John G. Burke

Wood Pulp, Water Pollution, and Advertising

In 1973 the total amount of money expended on advertising in the United States approximated

Comment: The Complex Nature of Explanations in the Historiography of Technology

25 billion. Although the annual volume of television advertising has demonstrated an astonishing increase since 1950, and although radio advertising, particularly on local stations, has recovered substantially from the initial impact of television, expenditures in the broadcast media still represent slightly less than 25 percent of all advertising monies. The balance is spent in an attempt to capture the publics attention by printing messages and illustrations in newspapers and periodicals, on billboards and public transit vehicles, and in direct mail to offices and residences. In addition, advertised brand name products require packaging for display and identification. Substantial amounts of paper for labels and cardboard for containers are required for this purpose, and heavier paperboard is used for the cartons in which the individual packages are shipped. Of the 61.9 million tons of paper and paperboard produced in the United States in 1973, it is a fair estimate that about 50 percent is used for advertising and for the packaging and shipping of advertised products. Thus the fortunes of the paper industry are and have long been linked to advertising. The relationship between the mounting volume of printed advertising and the increasing pollution of Americas waters does not appear to have received due recognition; it is to this subject that the present article is addressed. The wood pulp and paper industry is one of the major polluters of our rivers and streams. In 1963, for example, an estimated 13.1 billion gallons of waste water were discharged from our industrial plants, and of this volume 1,900 billion gallons, or 13.7 percent, came from factories manufacturing pulp, paper, and allied products. The total waste water contained an estimated 22 billion pounds of BOD (biological oxygen demand); the share contributed by the paper industry was 5,900 billion pounds, or 26.8 percent. Settle-

Comment: Let's Be Sure Technology Is for Man

A low-altitude coast-to-coast flight in fair weather is perhaps one of the better ways to appreciate the rich natural resources, the tremendous productive capacity, and the technological might of the United States. In the Northeast one may view the textile, metalworking, chemical, and refining industries, and in southern California, the sprawling aerospace complexes and their satellite manufacturing industries. Between these areas the traveler sees the coal mines and

Bursting Boilers and the Federal Power

It is to the credit of American engineering educators that they have been constantly concerned with the social value of their graduates since the time that engineering curricula were first incorporated into university education and separate institutes of technology were established. From the late nineteenth century on, engineering journals, educational reviews, and commencement addresses have given ample testimony that these educators wished, first, that graduating engineers had a broad educational background and, second, that the public was aware that engineers could bestow social benefits on humanity that were far beyond the narrowly conceived arena of engineering activities. For example, Frank O. Marvin, a professor of engineering at the University of Kansas and president of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, writing in 1901, recommended that engineering students spend an extra year or two in college so that they might study history, economics, sociology, English, and aesthetics.l In 1906 Herbert C. Sadler, a professor of engineering at the University of Michigan, warmly indorsed the efforts of his faculty to establish a six-year combined literary and engineering curriculum.2 Similarly, the belief that engineers could transform the social order and solve the urgent problems of humanity can be traced back to Saint-Simon in the early nineteenth century, and a hundred years later we can find the same views voiced by Charles P. Steinmetz, Morris L. Cooke, and Henry L. Gantt. Howland stresses both themes in his article. He recommends a five-