The Dawn of Innovation by Charles R. Morris

Over the course of the 19^th Century, the United States transformed from a frontier nation dependent on trade with former colonizing nations to a leading manufacturer and exporter of goods. Charles R. Morris describes how America accomplished this change in The Dawn of Innovation.

The forces that led to the development of an American system of manufacturing were practical and cultural. There were labor shortages, especially for skilled labor. Americans in every field were interested in mechanizing work to get it done with the people and skills available. Americans were also largely middle class, at least in their way of thinking. They had to have the means to cross the Atlantic, and once here wage pressure and the availability of resources quickly made many people middle class. The middle class valued improvement and economic independence. In the U.S. they were free from the limiting class structures of Europe.

The middle class were also consumers. They were interested in the goods and lifestyle associated with wealth, but at prices they could afford. And there were a lot more of them that the handful of rich people who were the consumers of traditional luxury goods. Americans wanted to produce, market and distribute goods on a mass scale that was hard for Europeans of the time to even imagine.

The cloth-making industry was one of the first to bring together the aspects of modern manufacturing: specialization, organization of work flow, mechanization and automation. American cloth makers took—sometimes stole—these things from the British. A leap that the Americans made, but not the British, was to apply these same concepts to all kinds of production.

The organization of work was especially helpful in the U.S., where the skilled workers needed for precision machine making were few. Morris uses the arms industry as an example of American leadership in the transformation from craft piecework to an organized workflow with uniform standards.

Morris also undertakes some myth busting. Eli Whitney is associated with first rifles—really the first manufactured goods—to have interchangeable parts, which is a hallmark of modern manufacturing. Whitney and others promised interchangeability to win contracts with the Army, but he never achieved it; it took him a while to even become a good gun maker. It took decades of work by others to achieve interchangeable parts. This was both a matter of organizing work and developing more precise machining equipment.

Morris shows how innovations accumulated over time to create American manufacturing leadership. He shows how the culture and natural environment were incubators for such development.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Gentleman Scientists by Tom Schachtman

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan Lyons

Waste and Want by Susan Strasser

Morris, Charles R. The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution. New York: Public Affairs, 2012.

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

Lithium is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. It is also in important part of the small, light, energy-packed rechargeable batteries that make our portable devices possible. It is also likely an important part of future batteries that might make longer-running electric cars and large-scale energy storage possible. Journalist Seth Fletcher describes the history of lithium as a battery material, especially in batteries for electric and hybrid cars, in Bottled Lightning.

Fletcher goes way back to the batteries made by Alessandro Volta in 1800 and, possibly more important, the first rechargeable batteries made by Gaston Planté in 1859 (a lead acid battery).

Fletcher treats this older history briefly. Like his readers, he is not as interested in batteries as in the uses of energy batteries enable. One of these uses is transportation. Many early cars were electric vehicles (EVs) that were powered by batteries. The technology of the time required large batters to hold relatively modest charges, which limited the range of the cars. Gasoline held much more energy than batteries, was widely available and cheap. For most motorists, gasoline beat batteries hands down.

Of course, priorities and technologies change. The energy crisis of the 1970s, along with a growing environmental movement, pressured automakers to develop electric car concepts. The technology of the time probably wasn’t up to the task for what most drivers wanted, and in combination with a return of low oil prices and automotive industry inertia the electric car development of that era came to an end.

Technology rolled on, as it does, and the development of cell phones—and the portable, networked computers they have become—put pressure on the battery industry to come up with lighter, longer lasting, rechargeable batteries. They found the answer in lithium-based batteries, especially the lithium-ion type that is common today.

When the automakers were again needing to look at alternatives to oil, mostly for fuel economy and emission control reasons, the new lithium-ion batteries changed the equation for the effectiveness and affordability of electric and hybrid cars. It is yet to become cheap, as attested by the price of the high-end electric cars made by Tesla. Even cars marketed for the mass market like the Chevy Volt is expensive without subsidies. (The Volt is technically a plug-in hybrid, but for the majority of drivers who travel less than forty miles a day it can be all-electric.)

There is a lot of potential for advance batteries becoming the industrial driver of the future. A growing electric car market will create a demand for a lot of batteries. The increased uses of renewable energy, and the eventual retirement of coal-burning and other fuel-consuming power plants, depends on energy storage to even out the waxing and waning of energy sources that vary with the cycles of the sun and the whims of the weather. The 2009 stimulus bill put a lot of money into new battery research and manufacturing, but Asia is still ahead of the U.S. in manufacturing capacity if not in innovation. If America wants a piece of this revolution (we’re going to buy a lot of these batteries, so maybe we should reap some of the benefits of making them), we’ll need to invest in these industries (as China is) and not leave to Asian manufacturers to lengthen their lead.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

Professional Amateur by T. A. Boyd

Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

Fletcher, Seth. Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cards, and the New Lithium Economy. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

The technology that has the potential for a breakthrough that could revolutionize life in the next few decades is not one many might think of. It’s the battery. The next generation of battery could make affordable, long-range electric vehicles available to the masses. They could make variable energy sources like wind and solar more viable competitors to traditional, fuel-burning energy.

Though it is not widely publicized, major companies, start-ups and even government agencies are involved in a race to bring the next generation battery to the market. The company that creates it and the nation that can establish the manufacturing base for it will be in a position to make a lot of money. It’s a dramatic story, which Steve Levine relates in The Powerhouse.

Levine provides some background on the development of the lithium ion battery and improvements to it. His focus, however, is Argonne National Laboratory.

Argonne, located near Chicago, started as a lab to research nuclear energy and weaponry. It traces its history back to the Manhattan Project and the University of Chicago lab where Enrico Fermi started a manmade, self-sustained nuclear chain reaction. At the close of the book, Argonne was taking the lead of a hub of battery technology development aimed particularly at creating the battery that will put electric cars in millions of garages.

Argonne is not the only player in the field. Levine also reports on some of the companies, large and small, and countries that are staking out their places in the field. Automakers, particularly General Motors, are particularly interested in these devices that might radically change their industry.

The chemistry of these batteries, particularly the cathodes, is discussed in the book, but not deeply. It is not a textbook on electrochemistry. It is instead a book on the business and politics of an uncertain technological development that has the potential to alter the economic and environmental condition of the world.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

The Grid by Gretchen Bakke

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

Professional Amateur by T. A. Boyd

Levine, Steve. The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World. New York: Viking, 2015.

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

World War II was a time when secrecy was often a necessary part of security. The secrecy surrounding the development to of the atomic bomb was particularly thick. Since that veil was lifted, Las Alamos, Nevada, has become strongly associated with the bomb, as it should be. However, there were other locations critical to the project. Denis Kiernan discusses one of them, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in her book The Girls of Atomic City.

The Clinton Engineer Works was part of the Manhattan Project. Its purpose was the enrichment of uranium to supply the research, development and construction of an atomic weapon. When it was built, the Army took over thousands of acres of farmland in Tennessee, displacing the residents. Oak Ridge did not exist before the project.

As the title suggests, Kiernan focuses on the role of women at the Clinton Engineer Works, as the area was known when it was a military reservation. The book draws on her interviews with women who worked at the site; the experiences of nine particular women serve as guideposts for the story. These women served in a variety of roles: statistician, chemist, inspector, equipment operator, nurse, secretary, and janitor. Some became wives and mothers as well during the war years. It was an interesting time when there was space for women in science, technology and manufacturing, but not a lot.

Kiernan reaches outside of Oak Ridge to mention other notable women who played a part. German physicist Lise Meitner coined the term nuclear fission; she had Jewish ancestors and fled to Sweden as the Nazis came to power in her homeland. Earlier, Ida Noddack was the first to suggest that the atomic nucleus could split, an idea that was initially rejected by many scientists studying radioactivity and the inner workings of the atom.

The growth of families in a place designed solely for one purpose suggested a result that had not been considered when the Army started to build the Clinton Engineer Works. Oak Ridge was becoming a community and it eventually became an incorporated city (in 1958 by a vote of the residents after federal and state laws opened the opportunity). Though the population dropped dramatically from its war-time peak, Oak Ridge remained a center for research in nuclear energy and the peace-time use of radioactive materials as it transitioned to civilian control. Today the Oak Ridge National Laboratory continues research in energy and computing. The city of Oak Ridge continues as well, still connected to its past as a unique factory town, but in many way a city like any other.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Kiernan, Denise. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. 2013. New York Touchstone: 2014.

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Maury Klein’s book The Power Makers is a history of power from the Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine to the foundations of America’s electric grid.

Unlike many historians who look at the history of electric power, Klein gives a lot of attention to steam. We haven’t had steam engines directly powering industrial plants for decades, but steam turbines are still central to the production of most electricity in the United States. Even nuclear power plants use steam turbines to run their generators, they just use the heat from nuclear reactions rather than from the combustion of coal or natural gas to boil water and heat the steam to more than a thousand degrees.

Klein gives attention to many lesser known names in the history of power. He shows that Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse had rivals other than each other, such as Elihu Thomson. Nikola Tesla is well known as the genius who invented the AC motor, but other engineers helped develop his prototype into a commercial product, such as mathematically talented engineer Benjamin Lamme. Many talented inventors tried their hands at making electric lighting and power systems better. Only some of them had the vision, business sense, good partners and luck to turn their ideas into successful products. Few of them are widely known today.

Electrification had clear, direct effects in industry and transportation. Klein discusses how it’s influence reached into other sectors of the economy. Corporate management and finance changed to meet the needs of a growing new technology. For instance, Edison General Electric was able to take advantage of a new New Jersey law that allowed corporations to own businesses in other states. Electric companies grew, expanded and consolidated through numerous mergers and acquisitions. They had a demand for capital that nearly rivaled the railroads, another transformative technology that had shortly preceded electric power.

As the availability of electricity grew, certain industries were able to grow, too. Some chemical and metals manufacturing required abundant electric power to catalyze chemical reactions or generate the high temperatures of electric furnaces. Manufacturers flocked to Niagara after a lager hydroelectric power station started operation there in 1895.

Klein brings the many thread of his story of power together by reflections on three great fairs: the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the first, a giant steam engine that powered exhibits by means of belts and pulley was a significant attraction. By the second, electricity was on display, and the White City fairground was a model for testing AC power systems. By the 1939 fair, large power utilities of the type we would recognize today were becoming common. By then it was no big deal to flip a switch or pull a lever and get power so, unlike the previous to fairs, no dignitary undertook a show of doing it; the power was on from the start.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Grid by Gretchen Bakke

How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson

The Lighthouse Stevensons by Bella Bathurst

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

1939 by David Gelernter

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

Rust by Jonathan Waldman

Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe 

Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey

Klein, Maury. The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron, is arguably one of the first computer scientists in history. She wrote what some considered the first computer program about a century before any computer was built, especially anything we would recognize as computer. James Essinger presents a summary of her life, and particularly a defense of her accomplishments, in Ada’s Algorithm.

In any discussion relating to the Byrons, it’s easy to get distracted by Lovelace’s father. In addition to being a famous poet, he lived a high life (often on the money of others) and had many lovers. Lady Byron, who separated from Byron and preserved her family wealth from his extravagances, made sure their only daughter had minimal contact with him. Lovelace had an education in math and science very unlike other women of her time because Lady Byron hoped it might counterbalance any of the excesses the girl may have inherited from the wild Byrons.

Lovelace took to math quite well. In a later age, she might have become a professional mathematician. In her own 1800s, her tutors sometimes complained that she reached too far for a woman, and strove to grasp at realms of math that only men had the stamina to explore. Fortunately her mother, and later her husband, William, Lord King, Baron of Ockham (later elevated to Earl of Lovelace), did not let such foolishness restrain her mathematical education.

She was still quite young, only 17, when she met the much older Charles Babbage, inventor of the partly build Difference Engine and never built Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was a calculating machine that could be programmed using punch cards. Though it was a mechanical device, not an electronic computer, Babbage’s structure (processor, memory, input and output) is the same structure of modern computers. Not only did Babbage conceive of computers a century before one was built, he drew plans for substantially completing such a machine, though the manufacturing technology of the time could not have made the parts required.

Lovelace was a friend of Babbage for many years. In 1843, about 10 years after they met, Lovelace published a paper explaining the operation and capabilities of Babbage’s machine. She had an even larger vision of it than the inventor. He saw the Analytical Engine as a tool for performing complex calculations accurately. She saw that it could do more than mathematical calculations; it could manipulate any symbols in almost any way instructed, so it might “compose” music by manipulating notes according so some rules, or perform logical functions, or handle any other information that might be digitized. She foresaw that what we now call computer science would become a discipline distinct from math.

She thought the paper might be better received if it was unsigned, but at the encouragement of her husband she published it under her initials. It was quickly discovered that “A. A. L.” was a woman, and almost a quickly dismissed as irrelevant. It wasn’t until the 20^th Century, when people were actually building digital computers, that the work of Babbage and Lovelace received some respect. Though modern computers do not have a technological connection to the Analytical Engine that was never built, it certainly has a strong conceptual connection.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

How to Build and Android by David F. Dufty

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Essinger, James. Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age. 2013. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2014.

The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan Lyons

Colonial America was a place that demanded much of settlers. While many appreciated the value of book learning, many came to America because of their strong opinions about a particular book, their new home required them to focus on practical knowledge for developing land, repairing hard-to-get goods and getting the most out of one’s one labor. In The Society for Useful Knowledge, Jonathan Lyons explores this emphasis on utility and its influence on colonial science and the revolutionary generation.

Ben Franklin is the most significant figure discussed by Lyon. He developed an appreciation early in life for the value of skilled labor, he was a printer himself, and he maintained this even as he became America’s most famous scientist and the new nation’s representative in Europe. Franklin’s influence in the American scientific community was huge even though he spent years in Europe; his connections to European scientists were part of the reason for his influence at home.

Franklin and his compatriots saw a great value in encouraging and disseminating useful information in science and engineering, especially if it might increase the productivity of American agriculture and manufacturing. Franklin founded one of the earliest scientific societies in the colonies and it eventually had many imitators. He also supported the establishment of what eventually became the University of Pennsylvania, though he broke with the other organizers when his emphasis on utility conflicted with their desire to provide an education focused on classical languages in the European mold.

Though Franklin was not trying to establish institutions that would lead to the revolution, he and many who worked with him did it anyway. Franklin and his Quaker neighbors preferred education in useful knowledge and trades. Many colonial scientists were self-taught and learned on their farms and workshops. They saw little value in the classical education popular in Europe that distinguished the aristocracy and upper class from others, but did little in their minds to suit a person for a role of value in the community. Americans needed to get stuff done and they didn’t care much about a person’s pedigree. This opened up opportunities for people of low social status to grow in wealth and influence. (Even in Europe, amateur scientists from many classes were common and it especially leveled the social ground around England’s coffeehouses.)

Franklin’s circle of mechanics and part-time scientists influenced the generation that followed them. Franklin’s personal reputation allowed him to be a leader in that generation who became the founders of the United States. The emphasis on practicality and experience, with the accompanying devaluing of ancient authorities in dead languages, influenced American political thought as well as its science, technology and education. The connections he made as a postmaster and scientific communicator also formed a model for the political influencers of his time.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

46 Pages by Scott Liell

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Lyons, Jonathan. The Society for Useful Knowledge: How Benjamin Franklin and His Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel by Frances & Joseph Gies

Among many the Middle Ages, between the Classical period and the Renaissance, is still thought of as the Dark Ages.  In their book Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel, Frances and Joseph Gies summarize scholarship that shows that the Medieval period was one of commercial and technological advancement that welcomed invention and the dispersion of knowledge.

The authors present a history of technology beginning with the contributions of Greek and Roman civilization and culminating with European developments on the cusp of the Age of Discovery.  The period in between is sometimes called the Dark Ages because of the lack of documentary history, the loss of the centralizing influence of Roman Empire, and the loss of Greek texts and knowledge in much of Europe.  The Gieses attempt to debunk the notion that this time was “dark” in the sense of being backward, especially superstitious, and lacking in advancement in knowledge, commerce, science, and especially technology.

From a technological point of view, the Middle Ages didn’t inherit from the Greeks or Romans much more than they might have learned for more ancient civilizations.  The Greeks little esteemed the useful arts.  The Romans were very practical adopters of technology, and they certainly did things on a large scale, but their main contribution was size and organization.  Medieval Europe more fruitfully borrowed and built upon technology from China.  Ancient China had very advance technology in comparison to contemporary civilizations, and the spice trade aided the transmission of technology, in the form of both devices and ideas, from East to West.

I think some of the greatest advances in this period occurred in architecture and materials.  In architecture, builders began to move away from Roman circular arches to something more like true arches.  This, along with the flying buttress, another Medieval development, made a new architecture of more open and brighter spaces possible.

Materials greatly improved, too, especially iron.  Either directly or as an idea, iron-making technology moved from China to Europe.  The blast furnace gave Europeans the ability to make cast iron.  Though casting iron parts was in their grasp, the more significant issue was that a lot more iron could be made.  Iron tools and parts made a host of other technology practicable.

Technological changes led to cultural changes, too.  Improved applications of animal and water power to agriculture and food production led to a transition away from slavery to a serf-tenant system in which the people who worked the field had a right to portion of their production.  Agricultural surpluses led to the development of cities along with a decline of bound serfs rise of free tradesmen.  The development of manufacturing led to all kinds of trade and improvements in commercial practices including double-entry bookkeeping.

I think this book may be a good introduction to the history of technology for people seeking an entry point to the field.  It is neither too technical nor too academic in its style.  It covers a period of history that is not as well covered by other popular books.  It also acknowledges and summarizes the technology of the immediately preceding and succeeding ages, so it covers a very wide timeframe.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Ancient Engineers by L. Sprague de Camp 

The Science of Leonardo by Fritjof Capra

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Gies, Frances, & Joseph Gies. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages.  New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Links related to Medieval science and technology

Grotesque mummy head reveals advanced medieval science

Google

News from My Alma Mater

Congratulations to Fu-hung Hsieh, professor biological engineering and the University of Missouri (I’m a graduate of that department), and Harold Huff of the Food Engineering Lab for their development of a soy chicken product called Beyond Meat.  The work was featured in the Winter 2013 issue of Mizzou (you can find more on the web here→).  The university has licensed the product to a company that will be manufacturing it in Columbia, MO.

Apparently, it is easier to make soy look, taste, and feel like chicken than to get people to eat their vegetables.  That may be more of a social issue than an engineering problem.