Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes

362 Pages·2001·1.99 MB·English

by  Michael Thad Allen

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ESSAYS IN HONOR OF T
THOMAS PARKE HUGHES AND F EC F
AGATHA CHIPLEY HUGHES
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Michael Thad Allen P
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This collection explores how technologies become forms of W
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technical systems strengthen or reshape social, political, andR
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Technologies of Power

Technologies of Power
Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes
and Agatha Chipley Hughes
edited by Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
Set in Sabon by The MIT Press.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Technologies of power: essays in honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha
Chipley Hughes/edited by Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-01184-0 (hc: alk. paper)—ISBN 0-262-51124-X (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Technology—History. 2. Technology and state—History. I. Hughes, Thomas
Parke. II. Hughes, Agatha C. III. Allen, Michael Thad. IV. Hecht, Gabrielle.
T19.T36 2001
609—dc21 00-048041
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Disciplined Imagination: The Life and Work of Tom and Agatha
Hughes ix
John M. Staudenmaier, S.J.
Introduction: Authority, Political Machines, and Technology’s
History 1
Gabrielle Hecht and Michael Thad Allen
The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardiner Hubbard and the
Formation of the Middle Class in America, 1875–1880 25
W. Bernard Carlson
Culture and Technology in the City: Opposition to Mechanized Street
Transportation in Late-Nineteenth-Century America 57
Eric Schatzberg
The Hidden Lives of Standards: Technical Prescriptions and the
Transformation of Work in America 95
Amy Slaton and Janet Abbate
Engineering Politics, Technological Fundamentalism, and German Power
Technology, 1900–1936 145
Edmund N. Todd
Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 175
Michael Thad Allen
Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making: The British
Origins of Operational Research 215
Erik P. Rau
vi Contents
Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 253
Gabrielle Hecht
The Neutrality Flagpole: Swedish Neutrality Policy and Technological
Alliances, 1945–1970 295
Hans Weinberger
About the Authors 333
Index 337
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the numerous individuals who aided us in
preparation of this book. We completed the introductory essay while
Michael Thad Allen was on leave at the Zentralinstitut für die Geschichte
der Technik at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. An informal seminar
organized by Matthias Heymann provided a lively forum for the discussion
of the guiding ideas around which this book took shape. The authors are
grateful for the comments of Alexander Gall, Jörg Hermann, Jeff Lewis,
Stephan Lindner, Falk Selinger, Mats Fridlund, and Nina Lerman. For their
insightful reviews, we thank David Nye, Ronald Bayor, Brian Balogh,
Douglas Flamming, Kenneth Ledford, Richard Kuisel, Geoff Eley, and
Karen Sawislak. Thanks also to Larry Cohen of The MIT Press for his sup-
port and patience. Our deepest thanks, of course, are reserved for Tom and
Agatha.
Gabrielle Hecht, Ann Arbor
Michael Thad Allen, Munich

Disciplined Imagination: The Life and Work
of Thomas and Agatha Hughes
John M. Staudenmaier, S.J.
Throughout almost fifty years she and I loved deeply and did history together.
—T. Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus(Pantheon, 1998), p. 309
Tom and Agatha Hughes, living together for nearly five decades, modeled
intellectual creativity for those close to them. They make a strong case for
intimacy as the heart of insight and mutuality as an essential condition for
sustained attention to the capricious historical record. They loved to talk
over what each saw in their several worlds—the academy, art, architec-
ture, the political order, their family, and their church. Having been party
to some of those conversations, I understood them to live with the expec-
tation that whatever they perceived, questioned, were annoyed at, or won-
dered about would not devolve into random fragmentary impressions.
Daily listening wove a continuous fabric of interpretation, with each an
interlocutor for the other. The editors and contributors to this volume have
dedicated it to Agatha and Tom together. When I write about the evolution
of Tom’s thought and of his place within the history of technology, the
roots of sustained insight that I witnessed in their relationship are never
far from my mind.
Tom Hughes sought theoretical understanding in densely worked his-
torical evidence, interrogating it and listening for surprises, sticking with
his material until it suggested conceptual themes that made sense of how
things happened. It was not his style to begin with theory so that he could
bring it to bear on evidence—and with good reason. During his early years,
it could be said that the closest thing to a theory of technological change—
a morally idealistic engineering creed combined with a postwar version
of American manifest destiny—was so pervasive that its influence passed