Merritt Roe Smith

Science, technology, and the military

World War II and the subsequent Cold War produced a dramatic change in the way scientists became involved in the weapons innovation process. For the first time in history military research and development (R&D) became a large-scale institutionalized process even in peacetime. The resulting ‘qualitative’ arms race in nuclear, conventional, and biological and chemical weapons raised the question of whether national and international security actually decreased, rather than increased, as a result of ‘destabilizing’ weapons innovations. These concerns brought about a new type of studies—defense technology assessment studies—that dealt with the impact of new weapons systems and dual-use technologies on national and international security. Negative impacts, such as undermining existing arms control agreements, also raised the question of whether and how the weapons innovation process could be influenced. The article discusses a variety of analytical approaches aimed at understanding the dynamics of the weapons innovation process. It argues that a sociotechnical network approach is the most promising one to provide valuable insights for influencing this innovation process. The approach also provides a suitable framework for investigating the relationship between civil and military technological innovation. This is of particular interest for the new information and communication technologies that may revolutionize future military affairs, and in which area civil and military technologies become increasingly integrated.

John H. Hall, Simeon North, and the Milling Machine: The Nature of Innovation among Antebellum Arms Makers

During the early decades of the 19th century, the firearms industry in the United States experienced a remarkable transformation from craft to machine production. The origins of this change can undoubtedly be traced to Europe, particularly France and Great Britain. Nevertheless, Americans made some boldly original innovations of their own and, in so doing, sowed the seeds for a system of interchangeable production that eventually bore their name. Indeed, the continuous introduction of novel woodand metal-working techniques at various armories throughout the country not only laid the basis for precision manufacture in other technically related industries, but also, in the eyes of European observers, represented one of the most exhilarating features of Yankee technology during the antebellum period. Exciting envy and admiration, they became great jewels in Americas industrial crown.1 The emergence of modern milling practice provides an apt illustration of the migration and diffusion of mechanical ideas during the formative period of American industrialization.2 Though by no means the only requisite for interchangeable manufacture, the mill-

America’s Coming of Age: Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought

According to DanielWalker Howe, the three decades between the end of the War of 1812 and the end of the Mexican War (1848) witnessed “the transformation of America.”1 Of what did this transformation consist? What drove it? What were its larger implications? These questions lie at the very center of historical writing about the early and middle decades of nineteenth-century America. Howe’s monumental effort goes far in answering them. In the process, he upends several well-known interpretations of the so-called Jacksonian period. Howe knits together a complex tapestry of seemingly unrelated historical events with keen insight and wonderfully lucid prose. His intermittent snapshots of American society between 1815 and 1848 are well done, as are his depictions of American science and literature. Of greater significance, however, are the connections he establishes between evangelical religion, social reform, sectional politics, and economic development as key elements in America’s transformation.His discussion of the Second Great Awakening, with its focus on revival-oriented Protestant preachers like Charles Grandison Finney and Lyman Beecher (the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) is extremely well done. Owing to the efforts of Finney, Beecher, and other “New Light” evangelists, the Second Great Awakening became a major force that not only ignited widespread millennial fervor in America but also spawned numerous voluntary associations calling for the reformation of society in preparation for the second coming of the Christ. Among these associations numbered temperance, missionary, Bible distribution, and pacifist groups as well as the most important of all, the abolitionist movement aimed at ridding the country of slavery. What is

Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England

Part I. Origins: 1. The transformation of water 2. Control of water company 3. Waters Part II. Maturation: 4. The struggle over water 5. The law of water 6. Depleted waters 7. Fouled water Part III. Decline: 8. The productive value of water.