Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 169 Thus it is instructive to compare the contents of this account with Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840 but based upon a nine-month visit made in 1831. Lakier shares many of Tocqueville’s basic interests, such as the new prisons at Auburn, New York, and Philadelphia and American innovations in patterns of in­ carceration. What distinguishes Lakier from Tocqueville, however, and what gives one a vivid sense of changes in physical mobility and material culture between 1831 and 1857 is the rapid growth of technological change. In all of Tocqueville there is only one brief reference to the railroad and few to steamships. In Lakier, by con­ trast, references to both are abundant. The nature of travel and freight transport had been revolutionized in the intervening twentysix years. Similarly, one will find in Lakier’s journal a range of phenomena that never appear in Tocqueville’s massive work: shipbuilding; lead and especially coal mining; steam plows and threshing machines, which were still very new in 1857; prefabricated cabins made for shipment to the territories of Kansas and Nebraska (see pp. 149-50); innovations in fire-fighting equipment; the role of inventions and the circumstances of inventors. It fascinated Lakier that we had a “special Patent Office” and that in the final week of 1857 alone sixty-two patents were issued. Above all, it impressed him that in the quest for labor-saving devices the United States literally enjoyed the best of all possible worlds: “The gathering in a single city, and not infrequently in a single workshop, of workers from all sections of Europe cannot but be advantageous to the bold and resourceful mind of an Ameri­ can; he has the opportunity, without going very far, to compare methods utilized in other lands, and if he can he will adopt and simplify, substitute steam for hands, write out a description—and a patent is ready” (pp. 258-59). This admirable volume has a helpful introduction (twenty-five pages), judicious annotations, a handsome portfolio of well-chosen half-tone illustrations, and a fine index. Michael Kammen* Winterthur Portfolio 12. Edited by Ian M. G. Quimby. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press for the Henry Francis duPont Win­ terthur Museum, ca. 1977. In both its annual and present quarterly formats, Winterthur Portfolio has become known as a source for new research in the dec­ orative arts. Innovations and stylistic trends in the decorative arts *Dr. Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University. His most recent publication is The Past before Vs: Contemporary His­ torical Writing in the United States (1980). 170 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE often relate to technological change, and articles frequently explore those complex interrelationships. Portfolio 12 is no exception. Daryl M. Hafter traces the career of “Philippe de Lasalle from Mise-en-Carte to Industrial Design,” which is not a simple task. While beautiful artifacts of French manufacture were known in Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries, information about their de­ sign and production is often inaccessible to students untrained in French and technical French, at that. Hafter outlines the career of one of the key figures in making and maintaining the reputation of Lyons as a center for the manufacture of high-quality brocades and silks in the final glorious years of the French monarchy. De Lasalle’s skills extended beyond the mere design of complicated ornamental motifs, florals, and even landscapes and portraits to pre­ paring the intricate warping system for the looms. Warping was the critical part of the industry, for the elaborate patterns required sev­ eral steps in order to be set up accurately and without wasting valu­ able threads. De Lasalle was able to increase quality hand production with an innovation that decreased time lost during the two or three months required to set up a loom for a quality brocade, although it was difficult for me to follow the explanation of how it worked with the description given. Outstanding in his mechanical abilities, de Lasalle also excelled as an entrepreneur and policymaker, taking steps that would help insure the future of...