11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES All the Milestones in Ingenuity— from the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven RODNEY CARLISLE John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iii 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page i Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page ii 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iii Scientific American INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES All the Milestones in Ingenuity— from the Discovery of Fire to the Invention of the Microwave Oven RODNEY CARLISLE John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 11164 Carlisle_ffirs.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:58 AM Page iv This book is printed on acid-free paper. ●∞ Copyright © 2004 by Rodney Carlisle. 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T15 .C378 2004 609—dc22 2003023258 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11164 Carlisle_ftoc.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page v CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii General Introduction 1 Part I The Ancient World through Classical Antiquity, 8000 B.C.toA.D. 330 9 Part II The Middle Ages through 1599 81 Part III The Age of Scientific Revolution, 1600 to 1790 149 Part IV The Industrial Revolution, 1791 to 1890 223 Part V The Electrical Age, 1891 to 1934 319 Part VI The Atomic and Electronic Age, 1935 into the 21st Century 397 Index 481 11164 Carlisle_ftoc.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page vi 11164 Carlisle_flast.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS riting the essays for this encyclopedia has provided me with an Wopportunity to bring together thoughts, information, and ideas that drew from many sources, both literary and personal, to which I have been exposed over many years. My interest in the history of technology was stimulated by a course taken as a freshman at Harvard that was taught by Professor Leonard K. Nash. As I recall, Natural Sciences 4 or “Nat Sci Four” was suggested by other students and advisers as the appropriate course for a history major to take to meet the college’s general education requirements. I did not realize it at the time, but the course had been established by James B. Conant and was later cotaught by Thomas S. Kuhn, who would pub- lish The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Professor Nash and Thomas Kuhn developed many of the ideas together that would later appear in Kuhn’s pathbreaking work, including a focus on the scientific revolution initiated by Copernicus and expounded by Galileo. In later decades, as I was teaching in the History Department at Rut- gers University in Camden, our college adopted a similar approach to general education requirements as that established by Conant. To pro- vide a course titled “Science, Technology, and Society,” I approached a colleague in the Chemistry Department, Professor Sidney Katz, and together we offered a sweeping history of science and technology, which we often taught in summer sessions, reflecting Thomas Kuhn’s focus on the revolutions in scientific thought, as well as investigations into the social impact of innovation. Of course, a great deal has happened in the disciplines of the history of science and technology over the past decades, and our readings in the subject took us to a finer appreciation of the complex crosscurrents 11164 Carlisle_flast.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page viii viii Acknowledgments between these two progressing fields. As Derek de Solla Price has remarked, the two fields are sister disciplines, each progressing some- times independently, sometimes one helping the other. Although it became fashionable among government policymakers after World War II to believe that technology sprang from the advances of science, his- torical studies had shown a much more complex interweaving of the two fields over the centuries. My debts of gratitude include not only those to Professor Nash for teaching the course at Harvard, taken nearly half a century ago as an undergraduate, and to Professor Katz at Rutgers for coteaching with me but also to the many students who took our own course in recent years. Although some faculty are loath to admit it, it is often the case that teachers learn more by attempting to answer the questions posed by students than they have gained by preparing their lecture notes. Often what has puzzled students about the subject can lead into the most fruitful courses of scholarly inquiry. More than once the questions they asked led to thought-provoking discussions between Professor Katz and myself over coffee in his laboratory-office. The collaboration of Professor Katz and myself was so interesting and we both learned so much that we looked forward to the courses with pleasurable anticipa- tion. Later, Professor Katz made a number of contributions to my Ency- clopedia of the Atomic Age. Using ideas we had honed in discussion, I later individually taught a course, “Galileo and Oppenheimer,” that again led to new insights from students. Surprisingly, it was a much older book that I found in a used-book store, Lewis Mumford’s 1934 study Technics and Civilization, that helped formulate my thinking about the relationship of science and technology. I had the opportunity to work with the ideas stimulated by reading that work when, through a contract at History Associates Incorporated of Rockville, Maryland, I produced a study for the Navy Laboratory/Center Coordinating Group. Due to the wisdom of How- ard Law, who served as the executive of that group, I was commis- sioned to produce a small bibliographic work evaluating more than 150 books and articles in the fields of science and technology. Our intent was to bring many of the insights and perspectives of historians of both fields to the community of naval researchers and science and technol- ogy managers. Working on other studies for the U.S. Navy through History Associ- ates Incorporated contracts helped hone my thinking about the com- plex interplays among the disciplines of science, engineering, and technology more generally. My studies of the history of naval science 11164 Carlisle_flast.m.qxd 5/26/04 9:59 AM Page ix Acknowledgments ix and technology shore facilities included the Naval Surface Warfare Cen- ters at Carderock, Maryland, Indian Head, Maryland, and most recently at Dahlgren, Virginia. The work of researchers, past and present, at those facilities required that I think through those changing relation- ships. Similarly, projects for the Department of Energy, also on con- tracts with History Associates, shaped my thinking. In particular, a study of nuclear production reactors for the Office of New Production Reactors, and recent work on fuel cells for automotive use for the Office of Advanced Automobile Technology at that department, deep- ened my appreciation for the practical side of technology policy at work. Ideas formulated decades ago by Mumford and Kuhn helped inform the books I produced for all those clients and others. Among the many people I met in these tasks who assisted me in my thinking were Dominic Monetta, William Ellsworth, Steve Chalk, Den- nis Chappell, Mary Lacey, and Jim Colvard. At History Associates, bouncing ideas off colleagues and gaining their insights were always profitable, and that community of active scholars made working with them a pleasure.