Technology

A

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution started in England, because that nation had the technological means, government encouragement, and a large and varied trade network. The first factories appeared in 1740, concentrating on textile production (see Factory System). In 1740 the majority of English people wore woolen garments, but within the next 100 years the scratchy, often soggy and fungus-filled woolens were replaced by cotton—especially after the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, an American, in 1793. Such English inventions as the flying shuttle and carding machines of John Kay, the water frame of Richard Arkwright, the spinning jenny of James Hargreaves, and the improvements in weaving made by Samuel Crompton were all integrated with a new source of power, the steam engine, developed in England by Thomas Newcomen, James Watt, Richard Trevithick, and in the U.S. by Oliver Evans. Within a 35-year period, from the 1790s to the 1830s, more than 100,000 power looms with 9,330,000 spindles were put into service in England and Scotland.

One of the most important innovations in the weaving process was introduced in France in 1801 by Joseph Jacquard; his loom used cards with holes punched in them to determine the placement of threads in the warp. This use of punched cards inspired the British mathematician Charles Babbage to attempt to design a calculating machine based on the same principle. Although this machine never became fully practical, it presaged the great computer revolution of the 20th century (see Computer).

A

1

New Labor Pattern

The Industrial Revolution brought a new pattern to the division of labor. It created the modern factory, a technological network whose workers were not required to be artisans and did not necessarily possess craft skills. Because of this, the factory introduced an impersonal remuneration process based on a wage system. As a result of the financial hazards brought on by the economic systems that accompanied such industrial developments, the factory also led to the constant threat of unemployment for its workers.

The factory system was achieved only after much resistance from the English guilds and artisans (see Guild), who could see clearly the threat to their income and way of life. In musket making, for example, gunsmiths fought the introduction of interchangeable parts and the mass production of rifles. Nevertheless, the factory system became a basic institution of modern technology, and the work of men, women, and children became just another commodity in the production process. The ultimate assembly of a product—whether a mechanical reaper or a sewing machine—was not the work of one person but the result of an integrated, corporate system. This division of labor into operations that were more and more narrowly described became the determining feature of work in the new industrial society, with all the long hours of tedium that this entailed.

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2

Increased Pace of Innovation

As agricultural productivity increased and medical science developed, Western society came to have a strong belief in the desirability of technological change despite its less pleasant aspects. Pride and a large measure of awe resulted from such engineering achievements as the laying of the first Atlantic telegraph cable, the building of the Suez and Panama canals, and the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the enormous iron passenger ship, the Great Eastern. The telegraph and railroads connected most of the major cities with one another. In the late 19th century, the American inventor Thomas Edison's light bulb began to replace candles and lamps, and within 30 years every industrial nation was generating electric power for lighting and other systems.

Such 19th- and 20th-century inventions as the telephone, the phonograph, the wireless radio, the motion picture, the automobile, and the airplane served only to add to the nearly universal respect that society in general felt for technology. With the development of assembly-line mass production of automobiles and household appliances, and the building of ever taller skyscrapers, acceptance of innovations became not only a fact of everyday life but also a way of life in itself. Society was being rapidly transformed by increased mobility, rapid communication, and a deluge of available information from mass media.

A

3

Technical Education

One of the several reasons why the United States became a technological leader in the 20th century was its development of an advanced system of technical education. Mechanical arts schools began in Philadelphia in the 18th century, and by the end of the 19th century they had spread to every major American city. In the 20th century, a state-based system of vocational education provided training in basic technical skills. Between 1862 and 1890, engineering and agricultural colleges in every state were funded by a federal program known as the Morrill Land Grant (see Education, Technical; Education, Vocational). In addition, since the early 1920s, every rural county in the nation has had a Federal Extension Service office that is responsible for disseminating information to farmers on new technologies and research.

B

Reassessments of Technology

World War I and the Great Depression forced a sobering reassessment of this rapid technological explosion. The development of submarines, machine guns, battleships, and chemical warfare made increasingly clear the destructive side of technological change. In addition, worldwide mass unemployment and the disasters met by capitalistic institutions in the 1930s initiated a further strong critique of the benefits that result from technological progress.

Then, with World War II, came the development of the weapon that has since become a general threat to life on earth: the atomic bomb. Although national leaders often speak of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, nuclear power can never be discussed without referring to its dangers as well. Another technological outgrowth of World War II—the development of computers and transistors and the accompanying trend toward miniaturization—is having equally profound effects on society as well (see Microprocessor). The possibilities it offers are enormous, but so are the possibilities for invasion of privacy and for workforce displacement by automated systems (see Automation).

During the 1950s some observers began to warn that many other products of technology also had harmful or destructive aspects. Automobile exhausts, they pointed out, were polluting the atmosphere, pesticides such as DDT were threatening the food chain, and mineral wastes from a wide variety of industrial sources were polluting large reservoirs of groundwater. Indeed, the physical environment has become so jammed with technological processes that one of the major challenges of modern society is the search for places to dump the wastes that have been produced.

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