Stathis Arapostathis

Electrical innovations, authority and consulting expertise in late Victorian Britain

In this article I examine the practices of electrical engineering experts, with special reference to their role in the implementation of innovations in late Victorian electrical networks. I focus on the consulting work of two leading figures in the scientific and engineering world of the period, Alexander Kennedy and William Preece. Both were Fellows of the Royal Society and both developed large-scale consulting activities in the emerging electrical industry of light and power. At the core of the study I place the issues of trust and authority, and the bearing of these on the engineering expertise of consultants in late Victorian Britain. I argue that the ascription of expertise to these engineers and the trust placed in their advice were products of power relations on the local scale. The study seeks to unravel both the technical and the social reasons for authoritative patterns of consulting expertise.

Harbours of crisis and consent: The technopolitics of coastal infrastructure in colonial Cyprus, 1895–1908

By the late 1800s British colonial rule in Cyprus was experiencing both a socio-economic and a legitimacy crisis. Britain’s development projects were intended to quell the crisis and consolidate colonial authority. Famagusta Harbour construction was an integral part of that programme, but it antagonised wealthy and influential Cypriots in Larnaca. They believed that such infrastructure would undermine the importance of Larnaca harbour and threaten their commercial and political interests. Their protests threatened the colonial administration with a new crisis that was averted by the integration of Larnaca’s Harbour into British plans. The colonial regime had to negotiate and co-operate with local networks of power in order to realise its development programme: harbour development was no mere rational engineering exercise.

Two centuries of innovation, transformation and transition in the UK gas industry: Where next?:

Britain’s gas system developed in the early 1800s. Over the past two centuries the system and its local, national and international networks have experienced much socio-technical innovation, governance changes and six key transitions. Since the Climate Change Act of 2008, it faces a seventh challenging transition as the UK moves uncertainly towards a low-carbon energy system, including decarbonising electricity, heat and transport. The paper explores: the origins of the system by Murdoch, Boulton and Watt; the early 19th century development of local gas networks; innovative responses to, inter alia, the challenge of incandescent electric light from the 1880s, including the expansion of the customer base and the development and active promotion of cooking and heat services – the growth, fragmentation and incoherence of the industry between the two World Wars; the post-war period that saw the industry nationalised in 1948, as the multi-fuel economy developed; the institutional, technical and social challenges associated with the conversion to North Sea natural gas in the 1960s; and innovation and change in response to the challenges that flowed from the privatisation of British Gas in 1987. The paper shows how examining past processes of innovation, transition and transformation through the lens of institutional ‘governance logics’ helps appreciate the challenges faced by system actors, technologies, institutions and regulators in the past and offers insights into the issues posed by the low-carbon transition. The paper begins by outlining some analytical concepts used in the analysis. We then examine the regime’s six past transitions. The paper concludes by considering what insights these past experiences suggest for a seventh transition towards a low-carbon economy, for the future governance of the UK gas system and its networks and particularly for natural gas.

Wireless at the Bar: Experts, Circuits and Marconi’s Inventions in Patent Disputes in Early Twentieth-Century Britain

This chapter brings together the law and the relevant institutions at the center of the analysis, with the aim of shedding light on the culture of invention as it developed and, eventually, prevailed in the field of wireless technology. It supplements the existing historiography of the wireless industry in Britain in the early twentieth century which focuses on the business strategies, the development and economics of manufacture and the role of corporate R&D in technological transitions, as well as that of contracts and agreements in a national and international setting. Inventorship in the industrial setting of wireless is reconstructed as a complex activity that was formed through the performance, agency and, most importantly, interaction of various experts and actors. The management of Marconi’s inventions involved circulation of knowledge, expertise, credit and trust in various locations: the laboratory, the public sphere of technical journals and the law courts. The case study in this chapter concerns the making of a patent, and a strong monopoly, through the decision-making process of the British law courts. The story argues that Marconi’s success in the Marconi vs British Radio Telegraph and Telephone Company court case was the result of preparation and organization, and the use of experts who combined scientific, practical and legal credibility. Despite the ideologically driven public discourse on the cognitive and social superiority of science over invention and practice, in the law courts a mixture of scientific authority and practical experience provided credible witnessing.

Modern Technologies or Technological Modernities

In the highly influential Leviathan and the Air Pump, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer argued that ‘. . . the history of science occupies the same terrain as the history of politics’. They stressed that science is a construct that is shaped by social, economic, political and cultural interests while at the same time it is part and parcel of the formation of social orders that legitimize specific political, social and cultural attitudes, understandings and ideas. In their words: ‘Solutions to the problems of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order’ (Shapin and Schaffer, 1985, p. 332). In restoration England the epistemological status of scientific knowledge was articulated in existing patterns of social credibility, authority and trust. The trustworthiness of the knowledge increased people’s credibility, authority and power to redraft the rules of social order, both within the scientific and the wider polity. Recent scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has stressed that science and technology are socially shaped through the intervention of experts, users, institutions, firms and states, while concurrently techno-sciences are part of the political activity and support existing or new social orders and political and cultural organizations (Noble, 1984; Winner, 1986; Jasanoff, 2004a; Badenoch and Fickers, 2010; Braun and Whatmore, 2010). In this approach, techno-sciences are represented in a symmetrical way and are as Science as Culture Vol. 21, No. 4, 550–555, December 2012