1. SOME ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION AND DIFFUSION IN EUROPEAN TECHNOLOGY 1450-1750 Thesis presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of History of Technology by Graham John Hollister-Short Department of History of Science and Technology Imperial College of Science and Technology University of London June 1976. 2. ABSTRACT The latter part of the period of three hundred years in European history from c.1450 to c.1750 is one of the more neg- lected in the history of technology. The present study is concerned to show something of the growing sophistication of machine design in Europe in this period and the settings in which these developments took place. Their cumulative effect was eventually to bring much of the continent, no less than Britain, to within measurable reach of the prospect of sustained economic growth. The nature of mechanical invention, the progressive adap- tation of machines to new tasks and the manner in which new tech- niques were diffused are all matters central to the development of the thesis. What is revealed very clearly is that Germany and England were the most technologically progressive areas of Europe. At first Germany was the principal generator of new technology, but from c.1700 the direction of flow was setting decisively out- wards from England. During the 16th century the development of mining in Germany gave rise to a sophisticated tradition of mechanical engin- eering which was eventually able to provide effective solutions, as with the Stangenkunst and the float-flume, to a whole range of difficulties in this field, particularly those connected with the problem of pumping and fuel supply. The English solution, that is, the use of coal and steam, to the same dual problem as it assumed serious dimensions took on so distinctive a form that by c.1750 two divergent models of technological development existed in Europe. It was not however the case that either was available for adoption in regions lying outside the narrow range of local conditions in response to which each had developed its characteristic forms. The German model was incapable, even in principle, of extension out- side its range, while the English model remained likewise generally unavailable to Europe in the absence of yet further technological development. 3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Professor A. Rupert Hall, my supervisor, and Dr. Norman Smith-for their help and stimulation and above all for the critical pressure which they brought to bear as my thesis took written form. I am particularly indebted also to Professor Hall for the gift of time which my election as Leverhulme Research Fellow in the history of technology at Imperial College in 1973-74 afforded me. For assistance in many forms I thank also Dr. Bruno Thomas, director of the Waffensammlung of the Kunsthistorischen Museum, Vienna, Dr. Jan Tibensky, head of the department of history of science and technology, Slovenska Akademia Vied, Bratislava, Mr. Joseph Vozar of the same department, Professor Friedrich Klemm of the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Dr. Werner Kroker of the Bergbau Mus- eum, Bochum, Professor Peter Foote of University College, London, Dr. Alex Keller of the University of Leicester, Dr. John Stoye, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and last but not least, Dr. Albert van Belden of Rice University, Texas. For further help with obtaining materials I have to thank the librarians of the Engineering Societies' Library, New York, the Tekniska Museet, Stockholm, and the North of England Institute of Mining and Mech- anical Engineers, Newcastle. 4 CONTENTS Chapter one Introduction 5 Chapter two The vocabulary of technology 49 Chapter three The origins and development of 120 the Stangenkunst Chapter four Leads and lags in late eighteenth 234 century English technology • Chapter five The introduction of the Newcomen 286 engine into Europe (1720 - c.1780) Chapter six The sector and chain: an historical 387 enquiry Chapter seven Conclusion 444 Appendix 455 Bibliography 482 5. Chapter One INTRODUCTION The idea which the present study first sought to develop was comparatively simple and straightforward. Since few would dispute that the complexity and range of mechanical devices at the disposal of Western Europeans underwent considerable development in the period c.1450 to c.1750, it appeared reasonable to suppose that some light might be thrown on how this development was achiev- ed by selecting for examination a number of discrete mechanical linkages or mechanisms that seemed likely, prima facie, to have played an important part in such a process. Each mechanism selected would be approached with two objects in mind. The first would be to seek to establish the origins, in time and place, of the item in question,and, if it were possible, attempt also to dis- cover the circumstances in which it came to be invented. The second would be to seek to trace its subsequent evol- ution and the paths by which it diffused; not only in space and time but also operationally as it was incorporated into a variety of new applications. Here one may remark that it is one of the curiosities of the history of technology that although invention lies at the heart of the discipline, little notice has been taken, with the honourable exception of Usher's essay, 'The emergence of novelty in thought and action', of what the act of invention involves in psycholo- gical terms'. This is something which must be examined further. For the moment, I wish to draw attention to ano- ther feature of invention, similarly neglected, which has 6. to do with the physical form which a device or mechanism assumed at the moment of its, creation. What is involved here is an analytical tool of great value, that is, the concept of skeuomorphism *. Whereas almost all who have written about invention have noted the step by step nature of technical development, which however expressed might be stated summarily as nil per saltum, no one has exploited the possibilities which such an evolutionary view of development carries with it as a corollary2. A newly invented device, ordinarily the result of a synthe- sis of pre-existing elements, will retain for some indeter- minate period features or traces of the matrix from which it took its rise. Some of these features may well be skeuomorphic or redundant in character as far as the actual functioning or utility of the new device is concerned, and, as they are perceived to be such, will be purged away. Thus begins the process of critical revision. If, however, sufficient early evidence is available for the period before such revision has obliterated the path by which it trav- elled, then from the p]rototype (which may perhaps have no other existence than in the pages of a note book) some- thing of the evolutionary history of the item in question may be securely established. Furthermore, the sequence forward in time is but part of what may be traced. It is also possible to move backwards from it. The redundant features carried over into the prototype may be sought for in pre-existing devices, and, if found, will permit the proximate milieu to be ascertained within which, or in terms of which the new concept, form or organizational whole was first realized. Here one returns directly to the question Skeuomorph (a/(4--01 , vessel;r('915 , form):an ornamental design the character of which is derived from the nature of the material of which it is composed. 7. of the modalities of perception established by gestalt psychology. A classic experiment, published by Kurt Koffka in 1915, demonstrated the basic idea of homogeneities and forces of cohesion which hold a shape or figure to- gether and render ineffective other stimuli which al- though present are able to become effective only if some new feature or inhomogeneity is introduced into the 3 figure . Such findings were to give concrete form to the, earlier, almost mystical, idea of gestaltqualitUt or 'form quality', an attempt to name the tendency, noticed long previously, for the eye to see things in certain constellations or configurations. Such tendencies sug- gested that there must be qualities belonging to organized forms over and above the various sensory ingredients that were present in a given situation. It is, in short, only by recognizing the power of the organizing forces present in certain configurations that one can begin to appreciate the immense perceptual diffidulty in breaking clear of one organizational whole in order to perceive another which is indeed seen but not seen as. The issue is one to which Russell Hanson devoted many luminous pages in his Patterns of Discovery, and one might take as illustration of the notion of seeing and seeing as that passage in which he sets Kepler and Brahe on a hill at dawn to watch the sun rise: "Let us consider Johann Kepler: imagine him on a hill watching the dawn. With him is Tycho Brahe. Kepler regarded the sun: it was the earth that moved. But Tycho followed Ptolemy and Aristotle in this much at least: the• S. earth was fixed and.all other celestial bodies moved around it. Do Kepler and Tycho see the same thing in 4 the east at dawn?" In one sense they do and in another they do not. They are, one might say, programmed diff- erently, and the visual data presented to them will fall into different discourses. Perhaps enough has now been said to establish, in outline at least, an elementary notion of what the vhen- omenon of invention involves in psychological terms, that is, the leap of stimulation, however mediated, from one strongly unified field to another. A gestalt, in brief, is not only organization but is a product of organization and is in its nature diametrically opposed to mere jux- taposition5.