Technologist

“ The engineer and the scientist and the chemist, within a single generation, filled Europe and America and Asia with their vast machines, with their telegraphs, their flying machines, their coal-tar products. ”

“ But once you started a sort of research in the field of coal-mining, a study of methods and means, a study of by-products and the chemical possibilities of coal, it was astounding, the ingenuity and the almost uncanny cleverness of the modern technical mind, as if really the devil himself had lent fiend's wits to the technical scientists of industry. It was far more interesting than art, than literature, poor emotional half-witted stuff, was this technical science of industry. In this field, men were like gods, or demons, inspired to discoveries, and fighting to carry them out. ”

“ Now the inventor and engineer type do not exist only in the world of engineering and mechanics, though it is in that world that they are the most clearly recognized; for they exist in all walks of life. In literature, inventors write novels; in business life, they project railroads; in strategy, they map out new lines of effort. In literature, the engineer writes cyclopædias; in business, he makes the projected railroads a success; in strategy, he works out logistics and does the quantitative work. ”

“ The material sciences early show the bias of the machine technology, as is fairly to be expected, since these sciences stand in a peculiarly close relation to the technological side of industry,—almost a relation of affiliation. At no earlier period has the correlation between science and technology been so close. And the response in respect of the scope and method of these sciences to any notable advance in technology has been sufficiently striking. ”

“ He who first discovers that an element or law of nature can be made operative for the production of some valuable result, some new art, or the improvement of some known art; who has devised the machinery or process to make it operative, and introduced it in a practical form to the knowledge of mankind, is a discoverer and inventor of the highest class. The discovery of a new application of a known element or agent may require more labor, expense, persevering injustiry, and ingenuity than the inventor of any machine. ”

“ Some praise may very well be given to the manufacturer and a great deal more to the inventor, for the work of each is essential to the good of the public; but, after all, the real honor is due the investigator who, by patient research and keenness of insight, discovered the laws that made possible the invention and its uses. Only let some genius discover electrical waves and in time there will be devised many systems of wireless telegraphy, or let the mysterious X-ray and how to produce it be revealed and soon there will be hundreds of clever devices for its practical use. ”

“ Blot out the process by which science arrived at results, and in every achievement of science, in the steam engine, the electric telegraph, we should soon have a heaven-descended agency, a god for every machine. ”

“ This employment of scientific knowledge for useful ends is technology, in the broad sense in which the term includes, besides the machine industry proper, such branches of practice as engineering, agriculture, medicine, sanitation, and economic reforms. ”

“ He too is an engineer with scientific and technical knowledge and training that control the most delicate of machines ever at the mercy of the elements, and engineer and scientist have supplied him with instruments and equipments embodying the results of refined research and investigation. ”

“ It is therefore obvious that, to invent a labor-saving machine successfully, it is first necessary to determine the executive method of operation, and often to invent a more suitable and adaptable one before inventing the means for accomplishing the same, as the executive part of his contemplated machine is his problem, and the ease or difficulty of its solution depends upon its simplicity. The intelligent and prudent inventor will carefully note his own special capacity, aptitude, taste, education, training, experience, and opportunity in certain directions. ”

“ But as seen from the point of view of technology, and more specifically from that of workmanship as it underlies the technological system, it is best characterised as the era of the machine industry, or of the machine process. ”

“ This machine technology, with its accompanying discipline in mechanical adaptations and object-lessons, came on gradually and rose to a dominating place in the cultural environment during the closing years of the eighteenth and the course of the nineteenth century; and as fast as men learned to think in terms of technological process, they went on at an. accelerated pace in the further invention of mechanical processes, so that from that time the progress of inventions has been of a cumulative character and has cumulatively heightened the disciplinary force of the machine process. ”

“ The technology which embodies the theoretical substance of this industry is a technology of workmanship, in which the salient factors are personal skill, force and diligence. Such a technology, running as it does in great part on personal initiative, capacity, and application, approaches nearer to the commonplace features of the institutional fabric than many another technological system might ”

“ Science generated technology, which dramatically affects the outcome of human effort.
The second component factor in the transition to the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy is the efficiency of our preparation for commanding these new tools, new forms of energy, and new forms of human interaction. Learning how to operate simple mechanical devices is different from learning how to program new tools capable of commanding sophisticated technology and of controlling tremendous amounts of energy. ”

“ But it is sufficiently evident that, before the engineer can determine what form of machine will best yield to him full control of these forces of Nature, he must have sufficient knowledge of science to be able to understand what scientific principles are to be rendered available, and what phenomena of Nature are operating in the production of the power which he is to seize upon and usefully to apply. ”

“ To do this work is to give a great impetus to pure and to applied science.
Two classes of men come to the front in the development of engineering: the one, men of deep scientific knowledge, to whom advance of knowledge is due, the other the great constructive engineers; men who can work in the large and can manage great enterprises with scientific accuracy and practical success. Everywhere the tendency in training is away from mere craftsmanship and towards power of administration. ”

“ By the invention of power-driven machines and by the distribution of the compact industries of the home out and into the scattered, innumerable business enterprises of the community, Science has given us, in place of a simple and near world, a complicated and distant one. ”

“ And, what is more instructive as to the part played by technological discipline in the growth of science, the character of this change in scientific scope, method and preconceptions is somewhat obviously such as would330 be given by habituation to the working of the machine process. Where later scientific inquiry has departed from or overpassed the limitations imposed by the habits of thought peculiar to craftsmanship the movement has taken the direction enforced by the machine technology. ”

“ The scheme of technology so worked out and carried along in the routine of getting a living will be serviceable for current use and have a substantial value for a further advance in technological efficiency somewhat in proportion as the knowledge so embodied in technological practice40 is effectually of the nature of matter-of-fact. Much of the information derived from experience in industry is likely to be of this matter-of-fact nature ”

“ Why not then follow this general usage, and adopt ‘technology’ as the science of trades, arts, or professions, and thereby obtain consistent and convenient terms to designate the two divisions of education—technical education, that given in the workshop, &c., and technological education, that which should be given as supplementary to all such technical education? ”

“ The Designing Computer It seems strange that the computer was a bookkeeper and clerk for years before anyone seriously considered that it might be an engineer as well, yet the men who themselves designed the computer were loath to use it in their other work. Part of this resistance stems from the high premium placed on the creativity of research and design work. The engineer uses science in his work, to be sure, but he professes to use it as an artist, or with the personal touch of, say, a brewmaster. ”

“ ENGINEERING The material prosperity of the last century is due to the co-operation of three classes of men: the man of science, who lives only for truth and the discovery of nature’s laws; the inventor, eager to apply these discoveries to money-making machines and processes, and the engineer, trained in mathematical investigation and in knowledge of the physical conditions which govern his profession, which is the mechanical application of the laws of nature. ”

“ Just now I was comparing the two kinds of knowledge which the theorist and the engineer can have of a machine, and I allowed the advantage of absolute knowledge to practical experience, whilst theory seemed to me mainly relative to the constructive industry. ”

“ It is included under the general term 'useful art.' An art may require one or more processes or machines in order to produce a certain result or manufacture. The term 'machine' includes every mechanical device or combination of mechanical powers and devices to perform some function and produce a certain effect or result. But where the result or effect is produced by chemical action, by the operation or application of some element or power of nature, or of one substance to another, such modes, methods, or operations are called 'processes.' A new process is usually the result of discovery ”

“ And it holds true for the machine technology beyond any other state of the industrial arts that the facts of observation can effectually be turned to account only in so far as they are apprehended in a matter-of-fact way. The logic of this technology, by which its problems are to be worked out, is the logic of a mechanical process in which no personal or teleological factors enter. ”

“ The plodding clerk, without an iota of mechanical knowledge, may perfect a system or an office appliance which will prove of vast benefit to himself and his fellows. The scientist may discover new forces and make new applications of old principles which will make the world marvel,—and so on through the whole category of crafts, occupations and professions. ”

“ Smiles justly says, "the real makers of modern civilisation"; while the professional men of science, provided with all means for acquiring knowledge and experimenting, have invented little, in the formidable array of implements, machines, and prime-motors which has shown to humanity how to utilise and to manage the forces of nature. ”

“ The second, How shall we construct a machine that shall most efficiently embody and accord with not only known scientific principles, but also with all well-settled principles of engineering practice? ”

“ I have discovered a new field of research, and great discoveries are still to be made in it. Were I to patent the machine, I should have to divulge what I know. Indeed, but for the sake of my daughter, I am not sure that I should ever patent it. Even as it stands, it will revolutionise not merely our modes of travel, but our industries. ”

“ The special part of technology here coming into question,—or what may be called the technological part of the study of special machines,—concerns itself with the action of the natural forces, through their various applications in the machine, on the bodies to be worked upon. ”

“ The work is planned by architects and engineers, whether mechanical, electrical, or civil, who are more or less equipped in the technology of their particular callings, and in the sciences of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. ”

“ Take but such an everyday thing as a useful invention and the putting of it at the service of men. You know how prolific the American mind has been in invention; how much civilization has been advanced by the steamboat, the cotton-gin, the sewing-machine, the reaping-machine, the typewriter, the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph. Do you know, have you had occasion to learn, that there is no hospitality for invention nowadays? There is no encouragement for you to set your wits at work to improve the telephone, or the camera, or some piece of machinery, or some mechanical process ”

“ A nineteen-year-old boy, just a quiet, unobtrusive young fellow, who talked little but thought much, saw in the discovery of an older scientist the means of producing a revolutionising invention by which nations could talk to nations without the use of wires or tangible connection, no matter how far apart they might be or by what they might be separated. ”

“ Satellite Communications Case Histories
39 Six Typical Problems
The questions we listed in Part I cover a very broad area of science and technology. Their answers involve, more than anything else, physics, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Some, however, also require that the men who work on them know chemistry, metallurgy, mathematics, and occasionally even biology, psychology, geography, and economics. ”