Technology and Culture

322 Book Reviews they have a legitimate basis for pride can live without prestige or can live in the hope and expectation that what leads to pride will also give them prestige in time. But we cannot live with ourselves without pride. We cannot tolerate humiliation without making as great an effort as is necessary to overcome it” (pp. 271-72). Aside from a twenty-page introductory sketch on the historical de­ velopment of the space program, Van Dyke organizes his sixteen chapters topically and into two substantive parts, “Motivations” and “Methods.” In the four chapters of the latter part, Van Dyke is con­ cerned with non-scientific and non-technological methods of promot­ ing the values, goals, needs, or interests dissected formerly. “Methods” include organizational arrangements in the federal government at large and within NASA, the mobilization of industrial and academic re­ sources, international co-operation programs, and information, educa­ tion, and propaganda activities abroad and at home. Using only two chronological benchmarks, the dates of Sputnik I (October 4, 1957) and of Kennedy’s call to Congress (May 25, 1961) for the adoption of the national goal of landing a man on the moon during the present decade, Van Dyke is sometimes cavalier with chronology and almost ignores the role of events in Project Mercury. He is curiously reticent about the growing controversy among scien­ tists and engineers over the issue of manned versus instrumented space flight. There is only one short chapter on the rationale behind argu­ ments over serendipity involved in scientific and technological discov­ ery, and only five pages consider specifically the motivational mix be­ hind manned exploration of space for science. In time, historians may well accept the social generalization Van Dyke suggests in his final paragraph: that before Sputnik there was apathy, afterward hysteria; and that before Glenn’s orbits, Americans were moved mainly by loss of prestige, whereas after Cooper’s day in space, pride or the sense of achievement in contests with nature instead of in competition with another nation became a major conscious motive. If this happens, and Van Dyke’s book is itself a symptom of such a change, then Pride and Power should certainly deserve some of the credit, because it cannot fail to be a cause of further maturation to all who read it. toot* Loyd S. Swenson, Jr.* Winterthur Portfolio One. Winterthur, Delaware: The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1964. Pp. 225. Illustrations. $9.50. In a statement of editorial policy (p. 7), Milo M. Naeve, the registrar of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, indicates that this * Dr. Swenson, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston, is the author of a forthcoming book on the Michelson-Morley aether-drift experi­ ments. He is a member of the group engaged in writing the program history of Project Mercury for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Book Reviews 323 will be an annual publication whose articles will reflect “the current interests of the staff of the Museum, the faculty of the University of Delaware, and graduates of the course of study sponsored by these institutions” (namely, the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture). Those who know the splendid accumulation of American arts and crafts (1640-1840) assembled at Winterthur by Henry Francis du Pont and displayed in carefully restored and reassembled period rooms will correctly assume that the Portfolio’s articles are not primarily aimed at an audience interested in technology. Indeed, the most interesting articles in this first volume, and considerably more than one-half its pages, are devoted to the history of the museum and of the Winterthur mansion, gardens, and farms. Even the more technical articles are pre­ occupied with matters that appeal chiefly to connoisseurs and antiquecollectors . Charles Hummel’s on “Samuel Rowland Fisher’s Catalogue of English Hardware,” for example, passes over doorknobs, card-table hinges, bolt-covers, and a wide variety of other brass objects contained in the catalogue, concentrating on drawer-pulls for fine furniture, and it specifically excludes consideration of another Fisher pattern book in the museum’s collection, containing saddlery and horse equipment. Mr. Hummel’s article is well written and efficiently illustrated, but...