Diesel: Technology and Society in Industrial Germany by Donald E. Thomas, Jr
Eda Fowlks Kranakis · Technology and Culture · 1989
1046 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Long before McLuhan’s “global village” was thought of, such new forms of communication seemed to promise the future annihilation of “Space, Time and Difference” and encouraged fantasies of reach ing out to the “others,” both on the earth and on other planets, creating a wider “kinship” and obliterating cultural difference. Over all, Marvin argues that the importance of early electrical communi cation lies “not in the record of cumulative improvements in engi neered devices, not in institutional narratives of how emerging industries built and marketed new devices of communication, but in the history of continuous concern about how new media rearrange and imperil social relationships” (p. 235). Edison and other popular self-taught electrical pioneers do not bulk large in this account, perhaps because they cannot comfortably be called experts or plausibly be seen as laymen. Nor was archival research deemed appropriate for a project focused on public dis course rather than on individuals or inventions. But granting this restriction to published anecdotes and stories, should material re printed in the engineering technical press be granted a special privilege? What of the journals of electrical medicine, of the National Electric Light Association, and the street railway associations? What of electricity in feminist utopian writings or in Mark Twain’s A Connect icut Yankee or in Henry Adams? Why is only one great world’s fair—the Chicago Columbian Exposition—discussed? Other com plaints: the index is too short and the illustrations are not analyzed, two failures of communication. Within the self-imposed limits of her research base, however, Marvin has made a thorough study of long-neglected materials, painstakingly winnowing thousands of pages in the technical press. Without using specialized jargon, she has deployed an original method which converts these forgotten materials into a work where technology, society, and communications intertwine. David E. Nye Dr. Nye is associate professor of American Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He is completing a work on the social meanings of electric light and power in the United States, and he serves as an educational consultant to Danish television. Diesel: Technology and Society in Industrial Germany. By Donald E. Thomas, Jr. University: University of Alabama Press, 1987. Pp. xii + 279; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $26.95. Diesel: Technology and Society in Industrial Germany is an in-depth study of the invention and early development of the diesel engine based on archival research with the collections of Diesel’s papers at the Deut sches Museum and the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Ntirnberg TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1047 Werkarchiv. The book offers a fascinating portrayal of the oftentimes indeterminate and malleable relationships that exist between theoret ical ideas, design options, economic and market contingencies, and social visions. The heart of the book comprises three chapters that discuss the (conceptual) invention of the diesel engine (ca. 1889-92), culminating in Diesel’s patent of 1892; the development phase (from 1893 to 1897) during which Diesel built and tested several working models of his engine; and the marketing phase (from 1898 to approximately 1912), in which Diesel and his industrial backers began to manufacture and sell diesel engines. Additionally, in two introduc tory chapters Donald Thomas presents a brief biography of Diesel as well as a study of his ideas for social reform (to which Diesel devoted considerable attention). A brief epilogue gives highlights of the subsequent history of the diesel engine up to the present. Thomas’s book both complements and supplements two earlier ar ticles on Diesel written by Lynwood Bryant that appeared in Scientific American 221 (August 1969): 108— 17 and Technology andCulture 17 (July 1976): 432—46. (There are, of course, important treatments of Diesel’s life and work in German as well.) It is not merely that Thomas provides us with more information, however, but also that his fuller analysis brings with it qualitatively new insights and raises new questions. For example, his account of Diesel’s social ideas helps us to see the invention of the diesel engine in a broader social context. Diesel was concerned about the rapid displacement of small craftsmen by factory labor, and he viewed the creation of a more efficient...