Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 449 discussions are not provided, this study should rest on the shelf beside Henry C. King’s The History of the Telescope until, hopefully, Miss Warner or someone else does provide them. Reese V. Jenkins* Star Performance. By Harriett Pratt Lattin. Philadelphia: Whitmore Publishing Co., 1969. Pp. 238; illustrations. $4.95. The role of graphic devices, both mechanical and stationary, in the history of astronomical practice and education has never been fully explored. Mrs. Lattin’s latest book, ostensibly on the history of demonstrational astronomy, neither begins to fill the gap nor presents a reliable summary of previous monographs. Its value as an entertaining book for children, at whom it seems to be directed, is negated by the many gross scientific, historical, and commonsensical errors it contains. Deborah Jf.an Warner! The Invention of the Sewing Machine. By Grace Rogers Cooper. Smith­ sonian Institution Bulletin 254. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insti­ tution, 1968. Pp. viii-|-156. $2.75. Grace Cooper’s new book on the sewing machine is an example of both the possibilities and the limits of “hardware” history. As an internal look at the way in which the sewing machine was developed it is a marvelous exercise. Carefully avoiding the single-inventor mythology which surrounds treatment of so many inventions or innovations of this period, the author sets about to take apart logically and analytically the development of a workable, practical, sewing machine. Like many good hardware historians, Cooper makes a sound and realistic attempt at relating the objects and lives of inventors in the area to the underlying social and economic conditions of the time. Often the insights which result are presented apologetically or parenthetically, but unnecessarily so. The monograph sets out to document in detail the evolution of the sewing machine, which was, as the author points out, one of the 19thcentury inventions that was in a sense inevitable, and one on which a number of talented figures worked. Although the casual reader might assume that the work was an attempt to debunk Elias Howe as the central figure, Curator Cooper keeps this aspect clearly in the back­ ground of the total investigation and in perspective. The result is a believable, meaningful account of both technological invention and innovation. * Dr. Jenkins is assistant professor of the history of science and technology at Case Western Reserve University. t Mrs. Warner, curator of the history of astronomy at the Smithsonian Institution, is working on a history of celestial cartography in Western Europe. 450 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The central economic issues that are uncovered are manifold and instructive. Though the basic impetus was directed at the problem of providing a reliable machine that would produce a permanent stitch using a continuous thread, the presumed market was industrial rather than domestic. The ultimate use of the sewing machine, as most early experimenters saw it, was for the production of various types of tapes and belts of cloth, only to a lesser degree the mass production of readyto -wear clothing. Few thought of it as an instrument of liberation for the females of the country, and fewer still were concerned with its potential for doing so. The author clearly shows how A. B. Wilson made many of the basic innovations which made the sewing machine a domestic and commercial success, and that Howe, rather than being the tragic inventor passed by, was a somewhat clever person who managed to realize a great deal from his patents. Like so many American inventors of the period, Howe be­ lieved his best chances would be in England. Returning to find many others working on “his” idea was no doubt unsettling. His ultimate ascension to the exalted role of “inventor of the sewing machine” is placed in its proper perspective. The technological linkages are carefully explored. For example, the problem of a thread strong enough to stand up to machine sewing re­ mained for some time a serious bottleneck, perverting no doubt many of the inventors’ efforts. The general economic and social significance of the invention is not neglected. The sewing machine, as finally per­ fected, was one of the first really expensive purchases of the middle-class...