers, legisla-
tors, bureaucrats, scientists, agencies, schools, corporations — together build
and maintain a system. But even though Hughes has mainly studied large
technological systems, it can be argued that the systemic nature of tech-
nology exceeds those kinds of technologies conventionally thought of as
constituting systems, precisely because systems are not well defined. They
range from strongly integrated and hierarchical to loose and decentralized.
There need not be one single system builder or one centralized organiza-
tion at a system's center. The historian can use the concept of system to
describe technologies, interconnections, and structures in order to interpret
an array of actions and make them coherent. Standardization and the path
dependence of technologies, for example, are social artifacts. The system-
atic nature of technology can be distributed across borders and diffused
into different cultural and political structures.

I take a systems approach to the history of the Swedish defense system
during the Cold War. By pointing to specific technological characteristics of
the Swedish defense system, I want to explore the argument that Sweden
was strongly connected to the military systems of the West. Focusing on the
material world of mundane artifacts, one can see a systemic pattern: in
essence. Western military technology and strategy enveloped Sweden's neu-
trality. This is not just another perspective on Sweden's neutrality. As doc-
uments become available, they make possible a closer and more detailed
study of the political processes underlying policy declarations, but a tradi-
tional focus will not grasp the fundamental integration that took place at
the military and the technological level, beyond rhetoric and discourse

302 Weinberger

alone. In this respect, the story of Sweden's neutrality cannot be understood
apart from technological practices.

My argument will of necessity be exploratory. I will focus on air- warfare
technology and strategy, though I could almost equally well have focused
on naval technology. A significant source and starting point has been an
official governmental investigation and its report Om kriget kommit . . .
[Had There Been a War . . . ]." That report, issued in 1994, was based on
classified interviews and documents, which were gradually released after-
ward. Some material is still classified. The report was also based on mate-
rial in other countries. In the United States, documents from the early period
are accessible, but many from the mid 1950s and after are still classified.
This also holds for British, Danish, and NATO material. The example nev-
ertheless amply illustrates that a history of technology perspective can
greatly benefit studies of the Cold War. I will try to show that the history of
Sweden's neutrality during the Cold War can not be understood without
attention to both the systemic technological aspects of modern warfare and
the social carriers of military technology. An ever-growing cooperation can
be found in the "technological" interaction between Sweden and the out-
side world.

"A Paradise for Wishful Thinkers"

The term "Cold War" is both apt and paradoxical. It, in fact, represents a
period of peace (at least in Europe) as a period of war, creating a war dis-
course that structured most thinking and analysis of international rela-
tions.^" In the Swedish case, this transformed the use of the concept of
neutrality, which in theory is only possible during war, into a peacetime
term. In the never-never land of the Cold War, neutrality had to be inter-
preted anew. It was exactly the blurred boundary between the states of
peace and war that elevated the neutrality issue into such a complicated
problem for Sweden's political and military leaders.

For small countries, the end of World War II meant the prospect of a new
world order based on mutually assured security. At Yalta, in February 1945,
Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin had discussed the international security
organization of the postwar period.^' The idea that all countries would unite
against any country that threatened peace never really stood a chance

The Neutrality Flagpole 303

against the opposite model, according to which the great powers were to
manage the world. The United Nations Organization was to function as an
"elite club for managing the globe."-' For a short time, however, it seemed
that a new world organization might perhaps be able to succeed in a way
that the older League of Nations had not. When the negotiations ended in
June 1945, the UN Charter gave China, Great Britain, the United States,
France, and the Soviet Union permanent places on the Security Council,
with the right to veto any sanctions against themselves or their associates.
This construction deeply concerned smaller countries.

For four years before 1949, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) was created, international tension increased. Even before the end
of World War II, distrust began to replace whatever hope there had been to
continue the cooperation that had defeated Hitler. As the Iron Curtain fell
around Eastern Europe, the United States slowly proceeded toward a pol-
icy of containment. As Stalin tightened his grip over Eastern Europe, the
Western powers responded with growing anxiety and pessimistic visions of
the future. With the creation of the Marshall Plan, the formulation of the
Truman Doctrine, and the birth of NATO, the overall structure of the Cold
War soon became fixed.

During the period 1945-1949, the United States' attitude toward Scan-
dinavia went from a rather detached and absent-minded one to one that
increasingly emphasized the need for the Scandinavian countries to choose
a side. US policy had long been the province of experts within the Depart-
ment of State, but it was slowly evolving to include the highest echelons of
power. The Scandinavian countries were seen as deeply democratic, with
their heart in the right place, but perhaps as having a somewhat confusing
and naive foreign policy. Although this was tolerated for a while, from 1947
on the United States put considerable pressure on Denmark, Norway, and
Sweden to fully declare their loyalty to the Western democratic nations in
the struggle against growing Soviet aggression.'^

Sweden's foreign policy was heavily influenced by the foreign minister,
Osten Unden, a professor of civil law who had been active in the Social
Democratic Party since 1909. He held the office of Minister of Foreign
Affairs from 1945 until 1962. The thinking of Unden is best characterized
by the tension between his belief in neutrality as an effective foreign pol-
icy for Sweden and his conviction that international peace and collective

304 Weinberger

security could be gained only by an international legal system.^'' Toward
the end of World War II, he had proclaimed that if a new world order of
security based on an effective, sohdarian international organization with
executive power to reinforce its statutes were to develop, Sweden should
give up its neutrality. He thus clearly saw that neutrality was not a priori
compatible with international sohdarity, and he always gave soHdarity a
higher priority. Unden envisioned a legal system in which all nations would
adhere to accepted rules of international conduct. With East- West tensions
increasingly suffocating the negotiations preceding the formation of the
UN and then the workings of the new organization, he saw no reason to
give up Sweden's neutrality.

Unden firmly believed that neutral countries like Sweden contributed to
a more peaceful world, that by their mere existence they would point to the
possibility of staying aloof in a bipolar conflict. At the same time, the
rhetoric surrounding Unden's foreign policy created a strong impression
that, in reality, a neutral country could play a role as an intermediary. This
belief and this impression resulted in a rather ambivalent strategy. On the
one hand, Sweden's neutrality fostered an autarchic military position, man-
ifested in a policy of nonalignment and in the development of specific
Swedish technological solutions; on the other hand, the bridge-building ele-
ment suggested that Sweden should try to seek a middle ground in the Cold
War, both strategically and ideologically.

H. Freeman Matthews, a career diplomat, served as the United States'
ambassador to Sweden during the years 1947 through 1950 — three of the
most formative years for Sweden's foreign relations in the Cold War.^^
While in Stockholm, Matthews labored to change Sweden's traditional
policy of neutrality in order to make Sweden reahze its dependence on the
West. Matthews 's perspective on Sweden's neutrality naturally differed
from Unden's. Matthews felt that Sweden had shown during the war that
it could not be trusted to enforce its neutrality, and that under pressure
from any strong belligerent state Sweden would make concessions just to
avoid military conflict. Thus, under the concept of strict neutrality,
Sweden in reality conducted a not-so-glorious pragmatic policy as long
as it benefited the country. The risk seemed great that Sweden would not
be able to handle a serious threat from the Soviet Union. The US
Department of State did not question Sweden's Western orientation or its

The Neutrality Flagpole 305

democratic capacity to withstand communist ideological propaganda; it
was Sweden's incapacity to adequately judge its own strategic position
and to foresee the probable course of an outright war that troubled US
diplomats.

Much to Matthews's irritation, Sweden's military and some of Sweden's
leading politicians believed that their country would receive assistance from
the West in case of Soviet aggression, without any prior planning or coop-
eration. Sweden's war planning did in fact presume help from the outside
in the case of aggression extended over a longer period of time, and most
of the scenarios explicated a strategic defense aimed at buying time.^'^
Matthews described this dual position as "a specious tenet in the creed of
Swedish self-deception."-^ Calling Stockholm "the paradise of wishful
thinkers," he produced a list of what he called twelve basic fallacies of
Sweden's neutrality thinking and sent it to US Secretary of State George
Marshall.^'*

The foremost fallacy cited by Matthews was that Sweden thought it
would be able to stay out of a third world war, and that somehow the great
powers would find Sweden's neutraUty advantageous. Though it was not
official policy, one Swedish argument against alignment with the West
rested on the assumption that Sweden was able to provide a middle ground
— a third way, in a pohtical and ideological sense, between the East and the
West — and that Sweden's neutrality was an important factor in the Soviet
Union's attitude toward Finland. A neutral Sweden created an ideological
and strategic spectrum across the Scandinavian peninsula that lessened ten-
sions and made the Finish solution possible; a closer and formal associa-
tion with the West would only change the USSR's attitudes toward Finland
in a negative direction, creating pressure for closer Finnish-Soviet military
cooperation. The balance also worked in the other direction, according to
Swedish thinking. If the USSR intensified pressure on Finland, Sweden
would be forced to join NATO, and that would make the Soviet position
in the Baltic more problematic.-' Matthews saw nothing relevant in this
thinking. In another letter to Marshall, he argued that Sweden's "sensitiv-
ity to what happens in Finland [gave] the Kremlin an opportunity for polit-
ical blackmail against Sweden."'"

Matthews found some alHes among the Swedes. One of them was the
Chief of the Swedish Air Force, General Bengt Nordenskiold, who in

306 Weinberger

Matthews's eyes estimated the balance of power realistically and under-
stood that Sweden needed to cooperate in advance to receive any Western
assistance. Nordenskiold was one of many leading military officers favor-
ably disposed toward a Swedish alliance with the Western countries.^'
Matthews sometimes thought (correctly) that he discerned fractions even
within the Swedish government — the Minister of Defense and friendly
Swedish ambassadors versus the Minister of Foreign Affairs and leading
Social Democratic politicians. The major newspaper Dagens Nyheter,
under charismatic editor-in-chief Herbert Tingsten, consistently criticized
the official neutrality policy.^- Tingsten shared Matthews's morally founded
critique of Unden's inability to see the cold international climate as any-
thing other than a struggle between two power blocs. They both thought
that Unden fled into formalism, trying to place Sweden on the middle
ground to create credibility for its neutrality policy. In numerous editorials,
Tingsten argued for joining any upcoming Western aUiance.

A coherent theme in the reports from the American Embassy in
Stockholm to Washington was a supposition that the sentiments of the
Swedish public on the neutrality issue would change. Change never came.
Matthews explained his ambition of "getting the Swedes off the neutrality
flagpole. "^^ And the American ambassador chose a harsh tone to get them
"stirred up" and force them to reahze that the price of neutrality would be
both a "failure to hold neutrality" and "the loss of potential help from the
West." Once the majority of the Swedish people and their politicians real-
ized that there was no Western help in sight with the chosen policy, the
"last-ditch neutrality boys like Unden [would] be overruled" at last.

In order to put more than words behind his tactics, Matthews recom-
mended isolation when it came to military matters. "The cure for isolation-
ism is isolation," Matthews argued, and he recommended strict restraint
when it came to military promises of assistance or Sweden's procurement of
US military technology.'* Since Sweden was able to buy some surplus mili-
tary equipment from the United States during this period, Matthews's rec-
ommendations were not always followed in the State Department, but there
was a period of constraint, for instance, in matters of radar technology,
which Sweden needed badly. In addition, Britain sold Sweden a substantial
volume of military technology at the same time, a fact that made Matthews
despair in his ambition to get the Swedes off the "neutrality flagpole."

The Neutrality Flagpole 307

Unusual among his diplomatic peers, Matthews seems to have thought
systematically about military technology and about Sweden's dependence
on the United Kingdom and the United States. His argument to counter iso-
lationism with isolation surely implies this. He knew that Swedish war plan-
ning assumed Western military assistance, and he knew that Sweden would
not be able to become self-sufficient in military technology (an insight
shared by some of his Swedish friends and one of their common grounds for
understanding). Matthews's strategy was to undermine Sweden's ability to
build up its military forces by denying it access, not to new military tech-
nology generically, but to new Western technology, thus barring Sweden's
integration into Western defense strategies aimed at the Soviet Union. This
would make the "last ditch neutrality boys" understand how untenable
being neutral actually was. They would not be able to make that neutrality
credible without a strong defense, which could be had only by integrating
into Western defense in general.

A Scandinavian Defense Pact

In 1950, Walton Butterworth replaced Matthews, also a career diplomat
with the Department of State. At the same time, a change in the United
States' attitude toward Sweden was noticeable. All along, Matthews and
Foggy Bottom had not seemed to have had entirely corresponding views of
how to handle Sweden. Matthews's diplomatic dispatches were often
drafted as arguments against Sweden's neutrality, but their tone was often
heated and hortatory, as if Matthews were actually trying to convince the
State Department, not the Swedes, of the perils of neutrality. Even within
the State Department there were different ideas about how to handle
Sweden's neutrality and reform Nordic thinking. ^^

The main reason for the change of attitude has often been attributed to
the unsuccessful negotiations of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden concern-
ing a Scandinavian Defense Pact (SDP) in 1949, and to the ensuing deci-
sions of Denmark and Norway to join NATO. The question of a defense
pact rose to prominence in the spring of 1948, when Sweden made a pro-
posal to Denmark and Norway that led to formal, partly secret, unsuc-
cessful negotiations that ended at the start of 1949. But according to
dispatches from the American legation in Stockholm, the idea of a Nordic

308 Weinberger

bloc had been aired at least as far back as 1946.^*' Unden had been a strong
opponent of a defense pact, but sentiments among the Swedish public made
the Social Democrats change their attitude. A speech by Norway's Minister
of Foreign Affairs, Halvard Lange, also indicated for the first time that
Norway might be interested in the formation of Scandinavian military
cooperation. In the autumn of 1948 the three countries created a commit-
tee to investigate the possibilities of a Scandinavian defense pact. For many
Swedish critics of the neutrality policy, those negotiations indicated that the
government was at last willing to reconsider its policy.

The Swedish historian Krister Wahlback has described the Swedish ini-
tiative and the subsequent events as a Swedish- American tug-of-war over
Norway that the United States eventually won. All the Scandinavian coun-
tries were willing to create an SDP, but they differed on the global status
of the pact. Both Norway and Denmark argued for association with
Western powers, whereas Sweden wanted the pact to be an extension of
Sweden's neutrahty. All three nations saw the benefits of military cooper-
ation and reahzed that none of them could withstand a Soviet attack for
long without British and American assistance. The basic dividing line was
to what extent such assistance would have to be prepared in advance.
Denmark and Norway argued that the scale of preparations, as well as the
Scandinavian need for procurement of British and American technology,
required some sort of formal agreement with the West — something the
Swedes saw as impossible because of their neutrality policy.

During the whole period of negotiation, US diplomats argued forcefully
against an SDP, at least in its Swedish version. Ironically, the success of US
diplomacy to shepherd Denmark and Norway into NATO strongly under-
mined Matthews's tactics. After the talks broke down, Sweden returned
to an outspoken nonalignment policy, and thus Matthews's goal became
even more distant than it had been. But now that the United States had
secured access to Greenland and Spitsbergen through Denmark and
Norway, Sweden's neutrality was recognized as much less problematic.
The State Department reconsidered its relations with Sweden, the strongest
military nation among the Nordic countries, and now regarded a strong
Swedish defense capacity as a first line of defense in the North." Rather
than try to cure isolationism with isolation, the United States now accepted
Sweden's neutrahty and tried to make the best of the situation.

The Neutrality Flagpole 309

During the SDP negotiations, much effort was made to analyze various
military preconditions for a common defense of the three Scandinavian
countries. It is surely fair to say that a coherent picture as well as a silent
agreement evolved among military experts from all three countries as to
how the Scandinavian forces could best be coordinated if a Soviet attack
were to come. The negotiations focused on two different options: first and
foremost, a formal defense pact with mutual responsibilities; if that proved
impossible, a "small solution," with more informal cooperation. The report
implicitly concluded that the difference between a formal defense pact and
a small solution was perhaps more of degree than of kind. In a secret letter
to the Swedish government commenting on the negotiations, the Supreme
Commander of the Swedish Defense Forces, Helge Jung, pointed to the need
for good contacts with the Western nations, especially Britain and the
United States.

The breakdown of the formal negotiations did not stop the ongoing dis-
cussions of the Scandinavian military leaders. In May 1949, three months
after the end of the talks, the British Embassy reported to London the exis-
tence of an agreement between the Swedish and Norwegian air forces on
a division of labor in case of a Soviet attack.^* Sweden would deploy most
of its air force to the south, repelling a Soviet attack from the southwest
through Denmark; Norway would be responsible for the Northern
defense.

The Chief of the Swedish Defense Staff, Nils Swedlund, suggested to
Prime Minister Tage Erlander that some of the mutual defense planning
that had been discussed during the talks should be allowed to continue —
informally, of course, and concealed from the Swedish public and the
world." Swedlund produced a memorandum proposing that twelve
detailed plans be drawn up to deal with matters such as radio and wire
communications between military agencies in the three countries, coor-
dination of air surveillance and air defense command and control, and
the establishment of standardized procedures for reporting and identifi-
cation processes. Furthermore, Swedlund suggested plans for army coop-
eration in the area around Treriksroset (the point where Norway, Sweden,
and Finland meet in the North) and along the railway between Kiruna in
Sweden and Narvik on the Norwegian coast. He also suggested plans for
naval cooperation with Denmark in the Southern Baltic Sea, and with

310 Weinberger

Norway concerning Kattegat and Skagerak in the North Sea. Erlander
made Swedlund understand that he was positively inchned toward at
least some of the plans, namely those he termed technical. In his diary,
Erlander noted that Swedlund's memorandum concerned coordination
on military telephony. "It presumably concerned harmless matters," he
added.''" The notes in Swedlund's diary regarding the same meeting and
its context shows that he had discussed the coordination issue with his
Scandinavian colleagues. In these discussions, technical matters were
basic to any cooperation. Without a removal of specific technological
differences, there could be no cooperation to speak of. What Erlander
saw as "harmless matters" represented for Swedlund and his colleges the
basis for cooperation.*'

In June 1 949, Norway's Minister of Defense, Jens-Christian Hauge, met
his Swedish counterpart, Allan Vougt, and expressed his (and, he claimed,
the Danish government's) wish for combined planning. At a September
meeting with the Swedish government, Swedlund again briefed them on
the plans for cooperation; afterward, he was given instructions to go ahead
with communications, coordinated air surveillance, air defense command
and control, air force search and rescue, and military weather service. The
army cooperation was delayed because Erlander was hesitant, although
he was generally in favor. Minister of Foreign Affairs Osten Unden
informed Swedlund of the decision of the government, and also of an ear-
lier meeting in Copenhagen at which Scandinavian foreign ministers had
agreed to exchange "technical results" and to prepare technical coopera-
tion — the latter, of course, Unden stated, "without engagement."''^ It is
hard judge this on the basis of the sparse material at hand. One interpre-
tation that fits well with Swedlund's further actions is that he understood
the latter to be a supplementary instruction — i.e, that he could set up
communications, arrange air force cooperation, and, more generally, make
further technical preparations.

Swedlund soon developed rather substantial cooperation with Norway,
well beyond the instructions he had been given in 1949, but not necessar-
ily without governmental acceptance. Norway's joining NATO in 1949 did
not in any way deter the close Scandinavian connections; on the contrary,
it provided Sweden with a potential channel to England and the United
States. All the cooperation was conducted with strictest secrecy.

The Neutrality Flagpole 311

The "Dropshot" War Plan

The evolving division of labor between Norway and Sweden coincided with
developments in US military planning. In 1949, a committee of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff prepared an extensive plan for a possible war against the
Soviet Union. This plan, called Dropshot, was only one in a series of war
plans. It was, in the eyes of both Norwegians and Swedes, most disturbing
because of its implications for their fate in a superpower conflict.

The overall objective of Dropshot was to destroy the USSR's will and
capacity to resist. The starting point of the scenarios described in the plan
was that the Soviet Union had launched an attack on continental Europe,
going through the western parts of Germany, over the Rhine, and into
France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In connection with Scandinavia, the
planners in Washington estimated a Soviet invasion of Denmark from the
south using "5 line divisions and 400 combat aircraft," defeating and occu-
pying Denmark within 14 days, and then making a "subsequent attack
against southern Sweden.'"*^ The invasion of Sweden and Norway would
commence about 90 days after the beginning of the attack on continental
Europe, the Soviets using approximately "13 line divisions and 600-900
tactical aircraft" and having the capacity to "triple the initial number of
divisions and build up to more than 2000 combat aircraft if required."'*''
Contemporary Swedish war planning envisioned four alternatives for a
Soviet invasion of Sweden: one in the southern province of Skane, one in the
north through Finland and Norway, a combination of the preceding two
alternatives, and an invasion across the Baltic Sea toward Stockholm and
central Sweden. In all these cases, Sweden's objective was to buy time while
awaiting assistance from Britain and the United States.''' At the end of 1947,
the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Defense Forces ordered a sepa-
rate study for two versions of the first alternative (a Soviet invasion of
southern Sweden), focusing on an invasion from Danish territory at Ore-
sund and/or Gothenburg.'"'

In a section on military alternatives, the Dropshot planners discussed
Scandinavia in two separate scenarios, one concerning Norway and Sweden
and the other concerning Denmark. The reason for this was that Sweden's
neutrality precluded a combined defense of Scandinavia. Denmark, because
of its topography, was said to be "virtually indefensible" — a conclusion

312 Weinberger

much in line with what the Swedish military had come to conclude in the
SDP negotiations, and a view expressed in a secret appendix by the Swedish
members of the committee and delivered to the Swedish defense minister
in connection with the negotiations/^ Norway and Sweden were seen as
strategically significant from both offensive and defensive standpoints. They
could provide air bases 500-700 miles closer to the Soviet Union than those
in the British Isles. In addition, holding Norway and Sweden would deny
the Soviets free use of the Baltic Sea. Maintaining control over Swedish and
Norwegian territory would deny the Soviet Union a base area for air and
naval operations over the North Sea. If the Soviet Union occupied Norway
and Sweden, it would be able to estabhsh bases for air and naval operations
against England and the North Atlantic.''^ Sweden's uranium, iron ore, and
industrial products also figured in these plans.'*' The United States and the
United Kingdom had tried in 1945 (before Hiroshima) to get some kind of
control over Swedish uranium by demanding exclusive first option use — a
request that was denied by the Swedish government, which instead formally
assured the US and the UK that it would exercise absolute control over the
uranium and informally agreed to keep them informed on the matter of
Swedish use.™ The Dropshot plan estimated that the equivalent of 20 US
divisions and 1800 combat aircraft would be needed to hold the
Scandinavian peninsula. The available Swedish and Norwegian forces (esti-
mated forces available 45 days after the continental invasion) totaled 13
divisions and 1400 combat aircraft.^'

Another important aspect of Scandinavia's military situation was the
imbalance of military power. Though formally Norway could mobilize six
divisions, these were characterized as "skeletonized." The report estimated
that Norway would be able to mobilize two divisions 90 days after the con-
tinental invasion. The air force of Norway was estimated to contain about
100 combat aircraft. Sweden, on the other hand, was predicted to be able
to mobihze 18 divisions 90 days after the continental invasion, and its air
force, with 1300 combat aircraft, was described as "one of the best air
forces in Western Europe." And Sweden would soon have the capacity to
manufacture its own jet fighters. ^-

In a section titled "selection of allied courses of action," defending
Central Europe was assigned the utmost importance. The alternative of
holding Norway and Sweden was briefly touched upon, but Sweden's neu-

The Neutrality Flagpole 313

trality was seen as a factor hindering any effective help. The planners con-
cluded:

The provision of the required aid would be justified only in the event it develops
that there is a reasonable assurance that Sweden would join with Norway and
Denmark in a concerted defense of Scandinavia in the event that the Soviets elect
to exercise their capabilities against any of the three Scandinavian countries. . . .
Based upon the above considerations, the course of action "Hold Norway and
Sweden" is rejected. ^''

During the SDP negotiations, the United States had opposed the formation
of such a pact. Thus, it seems rather surprising that the US military argued
so forcefully for a concerted defense of Scandinavia. The Dropshot plan
clearly indicates that the fate of Norway and that of Sweden were, in the
eyes of the military planners in Washington, linked. If the results of the plan-
ning process of which Dropshot was a part were communicated to Norway
(by then a member of NATO) or to Sweden, these considerations surely
must have provided a strong incentive for closer military cooperation
between those two countries.^''

A Shift of Balance

Cooperation among Denmark, Norway, and Sweden developed further
during the early 1950s." But at the same, those countries gradually built
up their relations with Britain and the United States. In 1949, in the above-
mentioned special letter in 1949 to the Swedish defense minister in con-
nection with the failure of the SDP negotiations. Supreme Commander
Helge Jung provided a clear rational for this: "... while isolation from
Denmark and Norway would be negative for our country, isolation from
the Western powers would seriously jeopardize our defense possibilities and
provision. ... A policy that jeopardizes provision from the West must there-
fore, from a military point of view, be strongly rejected. "^'' This was entirely
consistent with Swedish war planning, which, as I have mentioned, was
based on the assumption of Western help in the event of Soviet aggression.
A decisive step toward closer Norwegian relations with England and the
United States was taken in September 1951, when NATO's Northern
Command (AFNORTH) was established at Kolsas, near Oslo." This tem-
porarily affected Sweden's relations with Norway, since the Swedish mili-
tary was not certain whether previous agreements between Norway and

314 Weinberger

Sweden were still valid. Nils Swedlund, who in 1951 became Supreme
Commander, replacing Jung, did not know who was actually in charge of
the military forces in Norway. At a meeting with Swedlund, Norwegian
Prime Minister Oscar Torp assured him that the plans would remain in
force, and also promised to instruct the Norwegian supreme commander to
share the Atlantic Pact's defense plan for Scandinavia with him.

Contacts between Sweden and England soon increased in intensity.
Interactions between military personnel in England and Sweden soon led to
extensive exchanges of information. Sweden's Air Eorce and Navy both had
strong traditions of affinity to their British counterparts. In March 1951,
Swedish Defense Minister Allan Vougt sent a memorandum concerning
Sweden's armed forces to the British Air Minister Henderson, who had
asked Sweden for information on war planning in the case of a Soviet
attack. Vougt's comprehensive memorandum contained top-secret infor-
mation on Swedish war planning and capacity.

In mid 1952, the United States and Sweden exchanged diplomatic notes
concerning Sweden's purchase of military equipment and services from the
US government. On the request of the Swedes, the agreement was kept
secret for a period of two years. Discussions concerning the conditions of
such an agreement had been going on since the spring of 1951 and had con-
cerned mainly the United States' desire that Sweden join the international
system of export restrictions as implemented by the Coordinating
Committee for East-West Trade (CoCom). In February 1952, following a
new report by the National Security Council on the position of the United
States with respect to Scandinavia and Einland, President Harry Truman
declared that Sweden was eligible to purchase military technology in accor-
dance with the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949. The report of the
NSC was a revaluation of the United States' position with respect to
Sweden. After a prolonged period of trying to get Sweden "off the neutral-
ity flagpole," the US now seemed to accept Sweden's neutrality:

Although on balance, and primarily because of the advantage to the organization
of Scandinavian defense, it would be to our interest to have Sweden in NATO, we
must for the predictable future accept as a political fact Sweden's policy of avoid-
ing great power military alliances and calculate accordingly those means and meth-
ods best designed to increase Sweden's contribution to Western defense.^"

The report concluded that the United States should make Sweden eligible
to receive military assistance "on the same basis as other nations whose

The Neutrality Flagpole 315

ability to defend themselves is important to the security of the United
States,"^' and that the Swedish military establishment should further be
strengthened by exchanging military information and by having Swedish
officers attend American technical schools. During an informal trip to the
United States in April 1952, Prime Minister Tage Erlander met with
President Truman and discussed the matter/" Sweden agreed not to re-
export classified technology without prior permission from the United
States, and also to develop internal security measures to prevent transfers
of technology or knowledge to the Soviet bloc/'

Technological Dependence

But all the apparent logic of the above explanation is not sufficient for an
understanding of either the change in US diplomacy toward Sweden or the
reason for the increase in military cooperation. The British had sold
Sweden military hardware, undermining Ambassador Matthews's strat-
egy of curing Sweden's isolationism with isolation. But that in itself does
not explain the change. So far, the story has focused on high politics and
military considerations in connection with the foreign policy of Sweden
(and Norway). A missing link is hidden in the considerations of the mili-
tary, both in the United States and Sweden, and in the exchanges between
these countries that started as soon as World War II ended. Thus, the story
of the SDP negotiations and of the strategic considerations of how to
defend Scandinavia against a Soviet attack must be complemented by
observations of the ongoing cooperation between Sweden and the United
States.

After World War II, the US War Department issued a Post-Hostilities
Mapping Plan (the "Casey Jones" Plan) according to which the western
parts of Europe and Africa would be scanned from the air to gather basic
data for various maps and charts. One objective was to obtain data of suf-
ficient quality for the compilation of strategic and tactical maps of, among
other areas, the coastline of Northern Africa, the Middle East, Greece,
Italy, Austria, and the western portions of Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
Though most countries approved of the aerial survey, Sweden declined on
the basis of its neutrality policy. This caused the War Department some
concern, since the area was considered to be of strategic importance. As a

316 Weinberger

way of getting around Sweden's neutrality, Lieutenant Colonel G. S. Smith
of the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department suggested that
the United States offer "to loan material and personnel as required to
enable the Swedish government to conduct its own survey and to furnish
the United States a copy of data obtained."'^ The Swedish government
declined, on the ground that this arrangement too would formally violate
Sweden's neutrality policy. Nevertheless, the United States sold Sweden six
F-9 airplanes (a modified version of the B-17 bomber, stripped of all arma-
ment) and lent Sweden cameras and related equipment; in addition, a Um-
ited number of Swedes would be trained in the United States to carry out
the survey project "independently." All this would of course be handled
with the utmost discretion. Should it become known by the Soviets,
Sweden could always claim that all the work was done with Swedish
materiel and personnel, primarily for Swedish use. Selling the F-9s to
Sweden avoided political compHcations for the Swedish government. The
systemic military strategic requirements could be achieved without
Sweden's having to depart formally from its self-declared neutrality. The
subtext was quite different, though: the provision of maps to the US War
Department indicated that Swedish airspace would be used by US forces
in the event of war, and that Sweden was prepared to facilitate US mihtary
preparations well in advance. Obviously, the War Department considered
the project highly important.

In April 1945, the United States sold 50 P51-D20 Mustang fighter planes
to the Swedish Air Force. In March 1946, the Swedes wanted to buy 100
more Mustangs. In the United States, the sale was generally favored by both
the State Department and the War Department, but it contradicted Senate
regulations on the handling of surplus tactical aircraft. The State
Department had earlier assured Congress that it would sell such planes to
only a few specified countries. '"' The sale to Sweden received preliminary
approval, but then Secretary of State Dean Acheson decided against it.'^'' In
a letter to Acheson, Secretary of War Robert Patterson argued in favor of
the sale, referring to the joint mapping project. ''^ In October the State
Department finally approved the sale of 90 Mustangs, to the satisfaction
of the Swedish Air Force. The deal was a chit linked to the ongoing map-
ping project. Both were steps, however small, toward Sweden's convergence
with the West.

The Neutrality Flagpole 317

The mapping project was in itself only one of a series of preparations for
possible air warfare against the Soviet Union. Sweden's geostrategic posi-
tion was emphasized in various ways, one of them when the Strategic Air
Command's Director of Intelligence, a Colonel Bently, received an invita-
tion "to go hunting in Sweden" and "talk things over with his opposite
number.'"''' The trip was of course supposed to be completely unofficial,
and publicity was to be avoided. The Strategic Air Command had also pre-
pared war plans that involved crossing Norwegian and Swedish airspace
on the way to the Soviet Union. '^

Although the mapping project was carried out at an early date, the for-
mation of strategy for atomic warfare developed over a long period. In 1950
President Truman issued an decision to allow secret air missions over Soviet
territory for an aerial photographic survey, radar detection, and signal intel-
ligence.'* Aerial photographic and radar-detection missions were carried
out with unmarked British and American aircraft from bases in Britain and
West Germany, which deeply penetrated Soviet territory. The purposes of
those penetrations were to collect data for specific approaches to bomb tar-
gets and to produce a sequence of radar pictures as guides for future bomb-
ing missions. Signals intelligence concerning the Soviet air defense system
did not require penetration; it could in general be done along the Soviet
Union's periphery. Still, aircraft sometimes crossed the Soviet border in
order to investigate the reactions of the air defense system.

Sweden's intelligence organization had nurtured close relations to its
British and American counterparts in the postwar period. Because of
Sweden's proximity to the Soviet Union, US intelligence organizations
approached their Swedish counterparts and offered their cooperation.
Sweden bought signal-intelligence equipment from the United States at sub-
stantially reduced prices and used it for reconnaissance in the Baltic Sea.''
At the beginning of the 1950s, Swedish officers started to take part in
courses at American and British intelligence schools. One of the students,
Stig Synnergren, eventually served as Sweden's Supreme Commander
(1970-1978).""

We still know relatively little about the intelligence cooperation between
Sweden and Western countries, since most of the material is classified.
However, we do know of close cooperation between US military attaches
in Stockholm and the Swedish Defense Staff. The flow of information from

318 Weinberger

Stockholm to Washington was impressive in volume.^' From the available
material it is clear that information concerning Sweden's infrastructure
(airfields, railways, harbors, highways, industries, power plants, etc.) was
combined with information on the status of the armed forces (men and
materiel) and technological information on specific development projects
(for, e.g., jet engines and fighter planes). The fact that the infrastructure
reports often included aerial photos (positives and negatives) indicates that
the American personnel in Sweden either had access to aircraft with which
to take such photos or were given the photos by the Swedish military. The
number of reports runs to thousands. Altogether, the information acquired
in Sweden must have provided the US mihtary with a very good picture of
Sweden's military capacity and thinking.

In addition to the reports covering Swedish conditions, there were a
number of reports that contained information on the Baltic Sea, Finland,
the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and East Germany.
Swedish reports on the Soviet merchant marine and navy were combined
with aerial photos of Soviet naval ships and subsequent analysis of their
gunnery and other vital information. Swedish intelligence concerning
Soviet activities was communicated through the defense staff to the
American attaches, as were police interrogation reports concerning
refugees from the Eastern Bloc. For a number of years, the American
embassy also collected "POLSAM" (Petroleum, Oil, Lubrication Samples)
from Soviet ships in Sweden's harbors and sent them for analysis to
Washington. The metallurgy of a PoUsh airplane of Soviet origin was made
available through a small sample of aluminum. Most of the material from
Sweden was widely distributed within the American defense and intelli-
gence establishments. This military information was most likely collected
from various sources and in various ways, some legal and some illegal. But
it is also clear that the relationship between the Swedish and the US mih-
tary was intimate. Such evidence, in and of itself, might not necessarily
have compromised neutrality had the Swedish military treated all foreign
mihtary attaches the same. But there is no evidence that Soviet officers
enjoyed similar access. At one point, the Soviet diplomatic delegation in
Stockholm expressed its displeasure with the close contacts between the
Swedish and the American military. The Swedes' answered such com-
plaints by arranging larger meetings of all foreign attaches and by staging

The Neutrality Flagpole 319

demonstrations of Swedish military facilities. After one demonstration, the
American contingent reported to Washington with satisfaction that the
Swedish military had hidden substantial amounts of equipment in order
not to disclose too much to the Soviets/^

Systems and Strategic Missions

Seen from a strategic viewpoint, access to Sweden's airspace for Western
forces in the event of war proved to be of vital importance. If Sweden
wished to remain neutral in the event of war, its air force would have to
counter any violation of Swedish airspace. Asked by the press, Swedish
government ministers would answer that Sweden would defend its airspace
against any penetration, regardless of origin. But this was generally an area
of much ambiguity. American diplomats monitored and commented upon
these public statements. At the same time, Swedish diplomats in
Washington and military leaders in Stockholm reassured them that those
statements should not be taken too seriously.^^ The foreign "policy" of
Sweden was not decided on; the policy instead was a rather bewildering
outcome of different signals at different levels. Thus, Donald MacKenzie's
observation that policy is not a decision but an outcome is fully exempli-
fied by the case of Swedish neutrality.

From 1947 to 1951, US war planning regarded the possibility of defend-
ing the European mainland with pessimism. ^'' (This gradually gave way to
a more optimistic view.^') Instead, US military plans emphasized main-
taining some bridgeheads into Europe for an eventual counteroffensive.
Britain and to some extent Scandinavia were judged crucial, for
Scandinavia offered air bases more than 1000 kilometers closer than
Britain to the industrial regions of the Soviet Union. ^'^ At least as important
was keeping the Soviets from having access to Scandinavia. Although it is
hard to find material on actual war planning concerning the Scandinavian
peninsula in the 1950s and later, we do know that British war plans later
included overflight of Sweden, with Gothenburg in Western Sweden des-
ignated the point of no return.''^ Extrapolating from the strategic bombing
missions of World War II, one imagines that such missions would have
been planned for bombers with fighter escorts. If Sweden were to be given
so-called indirect support (for example, US bombing of Soviet harbors

320 Weinberger

from which an attack against Sweden was anticipated), the Swedish Air
Force would have to provide escorts or would have to put Swedish bases
at the disposal of British and American forces.

The cooperation was partly channeled through an air force search and
rescue agreement with Norway and Denmark, called SVENORDA. This
cooperation involved air surveillance, air defense command and control
standardization, and military weather service in case of war, as well as a net
of wire communications between air guidance centers in Norway,
Denmark, and Sweden. The cooperation involved exercises and the stan-
dardization of command terminology to correspond to NATO terminol-
ogy, which included setting specific radio frequencies for communications
between aircraft and air guidance. As part of the agreement, officers from
the three countries met frequently and regularly.^* This agreement was kept
secret until 1960 because it was seen as sensitive. Through this coopera-
tion, Swedish officers learned about the terrain, facilities, airfields, and com-
munication routines of the two Scandinavian NATO countries — and, of
course, vice versa. ^'

Norway and Sweden coordinated the installation of new radar stations
to maximize their coverage. After Sweden had established a radio relay net-
work as the backbone of a combat control system, Norway and Denmark
connected to the system. The possibility of transferring communication on
this net to NATO's European net existed, not least through AFNORTH in
Kolsas, Norway. Swedish Air Force officers thus gained good insight into
facilities, bases, and communication routines in Norway and Denmark,
and, subsequently, into NATO routines. The 1994 report Om kriget kom-
mit . . . discussed whether the arrangement made possible exchange of radar
images, but concluded that the capacity of the communication probably
was too low.*"

Identification of aircraft is important in peacetime air search and rescue
and in wartime air guidance and coordination. During World War II,
England developed the first radar aircraft-recognition technology, which
made it possible to determine the identity of an aircraft carrying a passive
transponder. The Swedish Air Force bought the British Mark III IFF (iden-
tification friend or foe) system early on, but it also started a project to
develop a Swedish IFF technology. Still, Swedish IFF technology was, from
the start, based on Western contacts and designs.**' The person responsible

The Neutrality Flagpole 321

for the development at the Research Defence EstabHshment (FOA) traveled
to the United States and Britain to gather information. The ground was
partly prepared for him by Martin Fehrm, head of section 3 at FOA and
later director-general. Fehrm and a military officer traveled to the United
States in 1946 to study IFF. In a memorandum concluding the trip, they
suggested procurement and testing of "foreign IFF-systems."*- They listed
about 15 different IFF systems, and they outlined the technological princi-
ples in detail. The person responsible for IFF development at FOA spent
half a year at Marconi College in the UK in late 1947.^^ With the help of
Fehrm's contacts and the Swedish military attaches in Washington, he also
traveled to universities, research laboratories, and defense industries in the
United States. Between late 1947 and early 1949, FOA developed a proto-
type intended for use by all the mihtary services; later in 1949, it received
grants from the services to continue design work.** A more nearly complete
system was tested in 1957. It seems probable that Sweden's air defense sys-
tem was made compatible with the Mark X system used by NATO at the
time. At least one document exists in which the Chief of the Swedish Air
Staff makes clear that any deployment of the system would be made depen-
dent on the ability to install IFF Mark X stations at the same time.*' That
document clearly spells out the Swedish Air Force's desire to distinguish
between Swedish aircraft and foreign aircraft. But the Swedish Air Force
also wished to identify NATO aircraft — something not strictly necessary if
Soviet and NATO planes counted equally as intruders. At the same time,
Swedish military engineers were being trained in use of the Mark X sys-
tem.*'' Only a few years later, NATO introduced yet another version, Mark
XII. It is not clear whether Sweden's air defense system incorporated it.
Military engineers claim that it would have been fairly easy to make the
Mark XII system compatible with the Swedish IFF system, had Mark XII
been suppHed.*^

At the end of the 1950s, the United States introduced LORAN C, a long-
wave, long-distance navigation system for strategic submarines and aircraft.
In the 1950s, a precursor of this system, LORAN A, was used by NATO
forces. During the buildup phase of Loran C, the United States asked
Sweden to provide permission to calibrate the system in Stockholm and
Gothenburg. After some investigations by a preparatory committee the gov-
ernment granted the request. The National Defense Research Establishment

322 Weinberger

(FOA) had previously studied LORAN A by obtaining technical data from
the United States and was well aware of the potential strategic use of
LORAN C by the US Air Force.*** From a systems perspective, the calibra-
tion of LORAN C was of great importance, since calibration as close to the
Soviet border as possible would make the system more reliable and navi-
gation more precise. Furthermore, the Strategic Air Command needed good
accuracy over Swedish territory for mission plans into the Soviet Union that
included the use of Swedish airspace. Calibration might traditionally be
considered a technical problem, but in this context it was what Thomas
Hughes would label a "critical problem." The problems were not technical;
rather, they had to do with access to Swedish airfields and airspace. NATO,
the US Air Force, and Sweden solved them by political means.

Cooperation extended into much more mundane details as well. In
January 1953, Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent a top-secret telegram
informing the US embassy in Stockholm that the Department of Defense
was "willing [to] consider additional stocks [of] AVGAS required by
Swedish Airforce."^' Acheson wanted to know the existing stock of gaso-
line, the peacetime monthly consumption, the minimum stock desired for
war reserve, and Sweden's storage capacity. Acheson also wanted to know
how many days the Swedes thought such a reserve would last in "wartime
operations." There are almost no further sources to establish what hap-
pened subsequently, but we do know that the US ambassador briefed Prime
Minister Erlander on the issue a few days later.'" Acheson's telegram in itself
indicates that the United States had been selling gasoline to the Swedish Air
Force, and that there was a reserve. The level of handling and the classifi-
cation surely indicate that this was a rather sensitive issue, and the available
Swedish information (which touches on the subject only briefly) clearly
states that Sweden switched to NATO-standard aviation fuel in I960."

Sweden's air defense strategy was based on the concept of decentrahzed
air bases. Swedish aircraft were designed to be able to use short runways,
and Swedish war planning centered on using reinforced highways as run-
ways. NATO's strategic bombers and escort fighters were heavier and thus
required longer runways and load capacity than the Swedish aircraft.
Supreme Commander Helge Jung had discussed this subject with some in
the Swedish government as early as 1948, and he had been instructed to
analyze the question of US bases in Sweden. During the 1950s a small num-

The Neutrality Flagpole 323

ber of runways, primarily located along the eastern coast, were reinforced
and extended to be able to accommodate NATO aircraft.'^ The exact rea-
sons for building these runways remain unclear. They may have included
accommodating damaged SAC aircraft returning from bombing missions
over the Soviet Union, or they may have been intended for a more system-
atic reception."

Conclusion

What all these preparations add up to is perhaps best understood by means
of the concept of the operational scenario. Taken one by one, they might not
seem to constitute more than fractured preparations, but taken together
they all facilitated a strategic mission of the US Air Force across Swedish air
territory with an infrastructure well prepared for warfare against the Soviet
Union. The exact scenario is hard to discern, since the plans of the Strategic
Air Command remain hidden in the archives (with other information). But
it would be wrong to assume that all these technological preparations were
carried out without a reason. It is also worth pointing out that the strate-
gic importance of Scandinavia increased with the buildup of the Soviet
Union's northern fleet during the 1960s and the 1970s.'''

Through technological preparations, Sweden became a hidden member
of NATO — something the Soviets, at times, complained about. As early as
1948, US Assistant Naval Attache R. A. Winston had a conversation with
Bengt Nordenskiold, Chief of the Swedish Air Force, on the matter of US
assistance. Nordenskiold saw the possibility of channeling assistance
through Swedish attaches in Washington and American attaches in
Stockholm. In his report, Winston wrote: "This opens up the possibility of
standardizing Swedish and US tactics and equipment, particularly in the air
forces, since Sweden is using a considerable number of surplus US aircraft
such as Mustang fighters. Harvard trainers etc. ... In effect, it would build
up a valuable backlog of highly trained combat units using US equipment
and tactics, led by officers known to be strongly anti-Russian, who might
be able to influence the Swedish government to abandon its policy of strict
neutrality in the event of war."" During this period, the main objective of
the United States was still to convince Sweden of the benefits of joining
NATO.

324 Weinberger

In April 1954, the US ambassadors to Denmark, Norway, Sweden,
Finland, Switzerland, and Iceland met in Copenhagen to discuss various
aspects of US policy toward the Nordic countries. One issue was the "spe-
cial cases of Sweden and Ireland," including the "military cooperation of
Norway and Denmark with Sweden.""" The meeting was chaired by
Hayden Raynor of the US State Department. In the minutes of the meeting,
the trend from 1949 on was described as "increasing de facto cooperation
with the US."'^ Convincing Sweden to join NATO was no longer the prime
objective. Now the ambassadors saw closer military cooperation with
Denmark and Norway and dependence on US supplies as a way of reach-
ing the "real gain represented by Swedish membership in NATO. " The goal
"should be the practical one of increasing the usefulness of Sweden to the
defense of the Scandinavian area."'^ They concluded as follows:

The Swedish Government, while continuing its overt attachment to an indepen-
dent course, has clearly shown its desire for closer relationships in fact. The ques-
tion of Swedish membership in NATO thus becomes somewhat academic
compared to certain practical questions:

1. The possibility of providing Sweden with certain information concerning NATO
planning.

2. The ability to release to Sweden certain classified information and equipment
which would directly strengthen its defense forces.

3. The arrangement of procedures for the exchange of technical information and
intelligence with Sweden.

4. Encouragement of closer defense cooperation between Sweden and its NATO
neighbors.

Attainment of objectives such as these would be just as effective as Swedish mem-
bership in NATO as a means of strengthening the West. ... If, as is understood,
important military advantages would flow from their achievement, we should con-
sider whether it is not now necessary to realign our sights on the substantial objec-
tives, without reference to the question of formal Swedish membership in NATO.''

In the subsequent summary, the ambassadors agreed to "hve with the non-
alliance policy."'""

In conclusion, then, referring to the overall argument of my chapter and
all the technological preparations and adjustments made in Sweden, this,
for the US ambassadors, represented the "real gain," not formal Swedish
membership in NATO. It might also be worth pointing out that, even
though the strong and clear-cut wording of the ambassadors can hardly be
misunderstood, much of the cooperation on the military level took place

The Neutrality Flagpole 325

directly between the Swedish military and their foreign equivalents, not at
the diplomatic level.

As is evident, the ambassadors clearly acknowledged the impossibility of
changing Sweden's official policy of neutrality, but they also saw how mili-
tary cooperation, intelligence exchange, and technological orientation could
turn the neutrality policy into a rather empty concept. In this way, they
reversed the argument that had been put forward by H. Freeman Matthews:
isolationism was to be cured not by isolation but by cooperation.

Swedish debates have traditionally portrayed the technological and mil-
itary cooperation between Sweden and member states of NATO as a way
for Sweden to obtain liberty of action in the event of war. I would argue
that this traditional portrayal is misleading. Technology is not made up of
dispersed artifacts alone; it is interconnected, systemic, and social.
Technology includes rules, career training, routines, and standardization,
and it facilitates some possible actions while prohibiting others.
Technology is a silent but very convincing "actor." Making those aspects
of Sweden's defense system visible helps us to judge the content of Sweden's
neutrality during the Cold War. The argument that technology opens spe-
cific avenues into the future and closes others may seem to be based on a
deterministic understanding of technology's role in society; however, if the
above case of Sweden's neutrality policy, written as history of technology,
is portrayed as technological determinism, it is a socially and politically
constructed determinism.

Notes

1. Walter LaFeber, "Presidential Address: Technology and US Foreign Relations,"
Diplomatic History 24 (2000), p. 3.

2. Ibid.

3. Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World (Cambridge University Press,
1995).

4. Jorg Martin Gabriel, The American Conception of Neutrality after 1941
(Macmillan, 1988), p. 3.

5. Ibid., p. 1.

6. Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace (Princeton University Press, 1999).

7. Wilhelm Agrell, "Sweden and the Cold War: The Structure of a Neglected Field
of Research," Scandinavian Journal of History 10 (1985): 239-253.

326 Weinberger

8. Ann-Marie Ekengren, Sverige under kalla kriget, 1945-1969. Report, Gothen-
burg University, 1995.

9. Among them the historian Wilhelm Agrell stands out as the leading scholar. He
has pubhshed a series of books deahng with different aspects of Swedish neutral-
ity and defense policy, including books on the Swedish nuclear weapons program,
Swedish cooperation with the West, and the overall structure of the defense sector
in relation to science, technology and doctrine. See Alliansfrihet och atombomber
(Liber, 1985); Den stora lognen (Ordfront, 1991); Det vdlorganiserade nederlaget
(Ordfront, 1990); Vetenskapen i forsvarets tjdnst (Lund University Press, 1989).

10. See Agrell, Den stora lognen; see also Paul Marion Cole, Neutralite du Jour:
The Conduct of Swedish Security Policy since 1945, dissertation, Johns Hopkins
University, 1990.

11. See, for example, Michael H. Hunt's three categories of (1) "realists" or
"postrevisionists," (2) historians who focus on the interaction of policy and the
domestic sphere, and (3) those who place foreign policy in an international context
( "The Long Crisis in US Diplomatic History: Coming to Closure," in America in the
World, ed. Hogan).

12. David HoUoway, Stalin and the Bomb (Yale University Press, 1994), p. 364.

13. Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth (Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1985); Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science (Columbia
University Press, 1993); Paul Forman, "'Swords into ploughshares': Breaking new
ground with radar hardware and technique in physical research after World War
II," Reviews of Modern Physics 67 (1985): 297-^55; Michael Aaron Dennis, "'Our
First Line of Defence': Two University Laboratories in the Postwar American State,"
Isis 85 (1994): 427-455; David Hounshell, "The Cold War, RAND, and the
Generation of Knowledge, 1946-1962," Historical Studies in the Physical and
Biological 27 (1997): 237-267.

14. Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World (MIT Press, 1996).

15. Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy (MIT Press, 1990), pp. 412^13.

16. Ibid., pp. 395-409.

17. Ibid., p. 400.

18. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Johns Hopkins University Press,
1983); Hughes, "The Evolution of Large Technological Systems," in The Social
Construction of Technological Systems, ed. W Bijker et al. (MIT Press 1987).

19. Om kriget kommit . . . , Betankande av Neutralitetspolitikkommissionen
(Statens offentliga utredningar, 1994). There is also a separate appendix with
selected source material. All the following references are to the Swedish report, since
the English translation (Had There Been a War . . . , 1994) omits the notes.

20. Nils Andren, "On the Meaning and Uses of Neutrality," Cooperation and
Conflict 26 [1991): 67-S3.

21. H.W Brands, The Devil We Know (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 5.

The Neutrality Flagpole 327

22. Vladisav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War
(Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 34.

23. See Geir Lundestad, America, Scandinavia, and the Cold War, 1945-1949
(Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 329-358. "With the Cold War temperature
increasing and America's involvement in European affairs growing," Lundestad
writes, "Washington stepped up its demands of loyalty from the Scandinavian coun-
tries" (ibid., p. 351). On the gradual change of the US position toward Scandinavia,
see ibid., pp. 51, 62, 77, 94-108, 230-234, 238-249. Howard Jones and Randall
B. Woods ("Origins of the Cold War in Europe and the Near East: Recent
Historiography and National Security Imperatives," in America in the World, ed.
M. Hogan, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 242) write that Lundestad showed
that the US "was invited" by Norway; however, a close reading of Lundestad sug-
gests a far more complex story. Cf . Gabriel, The American Conception of Neutrality
after 1941, pp. 92-112; Jussi Hanhimaki, Containing Coexistence (Kent State
University Press, 1997), pp. 104-105.

24. Karl Molin, Omstridd neutralitet (Tiden, 1991), p. 20.

25. Hanhimaki, Containing Coexistence, p. 105; Charles Silva, Keep Them Strong,
Keep Them Friendly, dissertation, Stokholm University, 1999, pp. 58-79.

26. Bengt Wallerfelt, "Den svenska krigsplanlaggningen i det kalla krigets inledande
fas 1945-1958. Militara och politiska aspekter," in Hotet frdn Oster, ed. K.
Zetterberg (Forvarshogskolan, 1997).

27. Matthews to Marshall, January 27, 1948, NARA, RG 59, Dec files 1945-49,
758.00/1-2748.

28. Matthews to Under Secretary of State, March 23, 1948, NARA, RG 59, Dec
files 1945^9, 711.58/1-1547. The twelve fallacies were drawn up in a telegram
from Matthews to Marshall (February 16, 1948, 758.00/2-1648).

29. Silva, Keep Them Strong, pp. 70-71; Nils Andren and Ake Landqvist, Svensk
utrikespolitik efter 1945 (Almqvist & Wiksell, 1965), p. 3; Jacques Freymond, "The
European Neutrals and the Atlantic Community," International Organisation 17
(1963), p. 603; Arne O. Brundtland, "The Nordic Balance — Past and Present,"
Cooperation and conflict 2 (1966): 30-63; Nils Orvik, "Scandinavia, NATO, and
Northern Security," International Organisation 20 (1966): 380-396; Bo Huldt,
"The Strategic 'Honh.," Washington Quarterly (summer 1985): 99-109; Rodney
Kennedy-Minott, Lonely Path to Follow, report. Hoover Institution, Stanford
University, 1990.

30. Telegram, Matthews to Marshall, February 18, 1948, NARA, RG 59, Dec. files
1945-49,758.00/2-1848.

31. Molin, Omstridd neutralitet.

32. Alf W Johansson, Herbert Tingsten och det kalla kriget (Tiden, 1995).

33. Ambassador H. Freeman Matthews, American Embassy in Stockholm, to John
D. Hickerson, Director of Office of European Affairs, State Department,
Washington, October 6, 1948, National Archives and Record Administration

328 Weinberger

(NARA), RG 59, Records of the Office of British Commonweahh and Western
European Affairs, 1941-1953, Lot files. Lot 54D224.

34. Krister Wahlback, "USA i Skandinavien, 1948-1949, del II," Internationella
studierno. 1 (1977), p. 28.

35. Molin, Omstridd neutralitet, p. 29; Gabriel, The American Conception of
neutrality after 1941, pp. 31,-\\1.

36. C. M. Ravndal to Secretary of State, July 9, 1946, NARA, RG 59, Dec files
1945-1949, 758.00/7-946.

37. Jussi M. Hanhimaki, "The First Line of Defence or a Springboard for
Disintegration? European Neutrals in American Foreign Security Policy,
1945-1961," Diplomacy and Statecraft? {1996): 378-403.

38. Om kriget komniit . . ., p. 155.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., p. 286. See also Hans Weinberger, "'Det rorde sig val om ofarliga ting':
Svensk neutralitetspolitik och synen pa teknik," Arbetarhistoria 23 (1999), no. 92,
p. 34.

41. Weinberger, "'Det rorde sig val om ofarliga ting.'"

42. Om kriget kommit . . ., p. 150.

43. A. Cave Brown, ed., Dropshot (Dial, 1978), p. 26. For an overview of US war
planning during the Cold War, with an emphasis on target lists and strategic con-
siderations, see David Allan Rosenberg, "A Smoking, Radiating Ruin at the End of
Two Hours: Documents on American Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union,
1954-1955," International Security 6 (1981-82), no. 3: 3-38; Rosenberg, "The
Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945-1960,"
International Security 7 (1983), no. 3: 3-71; Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed
Feace (Princeton, 1999), pp. 147-247. These works do not deal with specifics con-
cerning the Scandinavian area.

44. Brown, Dropshot, p. 128.

45. Wallerfelt, "Den svenska krigsplanlaggningen," p. 152.

46. Ibid., p. 161.

47. Om kriget kommit . . ., appendix, pp. 85-87.

48. Brown, Dropshot, p. 150.

49. Ibid.

50. Gunnar Skogmar, De nya malmfalten, Gothenburg University, 1997.

51. Brown, Dropshot, pp. 150-151.

52. Ibid., pp. 115-121.

53. Ibid., p. 180.

54. Ibid., p. 151.

55. Om kriget kommit . . ., appendix, pp. 149-159.

The Neutrality Flagpole 329

56. Ibid, p. 93.

57. Ibid., p. 153.

58. A report to the National Seecurity Council by the Executive Secretary on the
Position of the United States with Respect to Scandinavia and Finland, January 8,
1952, NARA, RG 273, Box 16.

59. Ibid.

60. NARA, RG 59, Dec files 1950-1954, 758.13/1-1752, 758.13/1-2352, 758.5/3-
1452, 758.13/4-152, 758.13/4-1152.

61. Om kriget kommit . . ., p. 130.

62. Lieutenant Colonel C.B. Smith, Military Intelligence Division, G-2, War
Department General Staff, "Memorandum for Mr. E.L. McGinnis, Jr., Division of
Aviation, Department of State," July 18, 1949, NARA, RG 59, Dec files
1945-1949, 858.014/7-1946.

63. Lundestad, America, Scandinavia, and the Cold War, p. 55.

64. NARA, RG 59, Dec files 1945-1949. Documents: 858.24/3-1346, 858.24/3-
1546, 858.24/5-1746, 858.24/6-646.

65. Lundestad, America, Scandinavia, and the Cold War, p. 55.

66. NARA, RG 59, subject files 1941-1953. Records of the Office of British
Commonwealth and Northern European Affairs, 1941-1953. Box 18. Telephone
memorandum, Sept. 20, 1948. Colonel Shepley and Benjamin H. HuUey, Chief,
NOE, State Department.

67. NARA, RG 341, Strategic Air Command Testimony Before the Vinson
Committee, DS-49-782, undated. Office of the Secretary of the Air Force,
1946-1956, Box 1.

68. Agrell, Den stora lognen, p. 132 (according to Agrell, based on Duncan
Campbell, The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, 1984, and John Prados, The Soviet
Estimate, 1982).

69. Jan Ottosson and Lars Magnusson, Hemliga makter (Tiden, 1991), p. 180;
Agrell, Den stora lognen, pp. 121-150.

70. Ottosson and Magnusson, Hemliga makter, p. 187.

71. Hans Weinberger, "Kartlaggningen av Sverige," Svenska Dagbladet, January
29, 2000; NARA, Records of the Headquarter of the US Air Force (Air Staff), RG
341, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Data Reference Branch, InteUigence
Report Card Index, 1939-1962, Box 80-82.

72. NARA, RG 38, Chief of Naval Operations, Naval Intelligence Reports,
Confidential 1949, Box 84. Serial 11-49, 12.1.1949. "A.N.A. visits Eighth Swedish
Army at Uppsala Officially on 27 September 1948." Cf. Weinberger,
"Kartlaggningen. "

73. Om kriget kommit . . ., p. 160. See also NARA, RG 341, Director of Opera-
tions, Air Force Plans, Project Decimal Files, 1942-1954, box 410, American Air
Attache in Stockholm to Washington, 8 July 1949: "I visited General Nordenskiold

330 Weinberger

1st July at his invitation. He expressed concern at a discussion I had had with his
Chief of Air Staff with regard to the possible danger to aircraft of the US Air Force
in case of strategic situation which might demand our overflight of Sweden. He has-
tened to assure that Swedish interference with such flights was utterly inconceiv-
able. Public statements by Defense Minister Vought which might be interpreted to
the contrary were merely political eyewash. He, Nordenskiold, had shown to
Vought the absolute necessity for such overflights by our aircraft and Vougt had
agreed that Sweden would not only permit but encourage such flights."

74. Agrell, Den stora lognen, pp. 110-111.

75. For an overview on US strategic planning and its changes, see Trachtenberg, A
Constructed Peace.

76. Agrell, Den stora lognen, p. 111. See also Brown, Dropshot.

77. Duncan Cambell, "The 'deterrent' goes to war," New Statesman, 1.5.1980.

78. Om kriget kommit . . . , pp. 133-135.

79. Ibid., p. 135.

80. Ibid., pp. 242-245.

81. FOA Archives, Redogorelse for verksamheten vid forsvarets forsknings,
Stockholm 10.9.1946. Dnr H 192.

82. FOA Archives, ProtokoU fort vid sammantrade den 26 juni 1946 angaende
apparater for igenkanningssignalering vid ekoradio, 26.6.1946, Dnr H 157.

83. FOA Archives, Redogorelse for verksamheten vid FOA 3 under budgetaret
1947/48 jiimte forslag till program for den fortsatta verksamheten, 11.9.1948, Dnr
H158.

84. FOA Archives, Letter from Martin Fehrm, FOA, May 9, 1949, to the Ordnance
Agencies of the Swedish Military Services, Dnr H 3043-478.

85. Om kriget kommit . . . , pp. 246-247.

86. Ibid., p. 247.

87. Ibid., p. 248.

88. Ibid., p. 252.

89. Telegram from Acheson to American Embassy, Stockholm, January 16, 1953,
NARA, RG 59, Dec files 1950-54, 758.56/1-1653.

90. Om kriget kommit . . . , p. 269.

91. Ibid., p. 258.

92. Ibid., pp. 253-259.

93. Interview with former Prime Minister Carl Bildt by Peter Bratt, Dagens
Nyfcefer, January 10, 1999.

94. Kennedy-Minott, Lonely Path to Follow, p. 15.

95. R.A. Winston, Commander, USN. Asst. Naval Attache, Aviation: Military
Cooperation, NARA, RG 38, Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval

The Neutrality Flagpole 331

Operations, Naval Intelligence Reports, "Secret" 1948, Box 24. Serial 5-S-48,
17.3.1948.

96. NARA, KG 59, Lot File 59D233, Miscellaneous Office Files of the Assistant
Secretaries of State for European Affairs, 1943-1957, Box 32. Folder "Ambassadors
Mtg Copenhagen, April 1954 (chaired by Hayden Raynor, State Department)."

97. Ibid., "Copenhagen Conference, Item # 6."

98. Both quotes: ibid.

99. Ibid.

100. Ibid.

About the Authors

Janet Abbate received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in
1994 and is now a member of the history department at the University of
Maryland. The author of Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999) and a co-
editor of Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (MIT Press,
1995), she has also published numerous articles on the history, culture, and
politics of the Internet. Her present research projects concern the adoption
of the Internet in Eastern Europe and the history of women in computing.

Michael Thad Allen completed his Ph.D. with Thomas Parke Hughes at
the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. During the period 1992-1995 he
also worked with Wolfgang Scheffler at the Zentralinstitut fiir Anti-
Semitismusforschung in Berlin. Since 1996 he has taught European history
and the history of technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He
has published articles in Central European History, in Technology and
Culture, and in Fast and Present. His first book is The Business of Genocide:
SS Business Administration, Slavery, and the Concentration Camps
(University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

W. Bernard Carlson studied with Thomas Parke Hughes at the University
of Pennsylvania in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. He now teaches the
history of technology in the Division of Technology, Culture, and Commu-
nication at the University of Virginia. Much of his writing has focused on
the organizational, cultural, and cognitive dimensions of invention. He is
the author of Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise
of General Electric, 1870-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and
an editor of the series Inside Technology (MIT Press). With support from

334 About the Authors

the Sloan Foundation, he is writing a biography of the flamboyant inven-
tor Nikola Tesla, tentatively titled Ideal and Illusion.

Gabrielle Hecht is an associate professor at the University of Michigan,
jointly appointed in the Department of History and the Residential College.
Her first book. The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National
Identity after World War II (MIT Press, 1998), was awarded the American
Historical Association's Herbert Baxter Adams Prize. She is working on a
history of colonial and postcolonial uranium mining in Africa, Australia,
and North America.

Erik P. Rau is a visiting assistant professor in Drexel University's Depart-
ment of History and Politics. His contribution to this volume is part of a
book project on the growth and spread of operations research in the United
States since World War II. His research interests include the emergence and
proliferation of new technical and engineering practices during World War
II and the Cold War, the relationship between technical expertise and the
state in postwar political culture, and the participation of American tech-
nical experts in decolonization and international development.

Eric Schatzberg is an associate professor in the Department of the History
of Science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he teaches the
history of technology. He has published a number of works on the history
of urban transit and airplane design. His book Wings of Wood, Wings of
Metal: Culture and Technical Choice in American Airplane Materials,
1914—1945 was published by the Princeton University Press in 1999. He is
currently studying postwar American critiques of technology.

Amy Slaton received her Ph.D. from the Department of History and
Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 and is now
an assistant professor in the Department of History and Politics at Drexel
University. Her book Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of
American Building, 1900-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, forth-
coming) was inspired in part by Thomas Hughes's interest in the encroach-
ment of mass production on traditional building methods and craft-based
occupations. Her current research addresses measurement and standard-

About the Authors 335

ization in later-twentieth-century engineering contexts and the social dis-
placements that such regularizing technologies continue to bring to the
American workplace.

John Staudenmaier, S.J. has been the editor of Technology and Culture since
1995. A professor of history at the University of Detroit Mercy, he has
served as a visiting faculty member at MIT, at Santa Clara University, and
at Boston College. He has authored several historiographical studies of the
history of technology, most notably Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving
the Human Fabric (MIT Press, 1985). He also writes and lectures exten-
sively to more popular audiences and consults for technology-oriented tele-
vision programs. Typically, he interprets personal and communal behavior
with an eye to the importance of core technologies in shaping behavior
within an individual's host society.

Edmund N. Todd studied modern European history at the University of
Florida and the history and sociology of science at the University of
Pennsylvania. He has taught at the University of Maryland, at the State
University of New York College at Potsdam, and the University of New
Haven. His most recent publication is "Von Essen zur regionalen Strom-
versorgung, 1890-1920. Das Rheinisch-Westfalische Elektrizitatswerk," in
Elektrizitdtswirtschaft zwischen Umwelt, Technik und Politik, edited by
Helmut Maier (Technische Universitat Bergakademie Freiberg, 1999).

Hans Weinberger is an acting associate professor in the Department of
History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm. He is the editor of Polhem: The Swedish Journal for the History
of Technology. His books include Ndtverksentreprenoren (Royal Institute
of Technology, 1997), a study of Swedish science and technology pohcy
during the Cold War. He is now doing research on Sweden's neutrality pol-
icy during the Cold War from a history-of-technology perspective.

Index

Air defense, 222-223
Architects, 111-114
ARPANET, 125-128
Automation, 186-187

Bell, Alexander Graham, 27-28,

33-34, 38-41
Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart, 217,

227-234
Boiteaux, Marcel, 282-283
Bombing, 237-242
Building codes, 103-110
Building materials, 114-121

Cabanius, Jean, 275-277
CEA, 259, 262-266, 269-286
Censorship, 179-180
Cold War, 4-6, 297-302
Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique,

259, 262-266, 269-286
Commission pour la Production

d'Electricite d'Origine Nucleaire,

278-280
Committee for the Scientific Survey of

Air Defence, 220
Conduit systems, underground, 81-82
Construction industry, 102-121
CSSAD, 220

DDT, 202

Determinism, political, 299

Dumbwaiters

building codes for, 103-110

specifications for, 102-103

EDF, 259, 262, 265-273, 278-280,

286
Edison, Thomas, 29, 30, 61
Electricite de France, 259, 262,

265-273, 278-280, 286
Electric power systems

development of, 145

regulation of, 64

shadow histories of, 147-148

for streetcars, 72-73
Elevators

building codes for, 103-110

specifications for, 102-103
Espionage, industrial, 192

Feder, Gottfried, 185-186
Friedlander, Saul, 179
Fukuyama, Francis, 175
Fundamentalism, technological,

150-156
Furniture, 193-196

Goring, Hermann, 177
Gould, Jay, 30
Gray, Elisha, 29, 33
Gretsch, Hermann, 193

Hill, A. v., 226-228, 234

Hitler, Adolf, 186-187

Holocaust, 177, 189-203

Horowitz, Jules, 275-277

Hubbard, Gardiner Greene, 27-28, 30,

34-38, 41-49
Hughes, Agatha Chipley, 2-3

338

Index

Hughes, Thomas Parke, 2-3, 145, 186,
301

Internet, 121-124, 129
Internetworking, 122-123
Interop, 131-135
InteropNet, 132-135

Joubert de la Ferte, Air Marshal Sir
Phihp, 233-234

Klingenberg, Georg, 145-146, 148,

150, 153-161
Koepchen, Arthur, 145-150, 154-161
Koselleck, Reinhardt, 176

Labor
computer network standards and,

121-124
industrial standards and, 96-98
and management, 98
skilled vs. unskilled, 114-121
standardization as, 124-128

LeFeber, Walter, 295

Liberalism, 184
corporate, 32

Locomotives, steam, 62-63

Lynch, Dan, 127, 129-132

Mass production, 186, 187
Matthews, H. Freeman, 304-307
May,Kurt, 190-192, 196

NATO, 303, 313-314

Network Control Program (NCP),

126-127, 131
Neurath, Constantin Freiherr von,

191-192
Neutrality, 295-297
Nordenskjold, General Bengt, 305-

306
North Atlantic Treaty Organization,

303,313-314

Operational research, 215-245
Orton, Wilham, 28-33, 38-41
Otis, Elisha Gray, 104

PEON, 278-280

Pile, Army General Sir Frederick,

228-229
Plumbers, 113

Postal telegraph system, 34-38
Postel, Jon, 122-123, 129-130
Postmodernism, 181
Product control, 100-101
Productivism, 188-189, 203-205
Progressivism, 58, 61

Radar, 219, 221-222
Radiance, French, 260-261
Railroad lines, 62-63
Reactors, nuclear, 263, 266-276,

280-287
Refrigerators, 110-114
Rorty, Richard, 175

Scandinavia, 303, 307-313
Sibley, Hiram, 28, 30
Socialists, scientific 226
Social relationships, 58-59, 84
Specialization, flexible, 186
Specifications, 136-137

for building materials, 114-121

in business exchange, 103

construction industry and,, 102-121

for elevators and dumbwaiters,
103-110

organization of construction and,
100-103

for prefabricated concrete reinforce-
ment, 114-121

product control and, 100-101

for refrigerators, 110-114

systematic expression of, 101-102

vs. standards, 100
Standards, 95

computer network, 98, 121-124,
129-135

construction industry and, 102-121

economic control and, 95-96

and exchange, 136-137

industrial vs. post-industrial, 97

for Internet, 121-124

as labor, 124-128

Index 339

product, 97-98

product control and, 100-101

science-based, 101

technical trades and, 101

technological integration and, 99

vs. specifications, 100
Stiel, Wilhelm, 145-150, 154-156,

159-161
Streetcars, 63-68
Street-railway companies, 71-72
Swedlund, Nils, 309-310, 314

TCP/IP Interoperability Conference,

131-135
TCP/IP protocol, 122-123, 131-135
TCP protocol, 122, 125-127
Technological fundamentalists, 146
Technological systems, 257-258
Technopolitical regimes, 257-259,

262-272
Technopolitics, 256-257, 262-272
Telegraphy, 28-34
Telephone, 27-28, 38^8
Textiles, 159-160
Tingsten, Herbert, 306
Tizard Committee, 220-222
Trolley systems, 57-65, 68-80, 83-85
Truman, Harry S., 314-315
Turner, Henry Ashby, 181-182

Unden, Osten, 303-304
United Nations, 303

Verification, 131-135

Warner, Sam Bass, 60
Weber, Max, 149-151
Westinghouse, George, 76