Technology and Culture

Organizational Notes THE PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, MEETING, OCTOBER 23—26, 1986 More than 275 people attended the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) at the Pittsburgh Hilton, October 23—26, 1986. The meeting was held simultaneously with those of the History of Science Society (HSS), the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA), and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S); total attendance at Pittsburgh exceeded 1,350. W. Bernard Carl­ son (University of Virginia) chaired the program committee, which included Pamela E. Mack (Clemson University) and Susan Douglas (Hampshire College). Local arrangements for all four societies were supervised by Peter Machamer (University of Pittsburgh), and special assistance to SHOT was provided by Susan Constant and Edward W. Constant II (Carnegie-Mellon University). The 1986 program was one ofthe largest offered by SHOT in recent years, containing twenty-four sessions covering a wide range of topics, including medieval and non-Western technology, historiography, visual thinking, reproductive technology, computers, and the effect of technology on the labor process. Special sessions were devoted to the scholarship of John B. Rae and to celebrating the twenty-fifth an­ niversary of the first manned space flight. To strengthen ties with the other societies, SHOT cosponsored several sessions, including “The Technology of Science” and “The Implications of ‘The Great Devo­ nian Controversy’ ” with HSS as well as two sessions on the sociology of technology with 4S. To supplement the paper sessions, the program included several other important events. The meeting began with a tour of a plant of Cytemp Specialty Steel Division, Cyclops Corporation, which is using the most recent developments in powdered metallurgy. Also, there was an exhibit on the history of microwaves, organized by the Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society of the IEEE and the Westinghouse Corporation, and a screening of several documentary films on technol­ ogy provided by California Newsreel. Special information sessions were also held on the research support provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation and on research opportunities available with the Historic American Engineering Record. 619 620 Organizational Notes Program Summaries The opening session on Thursday evening was chaired by Paul Durbin and addressed the question “Is Science Applied Technology?” All the participants were members of philosophy departments. Wil­ liam Maker (Clemson University) set up a sharp contrast—the lack of a relationship between science and technology among the Greeks and the close relationship between modern science and technology—in order to argue that still-prevalent Greek-based ideas need to be rethought. Joseph Pitt (Virginia Polytechnic Institute) used the exam­ ple of Galileo to argue that, if such intellectual instrumentalities as geometry are technologies every bit as much as the telescope, then recent philosophy of science attempts to assess the notion of technolo­ gical progress are fundamentally misguided. Davis Baird (University of South Carolina) presented a fascinating account of one of James Watt’s inventions, the indicator diagram, to show that a technological invention can be almost totally independent of scientific theory. The commentary by Robert Ackerman (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) dismissed Maker’s paper as based on a false dichotomy, questioned Pitt’s claim about geometry as a technology, and concen­ trated on clarifying the relationship between scientific theory and technological inventiveness during the period of Watt and the early steam engine. Pali. Durbin University of Delaware The session on “Visual Thinking and Technological Change,” orga­ nized by W. Bernard Carlson (University of Virginia) and chaired by Brooke Hindle, was carried by speakers who applied their own specific research to this question, all of them presenting slides effectively. The commentator then tied the three together, enlarging the focus, and the ensuing discussion was lively and profitable. Lee Ellen Griffith (University of Pennsylvania) gave the first talk, on line-and-berry inlay—a form of surface decoration applied to furni­ ture in 18th-century Chester County, Pennsylvania. This was craft design that followed standardized methods but did not use templates and necessarily depended much on the individual’s artistic sense. Visual thinking had to be a part of it, but the primary records are the extant pieces of furniture, and these seem to offer limited information about...