History of Technology Volume 14: Volume 14, 1992 9780720121339, 9781350018631, 9781350018617

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Editorial
The Contributors
Notes for Contributors
Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich
Aero-Engine Production Until 1933
Aero-Engine Production Under National Socialist Rule
Attempts To Increase Aero-Engine Production
Labour Conditions And Productivity
Problems Of Aero-Engine Production After 1942
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
Chaleur et Chauffage: L'introduction du Confort à Paris sous la Restauration (English summary by GH-S)
Summary
Resume
Introduction
La Propagation De La Chaleur
Cheminees
Theorie Des Cheminees
Les Combustibles
Les Appareils
Les Casernes
Conclusion
Notes et References
The Birth and Demise of a Medieval Windmill
Abstract
Introduction
The Windmill At Turweston, Buckinghamshire
Planning And Siting Of The Mill
Construction Of The Windmill
The Early Operation Of The Mill, 1303-1316
The Decline Of The Mill, 1316-1338
Conclusion
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
The South-pointing Chariot in Rome: Gearing in China and the West
Summary
Introduction
The Origin Of The South-Pointing Chariot
The Differential
Translating The Historia Augusta
Ancient And Medieval Gear Wheels
Transmission Of The Idea
Early Chinese Gearing
Conclusion
Notes and References
The Development and Use of the Tubular Beam, 1830-1860
Abstract
Introduction
The Great Victoria Bridge
Stephenson And Fairbairn
The Introduction Of The Tubular Beam
Criticism Of The Tubular Beam
The Demise Of The Tubular Beam
Conclusion
Notes and References
Some Designs of Jerónimo de Ayanz (c. 1550-1613) relating to Mining, Metallurgy and Steam Pumps
Introduction
Life Of Jerónimo De Ayanz
A General View Of Ayanz's Inventions
Exploitation Of The 'Negrillo' Ores Of The Potosí Mines
The Ventilation Of Mines By Means Of Steam
Steam Engines For Raising Water And Draining Mines
Notes and References
Peenemünde and Los Alamos: Two Studies
Abstract
Introduction
Los Alamos And Peenemünde: A Sense Of Perspective
The War Years
After The War
Los Alamos And Peenemunde: A Reflection
Notes and References
Reflections on Two Conferences: ICOHTEC XIX and MASTECH
Announcement: The Georgius Agricola Commemorations, 1994
Aim Of The Agricola Commemorations
Form Of Organization Of The Committee
Contents of Former Volumes

Citation preview

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY EDITORIAL BOARD Editors Dr Graham Hollister-Short and Dr Frank A.J.L. James RICHST, Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London WIX 4BS, England Professor Angus Buchanan Centre for the History of Technology University of Bath Claverton Down Bath BA2 7AY England Professor Andre Guillerme 2 rue Alfred Fouillee Paris, France Dr J.V. Field RICHST Royal Institution 21 Albemarle Street London WIX 4BS England Dr W.D. Hackmann Museum of the History of Science Broad Street Oxford OX1 3AZ England Professor A.R. Hall, FBA 14 Ball Lane Tackley Oxfordshire OX5 3AG England Dr Alexandre Herlea Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers 292 rue Saint Martin Paris 75003 France Dr Bruce Hunt Department of History University of Texas Austin TX 78712-1163 USA Professor Ian Inkster School of Social Science and Policy University of New South Wales PO Box 1 Kensington New South Wales 2033 Australia

Dr Alex Keller Department of History of Science University of Leicester Leicester LEI 7RH England Professor Svante Lindqvist Kungl. Biblioteket 102 41 Stockholm Sweden Dr Joseph Needham, FRS, FBA The Needham Research Institute East Asian History of Science Library 8 Sylvester Road Cambridge CB3 9AF England Dr Carlo Poni Departimento di Scienze Economiche Universita degli Studi di Bologna Strada Maggiore 45 Bologna Italy Dr Norman A.F. Smith London Centre for the History of Science and Technology Sherfield Building Imperial College London SW7 2AZ England Dr Hugh Torrens Department of Geology Keele University Keele Staffordshire England Dr Raffaello Vergani Istituto di Studi Storici Universita de Padova Via del Santo 28 35123 Padova Italy

History of Technology Volume 14, 1992

Edited by Graham Hollister-Short and Frank A.J.L. James

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 1992 by Mansell Publishing Ltd Copyright © Graham Hollister-Short, Frank A.J.L. James and Contributors, 1992 The electronic edition published 2016 Graham Hollister-Short, Frank A.J.L. James and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. History of technology. 14th annual volume: 1992 1. Technology – History – Periodicals 609  T15 ISBN: HB: 978-0-7201-2133-9 ePDF: 978-1-3500-1861-7 ePub: 978-1-3500-1862-4 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Card Number: 76-648107 Series: History of Technology, volume 14

Contents

Editorial

vii

The Contributors

ix

Notes for Contributors

x

HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich ANDRE GUILLERME Chaleur et Chauffage: L'introduction du Confort a Paris sous la Restauration (English summary by GH-S)

1

16

JOHN LANGDON The Birth and Demise of a Medieval Windmill

54

MICHAEL J.T. LEWIS The South-pointing Chariot in Rome: Gearing in China and the West

77

STANLEY SMITH The Development and Use of the Tubular Beam, 1830-1860

100

NICOLAS GARCIA TAPIA Some Designs of Jeronimo de Ayanz (c. 1550-1613) relating to Mining, Metallurgy and Steam Pumps

135

DONALD E. TARTER Peenemunde and Los Alamos: Two Studies

150

GRAHAM HOLLISTER-SHORT Reflections on Two Conferences: ICOHTEC XIX and MASTECH

171

Announcement: The Georgius Agricola Commemorations, 1994

176

Contents of Former Volumes

178

Editorial

In this volume of essays we return to our customary presentation. Our contributors will be found, accordingly, offering papers on a wide variety of themes each of which, we think, provides fresh insights into its respective field of enquiry. That by Michael Lewis, moreover, has to do with one of the central issues of the history of technology, namely, the diffusion of technology, next in importance only to the act or process of invention itself. Invention and diffusion have not received the attention that their importance warrants but, of the two, invention is notable for the egregious paucity of work devoted to it. This is strange. Indeed, when one reflects on the centrality of invention that A.P. Usher insisted on in his still strategically valuable study, 'The emergence of novelty in thought and action', it is bizarre. Invention lies at the heart of technology. It could scarcely lie anywhere else, since it is necessarily the Jons et origo of all technology. More importantly, it lies also at the heart of society itself, since it is the totality of the socio-cultural matrix, at once actor and receptor, which engages dialectically with the world of technics at all times and levels and places. As for the neglect, it is almost as if historians have implicitly assumed invention to be inexplicable: the heart (invention in this case) having its reasons which reason knows not of. It could also be simply the result of a general failure of imagination. Whatever the explanation, the neglect, although not total, is still a fact. John Staudenmaier in his Technology's Storytellers of 1985, an analytical study of papers published in Technology and Culture, found that in all those thousands of pages there was scarcely any serious discussion on the nature of invention. Those authors who, rarely, approached the subject were, he noted, content to point up the 'mysteriousness' of the phenomenon. What he might with justice have added was the propensity of North American historians to neglect what has been published (even in English) outside their own hemisphere. Perhaps the scholars of all great empires, not only the Chinese, tend to develop a 'middle kingdom' psychology, something not to be confused with the various types of chauvinism. We plan in Volume 15 to present one or possibly two papers on invention in the hope that some priming of the pump will ensure a sustained flow of papers on the subject in the future. Diffusion, by contrast, has been much more regularly studied. This is because one supposes that whatever elements of the supra-rational may be thought to mask invention, the diffusion of a new technique or machine, once invented, is eminently scrutable, since it has, ipso facto, become subject to the normal laws of economics. The emergence of a new technology is like suddenly finding a new card in the pack, and is manifestly something that cannot be ignored. This is the reason, doubtless, why so many economists

vn

Vlll

Editorial

have engaged with the diffusion aspect at least of the history of technology. It may also explain why the 'black box' approach to the technological entity itself is also such a notable feature of this kind of writing. One cannot really complain, of course, when the impact of a new technology is the focus of interest, that its aetiology has not been gone into. It is, after all, for historians of technology to write the history of technology. On the world historical scale the importance of technological diffusion is self-evident. One might note, en passant, that the first ICOHTEC conference at Pont-a-Mousson in 1968 was devoted to this very aspect of technology. In this respect the history of technology has no greater panoramic setting to offer than the rise to pre-eminence of the West since about 1600, and pari passu with that process the passing of what Charles Singer called two millennia of Chinese technological primacy. Compared with the task of trying to understand which social and cultural factors, retarding in one case, accelerating in the other, may have been involved in this process, all else is really parish pump history. The rise of western Europe, in the light of Dr Joseph Needham's work, might seem to owe inestimably much to previous Chinese achievement. This raises the question, of course, of the times and routes by which the technological accomplishments of the Chinese cultural area were transferred to the West. The provisional balance sheet between East and West drawn up in Science and Civilization in China is overwhelmingly in favour of the East, with the West as beneficiary. Only a relatively few Western (that is to say, Hellenistic) items seem to have been deemed valuable enough to be transferred to the East. What Michael Lewis raises as a possibility in his essay on 'The South-pointing Chariot in Rome' is that what has up to now seemed an indubitably Chinese property may, after all, have been an imported luxury item from the West. In that case, it would be on a par with other pieces of Hellenistic mechanical ingenuity employing more or less complex trains of toothed wheels. One reason for the paucity of work on invention and diffusion (and this is especially true of the former) is perhaps that to tackle either of these aspects of the history of technology the researcher has to be master of a wider range of skills than historians are commonly able to command. As far as invention is concerned (or so it seems to us), the researcher would also have to possess something of the psychological profile of the inventor himself. If this is true of all disciplines, it is a fortiori true of the history of technology. Perhaps this is one of the reasons, although no doubt a minor one, why the history of technology remains such as underdeveloped area of intellectual enquiry. At the end of this volume a symposium held in Lyon on 8-12 September 1991 is reviewed. Its theme was 'The social mastery of technology'. The number of speakers approached 100, of whom perhaps no more than seven were historians of technology. Reflections on the significance of this imbalance will be gratefully received. G.H.-S. F.A.J.L.J. Through an oversight, we omitted to mention in the previous volume that the paper by the late W J. Reader was prepared for publication by E.D.P. Symons.

The

Contributors

Hans-Joachim Braun is professor of modern social, economic and technological history in the Fachbereich Padagogik, Universitat der Bundeswehr Hamburg, Holstenhofweg 85, D-2000 Hamburg 70, Germany. Andre Guillerme is professor at the Institut Francais d'Urbanisme, Cite Descartes, 47 rue Albert Einstein, 77436 Champ-sur-Marne, France. John Langdon is a professor in the History Department of the University of Alberta. His address is: The University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H4. Michael J.T. Lewis is a lecturer in the Department of Adult Education, University of Hull. His address is 60 Hardwick Street, Hull HU5 3PJ, England. Stanley Smith is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and is an architect in private practice in London. His address is 30 Hadrian Street, Greenwich, London SE10 9AQ, England. Nicolas Garcia Tapia is professor of power engineering and fluid mechanics at the Polytechnical School of Valladolid. His address is: Miguel Sebastian Herrador 1.6° C, 47014 Valladolid, Spain. Donald E. Tarter is emeritus faculty University of Alabama in Huntsville and visiting lecturer at the International Space University. His address is 591 Sharpes Hollow Road, New Market, AL 35761, USA.

IX

N o t e s for

Contributors

Contributions are welcome and should be sent to the editors. They are considered on the understanding that they are previously unpublished in English and are not on offer to another journal. Papers in French and German will be considered for publication, but an English summary will be required. The editors will also consider publishing English translations of papers already published in languages other than English. Three copies should be submitted, typed in double spacing (including quotations and notes) with a margin on A4 or American Quarto paper. Include an abstract of 150-200 words and two or three sentences for 'Notes on Contributors'. It would be appreciated if normal printers' instructions could be used. For example, words to be set in italics should be underlined and not put in italics. Authors who have passages originally in Cyrillic or oriental scripts should indicate the system of transliteration they have used. Quotations when long should be inset without quotation marks; when short, in single quotation marks. Spelling should follow the Oxford English Dictionary, and arrangement H. Hart, Rules for Compositors (Oxford, many editions). Be clear and consistent. All papers should be rigorously documented, with references to primary and secondary sources typed separately from the text in double spacing and numbered consecutively. Cite as follows for books: 1. David Gooding, Experiment and the Making of Meaning: Human Agency in Scientific Observation and Experiment (Dordrecht, 1990), 54-5. Subsequent references may be written: 3. Gooding, op. cit. (1), 43. Only name the publisher for good reason. For theses, cite University Microfilm order number or at least Dissertations Abstract number. Standard works like DNB, DBB may be thus cited. And as follows for articles: 13. Andrew Nahum, 'The Rotary Aero Engine', Hist. Tech., 1986, 9: 125-66, p. 139. Line drawings should be drawn boldly in black ink on stout white paper, feint-ruled paper or tracing paper. Photographs should be glossy prints of good contrast and well matched for tonal range. The place of an illustration should be indicated in the margin of the text where it should also be keyed in. Each illustration must be numbered and have a caption. Xerox copies may be sent when the article is first submitted for consideration.

x

A e r o - e n g i n e t h e

P r o d u c t i o n

T h i r d

HANS-JOACHIM

i n

R e i c h BRAUN

Extensive literature exists on aircraft history, especially on war aeroplanes. This literature generally concentrates on the 'final product', the aircraft, on its design and use during the war and on the aircraft pilots, the renowned 'air aces'.1 We do not, however, know very much about the production process of these aeroplanes.2 This is even more true of aero-engine production, and there are only a few books on the final product itself, the aero-engine.} The fact that historians have paid so little attention to aeroengine production is strange, because those engines were—and probably still are—the most important factor in aviation. During the Second World War Germany's difficulties with aero-engines caused problems in the air war.4 Although, as far as the end product, the aircraft, is concerned, aeroengines and airframes form a unit, their respective production processes are quite different, so that it is justifiable to treat aero-engine production separately from the manufacture of airframes. Engines and frames were occasionally produced by one company, like Junkers; the rule, however, was that firms concentrated on either aero-engines or airframes. An airframe plant can be regarded as a sheet-metal fabrication and assembly shop, whereas an engine plant was principally a precision machine tool shop. The former required fewer precision machine tools and less skilled labour. Airframe production seemed to be more adaptable to mass production processes than aero-engine production with its large number of machine tools, such as turret lathes, boring mills and drill presses, operated by highly skilled labour, working to extremely close tolerances.' The main purpose of this paper is to give an overview of aero-engine production processes during the Third Reich with special emphasis on aero-engine production under the conditions of the Second World War. The questions dealt with are the changes in production processes, productivity development and the role played by rationalization. A key issue is that of the role of the National Socialist regime in the production process. Also, how military demand affected output and labour conditions in the aero-engine industry will be discussed. Until mid-1941 the output of aircraft in general and aero-engines in particular was, compared with that for a country like Great Britain, comparatively low. The Blitzkrieg strategy may have accounted for this, but there are certainly other reasons which lay in the organization of production. These will be dealt with as well as 1

2

Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich

the issue of the effects of bombing and dispersals later in the war. The aero-engine firms of Daimler-Benz and BMW are at the centre of this study. AERO-ENGINE PRODUCTION UNTIL 1933 During the First World War aero-engine production in Germany played a vital role, and in both quantity and quality German aero-engines had a high standard. The engine most used was the Daimler liquid-cooled, sixcylinder, 100 hp in-line engine, although, at the end of the war, BMW developed the high-compression 185 hp engine. The dominant position of the Daimler V-engine, however, limited both production and performance of aircraft during the First World War. Six-cylinder engines were, indeed, robust, reliable and economical, but the almost exclusive reliance on them prevented the development of high-performance engines like the HispanoSuiza, Renault, Rolls-Royce or the Liberty engine.6 As to aero-engine production processes in Germany during the First World War, general-purpose machine tools, operated by skilled craftsmen, were prevalent. At Daimler there was, however, a tendency, which had already been visible as a result of the severe slump in the automobile industry during 1907-8, to substitute skilled labour by unqualified workers, operating special machine tools such as automatic revolving turret lathes or automatic milling machines. Strangely enough, this tendency was partly reversed as the First World War progressed, when a greater reliance on highly skilled labour operating general-purpose machine tools prevailed again. The explanation is that Daimler's privileged position in the German war economy made it easy for the firm to use skill-intensive production processes with the appropriate labour, although skilled labour was generally in short supply. The cost-plus system also acted counter to an economical production of aero-engines.7 In the years immediately following the First World War aircraft production in Germany came almost to a complete stop. Article 202 of the Versailles Treaty of 28 June 1919 demanded the complete surrender of German aircraft. Production and importation of aircraft were forbidden and only the development and production of very light engines for sporting planes was allowed. Nevertheless, in Germany as well as in other countries, especially the Soviet Union, German engineers continued their work on aircraft and aero-engines, and a 'clandestine rearmament' took place.8 In 1926, the Allies loosened their limitations on building aircraft and aero-engines in Germany. Therefore, the German Ministry of Transport (Reichsverkehrsministerium), together with the German Development Agency for Aviation (Deutsche Versuchsanstalt fur Luftfahrt), awarded a contract to Daimler-Benz for building a liquid-cooled, 12-cylinder aeroengine. In the Reichswehr (German armed forces) there had been a strong bias towards liquid-cooled engines for a long time, because their performance, especially at high altitudes, was supposedly better than that of aircooled engines. Particular efforts were put into the development of diesel aero-engines. The Daimler-Benz 16-cylinder engines with 1,320 hp and

Hans-Joachim Braun

3

Figure 1 Assembly hall for Benz aero-engines in Mannheim during the First World War. Source: Manfred Barthel and Gerold Lingnau, Daimler-Benz: Die Technik (Mainz , 1986), 75. 1,620 rev/min were quite successful; they were used for the propulsion of the Zeppelin LZ 129, the Hindenburg. In 1930 the opinion prevailed in the League of Nations that Germany could again have an air force of its own.9 Therefore the Ministry of Transport awarded three aero-engine contracts to Daimler-Benz, BMW and Junkers to develop a 12-cylinder, liquid-cooled, high-performance aeroengine of 800-900 hp. Daimler-Benz constructed the DB F 4 (later the DB 600) which, as a result of trials with direct fuel injection, was developed into the DB 601. 10 AERO-ENGINE PRODUCTION UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALIST RULE The National Socialist seizure of power in 1933 and the creation of the German air force stimulated aero-engine development. The question of whether aero-engines were to be bought abroad or whether industry was to produce them at home was soon decided in favour of the latter: the precarious foreign exchange situation limited purchases abroad; foreign governments were, for security reasons, generally not enthusiastic about selling or licensing 'high technology' aero-engines to Germany; and, as a consequence of war preparations and a policy of self-sufficiency, German firms were bound to develop aero-engines of their own.11

4

Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich

Figure 2 Aero-engine assembly at the Daimler-Benz Works, Genshagen. Source: Karl Heinz Roth, 'Der Weg zum guten Stern des "Dritten Reiches": Schlaglichter auf die Geschichte der Daimler-Benz AG und ihrer Vorlaufer (1890-1945)', in Hamburger Stiftung fiir Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (ed.), Das Daimler-Benz Buch: Ein Riistungskonzern im 'Tausendjahrigen Reich' (Nordlingen, 1988), 234. Among the new aero-engine factories built in connection with German rearmament after 1933, the Daimler-Benz plant at Genshagen, about 20 miles south of Berlin, stands out. In autumn 1935 Daimler-Benz, in conjunction with the National Socialist regime, decided to built a new aeroengine plant, the Daimler-Benz Motorengesellschaft (Daimler-Benz engine company), which was to use mass production methods. A significant feature of the construction of the Genshagen plant was that the planners took the possibility of bombing in a future war into account. The enormous complex consisted of about 100 buildings which were hidden, for reasons of camouflage, in a wood. This, however, hampered a rationalized production flow and easy transport and communication networks.12 The plant went into operation in late 1936 with the DB 600, which was produced until mid-1938. From the outbreak of war until March 1942 the Daimler-Benz 601 was built there. u The Daimler-Benz firm at StuttgartUnterturkheim owned only 5 per cent of the capital stock of the new plant; the rest was paid by the Bank der deutschen Luftfahrt (Bank of German Aviation), which belonged to the Reich.14 The BMW plant in Munich-Allach, north-west of the centre of Munich, which started in 1937 with the repair of aero-engines, can be regarded as

5

Hans-Joachim Braun Table 1 Aero-engine production 1939-1945 1939 Great Britain USA Germany Daimler-Benz Genshagen

1940

12,499 20,074 — 15,513 n.f.a. 15,510 3,681 6,219 2,249 3,176

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

36,551 53,916 57,985 56,931 22,821 58,181 138,089 227,116 256,912 106,350 22,400 37,000 50,700 54,000 n.f.a. 7,372 10,151 19,625 28,669 n.f.a. 3,659 4,920 7,702 10,535 n.f.a.

n.f.a., nofiguresavailable. Source: Richard J. Overy, The Air War 1939-1945, London 1980, p. 150; BIOS, FR 35, Daimler-Benz, p. 17. an aero-engine plant similar to Daimler-Benz. As in the Daimler-Benz Genshagen case, the Allach plant was connected with the main BMW plant in Munich in that experimental work as well as design and development were carried out at the main plant. For Daimler-Benz this was StuttgartUnterturkheim, but also the DB aero-engine works at Berlin-Marienfelde. The Allach plant was planned and built as a mass-production factory for the BMW 801 and started producing this engine in 1941. Work was concentrated in a large concrete-reinforced, bomb-proof building, the roofs and walls of which were 3.5 m thick.1' Reasons for the Low Aero-engine Output in Germany until 1942 Table 1 shows that German aero-engine production caught up with that of Great Britain, which had started from a comparatively high level, only in 1944. Mainly thanks to superior mass production techniques, the United States' aero-engine industry experienced much higher growth rates of output than both Britain and Germany. In Germany, the most significant rise in output took place in the years 1942 and 1943, because of organizational changes and rationalization. German output figures for the 1945 war months are not given because of insufficient data, but it is safe to say that output shrank, mainly because of bombing and its effects on production. Although aero-engine output in Germany increased rapidly after 1942, the figure was comparatively low until mid-1941. Until then, occasional problems with the supply of raw materials, labour, machine tools and energy certainly existed, but the major difficulty rested in the organization of aero-engine production and government policy. Karl Christian Muller, who was in charge of the Daimler-Benz aero-engine factory at Genshagen, complained in December 1941: 'Unfortunately, there is nobody in Germany who decides which programmes in aero-engine production are the most important. Everybody has different ideas on this, be it Reichsmarschall Goering, Minister Todt or others. . . .' lb In connection with this, aero-engine firms were faced with a host of modification demands from the air ministry and other bodies or individuals. BMW complained about the frequent modifications of its engines, which in 1939-40 had led to the result that only 44 per cent of the scheduled quantity of BMW 801s was

6

Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich

Figure 3 Daimler-Benz DB 603 E aero-engine, 1,800 hp, 1943. Source: Daimler-Benz Archives, Stuttgart-Untertuerkheim. produced.17 The firms also complained about inadequate supplies of machine tools. The German factory system put great emphasis on the master craftsmen (Meister) and skilled workers, and was opposed to the introduction of unskilled labour and special machine tools.18 However, factories such as the Daimler-Benz plant at Genshagen and the Henschel plant, which built Daimler-Benz aero-engines under licence, were already using special machine tools in the 1930s. They complained about the slow supply of these Engpassmaschinen (bottleneck machines), such as automatic milling machines, boring machines and turret lathes.19 Generally, long delivery times caused problems. Apart from this, firms sometimes manufactured aero-engines which were not really ready for series production. This goes for the Daimler-Benz 605, which had difficulties with lubrication, piston seizure and fractured connecting rods. Therefore the DB 603 was often preferred.20 ATTEMPTS TO INCREASE AERO-ENGINE PRODUCTION The Nazi government and aero-engine manufacturers took various measures to increase armament production in general and aero-engine production in particular. The aims of government and industry were similar, if not identical; an increase of output was in the interest of both. Although manufacturers sometimes complained about the air ministry's constant

Hans-Joachim Braun

7

modification demands, the industry's top men did not cause any problems, often being convinced National Socialists themselves. The most important way to raise output was to change production organization and the methods of control, as well as to increase productivity by a more efficient use of resources.21 On 14 May 1941 the Industrierat (industrial council) was founded with the objective of giving to industry a large role in the organization of production. The Filhrer orders of June and July 1941 and the introduction of the 'Ring' organization in industry brought about a more efficient division of labour and better cooperation between large armament manufacturers and smaller supplying firms. In August of that year Air Marshall Erhard Milch announced a new armament programme for the Luftwaffe which, in November 1941, was replaced by the even more ambitious Elch-Goering programme. Both programmes tried to create the prerequisites for an improved aircraft production, in particular aero-engine production. Plants such as the BMW Munich-Allach factory were from then on expected to produce 1,000 engines a month.22 On 3 December 1941, Hitler decreed the further rationalization of production under military contracts, which was to be achieved by three means: more effective mass production methods and simpler design of equipment; concentration of armament production in plants with the best and most economical working methods (Bestbetriebe); and the construction of additional floor space in order to replace losses of military equipment in the Soviet Union. u Other events such as the Fuhrer's order 'Armament 1942' in January 1942, Albert Speer's appointment as Munitions Minister in February of that year or the installation oiZentrale Planung (central planning) in May 1942, the main aim of which was to improve raw material allocation, complemented these measures. Apart from Air Marshall Milch and Hermann Goering, William Werner, who became acting chairman of the Industrierat, was of particular importance for the increase of aero-engine production. Werner was much influenced by American mass production methods. Born in New York City, where his father was a German banker, he went to Germany in his youth, attended a technical school, worked at various machine tool firms in Berlin and became Technical Director of the Schiess Company in Diisseldorf, a manufacturer of heavy machinery. In 1926 he spent some time at Chrysler in Detroit, where he made himself familiar with American automobile production technology. Back in Germany, he worked for the Horch automobile company and, in 1932, became Technical Director of the Auto Union AG, Chemnitz. From 1938 onwards he was also in charge of the Mitteldeutsche Motorenwerke, Taucha, a subsidiary of Auto Union, which produced aero-engines.24 Inspired by what he had seen in the United States, Werner, as acting chairman of the Industrierat, demanded the general introduction of mass production, the manufacture of large series and a concentration of the means of production.21 Milch, Goering and also Hitler were impressed by his ideas, and the Nazi government tried to put many of his proposals into practice.26

8

Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich

However, some of his plans proved impracticable: for example his idea of a far-reaching division of labour in aero-engine production, in which all firms involved were to concentrate on the manufacture of only a very small number of components. Although this would—at least in theory—have made an increased output possible, the transfer of a host of machine tools to the various plants and the process of rearranging the production process would have caused an interruption of aero-engine manufacture for two or three months. Werner's plan had therefore to be dropped.27 One of the key proposals in the discussion of a more efficient organization of aero-engine production was, indeed, the possibility of an increased concentration in a few firms. The other possibility was a more extensive division of labour between a large number of plants with the effect of greater specialization. The latter option probably had productivity advantages and might have been preferable from the point of view of dispersals, but it definitely had the disadvantage of being extremely vulnerable to air attack. Also, the deliveries of some smaller supplying firms were sometimes deficient and the risk of supply failures increased as the war continued and the means of transport and communication deteriorated. Therefore, a firm like Daimler-Benz tried to manufacture as many aeroengine components as possible in its own major plants, including even machine tools.28 In spite of all these problems the German aero-engine industry, during the period January to October 1942, achieved a 65 per cent increase of productivity, mainly by means of rationalization of the work process.29 This increase of productivity was chiefly due to three factors: 1. Introduction of special machine tools. 2. Simpler constructions. 3. Flow production, sometimes using assembly lines.M) As a consequence, manhours for the production of one aero-engine at BMW, a firm which introduced assembly line production in 1942, fell from 3,150 hours in 1940 to 1,250 hours in 1944.:il Cast and forged materials were increasingly used. Moreover, large quantities of raw materials were also saved. Whereas in 1940 5,445 kg of metals had to be used for one aero-engine, by 1944 this figure was down to 2,790 kg. At DaimlerBenz, Hollerith machines were used from 1940 onwards for controlling the production process/ 2 LABOUR CONDITIONS AND PRODUCTIVITY From 1941 to 1942 employment in the German aero-engine industry increased only slightly, but output was raised by about 75 per cent.** During the following years, the rise in productivity continued. At Genshagen, Daimler-Benz's largest plant, the situation was as shown in Table 2. At Genshagen, the most significant leap in productivity took place in 1943 and 1944, mainly owing to the use of special machine tools and rationalized production methods.

9

Hans-Joachim Braun Table 2 Personnel at the Daimler-Benz Genshagen aero -engine plant, 1939-1945 End of year German Foreign Aero-engines Total produced 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 28.2.1945

6,845 8,096 7,895 7,135 8,084 6,075 3,802

— — 1,899 6,011 5,542 6,631 3,010

6,845 8,096 9,794 13,146 13,626 12,706 6,812

2,249 3,176 3,659 4,920 7,702 10,535 —

Source: BIOS, Foreign Report, Daimler-Benz, p. 19. During the first two years of war, over 80 per cent of the employees were male, almost half of them skilled workers. About 60 per cent of the female employees worked as machine or unskilled workers. The wartime shortage of labour, especially skilled labour, was the main reason for bringing in special machine tools and using them on a large scale. As a consequence, the employment of semi-skilled workers rose significantly over the next years, accompanied by the application of rigid control measures.34 In 1941-2 the composition of the workforce changed dramatically with an influx of foreign labour from occupied Europe and prisoners of war joining the Genshagen labour force. After the end of the Blitzkrieg and the subsequent mobilization of total war, substitutes for German workers had come mainly from Poland and the Soviet Union, and forced labour, but also from the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Ravensbriick. The situation was similar at other aero-engine companies.3' PROBLEMS OF AERO-ENGINE PRODUCTION AFTER 1942 The quite spectacular increase in aero-engine production after 1942 does not mean that there were no production problems under Albert Speer, at first munitions minister and later minister of armament and war production. Apart from the effects of bombing and dispersals, firms like Daimler-Benz continued to complain about the often inferior quality of components like pistons, crankshafts and slide bearings delivered by suppliers. To some extent, material supply problems were the reason, but it also became clear that several suppliers were still unable to produce aeroengine components suitable for the close tolerances demanded for highperformance engines.36 The supply of pistons also suffered from constantly changing designs, partly to suit the new materials made available. These changes were sometimes forced upon the industry to achieve a better performance from the engine.37 The BMW plant at Eisenach complained that from March 1943 to April 1944 workers had to produce aero-engine components under most

10

Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich

primitive conditions. With only a few state-of-the-art machine tools available, they had to resort to wooden-framed machine tools.iH Production at the BMW Munich-Allach plant was also beset by numerous design changes and a poor supply of craftsmen and builders for the extension of the plant. Lack of building workers and of concrete made this impossible.J9 Although there were a sizeable number of single-purpose machine tools, which made mass production possible, these tools were often out of order and nobody was able to repair them.40 Another problem was that of the notorious Flugmotorenwerke (aeroengine works) Ostmark, which caused the Nazi officials and Daimler-Benz many headaches. The Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark were founded by the air ministry in 1941 with production facilities near Vienna and in Brno for the production of the Junkers Jumo 222 aero-engines. The air ministry, however, soon changed its plans for this plant and decided that it should manufacture 1,000 Daimler-Benz aero-engines a month. In setting up the works, the air ministry experienced numerous difficulties with labour, management and the supply of machine tools. Of a total of 10,800 workers, there were 2,200 prisoners of war whose work performance was poor. Problems were compounded by insufficient supplies of components, especially crankshafts. During an inspection in January 1943 Goering called the Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark a 'pigsty' and had the top management— employees of Daimler-Benz—dismissed. The first Daimler-Benz engines were, at last, turned out by the end of 1943. Although the factory's total capacity was 1,000 engines per month, as a result of Allied bombing total output in 1944 amounted only to 2,375 12-cylinder DB 603 engines, which represented less than one-fifth of the plant's capacity.41 EFFECTS OF BOMBING AND DISPERSALS Obviously, air attacks on factories, the transport system and the centres of energy supply were responsible for great losses of output in aero-engines. However, since the airframe industry was generally behind schedule, this did not cause too many severe problems. Air attacks on the component specialists caused shortages. It was therefore necessary to resort to large-scale dispersals as a means of protection with consequent losses of time and output and increased difficulties of communication.42 Often the underground factories were not ready to receive the dispersed plants. There were also losses in man-hours through air raid warnings and through workers having to attend to their own bombdamaged dwellings.43 Shortages of raw materials—steels and alloys—as well as of small forgings were often the consequence of bomb damage to producing plants and transport networks. Crankshafts became the only large bottleneck in forging components, owing to bombing of production facilities in the Ruhr area (Krupp) and Hamburg. There were also shortages of other engine parts, especially gears and ball bearings, following air attacks.44 The general scheme of dispersal was the transfer of production facilities to surface and underground factories within a 30-60 km radius of the

Hans-Joachim Braun

11

original plant. In most cases the parent factory remained the nerve centre of the dispersed unit and, generally speaking, assembly was still carried out at that plant. In 1944, BMW dispersed production facilities to the beer halls Hofbraukeller and Franziskanerkeller for the manufacture of gears and small parts respectively.45 In cases of dispersal, many more machine tools had to be distributed to the small dispersed plants than had been required before. Work with specialized machine tools had often to be abandoned in favour of the use of general-purpose tools. This, of course, exerted a heavy demand for skilled labour, which ran counter to the firms' and government's policy of employing as many unskilled workers as possible.46 Although output was still high even in late 1944, dispersals did cause a considerable loss in efficiency and output. The case of Steyr Daimler Puch AG, Steyr, Austria, is relevant here. In February 1944 the firm was transferred from Steyr to Vienna after bomb attacks and in May 1944 the plant had to move into an underground beer cellar in Budapest. When this operation was completed, the Russian advance towards Budapest began and so the factory had, once again, to be removed to Vienna and, shortly afterwards, back to its original home in Steyr. Needless to say its output suffered severely from this odyssey.47 The move of the Daimler-Benz Genshagen plant to Obrigheim, a large gypsum quarry near Neckarelz in Wurttemberg, about 400 miles away from Genshagen, can be regarded as the most spectacular case of dispersal in aero-engine production.48 Obrigheim, an enormous subterranean factory with the code-name 'Goldfisch', was to produce major engine components like crankshafts, cylinder heads and connecting rods for subsequent shipment to Genshagen, where final assembly operations continued.49 The workers in Obrigheim had great difficulty continuing production, partly because of an insufficient supply of electricity caused by damage to outside installations. Moreover, parts of the works became flooded by the River Neckar in November 1944. Problems such as the malfunction of the ventilating system held up production, too. At the time of dispersal the ventilating plant was only partially completed and, owing to the breakdown of the locomotive which was to supply steam for heating the air, only cold air was blown into the galleries which resulted in a drastic drop in temperature, and a rise in the number of sick workers.M) Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that productivity was low. To this has to be added the generally poor performance of concentration camp inmates which, in March 1945, prompted the Genshagen director Muller to offer the SS 10,000 marks for the removal of these 'sick and starving do-nothings' as he chose to call them. Threats and terror had ceased to have any effect and aero-engine production gradually came to a halt.51 CONCLUSION It can be said in conclusion that the general picture of armament production in Germany during the Second World War and its rapid increase

12

Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich

Figure 4 Site of the Daimler-Benz underground aero-engine works 'Goldfisch' with boiler-house. Source: Rainer Froebe, 'Wie bei den altern Agyptern: Die Verlegung des DaimlerBenz-Flugmotorenwerks Genshagen nach Obrigheim am Neckar 1944/45', in Hamburger Stiftung fur Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (ed.), Das DaimlerBenz Buck: Ein Rustungskonzern im 'Tausendjahrigen Reich' (Nordlingen, 1988), 443. after 1942 is also true to a large extent for aero-engine production. The numerous organizational changes, the introduction of special machine tools on a wide scale, simpler constructions and the application of mass production methods, sometimes using assembly lines, brought about a significant increase in productivity. The shortage of qualified labour in the German war economy, especially after 1941, did not have a negative effect on aero-engine output. On the contrary: by using single-purpose machine tools, operated by unskilled workers, output and productivity could be increased dramatically. In this respect Germany only repeated what the United States had done before.

Hans-Joachim Braun

13

High output figures brought about by improvements in the organization of aero-engine production, by the introduction of rationalization methods and by the application of single-purpose machine tools during the years 1941 and 1942 should not, however, conceal the fact that many of the problems which the German war economy had in the first half of the war still remained after 1942: even before bombing and subsequent dispersals, the cooperation between the different firms involved in the production process did not always function very well. Although the 'Ring' production system improved matters, there were still many problems of coordination between the central firms of the production ring and the numerous suppliers. Shortages of labour, material, energy and transport often impeded final assembly and output. Also, the rate of the introduction and diffusion of single-purpose machine tools should not be overrated. For many 'bottleneck machines' the times of delivery were two to three years so that they were, in fact, unavailable during the war. With bombing and dispersals after late 1943, conditions of aeroengine production obviously became more difficult. Still, the high figures for output and productivity show, that, in spite of numerous problems, the German war economy worked reasonably well, even in 1944. It is true that in the case of aircraft and aero-engine production, political and military priorities did play an important role, but the high output figures are nevertheless remarkable. We have to bear in mind, however, that all this happened under a system of force and repression, and that concentration camp labour was widely used in German armament production. Acknowledgements For making available to me documents and other materials, I am grateful to Mrs Buttner and Mrs Weyand of the Daimler-Benz Archives, StuttgartUnterturkheim, Mr Philip Reed, Imperial War Museum, London, Mr Thomas Erdmann, Auto Union Archives, Ingolstadt, the staff of the Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv in Freiburg, Dr Richard J. Overy, Cambridge and London and to Dr Andrew Nahum, of the Science Museum, London. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft assisted my research with a travelling grant, for which I am also grateful. Notes and References 1. On that problem see, e.g., James R. Hansen, 'Aviation History in the Wider View', Technology and Culture, 1989, 30: 643-56. 2. See, however, Hans-Joachim Braun, 'Fertigungsprozesse im deutschen Flugzeugbau 1926-1945', Technikgeschichte, 1990, 57: 111-35. 3. For example Kyrill von Gersdorff and Kurt Grasmann, Flugmotoren und Strahltriebwerke (Koblenz and Munich, 1981). 4. John H. Morrow, 'Die deutsche Luftfahrtindustrie im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg: Ein Vergleich', in Horst Boog (ed.), Luftkriegfuhrung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Ein internationaler Vergleich (Bonn, 1990). 5. Edward L. Homze, Arming the Luftwaffe: The Reich Air Ministry and the German Aircraft Industry, 1919-1939 (Lincoln and London, 1976), 82-3. 6. John H. Morrow, Jr, Building German Airpower, 1909-1914 (Knoxville,

14

Aero-engine Production in the Third Reich

1976); and, by the same author, German Air Power in World War I (Lincoln and London, 1982). 7. Bernard P. Bellon, Mercedes in Peace and War. German Automobile Workers, 1903-1945 (New York, 1990), 39-40, 88-96. 8. See, among others, Ernst-Willi Hansen, Reichswehr und Industrie: Rustungswirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und wirtschaftliche Mobilmachungsvorbereitungen 1923-193 (Boppard, 1978). 9. Manfred Barthel and Gerold Lingnau, Daimler-Benz. Die Technik (Mainz, 1986), 119-20. 10. Ibid., 120. 11. Homze, op. cit. (5), 83. 12. Max Kruk and Gerold Lingnau, Daimler-Benz: Das Unternehmen (Mainz, 1986), p. 142. 13. BIOS, FR 35, Daimler-Benz. 14. Kruk and Lingnau, op. cit. (12), 142. 15. Bayerische Motorenwerke AG, Mtinchen-Oberwiesenfeld', CIOS, XXX48, 3. 16. Daimler-Benz, Vorstandssitzung, Stuttgart-Unterturkheim, 11 December 1941, 11, Daimler-Benz Archives Stuttgart-Unterturkheim. 17. BMW 801, Programm-Erfullung, Speer Collection, FD 3595/45, Imperial War Museum, London. 18. Richard J. Overy, The Air War, 1939-1945 (London, 1980), 170. 19. Daimler-Benz Motorengesellschaft Genshagen. Leistungsbericht der Daimler-Benz AG, ausgestellt im Jahre 1940, Vol. 19; Protokoll der Sitzung des Reichsluftfahrtministeriums, 7 March 1941, Daimler-Benz Archives. 20. Henschel Flugmotorenbau GmbH, Kassel, Allgemeiner Bericht der Geschaftsfuehrung im laufenden Kalenderjahr (1944), Imperial War Museum, London. The above remarks refer to the year 1941. Hans Pohl, Stephanie Habeth, Beate Bruninghaus, Die Daimler-Benz AG in denjahren 1939-1945 (Stuttgart, 2nd ed. 1987), 100. 21. Richard J. Overy, German Aircraft Production 1939-1942: A Study in the German War Economy, Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1978, 229. 22. BMW, Ablauf der Lieferungen seit Kriegsbeginn, p. 8, Speer Collection, FD 4965/45, Imperial War Museum. 23. Hans-Joachim Braun, The German Economy in the Twentieth Century: The German Reich and the Federal Republic (London and New York 1990), 129. 24. Audi AG (ed.), Rad der Zeit: Eine Unternehmens-dokumentation der Audi AG (Munich 1989), 123. 25. BMW, op. cit. (22) pp. 7-8. 26. Daimler-Benz Vorstandssitzung, op. cit. (16). 27. Daimler-Benz Vorstandssitzung, Unterturkheim, 23 October 1941 and 11 December 1941 op. cit. (16). 28. Daimler-Benz Vorstandssitzung, Unterturkheim, op cit. (16), 16 August 1940; BIOS, FR 35, Daimler-Benz, 24. 29. Overy, op. cit. (21), 210. 30. BMW, Kriegsleistungsbericht, Speer Collection, FD 927/46; also in BMW Archives, Munich. 31. BMW, op. cit. (22). For similar results at Henschel see also Henschel Flugmotorenwerke GmbH, Kassel, Aktenvermerk 28 December 1943, Speer Collection, FD 3224/45, Imperial War Museum, London. 32. BMW, op. cit. (22) 8-9. Also: Daimler-Benz Motoren GmbH Genshagen. Leistungsbericht der Daimler-Benz AG, ausgestellt im Jahre 1940, Bd. 19, DB Archives.

Hans-Joachim Braun

15

33. Overy, op. cit. (21), 270. 34. Bellon, op. cit. (7), 240. 35. BMW, Folder No. 16, 13 August 1942, Speer Collection, FD 3595/45, Imperial War Museum, London. One thousand concentration camp inmates from Dachau were to work for BMW. Also Bellon, op. cit. (7), 241-2. 36. Daimler-Benz, Vorstandssitzung, Unterturkheim, op. cit. (16) 30 June 1942 and 1 July 1942. 37. BIOS, op. cit. (28) p. 24. 38. BMW 323 Fertigung, pp. 28-30. FD 3595/45, Folder No. 3, Imperial War Museum. 39. BMW FD 4969/45, Folder No. 1, Imperial War Museum. 40. BMW FD 3595/45, Folder No. 20, Imperial War Museum. 41. BIOS, op. cit. (28), 11; Pohl and others, op. cit. (20), 83; Bellon, op. cit. (7), 248. 42. BIOS, op. cit. (28), 28-9. 43. CIOS XXX-48, BMW, p. 16. 44. BIOS, op. cit. (28), 24. 45. CIOS, XXX-48, op. cit. (43), 8, 14. 46. Overy, op. cit. (21), 124. 47. BIOS, op. cit. (28), 10. 48. Pohl and others, op. cit. (20), 85; Rainer Froebe 'Wie bei den alten Aegyptern'. Die Verlegung des Daimler-Benz-Flugmotorenwerkes Genshagen nach Obrigheim am Neckar 1944/45', in Hamburger Stiftung fiir Sozialgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (ed.), Das Daimler-Benz Buck (Nordlingen, 1987), 392-470. 49. Bellon, op. cit. (7), 244. 50. FD 2228/45, Speer Box 75, Imperial War Museum. 51. Bellon, op. cit. (7), 244.

C h a l e u r

L'introduction sous

la

ANDRE

e t

C h a u f f a g e

du

Confort

a

Paris

Restauration

GUILLERME

SUMMARY Heat and Heating: The Introduction of Comfort into Restoration Paris 1815-1830 In parallel with the industrial revolution in France, there developed a growing and marked emphasis on material comfort. Street lighting caused the seasons to vanish from the city. What was happening in public areas was matched by changes inside buildings. Hand in hand, however, with an increased appetite for warmth and ease went strenuous efforts, based on a new understanding of thermodynamics, to increase the efficiency of stoves and furnaces. Economies in fuel use of up to 50 per cent were achieved in the period, thanks to the efforts of industrialists and engineers, notably military engineers. It was in England, Scotland and Pennsylvania that the first serious attention was given to improving the internal lines of fireplaces and the supply of air to them. The object was to provide the greatest possible quantity of heat, delivered where it was needed. With Rumford, the drive was philanthropic. In England heating was first of all an industrial question. Although the development of public and domestic heating in Britain will not be commented on here, it will be the measure (more especially as represented in the work of Thomas Tredgold) against which developments in France will be judged. Maintaining a correct degree of warmth in apartments was not simply about bodily ease but was also a matter of hygiene, of prophylaxis against sickness. The urge to conserve heat, however, sprang from a different concern and was intimately linked to the debate about the cooling of the earth, a debate given point by the rigours of the 'little ice age' then being experienced. The nature of heat, the internal heat of the earth and the nature of cold were elements in this debate. Fourier's researches provide a link between science and society: the circulation of heat in the planet and in a house were, he supposed, susceptible to the same laws. 16

Andre Guillerme

17

Domestic Heating A building boom began with the Restauration. Fourier's Memoire of 1818 precisely defined the conditions necessary for fuel-efficient building. Chimneys and fireplaces in the English manner became the vogue in Paris. The trouble was that correctly built chimneys of burnt brick properly keyed to the structure in the building could easily cost 30 francs per metre (£1.20 at the then rate of exchange). This was prohibitively expensive even for the professional classes. Cheaper substitutes were resorted to but predictably failed to answer. Apart from all this, who knew what the diameter of a good chimney ought to be to balance sufficiency of draught against an economical rate of combustion in the grate? The experts were at a loss. In the end it was hydraulic engineers such as Girard and Mallet who developed a formula for the frictional resistance to flow in pipes that would equally serve for all fluids. In 1826 it was applied by d'Aubuisson to mine ventilation; in 1827, by Peclet, to chimney draughting. Fuels Peat, locally dug, was the cheapest fuel in the Ile-de-France. Paris, lacking sufficient native wood, drew in imports amounting to 136,000 tonnes in 1843. During the 1820s briquettes made from charcoal dust and clay made their appearance. Improvements in the production of charcoal, notably by Foucauld, increased yields by 20 per cent as well as producing creosote as a by-product. During the Restauration, however, coal supplied 65 per cent of Paris' fuel needs and, like charcoal, cost only half the price of wood. Britain led the way in gas lighting. In 1816 London had more than 6,000 street gas lamps. Paris followed suit in 1819. Many pennies dropped. Coal for gasification was seen as a new outlet for French mines, coke was a good fuel and its use would help save the forests. The logic of industrialization in France was, in these matters, the reverse of that in Britain, where industrial, not urban, needs led development. Apparatus In 1826 Peclet systematically tested both fireplace types as well as types of stoves and found that Desarnod's fireplace gave out six times more heat than the ordinary type, and Thilorier's smoke-consuming stove eight times. The worst-performing type was the ordinary fireplace, which wasted 94 per cent of the heat of the fuel. Peclet's research, however, showed that heating by means of hot water circulation was the best method. The future lay with central heating. By 1829 the Stock Exchange was heated in this way as well as most hospitals. Well-off individuals installed domestic systems. Manufacturers of Heating Equipment There was fierce competition to supply stoves and pipework but the market was unpredictable. Any crisis sent sales plummeting. The real winners were the chimney sweeps as more and more work came their way. The labour

18

Chaleur et Chauffage

force consisted of young boys of 7 to 9 years of age. The master sweeps recruited them in poor rural regions, the boys' parents renting out their children from October to May for work in the cities. The Barracks The question of efficient heating also concerned the army authorities who were anxious to reduce the per capita consumption of fuel by the troops. Reconstruction of half the barracks in France also improved the soldier's lot, but the greatest economies of fuel were made in the preparation of soup for the soldiers. The Soldier's Soup The old method of preparing the soldier's soup (by squads of 10 men) was highly wasteful of fuel, with 90 to 95 per cent of heat wasted. In the new barracks communal cooking for groups of 60 was enforced, and with improved stoves economies of 50 per cent were achieved. That was only the beginning. New types of cookers progressively reduced the price of soup, as Table 3 shows. Choumara's system saved about 200 cubic metres of wood per day, yielding an annual saving of 750,000 francs (c. £30,000). Campaign Bread Important lessons were learnt during the expeditions mounted for the conquest of Algeria. In 1831 Dufour's newly invented prefabricated furnace permitted a tenfold increase in bread production, with fuel savings of 40 per cent over the old type. Conclusion Heat and heating were, so to speak, the two teats on which Restauration Paris sucked. Treatises multiplied, while Utopians dreamed of entire cities warmed beneath immense glass domes. (Summary by G.H.-S.) RESUME Les lois de Fourier relatives a la thermique donnent acces a une gestion parcimonieuse de la chaleur planetaire comme du combustible dans l'atre. Si la Restauration engendre la thermodynamique, elle marque l'essor de la thermostatique et des cheminees en France, surtout en Ile-de-France: d'un cote la revolution industrielle qui multiplie les usines, la croissance des constructions neuves, de 1'autre la montee du confort qui revient, avec l'eclairage public, a faire disparaitre les saisons de la ville et a y instaurer un eternel printemps: derriere les murs, toute une rehabilitation du bati ancien, une mise en conformite de l'appartement a l'aisance se manifeste alors en sous-ceuvre. Mais la Restauration pousse aussi aux economies de combustible qu'on peut estimer globalement a 50% entre 1815 et 1830, grace a la diffusion d'innovations thermostatiques, a la participation

Andre Guillerme

19

active des industriels et des ingenieurs de l'Etat, notamment les militaires. INTRODUCTION En France, a la fin du dix-huitieme siecle, dans les villes le mode de chauffage varie considerablement d'une habitation a l'autre. 1 Dans les plus pauvres, depourvues de cheminee, un brasier sert tout a la fois a rechauffer la soupe et a dessecher la paroi interieure des murs trempes: ici point d'etancheite car le beton d'argile ou le mortier de chaux grasse, en contact direct avec l'humidite exterieure et le sous-sol mouille par la nappe ou le ruissellement des eaux pluviales, assure une forte hygrometrie. On se chauffe d'abord pour se secher et on dort habille, tous ensemble, les uns contre les autres, sur le grabat et sous l'edredon.2 L'appartement d'une famille plus aisee peut disposer d'un fourneau a charbon de bois dont le conduit d'evacuation est raccorde a la cheminee ou a une ouverture donnant dans la rue. Les lits isoles des murs et du plancher par des alcoves qui confinent air et chaleur sont rechauffes par des bassinoires remplies de braises. Dans les hotels prives la cheminee est un monument qui classe son proprietaire. Les ordonnances royales de 1712 et 1723 ont fixe les dimensions interieures des conduits aboutissant a d'immenses pieces, d'autant plus hautes sous plafond que le proprietaire est riche: faits de briques avec fantons3 de fer plantes de distance en distance, ils doivent pouvoir laisser glisser un jeune enfant pour le ramonage.4 Ces cheminees monumentales generent, l'hiver, des vents-coulis 'qui font frissonner une partie du corps tandis que l'autre est grillee par le feu':5 la seule chaleur, extremement faible, ne provient que du rayonnement; mieux vaut encore celle des serviteurs qui couchent dans les antichambres-tampons.6 Entre la belle cheminee au puissant tirage qui appelle le froid exterieur et le petit brasier au milieu de la salle commune semi-enterree, l'inegalite sociale ne semble pas tres forte devant le feu et les savants ne s'en preoccupent guere, excepte la Societe de Medecine, la plus sociale des societes savantes, promotrice de 1'hygiene.7 En Pennsylvanie, en Ecosse, en Angleterre, la ou affleure la revolution industrielle, au contraire, le probleme du chauffage quotidien trouve l'amorce d'une solution grace aux innovations techniques de Blake, Leslie, Franklin puis Rumford. Ils sont les tout premiers a ameliorer la construction du foyer a la fin du XVIIIe siecle: ils en diminuent la profondeur et avancent le contre-coeur pour augmenter le rayonnement, resserrent les jambages pour diminuer la quantite d'air froid, terminent la hotte par des murs inclines pour faciliter la reflexion des rayons, retrecissent le conduit pour augmenter le courant d'air et disposent a l'entree une plaque mobile autour d'un axe pour regler le tirage,8 et font une analyse circonspecte des moyens de remedier aux causes qui font fumer les cheminees. 'Je parle des moyens de pourvoir aux besoins des pauvres, et d'assurer leur existence et leur bonheur, en introduisant dans cette classe de l'espece humaine

20

Chaleur et Chauffage

Traite de la Llidleur.

Figure 1 Les bouillotes, chaudieres a vapeur de petite dimension, sont tres repandues dans les ateliers industriels et pour le chauffage d'etablissements collectifs, theatres et cafes vers 1825. En 1830, les meilleures sont fabriquees par le pionnier des foyers, Edouard Koechlin, a Mulhouse: elles evaporent 7,2 litres d'eau par kilo de houille; celles de Christian a Paris ne saturent que 6 tandis que les plus communes n'en elevent que 5. En 1824 un appareil de chauffage a la vapeur peut, selon Clement, revenir a 70 000 F a cause du prix des tuyaux de desserte en cuivre ou en fer forge; en 1828, selon Peclet (II, p. 456), le meme appareil revient a 50 000.

Andre Guillerme

21 27 Le prix restant fixe, c'est la marge du producteur qui augmente. Mais jusque dans les annees 1840, jusqu'au developpement des voies ferrees et vicinales, ces innovations ne touchent que la grande peripheric des villes fournies en houille, combustible rival. Sous la Restauration, le million de tonnes de production houillere satisfait a peine les deux tiers des besoins.>8 Pour les particuliers, la houille se vend a la voie (15 hi ras ou 12 hi comble) ou a l'hectolitre et, au niveau de 1'ilot urbain, on peut l'acheter au kilo. Mais la houille est un combustible trop recent pour ne jouir que de qualites: le commun des mortels lui reproche d'etre tres salissant, de mettre trop longtemps a demarrer, de donner des maux de tete, voire de tuer par ses emanations.59 En outre son prix et done sa consommation varient selon la distance au lieu de production. Ainsi dans la Creuse, a Gueret, en 1837, le kilogramme de houille vaut 3 centimes—prix de gros—trois fois plus que le bois,60 mais a Beauvais ou a Paris, en volume, la houille est moitie moins chere que le bois et vaut le meme prix que le charbon de bois. Ici et de plus en plus, 'dans beaucoup de maisons, on se sert maintenant de ce combustible en le melant avec du bois'.61 Le coke En France, le coke est un produit importe, fabrique, essentiellement urbain. Des les annees 1800 la houille cokefiable a permis a la Grande Bretagne d'engager ses villes dans la modernite en developpant l'eclairage public. Le gaz provient de la distillation de ce type de houille qui donne par ailleurs le coke, combustible a tres bon pouvoir calorifique, et le goudron qui va etre empoye au revetement des trottoirs. Signe d'un ecart technologique, en 1816, les rues de Londres possedent plus de 6 000 bees de gaz alors que celles de Paris disposent de moins de 4 000 lanternes.62 L'aventure urbaine du coke est d'autant plus seduisante qu'elle est transferee par l'aristocratie—les Emigres—qui soutient l'entreprise londonienne d'eclairage public Windsor. En 1816 elle obtient I'autorisation d'eclairer pendant deux mois le passage public des Panoramas, puis en 1818, les cours et les galeries du palais de la Chambre des Pairs, en 1819, le pourtour de l'Odeon. En outre, le prefet ordonne cette annee i'eclairage de l'hopital Saint-Louis au moyen du gaz extrait de la houille' et distribue dans les diverses parties de l'hopital a l'aide de canons de fusils de reforme.63 Nouveau succes. L'Academie prend parti: I'eclairage au gaz merite toute l'attention du gouvernement, non seulement parce qu'il donne le moyen d'eclairer beaucoup mieux les villes, mais surtout parce qu'il ouvre de nouveaux debouches a nos mines de houille, a nos fonderies, a d'autres arts dont les produits servent a la construction et a l'entretien des usines d'eclairage, et parce que, pouvant produire du coke en grande quantite et a bas prix, le nouvel art peut fournir un combustible qui ne sera pas longtemps

31

Andre Guillerme

repousse de nos menages et contribuer ainsi a arreter la destruction de nos forets.64 Tres rapidement des compagnies d'eclairage se creent a Paris,65 non sans apeurer le voisinage66 puis dans les grandes villes de province: des 1830, plus de 6 000 lampadaires eclairent, le soir, les boulevards de la capitale—7 258 a Londres en 1828—, tandis qu'autant de maisons particulieres sont abonnees au gaz—61 000 lampes privees a Londres. Si en Grande Bretagne l'industrie porte l'eclairage, en France, l'eclairage tire l'industrie. La-bas le gaz est un residu de la houille, tandis qu'ici on le considere comme un produit derive, une valeur marchande qui reduit d'autant le cout du combustible importe, freine le deboisement et rend competitive la production industrielle. En ville, le coke apparait comme un combustible propre. Table 1 Prix d'achat moyen a Paris et consommation d'air des differents combustibles en 1828 d'apres Peclet houille coke bois (hetre) charbon de bois tourbe prix (F/hl) kcal/kg prix de la thermie en F volume d'air (mVkg)

4,4 6,04 9 20

2,85 6,20 15 18

1,75 3 a 3,6 12 7,5 a 10

4 5,5 a 7,8 25 18

0,34 1,4 a 3,0 31 5a8

LES APPAREILS Montgolfier realise, dans le bureau consultatif des Arts au ministere de I'interieur, vaste piece de 5,2 x 4,6 m2 et de 4 m sous plafond (soit 100 m3), plusieurs experiences durant l'hiver 1805-6 pour evaluer, dans les circonstances ordinaires, la perte de chaleur par les parois d'une chambre chauffee par une cheminee commune. II revele que chaque kilogramme de bois eleve la temperature de 0,152°C et que la perte de chaleur equivaut au cinquieme du produit de la masse d'air de la chambre par la difference de temperature entre I'interieur et I'exterieur, perte due en grande partie aux fenetres. L'annee suivante, il experimente les poeles de Guyton-Morveau, Voyenne, Bertolini, tous construits sur le systeme des gros poeles suedois et semblables au poele fumivore de Thilorier.07 Vingt ans plus tard, Peclet va plus loin et met a l'epreuve de la consommation les types de cheminee et de chauffage dans la meme piece que Mongolfier, au Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers: cheminee a la Rumford, a la Desarnod, poeles—alors bien moins encombrants que les anciens—de Curandeau, de Desarnod (dit foyer domestique), fumivore de Thilorier, four tour-creuse de Desarnod. Les resultats sont etonnants: le foyer domestique de Desarnod degage six fois plus de chaleur que la cheminee ordinaire et le nouveau poele fumivore de Thilorier huit fois plus. La pire est la cheminee commune qui ne fournit que 6% de la chaleur emise, soit une deperdition de 94%.

2*: Vol. PI. 21.

mmmmTmmmj^tiw

Andre Guillerme

33

Figure 2 Les cheminees de Rumford (figure 218) sont ameliorees a l'aide de plaques mobiles par differents techniciens comme Bronzac (figures 18, 19 et 20 de Belmas) qui presente des cheminees a 'foyer mobile'—coffre en fonte de 35 cm de profondeur—qui laisse au proprietaire la jouissance de la vue du feu et de la chaleur rayonnante pour un prix variant de 110 a 400 F selon les dimensions et les ornements. Les foyers de Chenevix" et surtout de Desarnod (figures 21, 22, 23 de Belmas) remportent quelques succes durant l'Empire. La reputation de ce dernier lui permet de presenter des produits de qualite, en fonte, comme le foyer 'tour creuse' (figure 24) qui diffuse quatre fois plus de chaleur qu'une cheminee classique mais dont la forme trop bizarre rebute; son 'foyer simplifie' connait un succes certain (figure 25) ou son 'foyer nouveau' (figure 26) juge tres beau, tres elegant mais tres couteux par les contemporains: il 'fait trouver aupres' de la cheminee 'toute la gaite qu'inspire un feu vif et petillant'.100 Le prix varie de 120 a 740 F selon la grandeur du foyer qui varie de 50 a 90 cm. Sa cheminee est recommandee par les membres du bureau consultatif du ministere de l'lnterieur pour equiper les bureaux du ministere en 1827. La cheminee a coke exige une grille (figure 215). Copiant les foyers Desarnod, Bruynes les realise non pas en fonte mais en terre refractaire. Pour ameliorer encore le rendement des cheminees on invente vers 1820 des buches economiques creuses en fonte, qu'on dispose au fond de la cheminee et qui communiquent avec les parois laterales ou circule l'air. En 1827, Delaroche brevete un dispositif remplacant les chenets par des tuyaux creux dans lesquels circulent l'air qui vient deboucher sous les tablettes tandis qu'en 1830 Latour propose des chenets soufflants et qu'en 1831 Brochin cree le 'foyer francais' entoure pierres de Tonnerre—qui resiste tres bien au feu!—percees de tuyaux qui montent au-dessus de la cheminee. Les recherches de Peclet concluent que le seul moyen d'obtenir des cheminees le meilleur rendement est d'y echauffer de l'air comme dans les caloriferes. Elles confirment les experiences de Marcus Bull qui, en 1824, avait montre qu'un poele bien congu chauffe 10 fois mieux qu'une cheminee ordinaire.68 Surtout, elles montrent que le meilleur chauffage est celui delivre par eau chaude: puisque Fair a quatre fois moins de capacite pour la chaleur et qu'il est 800 fois plus leger, son pouvoir calorifique est 3 200 fois moins eleve que celui de l'eau, il lui faut aussi un debit plus eleve, done des tuyaux de plus grande section. L'avenir est au chauffage central a eau chaude et des 1827 Desrones presente a la Societe d'Encouragement pour 1'Industrie Nationale les premiers calorimetres a grande surface de chauffe.69 La Bourse de Paris est ainsi chauffee en 1829 comme la plupart des hopitaux, des theatres et des filatures de coton durant les annees 30.70 Sous la Monarchic de Juillet, les citadins aises dotent leur demeure urbaine de chauffage central et celui-ci atteindra les immeubles locatifs au cours du Second Empire. Les producteurs La concurrence est grande entre producteurs de chaleur domestique; les prospectus en assurent la publicite: le compagnon de Lavoisier, Guyton de Morveau, fabrique ses caloriferes a Dijon; Desarnod est connu des le debut de l'Empire pour la qualite de ses produits; Chenevix, Bronzac, Brochin, Curandeau, fabriquent cheminees, poeles et tuyauteries en fer

34

Chaleur et Chauffage

Traite, de, la Chaleur

i I K

, \

\i86.

El it8j. h

2o3f6Js Figure 3 Les poeles simples (figures 185 et 185 bis de Peclet) consomment beaucoup de combustible et chauffent peu a cause d'une trop haute temperature et d'un

Andre Guillerme 7rcute

de

la

35

Chaleur,

trop grand debit. Une reelle economie d'energie est realisee par Franklin dans les annees 1788-9 pour son 'poele de Pennsylvanie' en reduisant le diametre du tuyau d'evacuation (figures 186 et 187). Les poeles les plus communs dans les appartements de la moyenne bourgeoisie sous la Restauration sont les 'cheminees-poele' de Desarnod placees devant une cheminee bouchee comme sur la figure 189 dont la surface de chauffe est cependant trop petite. Les poeles 190 et 191 a sept plaques ont un meilleur rendement mais sont reserves aux maisons bourgeoises. Place au milieu de l'appartement, le poele a tuyau de fumee sous le parquet (figure 206) rencontre un vif succes dans les grandes villes; mais son poids excessif et la trop grande chaleur degagee par les tuyaux degradent dangereusement les planchers.

2?vol.

PI.

Figure 4 Les caloriferes sont—par definition—installes a I'exterieur. La chaleur est transmise par tuyaux d'air. On retient ici le calorifere de Feilher de Berlin, tres repandu en Prusse (figures 198-201), celui de Guyton-Morveau destine aux riches maisons (196-197), celui de Curandeau qui effectue une belle performance sous la

20.

2i: Vol. I>(, 2*3.

j

Restauration. Surtout, le calorifere permet le chauffage de grands edifices comme les hopitaux ou les usines: les figures 236 et 237 representent celui de I'hopital general du Derbyshire dont le foyer est forme d'une grande cloche en tole de 5 mm d'epaisseur.

38

Chaleur et Chauffage ]»HYSIOl*E ]rf3>l'STItlELLK — i'ALWKJFKRE.

'/;•„/,,• .„„',;,„A /. V.

, '/&„ ,/„ fiV/%'.1 , e/j//

Figure 4 Original drawings of Ayanz's steam engines. Ayanz recommended the use of thick pipes and copper boilers with a silver solder, but even so the height of elevation was still limited because of the maximum steam pressure sustainable by the boiler.J 2

&/r t/u Parts at 6z/ye of Ji ort/j Fire

Figure 7 Savery's steam 'engine', The Miner's Friend (1702).

148

Jeronimo de Ayanz: Mining, Metallurgy and Steam Pumps

century, even though political and social reasons may well have prevented their further development. n

Notes and References 1. Further details on this subject can be found in: Nicolas Garcia Tapia, Patentes de invencion espanolas en el Siglo de Oro, Registro de la Propiedad Industrial, Ministerio de Industria y Energia, Madrid, 1990. We have summarized some of its material in this article. 2. David Goodman, Power and Penury (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Nicolas Garcia Tapia, Tecnica y poder en Castillo, durante los siglos XVIy XVII, Junta de Castilla y Leon, 1989. 3. Nicolas Garcia Tapia, Ingenieria y Arquitectura en el Renacimiento espahol (Universidad de Valladolid, 1990). 4. Few details were known concerning Jeronimo de Ayanz's life and work. These were initially published by Tomas Gonzalez, Registro y relacion general de las minas de la corona de Castilla, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1832), and Noticia historica documentada de las celebres minas de Guadalcanal (Madrid, 1831), vol.1, p. 211, and collected by Jose Maria Lopez Pifiero and others, Diccionario historico de la ciencia moderna en Espana (Barcelona, 1983), p. 82. 5. The biographical data we have gathered is in the following archives: Archivo General de Simancas (A.G.S.), Section Guerra Antigua, bundle 262, folios 222 and 263; bundle 267, folio 180; bundle 254, folios 207 and 208. A.G.S., Section Titulos de Castilla, bundle 1092, folio 1. A.G.S., Section Contadurias Generates, bundles 850, 852 and 854, without foliation A.G.S., Section Contraduria de Mercedes, bundle 1037, folios 28 and 29. Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Manuscript 11725, Memoriales y genealogias diversas, folios 75-83. 6. Archivo General de Palacio Real de Madrid, Boxes 87/48 and 87/49. 7. A.G.S., Contadurias Generates, bundle 852, without foliation. Respuesta de don Geronimo de Ayanz, Comendador de Ballesteros de la Orden de Calatrava, a lo que el Rey le pregunto acerca de las minas destos Reynos, y del metal Negrillo de Potosi. 8. Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, Biblioteca Maritima Espanola (Madrid, 1851), vol. I, 558-60. 9. Archivo parroquial de Sans Gines, Madrid. Defunciones, libro 2, f. 135. Archivo Historico de Pro toco los de Madrid, Testamentos, Pro toco lo 4237. 10. A.G.S., Cedulas de Castilla, number 174, folios 49-94. The transcription of the whole document with commentary is in: Tapia, op. cit. (1), 61-253. 11. Tapia op. cit. (1). 12. For more on this subject see Jose Maria Lopez Pifiero, Cienciay tecnica en la sociedadespanola de los siglos XVIy XVII (Barcelona, 1979) 259-69; Julio Rey Pastor, La cienciay la tecnica en el descubrimiento de America (Madrid, 1842), 108-19. 13. Julio Sanchez, De mineriay comercio de metales, Universidad de Salamanca, 1989. For more about the problem of the minerals negrillos of Potosi see: Modesto Bargallo, La amalgamacion de los minerales de plata (Mexico, D.F., 1969). 14. Bargallo, op. cit. (13), 280, 281. 15. A.G.S., Consejo y Juntas de Hacienda, bundle 418-8. 16. Alvaro Alonso Barba, Arte de los metales, en que se enseha el verdadero beneficio de los de oro plata por azogue, el modo de fundirlos todos y cdmo se han de rejinar y apar unos de otros (Madrid, 1640). 17. Nicolas Garcia Tapia, op. cit, (1) (1990), and Beneficio de los minerales 'negrillos' de Potosi, 68-76. 18. Tapia, op. cit. (17).

Nicolas Garcia Tapia

149

19. Tapia, op. at. (17). 20. Agricola, De re metallica (Basilea, 1556). 21. Nicolas Garcia Tapia, Tngenios para desaguar las minas a principios del siglo XVII', Seminario de antiguas obras hidrdulicas hispanoamericanas (Mexico, D.F., forthcoming); idem., op. cit. (1), pp. 77-81. The Harzer Wettersatz, a similar system, was invented by Bartels in Clausthal in 1712. 22. Idem., op. at. (1), pp. 88-90. 23. Idem., op. at. (1), pp. 80-1. 24. Nicolas Garcia Tapia, 'La primera patente de aplicacion de la energia del vapor. Jeronimo de Ayanz (1606)', in Actas de historia de la fisica (Mahon, 1989), pp. 301-10. Idem., 'La maquina de vapor inventada y patentada en 1606 por Jeronimo de Ayanz', Tecnica Industrial, September 1987. Idem., 'Inventores del Siglo de Oro', Revista de Investigacidny Ciencia {Scientific American), September 1989: 6-13. Idem., op. cit. (1), 81-8. 25. Idem., op. at. (1), 223-5. 26. It is possible that Ayanz was ahead of his time technologically. Although he was able to put into practice some of the engines he designed, he always admitted the necessity of having good craftsmen at his disposal to make steam engines for industrial purposes. Ayanz himself speaks about the danger of faulty engines. He recommends their use in garden fountains where a lesser elevation is required. See Tapia, op. at. (1), 224. 27. Jose R. Carracido, 'Juan Escribano', in Estudios historico-criticos de la ciencia espahola (Madrid, 1917), 221-31; F. Picatoste Rodriguez, Apuntes para una biblioteca aentifica espahola del siglo XVI (Madrid, 1891), pp. 81-4. 28. / tre libri de spiritali di Giovambattista della Porta napolitano. Cioe d'inalzar acque per forza delVaria, Iacomo Carlino (Naples, 1606). 29. Salomon de Caus, Les raisons des forces mouvantes (Paris, 1615); Giovanni Branca, Le Machine (Turin, 1629); Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, A Century of the Names and Scantlings of Such Inventions (London, 1663). 30. A.G.S., Section Contadurias Generates, bundle 850, without foliation; section Consejoy Juntas de Hacienda, bundle 421-11; see also: Tomas Gonzalez, op. cit. (4), vol. II, 626-42. 31. The number of experiments with fireballs which expelled steam through holes made in them, and which sometimes had the shape of a human head, increased during the Renaissance. It is likely that Ayanz knew of some of these experiments, which were probably carried out at the royal court to which Ayanz belonged. For further information see our paper 'La machine a vapeur avant la thermodynamique', XVIIIeme Congres International ICOHTEC, Paris, 1990.

P e e n e m i i n d e L o s

T w o

a n d

A l a m o s

Studies

D O N A L D E. T A R T E R

ABSTRACT The Second World War produced two great and memorable scientific and technological teams: the German Peenemiinde rocket team under the direction of Dr Wernher von Braun, and the American Los Alamos atomic bomb team under the direction of Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer. Taken together, the contributions of these teams created the post-war capability for intercontinental nuclear warfare. These teams, working in different countries under radically different political systems, encountered severe political difficulties during and after the war. Each, in its own way, has had to live with its deeds, endure public suspicions, and bear the judgement of history. This article, based on 13 hours of interviews recently completed with members of the von Braun Peenemiinde team, together with an analysis of several hours of video interviews of members of the Oppenheimer Los Alamos team, seeks to present a meaningful contrast and description of the environments and the pressures under which each worked. INTRODUCTION Late in 1982, the United States Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) began a series of interrogations of a former von Braun rocket team member, Arthur Rudolph. Rudolph had been one of the central figures in the American Apollo Lunar Program, having been the Saturn 5 project manager. He had left his previous home in Huntsville, Alabama, site of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, and was then residing in San Jose, California. Throughout 1983, OSI continued its investigations, and late that year informed Dr Rudolph that it believed there was sufficient evidence to link him to war crimes activity at the World War II German rocket facility, Mittelwerk, a forced-labour installation in the Harz Mountains. OSI threatened prosecution and indictment unless Dr Rudolph signed an agreement to leave the country and renounce his citizenship. After agonizing over the prospects of a long and expensive trial or doing as the 150

Donald E. Tarter

151

OSI requested, Dr Rudolph decided in November 1983 to leave the United States. On 27 March 1984, he and his wife boarded a plane in San Francisco en route to Germany. The disposition of the Rudolph case bitterly incensed many of Rudolph's original German colleagues and many of his associates in the American space programme. In early 1989, an effort was launched by several of his friends and colleagues in Huntsville to have the government allow his return to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the lunar landing in July. That effort failed. A 1989 editorial in the Huntsville Times1 noted that Rudolph chose to leave the USA because there was a possibility of prosecution, and a chance that if successfully prosecuted he would be deported and lose his government benefits. The editorial added: The right and justice of the matter have never been established. The aging retiree chose to acquiesce rather than fight. The West German government has said it did not find evidence to prosecute him. . . . [This] leaves unanswered the question of the basic justice of the Rudolph case. The OSI's decision is, of course, subject to review. Rudolph has recourse through the federal courts, but to date, he has not taken it. And his dilemma is what it always was: a court order dissolving his voluntary surrender of citizenship would also set aside the OSI's side of the agreement. By starting the case over, Rudolph would be exposed to prosecution with the prospect of deportation and the loss of retirement benefits. It is a dilemma best left to history. In late 1983 and early 1984 Mr Konrad K. Dannenberg and I were beginning a project at the University of Alabama in Huntsville which would add to the recorded recollection of members of Wernher von Braun's Peenemunde rocket team. Dannenberg himself was a former member of that team. He had served as a propulsion engineer on the first successful A-4 (later termed V-2) launch in October 1942. Later, among other duties in the United States, he had served as deputy director of the Saturn Program at George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. Both Dannenberg and I were most interested in seeing that early recollections of German rocketry were preserved. Likewise, we were interested in obtaining comments about the future of space development as anticipated by these pioneers. Hence our project was entitled, 'Our Future in Space: Messages from the Beginning'. As a sociologist, I was also interested in obtaining a sense of the human responses to the conditions under which scientific and technical work was conducted in the totalitarian environment of Nazi Germany. Epochal work was being done. It was work that would literally begin the space age. While popular perception dates the beginning of the space age to the famous Soviet Sputnik launch on 4 October 1957, in fact the first human-designed object ever to ascend into the environment of space was launched some 15 years and one day earlier, 3 October 1942. That object was the German

152

Peenemunde and Los Alamos

A-4 rocket, launched from the Peenemunde test facility, reaching an altitude of over 80 km (50 miles) and a range of 192 km (120 miles). Thus, at a place now almost forgotten, humanity began its ultimate adventure into the cosmos. As a realist, I know that the drive behind much of human technology has been the military advantage that it might give. As an idealist, I am opposed to the use of science to further human destructiveness. As a behavioural scientist, I wanted to understand how men refined by sophisticated scientific and technological training could be reduced to the service of tyranny and human oppression. For over two decades I have had the privilege of associating with many of the members of the von Braun team both as a neighbour and as a scholar interested in the social impact of the space age. That association with these gentlemen who stood at the beginning of the space age has, I believe, given me some insight into the questions I have asked. It has always been difficult, at best, to discuss such matters with them. Even in the most relaxed of times, the subject is not an object of easy reflection. I had hoped that our project to videotape the remembrances of key scientific and technical personnel at Peenemunde would be able to probe for answers to difficult and sensitive moral and political questions. The news of the Rudolph case, and the fact that other members of the original rocket team were also under investigation by the Department of Justice, left a heavy pall over any such discussion. Many of the group who had originally agreed to hour-long video sessions decided that they did not wish to grant such an interview under the existing circumstances of rumour and suspicion. Television networks and newspapers were, at the time, contacting me in attempts to obtain materials that would be useful to assist in compiling their own reports on the possible connection of the Peenemunde Team to Nazi atrocities. Some members of the group who decided to go ahead with the interviews stipulated that as a condition for their appearance they would talk about the history and circumstances of technological development, but did not wish to enter into a discussion relating to politically sensitive subjects. Although circumstances made our project most difficult, a grant from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and assistance from the Huntsville affiliate of the Alabama Public Television Network permitted us to obtain 13 hours of videotaped interviews from a dozen members of the original Peenemunde rocket team, but for the reasons stated above I have relied more on information obtained in my 20 years of association with members of the Peenemunde team than on comments made directly in the video interviews.2 During the same period that we were recording the recollections of the Peenemunde pioneers, I, along with several of my students, was engaged in an in-depth analysis of the experience of the Los Alamos atomic bomb team, directed by the late Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer. Through an extensive search of the literature and analysis of several hours of videotaped interviews with key members of that team, we compiled what we thought were some interesting points of comparison between the experiences of the members of the Los Alamos project and those working at Peenemunde. We felt that such a comparison could, perhaps, put the whole question of

Donald E. Tarter

153

the moral and political posture of those at Peenemunde into somewhat sharper focus. In addition, I had at least two reasons to seek such a comparison. Firstly, taken together, the contributions of these two great technical teams made the age of intercontinental nuclear warfare possible. Secondly, these were ends not consistent with the motives that drove them in their youth. The young men who were later to go Peenemunde and begin the space age dreamed of interplanetary space flight. Almost all of them with whom I have talked have specifically mentioned their thrill and excitement about the early German science fiction movie, Frau im Mond (Girl on the Moon). This Fritz Lang movie, filmed in consultation with the early Romanian space pioneer Hermann Oberth, stimulated an entire generation of young idealists into seeking careers in space technology. Likewise, as youths, the men who were to go to Los Alamos to begin the atomic age had their own captivating visions that stirred within them. The young Oppenheimer was intrigued by a box of minerals given to him as a gift and was soon exploring the rock formations of Central Park in New York City. At the age of 11 he was accepted into the New York Mineralogical Club. The young Edward Teller was seized by the excitement of science through the works of Jules Verne. The young Leo Szilard showed an almost prescient childhood fascination with the classic Hungarian poem of pessimism, The Tragedy of Man, which, perhaps, accounts in part for his lifelong mission to forestall nuclear tragedy. The youthful dreams and aspirations of these men did not involve the development of weapons of destruction. Rather, they hoped as adults to understand the laws of nature and to travel into interplanetary space. The world as it was, however, demanded that their noble aspirations be put to the service of much less noble ends. Though they were to move to the very edge of human understanding, they could not escape the political, economic, and social forces of their time. Their dreams were laid aside while their professional talents were channelled into designing means of death and destruction. What types of readjustment are required for such an awesome redirection of one's own purpose for existence? This question led me to investigate the experiences of these two groups for answers. Their members shared an early experience that an increasing number of scientists and technologists in our current world now face. Out of the processes set in motion at Peenemunde and Los Alamos, the world has now evolved a global militarized culture. A very substantial portion of scientists and technologists trained for participation in our modern world economy find themselves in a situation where their prime opportunity for employment and career development lies in the service of the international arms industry. As nations drain their resources in search of military superiority, many of the more productive and hopeful goals of humankind are cancelled or delayed. The experience of those at Peenemunde and Los Alamos may give us a fuller understanding of the forces that have increasingly put science and scientists in pursuit of destructive goals.

154

Peenemunde and Los Alamos LOS ALAMOS AND PEENEMUNDE: A SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE

In seeking to gain perspective through comparison of Los Alamos and Peenemunde, it is informative to consider the forces that led each group to come together as a team. Few of their members anticipated careers associated with the military establishments of their respective countries. Yet all of them found that the military was their prime avenue of career development. In the case of the Peenemunde group, many of its members had been affiliated with small German rocket societies such as the Society for Space Travel (Verein fur Raumschiffahrt, or VfR) that had been forming since the late 1920s.3 While such organizations were not taken seriously in their early days, publicity that played upon the intriguing possibilities of interplanetary space flight made them an object of public curiosity. Many accounts of German military developments prior to the Second World War suggest that the concept of the high-angle rocket appealed to German officialdom because it might offer a legal way around the restrictions placed on the development of artillery weapons in the Treaty of Versailles.4 While a case be made for this, it should be remembered that development of potentially illegal artillery had been underway for some while. In the words of Dr Georg von Tiesenhausen, When I was drafted in 1936, I found the 8.8 cm anti-aircraft cannon already developed, including its advanced semi-automatic range finders, and velocity and direction indicators. This was a superior masterpiece of engineering development that must have started many years earlier.:) Indeed, Dr Gerhard Reisig points out that The development of the '88' (as it was commonly called) had begun as early as 1929, in the Weimar Republic. Its use as a replacement for aging weapons was allowed under the treaty. However, the same weapon had great potential for anti-aircraft purposes, making it of questionable legality.6 Given the general drift away from the strictest adherence to the standards of the Treaty of Versailles, even in the Weimar Republic, it is unlikely that legal questions overshadowed more practical considerations of feasibility and economics in the earliest days of rocketry. Early military development of German rocketry fell under the aegis of Walter Dornberger, an artillery captain who, in 1930, had graduated from the Technische Hochschule, Berlin. In the fall of 1932, Dornberger recruited Wernher von Braun as his chief technical assistant, thus making von Braun the ranking civilian in the rocket programme. Subsequently von Braun obtained his doctorate in physics in 1934 at army expense. In the meantime, on 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler had been officially appointed Chancellor and the Nazi Party of Germany quickly consolidated its power. Thus, as the Weimar Republic crumbled, the young von Braun

Donald E. Tarter

155

was completing his formal education under circumstances that were to obligate him to serve the German army. It should also be remembered that the Great Depression hit Germany with a vengeance. The severe economic climate motivated individuals to take employment anywhere it could be found, and, with the early rocketeers, it could be found only in the army. Neither German universities nor private industry showed the slightest interest in rocketry. At the best of times, private funding for studying rocket propulsion would have been most difficult to obtain, but, with the depression threatening the very survival of German industry, such a venture into basic research was out of the question. Arthur Rudolph, like so many of his counterparts, found himself without work and without money. Captain Dornberger moved through this cadre of unemployed engineers looking for ideas that might serve the army's interest in rocketry. From his recruitment efforts and from the lack of any available economic alternative, several young rocketeers were brought on to the government military payrolls. For reasons completely beyond their control, and toward ends that were divergent from their dreams, an increasing number of young German space visionaries found themselves in the service of a military establishment that was later to serve Nazi Germany. As the activities of the early rocket pioneers grew, it became obvious that they would need a larger and more elaborate facility to test their new generation of vehicles. The first test facilities at Kummersdorf, some 25 kilometres south of Berlin, were rapidly becoming inadequate. The vicinity of the small fishing village of Peenemiinde on the Baltic Coast seemed to provide the perfect place. First suggested to von Braun by his mother, the site offered isolation and a place to fire the still highly experimental vehicles. As political tensions heightened in Europe, the advanced guard of the Peenemiinde team was almost totally preoccupied with the elaborate preparations involved in the opening of the world's first largescale rocket test facility. The Army Research Centre at Peenemiinde became fully staffed in August 1939. On 1 September 1939, Hitler ordered his troops to invade Poland, thus formally beginning the Second World War. By 1942, the facility at Peenemiinde employed 1,960 scientists and technicians and some 3,852 other workers. Work on rocket development was then proceeding at maximum intensity. The nearly complete mobilization of German society in the course of the Second World War saw many individuals with scientific and technical skills pressed into the military service. Among the interview group was Dr/Lance Corporal Ernst Stuhlinger, who was serving on the Russian front as an infantryman when he received orders to report to Peenemiinde. This was a place and a project of which he had never heard. Likewise, Konrad K. Dannenberg, an infantry lieutenant in France, was called away from the battlefield to join the rocket development centre. For individuals such as these, the motivation was clear: build rockets or dodge bullets. In contrast, the factors that led to the assembly of the Los Alamos atomic bomb team were remarkably different. The scientists who were

156

Peenemunde and Los Alamos

Figure 1 Peenemunde on the Baltic coast of Germany. Source: Ernst Klee and Otto Merk, The Birth of the Missile (Harrap, London, 1965). A translation of Damals in Peenemunde (Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg). to comprise the core group at Los Alamos came from the well-established scientific field of physics. Physics, as a discipline, had become increasingly important since the turn of the century,and had acquired respect in major universities. In Germany, however, with the rise of the Nazi Party, the physics community had suffered a terrible blow. Fully 25 per cent of academic physicists in Germany, almost all Jewish, found themselves forced from their positions shortly after Hitler came to power. By 1934, one of every five institute directorships in Germany was vacant. The number of physicists who left Germany was large, but the quality was truly astounding. Fascism flushed away the cream of European physics: Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, Michael Polanyi, Theodor von Karman, George de Hevesy, Felix Bloch, James Franck, Lothar Nordheim, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr and Eugene Rabinowitch. Along with some sympathetic non-Jewish scientists such as Erwin Schrodinger and Martin Stobb, these men were to become the driving force behind atomic research in Britain and the USA. Hence, there was a stark contrast between the unemployed and unknown engineers and technicians who were seeking affiliation with the German army, and the relatively affluent and widely known physicists who were leaving Germany in droves. Of the Peenemunde team, only a few members could be considered to have outstanding credentials in science. Among them were von Braun, with a Ph.D. in physics; Ernst Stuhlinger, also with a Ph.D. in physics; and Carl Wagner, a Ph.D. physical chemist. Engineers did not yet enjoy the status of scientists. As Ernst Stuhlinger stated: According to my own observations, during the late twenties and the thirties, the general public held natural scientists in higher regard than philosophers. Engineers were considered with less awe than scientists, but their high value to society was well recognized—more than that of philosophers. Engineer covers a very broad field; engineers were

Donald E. Tarter

$^$>kUJ*

157

#;

Figure 2 The Peenemiinde test site. Source: as Figure 1. never treated all alike. After all, engineers built the fabulous new airplanes and ocean liners, the worldwide telephone networks, and the television systems that began to appear during the mid 1930s, but engineers were also those simple-minded people who were at fault when the electric light did not work; when the car had a defect; when a train was late; or when the elevator got stuck between floors. The scientist, in the conception of the public, presented a far more

158

Peenemunde and Los Alamos homogeneous image than the engineer. There is no doubt that scientists found a far greater degree of respect than engineers in social circles during the 1920s and 1930s.8

Even in the USA, in the 1950s and 1960s, it was not unusual to find lingering traces of status comparisons among certain scientists who sometimes referred to the transplanted Peenemunde Team as 'von Braun's plumbers'. Stuhlinger continues: During the war, many things were different. From the standpoint of those who felt responsible for the conduct of the war, those scientists and engineers who contributed directly or indirectly to the war effort were, of course, of utmost importance. For Hitler and his immediate entourage, things were again different. Hitler did not like scientists (because they failed to rally around his flag), and he let them feel it. During the first years of the war, he denounced them, or at least neglected them, saying that he did not need them. He wanted production experts who could deliver large quantities of ammunition and other war materiel. He needed and wanted engineers who could help with that production. Only toward the end of the war, when things went badly for Germany, Hitler complained bitterly that his scientists had not provided him with the wonder weapons he would have needed to win the war. This complaint, Stuhlinger insists was directed primarily at the scientific community, not the engineering and technical community. Hitler felt that his initial mistrust of scientists had been verified. These 'fuzzy minded' dreamers had failed to deliver on their promises, not only in terms of rocket technology, but in terms of a host of land, air and sea weapons. According to Stuhlinger, considerations of relative status were not a factor within Peenemunde itself. Scientists, engineers and technicians worked together without reference to privilege or prestige. Whatever the general public or the Fuhrer thought of their relative merits, for practical purposes such considerations were unimportant. 9 Neither the community of Jewish physicists nor the community of nonJewish scientists and engineers was particularly active politically. The prevailing attitude of both was, insofar as possible, to ignore the political world and get on with their chosen professions. There were exceptions, most notably among the academic physicists such as Szilard, Bohr and Schrodinger, but the activist attitude was not the norm. Alan D. Beyerchen, in his study of the political posture of the physics community in the Third Reich, refers to this attitude as a form of 'inner migration'.10 Edward Teller expressed much the same early rejection of political involvement by noting that the continuing European political difficulties forced him to be 'enveloped in the feeling that only science is lasting'.11 In Germany, this apolitical posture was even more pronounced for the Peenemunde group. At least three reasons can be identified that may account for this. First, their educational backgrounds had certainly not

Donald E. Tarter

159

prepared or predisposed them to ask political questions or seek out political activities. Second, as they gravitated toward the closed and restricted environments of Kummersdorf and later Peenemiinde, they became progressively more isolated from the intellectual currents at play in the cities and in the universities. Third, and perhaps most important, their lot was improving under the rule of the Third Reich. For the most part, the men of Peenemiinde were plain, practical men, mostly members of the volkisch ideal, the German or Nordic middle class. Their training was in practical, not theoretical matters. They were, in the eyes of the Aryan thinkers, the finest example of native German utilitarianism. Hitler's Aryan ideology even found its way into physics, in a movement led by two Nobel laureates, Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark.12 Perhaps the most prominent statement of the philosophy of Aryan physics can be found in Lenard's Deutsche Physik, published in four volumes during 1936 and 1937.13 Aryan physics proclaimed the applied and experimental over the theoretical. Applied physics was German; theoretical physics was Jewish. Technology was preferred over theory. Non-Jewish German theoretical physicists such as Heisenberg were chastised for bringing a Jewish spirit to German physics, yet statements from the Peenemiinde group tend to confirm the failure of Aryan physics to become an influential part of German physics, even in the darkest days of the push toward ideological conformity. Physicist Ernst Stuhlinger observes, When Lenard's book, Deutsche Physik, was published, it met with headshaking and amazement among colleagues. We young physicists read a few pages out of curiosity, and then put it aside. I remember that Hans Geiger once said to a group of students, 'This is all very strange. One cannot do away with the facts of physics just like that. I'm so surprised that Lenard should have digressed so far; he used to be a very fine experimenter.' Under the circumstances, it was very courageous for Geiger to say that much. We students got the message. I remember that I was very glad to have this assurance and confirmation of my own thoughts. Stuhlinger goes on to confirm Alan Beyerchen's observations that Aryan physics was very ill-defined, and fraught with internal contradictions. The names connected with Aryan physics were Lenard, Stark, Tomaschek and a few hot-headed students, but that was an extremely small minority among the hundreds of physicists who were active at universities at the time. Lenard, Stark and Tomaschek were really ostracized. Physics was taught as usual, with Einstein's relativity, Bohr's atom model, Heisenberg's and Schrodinger's quantum mechanics, Pauli's principle, etc.14 Gerhard Reisig, who was in the field of engineering physics, dismissed Lenard and Stark as being thought of as eccentric old men, opportunists seeking to resurrect their declining careers.15 Georg von Tisenhausen

160

Peenemiinde and Los Alamos

thinks they had virtually no influence in the practical or intellectual activities of engineers. In his words, 'Aryan Physics? I never heard of it'.16 Hence, as the 1930s drew to a close, we see an interesting phenomenon among the community of German scientists and technologists. Large numbers of an old intellectual elite had been dethroned, while a new and emergent elite of physicists and engineers was assuming command. Pressures for ideological conformity were apparent, even to the most politically detached, but an ideological physics was destined to be stillborn. The historical trap was set. The engineers and technicians bound for Peenemiinde were absorbed by new and seemingly unlimited opportunities. The rush of excitement and the promise to be able to pursue the longheld dream of opening the door to the cosmos dimmed their already feeble propensity to question political policy. The Peenemiinde team was lured into a political and moral lethargy that would later be enforced by the powers of a police state. The Jewish physicists who were destined to become a major component of the yet-to-be Los Alamos team were busily directing their efforts toward the rescue of their families and colleagues. What little time was left was spent urging the British and American governments to prepare to develop the ultimate weapon against Fascism: the atomic bomb. Those who were to be at the core of the Los Alamos team were made callous by the human outrages occurring around them. In the process, their concerns for survival surpassed the moral questions raised by a weapon of mass destruction. Social scientist have long held that moral questions can only be understood within the context of their times. Perhaps that is why so many members of these two technical teams answer the probes of modern moral investigators with the response, 'You just don't understand.' THE WAR YEARS The Peenemiinde research facility became fully operational in August 1939. It was not until April 1943 that the Los Alamos atomic development facility was opened. Some comparisons of these two major research and development facilities are useful in understanding the behaviour of those who worked at each. Both facilities were secret and isolated. Peenemiinde had nearly 6,000 operational personnel at its height, the Los Alamos facility had a total workforce of nearly 5,000. Both facilities were heavily dependent upon support facilities in other parts of their respective countries. In Germany, these support facilities were increasingly disabled by Allied attacks as the war progressed. In the United States, the support facilities were secure and increasingly grew more productive. Peenemiinde itself came under direct bombing attack in August 1943. Los Alamos never had such concerns. The mission at Peenemiinde was open-ended and growing. It was assigned to develop, produce and supply an increasing variety of rocket-propelled vehicles for military use. The mission at Los Alamos was singular and finite: produce an atomic weapon. Both

Donald E. Tarter

161

Peenemunde and Los Alamos operated under a military commander: General Walter Dornberger in Germany and General Leslie R. Groves in the United States. Both project directors were civilian scientists—Dr Wernher von Braun and Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer—and both were natives of their respective countries. Peenemunde operated in the totalitarian environment of war-ravaged Germany, whereas Los Alamos operated in the more open and democratic environment of a secure United States. Because collaborative scientific and technological enterprises require a great deal of free discussion and exchange of ideas, both facilities seemed to maintain a good deal of internal freedom with regards to discussion of the best strategies to achieve their stated mission. Open discussion of other applications of technologies, most specifically space travel, were forbidden at Peenemunde, and political discussions were most certainly forbidden, while at Los Alamos the political ramifications of the work were an open but infrequently discussed topic. From the date the Peenemunde facility became fully operational to the date of the first successful A-4 test, 3 October 1942, there was a lapse of three years and two months. From the date that Los Alamos opened to the first successful test of the atomic bomb at the Trinity Site, July 1945, there was a lapse of two years and three months. The time from the first successful A-4 test launch in October 1942 to its first successful military use in September 1944 was one year and eleven months. The less complex V-l weapon was ready some 2 | months earlier and was first used on the battlefield on 13 June 1944. The time from the test of the atomic weapon at the Trinity site in New Mexico on 16 July 1945 to its first use in warfare at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 was a mere three weeks. Credible analysts estimate that the German V-weapon effort cost approximately three billion war-time US dollars. The Manhattan atomic bomb project cost approximately two billion dollars.17 While it is impossible to judge with quantitative certainty, the general conditions under which the two research and development facilities existed, and the missions they were assigned to accomplish, suggest that the task faced by the Peenemunde group was more difficult than that faced at Los Alamos. The industrial, university, and governmental support facilities that were necessary for the completion of the Manhattan Project were enormous, and they were located in a country that was not under direct attack. The administrative and production challenges faced by Peenemunde, being open-ended and constantly subject to disruptions through enemy attack, were far greater than those of Los Alamos. The Peenemunde facility first came under direct attack with the Allied aerial bombardment of 17 August 1943. Although the Royal Air Force specifically intended its mission to kill as many of the expert technical and administrative personnel as possible, in fact only two key figures were killed, Walter Thiel and Erich Walther. Seven hundred and thirty-three other individuals died in the raids, and major damage was done to personnel housing and development works. Following the Peenemunde bombing, systematic raids were launched against supporting assembly plants and hydrogen peroxide production facilities. Peenemunde itself was not

162

Peenemunde and Los Alamos

bombed again for almost a year, and never with the same intensity. This was because intelligence reports indicated that much of the testing and production had been moved elsewhere.18 Helmut Zoike, the engineer at the control panel who actually launched the first human object in space, stated in our interviews that 'The bombings came too late to hinder the A-4 development, this was already done. The raids were, also, too early to interfere with deployment. It really came at a very opportune time from the German perspective.'1 Thus, the actual raid on Peenemunde was not as crippling to the programme as the continuing raids on support facilities. It was, nevertheless, in an increasing atmosphere of desperation that the decision was made to move rocket production underground into the infamous Mittelwerk facility. This site was the location of an old gypsum mine in the Harz Mountains in north-west Germany. The conversion from mine to missile-production facility was a harsh and dirty task, performed under intense pressure, and using forced labour from a mixture of criminals, homosexuals, prisoners of war and political prisoners. Von Braun described the conditions of the labour force at Mittelwerk as 'horrible'; Albert Speer used the term 'barbarous'; and Arthur Rudolph calls the treatment of prisoners 'primitive' and 'awful'. Prisoners were literally worked to death or exposed to such unsanitary conditions that they died of disease. Those who resisted faced summary execution. Bodies were disposed of in a local crematorium. Only 11 months after General Dornberger had proclaimed the A-4 vehicle to have opened the doorway to the heavens, it was being produced in the dungeons of hell.20 The universal question asked by students of the history of technology and ethics comes here. Did the Peenemunde personnel know the composition of the Mittelwerk task force? Clearly, they did. Were they personally terrified, or did they shrug off the barbarities because it was the job that mattered? It has been their position that it was the former: their welfare and the welfare of their families depended on their compliance with the situation as it was. Given the tyranny and the desperation of the Nazi regime, this seems a distinct possibility. Social science has no power to read the minds and motives of human beings. We can describe events, describe the behaviour of individuals in those events, and record their explanations of their behaviour. It is up to the student of history to interpret his or her acceptance of those explanations. Rudolph, and others at Mittelwerk, were frequently reminded that they too could join the forced labour teams if they did not fully cooperate with the SS authorities. Previously, in March 1943, Wernher and Magnus von Braun, Klaus Riedel, Helmut Grottrup and Hannes Luhrsen had been arrested by the Gestapo at Peenemunde and charged with treason for describing the A-4 as a space vehicle rather than a weapon of war. Obviously, this arrest was not over mere semantics, but was designed as a warning to key members of the team that nobody was immune from the force of SS control. The madness of war became complete. German atrocities at home and in occupied territories mushroomed. This was followed by the growing

Donald E. Tarter

163

insensitivity to human suffering on the part of the Allies. In July 1943, the mostly civilian city of Hamburg was fire-bombed, and in one night 45,000 Germans died—most of them old people, women and children.21 Other cities such as Cologne and Dresden were to suffer the same fate. Hostility had escalated into mutual barbarity. With these developments, the world's first generation of space vehicles changed their name from A-weapons, which innocuously meant assembly, to V-weapons, in which the V meant, ominously 'vengeance' (Vergaltung). By comparison, the scene surrounding the isolated mesa that was home to the Los Alamos laboratory appeared almost serene. Here, desperation was nowhere apparent on the landscape, but, rather, was hidden in the emotions and fears of the men who laboured frantically against a possibility that proved eventually to be a phantasm. These scientist worked with a fair certainty that Japan would not be able to develop the atomic bomb, but there was much less certainty about what the German potential might be. In their minds, the real enemy was Germany. Japan was a force to be dealt with after the demise of Hitler was assured. Emotional responses to the Third Reich were unusually intense because of the personal associations that many at Los Alamos had with the Third Reich. Several, including Oppenheimer, had relatives who were suffering and dying under Nazi persecution. Whether they shared personal experience or not—Jewish, non-Jewish, American-born and foreign-born—all at Los Alamos were melded together into a coordinated and determined force to produce the agent of mass destruction that they knew was possible. Motivations had been internalized. These men did not work under the threat of midnight arrest. There was no possibility of being assigned to forced-labour parties. They worked voluntarily for a cause they considered essential. This, too, made the task at Los Alamos easier. There were reservations expressed and even some resignations, but the team as a whole had an esprit de corps that was remarkable. Interestingly, from a behavioural science point of view, the positive esprit de corps at Los Alamos had its counterpart in a sort of 'negative' esprit de corps at Peenemiinde and Mittelwerk. Dr Paul Figge, who was a major figure in A-4 production, described it thus: The bombings hardly affected progress on the A4 program, because our enthusiasm still remained high to accomplish the goal. So actually, the more difficult the conditions became, the more the enthusiasm grew to finish what we had begun. 'Enjoy the war—the peace will be terrible' was the motto.22 Caught up as they were in the enthusiasm for their task, members of the Los Alamos team, as well as their Peenemiinde counterparts, were to come to accept and take pleasure in the pernicious products of their science and technology. No member of the Los Alamos team, during the course of his work, ever had to witness a summary execution. No member ever lost one of his immediate family or a close colleague to enemy bombing. No member of the Los Alamos team ever had to look into the wretchedly pitiful face of a slave labourer dying in the process of being forced to serve a cause he

164

Peenemiinde and Los Alamos

detested. Yet the war culture prevailed. Its all-consuming power instilled into the Los Alamos team a growing callousness that effectively precluded deep moral and ethical reflection on the ultimate consequences of their deeds. Donald A. Strickland, in his study of the atomic scientists' political movement of 1945 and 1946, notes that at Los Alamos there was 'no political arousal before the end of the war, save for a few private conversations'. He calls this an 'arresting' fact, considering that the politically active Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard were frequent visitors to this remote site.2* The drive to achieve the task was too intense for reflection. It was after the grisly weapon was a. fait accompli that the ponderous questions of morality were asked. Fermi moved to Los Alamos in September 1944. Although he was technically an enemy alien until his American citizenship was granted in 1945, he was allowed to become a lab director. Bohr, on the other hand, had incurred the severe displeasure of Winston Churchill over his insistence that the Soviets be informed as to the existence of the weapon and invited to collaborate in a scheme of international control. Bohr had further made unauthorized disclosures about the project to Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter. It has been reported that, for this, Churchill was on the edge of ordering Bohr's arrest.24 Roosevelt adopted Churchill's position and became extremely cool toward Bohr. Despite these political difficulties, Bohr was allowed a major consultancy role at Los Alamos. These two cases seem to demonstrate that the practical matter of building the bomb was placed above political questions about those who were building it. It is not likely that the same lenience would have been extended to the key technical personnel on the Peenemiinde team. While most at Los Alamos simply lost themselves in the task at hand, there were more glaring examples of growing insensitivity to humanitarian considerations. From the time Edward Teller arrived, he set his sights not on the mission at hand, but the even greater destructive potential of the hydrogen bomb, or the 'super', as he almost affectionately called it. Teller eventually refused to work under Hans Bethe on further calculations concerning mere fission weapons, and was given his own small group at the laboratory for investigation of the development of a thermonuclear weapon.25 In addition to this minority thrust toward overkill, there was a disquieting theoretical possibility that the ignition of the fission weapon might just produce enough heat to cause a reaction between deuterium and nitrogen, and thereby set fire to the world's atmosphere. On hearing this, Oppenheimer immediately set Hans Bethe to work checking Teller's initial calculations. Was this, the ultimate catastrophe, really possible? For the first but not the last time in history, human beings had to make a decision as to whether a task at hand was worth the risk—albeit infinitesimal—of ending our collective existence. The logic we used then may give us a hint of the logic we shall have to use again. According to Teller, the matter was firmly laid to rest in 1942, when some of his initial calculations were found to be in error. As Peter Goodchild

Donald E. Tarter

165

notes in his classic study of Oppenheimer, several scientists were, over the next three years, to make the same calculations as Teller; and because Teller's initial calculations had been kept secret, they too came to Oppenheimer with great alarm.26 Calculations were checked and rechecked right up to 1945, shortly before the first test detonation at the Trinity site. Rumours of the potential total human catastrophe had become so widespread among all levels of personnel at Los Alamos that the authorities drew up contigency plans for psychiatrists at the Oak Ridge facility to be flown to Los Alamos should panic ensue. Arthur H. Compton has said that his group calculated a three-in-a-million chance of destroying the world, and that was an acceptable risk. Edward Teller, on the other hand, insists that they were able to dismiss the possibility entirely. At that time such statements of high confidence seemed most reassuring.27 Looking back from the perspective of a generation that has heard similar confident risk assessments before events such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the space shuttle Challenger, those expressions of high confidence sound more hollow. A final observation on the darker face of Los Alamos is now in order. The prevailing pathos of the general culture had affected all who laboured there, but perhaps the extent to which it had changed basic human values is best illustrated by J. Robert Oppenheimer himself. Based on information recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Joseph Rotblat, a physicist who assisted in bomb design, and one of the few who left prior to project completion, relates the following story. In a letter dated 25 May 1943, from Oppenheimer to Enrico Fermi, the issue of using radioactive materials to poison German food supplies was raised. Oppenheimer was asking Fermi whether he could produce enough strontium without letting too many in on the secret. Oppenheimer continued, T think we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men.' Rotblat offers the following observation, T am sure that in peacetime these same scientists would have viewed such a plan as barbaric; they would not have contemplated it even for a moment. Yet, during the war, it was considered quite seriously, and I presume, abandoned only because it was technically unfeasible.'28 Richard Rhodes comments on the same incident as follows, 'There is no better evidence anywhere in the record of the increasing bloody-mindedness of the Second World War than that Robert Oppenheimer, a man who professed at various times in his life to be dedicated to Ahisma (the Sanscrit word that means doing no harm or hurt . . .) could write with enthusiasm of preparations for the mass poisoning of as many as five hundred thousand human beings'.29 AFTER THE WAR Their accomplishment in the Second World War made the members of the Los Alamos and Peenemunde teams into legends. Their actions and statements after the war shaped and moulded the public perceptions of these legends, yet the environments that the two groups faced after the

166

Peenemiinde and Los Alamos

war were radically different. It is those differences that have done much to shape our postwar evaluations of them. Members of the teams at Peenemiinde and Mittelwerk fled their posts as the Allied forces closed their grip around Germany in early 1945. They arranged a rendezvous at a small Austrian village named Reutte. There they surrendered to the American forces, and their journey to the United States began. The code name Project Paperclip was given to this movement. Some 118 individuals comprised the first group of Peenemiinde personnel coming to the USA. Later, several hundred additional individuals, including family and colleagues, joined them. One member of the core group, Helmut Grottrup, decided to remain in what was to become East Germany and work with the Soviet missile programme. A small cadre of other German rocket personnel joined him and were later transferred to the Soviet Union. From the time von Braun and his group surrendered until some years after their arrival at Fort Bliss, Texas, they remained, as Ordway and Sharpe put it, 'prisoners of peace'.30 They were allowed substantial freedom of movement and association, but they were subject to governmental restrictions and objects of continued surveillance by the FBI and other government agencies. Although acceptance by the American public was generally polite, some degree of suspicion and hostility was occasionally apparent. In contrast, the key figures at Los Alamos, their mission completed for the most part, sought to leave weapons work and return to academic environments. They did so with an enhanced prestige that made them instant scientific celebrities wherever they went. They existed in an atmosphere of honour and respect, and they were encouraged to express their views freely on what they had done and what it might mean for our future. There was pressure on the atomic scientists to help us think about the new issues we faced in the nuclear age. Their academic settings made this possible. Their organization into politically active groups and their launch of the influential Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists were reflections of this type of environment. But for those who had come from Peenemiinde, conditions were very different. Between 1945 and 1950, there was little public discussion of their role or their activities. They worked for the US army on the remote missile test ranges of Texas and New Mexico and their actions were shrouded in secrecy. Occasional announcements of V-2 launchings were made, but very little was said about the German team that assisted. The United States government was still too uncertain about the possible public reaction to play up the presence of these men from Peenemiinde. It was not until the early 1950s that the public began to learn of the activities of these men. Shifting as they did from the sparsely populated regions of Texas and New Mexico to the more populated regions surrounding Huntsville, Alabama, they came increasingly to public attention. The focus of publicity was on Dr Wernher von Braun. His charismatic manner and his ability to capture public attention were immediately apparent. He began to publish books such as Across the Space Frontier, Man on the Moon

Donald E. Tarter

167

and Mars Project in the early 1950s. As these works came to public attention, the Cold War intensified. With the advent of the Soviet launch of Sputnik, in October 1957, attention focused on the Germans at Huntsville. The USA increasingly began to look to them to save its international prestige by answering the Soviet challenge with its own successful orbital vehicle. After dismal failures by the navy in its Vanguard programme, von Braun's team at Huntsville was given the task and, on 31 January 1958 the Redstone rocket lifted the USA's first satellite, Explorer I, into orbit. The space age for the United States had now really begun, and Dr Wernher von Braun was its leader. The passions of the late 1950s and 1960s were assertive and not reflective. This was mirrored in von Braun's writings, which became commonplace in the scientific and popular press. These dealt almost entirely with the prospects of new hardware in space and new missions for space vehicles. The more sensitive subject of science and its relation to political and foreign policy issues was almost never discussed. By contrast, the atomic scientists made such issues their central focus. Suspicions concerning the historical role of the Peenemunde team were occasionally expressed in public dialogue in the late 1960s and 1970s, but they were seldom answered by the team itself. Their continued affiliation with the army, and later NASA, dampened any thoughts of embroiling themselves in controversial questions. After the successful Apollo Lunar Program, there was a feeling among several of von Braun's close associates that he was a victim of lingering prejudice against Germans by not being considered for the top job at NASA. His resignation from NASA in 1972 was rumoured to be a result of such prejudices but, in traditional low-key style, he and his colleagues shied away from disccussion of such allegations. When we sought clarification on this point for our project, Stuhlinger, Reisig and von Tiesenhausen all confirmed that they felt prejudice was a factor. But all agreed that it was more than just prejudice. As Stuhlinger pointed out, At the time when the first American satellite was planned, 1955-57, there were people who thought that an American satellite should be built by native Americans, not naturalized immigrants—who even had been enemies less than ten years earlier. That attitude was probably the real reason why the Navy- supported Vanguard, and not the Armysupported Explorer, was America's satellite project for the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year. However, in my talks with large numbers of people who knew von Braun, it is clear that the true reason was neither von Braun's background as a builder of rockets for the German Army, nor a lingering prejudice against Germans in general, but 'very simple human jealousy'. Von Braun's popularity was extraordinary, not only with the public and the news media, but also, with Congress. For some within the high ranks of NASA, this was just too much to bear/ 1 Reisig noted that 'We found out that Americans like success but not too much success'.

168

Peenemiinde and Los Alamos

In a strange historical irony, the leaders of these two great scientific and technical teams met their final demise in much the same way. Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer's career with government came to an end with a denial of his security clearance because of past political associations. However, professional jeolousy was also a key part of this decision. In the Oppenheimer case, the principal source of opposition has been identified as Edward Teller, who, in the words of Peter Goodchild, saw Oppenheimer as 'a man of rival power and opposite persuasion'." Likewise, von Braun's fate was sealed by the same combination of past political associations and professional rivalry. Oppenheimer received strong expressions oi support from his colleagues and stirred much public debate. With von Braun, there was a minimum of public discussion. Right up until 1984, when the US Department of Justice completed its investigation of Dr Arthur Rudolph and he chose to leave the country rather than face trial, the Peenemiinde team avoided public controversy. The news of the Rudolph affair shook the German group. Virtually all had now retired and were free to express themselves on events in Germany. Some did, but most felt that their best interest could be served by remaining silent. Indeed, many long decades of silence about the political winds that had constantly buffeted them throughout their careers had crippled their capacity for public expression about these issues. It was as if by spending a lifetime in difficult circumstances where silence was the seeming solution, when public expression was demanded they had no capacity for it. At this point, they as a group, their ranks now thinned by death and debility, stood wounded and demoralized. Their great goal of leading the moon race, though accomplished, had been followed not by respect but by what they perceived as a sense of public rejection. LOS ALAMOS AND PEENEMUNDE: A REFLECTION Now, nearly 50 years after the last great war, emotions have not yet cooled enough to look dispassionately upon events of that epoch. The exile of Dr Rudolph and some lingering pressures to investigate other members of the Peenemiinde group attest to this fact. It is not the purpose of this article to attempt to assess guilt or innocence of any individual, or to try to place a moral judgement on either team. It is to place them side by side and note the points of similarity and the points of contrast. In so doing, I have sought to show that both were the product of the peculiar and seemingly pathological forces of their time. Nearly 13,000 individuals died as a result of the machines built by the men of Peenemiinde. This death toll was dwarfed by the 340,000 individuals who ultimately died as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the context of those times, such numbers became mere abstractions in a cultural ambience that had come to accept the atrocity of mass annihilation. Today, perhaps, we can look at these figures with some sense of perspective.H We may conclude from this contrasting viewpoint of these two great technological teams that human evaluations are not based on absolute

Donald E. Tarter

169

deeds, but upon the relationship of those deeds to a larger cultural and historical context. The Los Alamos team stands as an honoured and esteemed group to which individuals still proudly claim affiliation. The Peenemunde team, to this day, prefers a low profile and elicits a curious public response. As the remaining members of both teams now live out their final days, they must examine their own consciences, ponder their own products and judge their own role in history. Their experience has taught those of us who would pass judgement that technology in service to war and its weapons brings, to those who prepare such weapons, honour or disgrace based not upon the lethal impact of their work but upon the moral judgements that are defined by the victors and endured by the vanquished. Notes and References 1. Editorial, The Huntsville (Ala.) Times, 27 January 1989. 2. The videotaped interviews are available through the library of the University of Alabama in Huntsville or the library of the United States Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville. The author would like to thank the following individuals for their willingness to participate in this project: Konrad K. Dannenberg, Jim Fagan, Rudolph Hermann, Otto Hirschler, Dieter K. Huzel, Fritz K Mueller, Willibald Prasthofer, Eberhard Rees, Wernher K. Rosinski, Gerhard Reisig, Ernst Stuhlinger, Georg von Tiesenhausen and Helmut Zoike. This is a revised and expanded edition of a paper presented at the 38th Annual Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, Brighton, United Kingdom, October 1987. 3. The nature and history of the early German rocket societies has been detailed in Frank H. Winter, Prelude to the Space Age: The Rocket Societies, 1924-1940 (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983). 4. For a more detailed account of this historical matter, see Frederick I. Ordway, III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979), 16-20. 5. As stated by Dr Georg von Tiesenhausen in personal correspondence to the author, February 1989. 6. As stated by Dr Gerhard Reisig in interview, February 1989. 7. These figure are reported. Alan D. Beyerchen, Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1977), 200. 8. As stated by Dr Ernst Stuhlinger in personal correspondence to the author clarifying points in the video interview, February 1989. 9. Ibid. 10. Beyerchen, op. cit. (7), 201. 11. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1986), 113. 12. Beyerchen, op. cit. (7), ch. 5 and 6. 13. Philipp Lenard, Deutsche Physik,4 vols. (Munich, J.F. Lenmanns, 1936). 14. Stuhlinger, op. cit. (8). 15. Reisig, op. cit. (6). 16. Von Tisenhausen, op. cit. (5). 17. Ordway and Sharpe, op. cit. (4), 242. 18. Ordway and Sharpe, op. cit. (4), 121-4. 19. As stated by Helmut Zoike in the video interviews: 'Our Future in Space:

170

Peenemiinde and Los Alamos

Messages from the Beginning' (Library, University of Alabama in Huntsville and the archives of the United States Space and Rocket Center). 20. This refers to General Dornberger's talk on the evening of 3 October 1942, the date of the first successful A-4 launch, in which he stated that 'We have invaded space with our rocket for the first time.' See Ordway and Sharpe, op. cit. (4), 42. 21. Rhodes, op. cit. (11), 474. 22. Ordway and Sharpe, op. cit. (4), 69. 23. Donald A. Strickland, Scientists in Politics: The Atomic Scientists Movement, 1945-46 (West Lafayette, Ind., Purdue University Press, 1968), 34-5. 24. Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov 's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, (New York, Equinox Books, 1972), 902. 25. Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds (New York, Fromm International, 1985), 105. 26. Goodchild, op. cit. (25), pp. 63-4. 27. Goodchild, op. cit. (25), p. 63. 28. Joseph Rotblat, 'Learning the Bomb Project', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 47, N. 7, 1985: 18. 29. Rhodes, op. cit. (11), p. 57. 30. Ordway and Sharpe, op. cit. (4), 362. 31. Stuhlinger, op. cit. (8). 32. Reisig, op. cit. (6). 33. Goodchild, op. cit. (25), 252: indicates the rivalry between J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller. 34. These figures were obtained from Ordway and Sharpe, op. cit. (4), and Rhodes, op. cit. (11), 734, 740. Various studies produce different numbers, but these seem to be approaching the norm of estimates.

R e f l e c t i o n s

o n

T w o

C o n f e r e n c e s

I C O H T E C and

X I X

M A S T E C H

The theme of the ICOHTEC XIX congress, held in Vienna on 6 September 1991, was 'The development of technology in traffic and transport systems'. Historians would scarcely be historians if they had failed to tease out of this theme more aspects than most would have readily believed it contained: transport concrete and metaphorical, transport wheeled and wheel-less, transports ancient and modern, and so on. A number of speakers addressed, for example, the subject of Flosse and Flbsserei. Long before the European railway networks were built to distribute coal throughout the continent, a different medium of transport (water) carrying a different fuel (wood) performed a similar function. In Anglo-Saxon technological historiography this aspect of pre-industrial Europe passes unnoticed, although the curious may find a few not particularly informative pages on 'the floating of wood' in the English translation of Johann Beckmann's History oj Inventions (Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Erfindungen). The complex technology that was developed to deliver entire tree trunks as well as cord-wood along thousands of miles of artificial and natural watercourses in a coal-innocent Europe is the other side of the coin to John Nef s description of the British economy's transfer to a mineral fuel technology during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Having mentioned Beckmann's technological vignettes of some two hundred years ago, I should note in passing that among his gallery of inventions was an enquiry into the origins of the coach. Erzsebet Szentpetery, of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, on 'The history of the Hungarian coach: legend and reality' carried that history back to a document of 1494 which speaks of a payment 'pro unum currum kochy'—kochy being a phonetic rendering (i.e. 'coachy') of the Hungarian place name Kocsi after which all coaches are named. Predictably, perhaps, the largest group of papers was that dealing with various aspects of railway history. Taken together, these formed an interesting group. One idea frequently expressed was that railway history, in continental Europe at least, needed to be studied on an international basis. Here a contemporary example might be the development in various states of the TGV concept. An interesting paper by Helmut Lachner of 171

172

Reflections on Two Conferences

the Boltzmann Institute, Puchenau, Austria, dealing with the metallurgical problems encountered in the production of rolled rails, pointed up the interdependence of one technology upon another. The laminar structure of rails produced from puddled iron caused serious problems of track maintenance, since the railhead often separated from the body of the rail. The problem was eliminated only when steel rails became available after 1855. Engines, whether to power road or rail vehicles or aircraft, were the subject of a small but important group of papers. Alexandre Herlea of CNAM, Paris, drew attention to Traian Vuia's role in the early history of aviation. Obscure Balkan pioneers tend to be rather a drug on the ICOHTEC market but on this occasion those who came to depreciate the stock stayed to buy it. Vuia's aircraft, powered by a steam engine using carbonic anhydride as fuel, was the first aircraft in the world to make an unassisted take-off (that is, without pushers) under its own power. This was at Sartrouville on 18 March 1906. Barton Hacker's paper (Oregon State University) on 'Project Rover', a programme designed to produce a nuclear-powered rocket engine (for use in space, not for lift-off), had all the makings of a horror story, especially when it came to contingency planning in the event of an 'incident'. As it happened, the first full Rover power test in 1959 was a spectacular success, and when the programme was wound up it had fallen victim not to technical problems but to intradepartmental politicking. It is, however, a point that arose from the paper by Hans Braun of the Universitat der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, on 'The adoption of German and Swiss engine technology in the United States 1880-1939' to which I particularly wish to draw attention. German engines were apparently more expensive than their American counterparts. This was because German engines were literally built to last a lifetime, whereas American products, although working perfectly well, were engineered to lower standards to give a relatively short working life. What Braun had found in the American power plant sector was, he thought, probably true of other sectors also. But what does this mean? It seems to me that what was happening here in the late nineteenth century was a confrontation of two mentalites. On the European side (because surely the British and the French took no less pride than the Germans in the durability of their engineering products) what was involved might be explained as the carrying over into the high technology of that period a psychological attitude formed long before. It more properly belonged to a thrift economy, born of long centuries of enforced parsimony in the use and husbandry of scarce resources. Its ethos was the sinfulness of waste, the outcome of a relatively frail technological capacity to wrest from the natural world the materials that life required. It was only, therefore, through the sustained exercise of craftsmanship at the best levels of empirically derived skill that even modest standards of material wellbeing could be maintained. On the American side, by contrast, there were already in the last decades of the nineteenth century early features of what one can only call an economy of waste. The prodigious natural resources with which the United

Graham HollisteiShort

173

States was endowed helped engender new values and attitudes, as was certainly the case also with its social structure. From wastefulness would proceed in due course all those features of contemporary life with which we are familiar but whose apogee may already be behind us: planned obsolescence, the tailoring of taste, and the accentuation of vogue as adjuncts of a throwaway economy. It is only, of course, retrospectively that the rationality of these new trends eludes us. A vastly developed technological capacity was in itself producing abundance. The very pace of that development rendered machines obsolete and therefore uneconomic to run well before they were worn out. The period of the 1870s and 1880s is arguably the watershed between ancient and modern times. This is also the beginning of the so-called second industrial revolution, and perhaps it is here that one should locate the real caesura dividing technology past from technology present. This is certainly so in the case with which I am most familiar, the history of mining. Yet one has to recognize as well that this economy of waste has been the source of the Western world's unparalleled economic prosperity. Where would we be without credit facilities, although the slogan, iive now, pay later' now has more ominous overtones than the coiners of the phrase can ever have imagined. At the same time, much of society's brightest talent has been channelled into advertising in order to sustain conspicuous consumption. All the same, these features of contemporary Western or Westernized society are now increasingly perceived as damagingly shortsighted. They have produced a countervailing reaction towards conservation and recycling, and all in all a more holistic rationality. It was Rostow who coined the phrase 'the take-off into sustained economic growth'. The metaphor may well describe the entry of economies into the first flush of industrialization. But after every take-off must come a landing, and this seems inevitable if the ecological balance is not to be disturbed beyond recall. And what is recycling but thrift writ large? There is matter for the sociologist here because it must surely be the case that such a profound shift as that from thrift to waste which began over a hundred years ago must have been reflected in every aspect of American cultural life, just as will the dialectical shift away from waste, if green issues and environmental concerns bite deeply into popular consciousness for long enough to effect a permanent change. ICOHTEC conferences have debated over the last 19 meetings important but subordinate themes in the history of technology. The MASTECH International Colloquium, organized by the Research Group in Industrial Economics of the CNRS and the Rhone-Alpes Maison des Sciences de 1'Homme, chose as its target nothing less than the social mastery of technology. The colloquium was held in Lyon from 9 to 12 September 1991. As I have already mentioned in the editorial pages of this volume, I spotted few historians of technology, or even historians, among those attending the colloquium, although whether this was the result of accident or design (on the organizers' part, of course) I am unable to say. If one is going to attempt to brainstorm a major problem which so manifestly intermeshes with every aspect of society, then there is everything to be said for assembling experts from across the disciplinary spectra, and certainly political

174

Reflections on Two Conferences

scientists, economists, sociologists, social anthropologists, philosophers and scientists of every stripe were well represented. So far (perhaps) so good. But much will then depend on how this really quite staggering concourse of expertise is (to put it crudely) processed. There is probably no best way but there are nonetheless obvious pitfalls to avoid, and over-packaging the participants is certainly one of them. The organizers chose to plunge in in medias res. But of course plunging in can be done in a variety of ways, and the way the organizers chose was not obviously well calculated to produce fruitful results. So that the reader has some more concrete idea of how things were managed, let me explain that the procedural steps were as follows: (i) At the stage of invitation to submit a paper one was asked to select from one of four themes, viz.: (a) Is the social mastery of technology desirable and is it possible? (b) The science of techniques; general theories of technology: their multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary character. (c) Interdisciplinary approaches to the technological system: the state of the art. (d) The social mastery of technology: issues, conditions and methods, (ii) Shortly before the conference the organizers sent each contributor copies of those other papers that they judged most nearly adjacent to one's own. In my case it was four (but not the four I would have selected for myself), (iii) Conference time was divided into 10 sessions of 90 minutes each. Since there were nearly 100 papers to be distributed among these sessions, there was obviously going to be virtually no time for any of the session authors to develop his or her ideas. In fact, even this little was reduced nearly to vanishing point. Session planning was as follows: a rapporteur would speak for 30-40 minutes and present an overview of the eight or nine papers for which he was responsible. The processing, however, went even further than this. Each speaker was then given three minutes to respond to three questions prepared by the rapporteur (the same three questions were given to everyone). Theoretically, 30 minutes then remained for the audience to participate, either by way of reflections on what they had heard, or with further questions. It rarely worked out like that in practice. The pace was relentless. What was worse was that rapporteurial garrulity and relaxed chairmanship sometimes caused sessions to overrun, and thus cut into time scheduled for those following. Arrangements like these scarcely seem calculated to produce fruitful exchange or enlightenment, and I would suggest that conference organizers dealing with large numbers should take advice from sociologists and psychologists as to the most suitable methods to adopt so as to permit maximum interchange. Probably it was in the interstices of the programme that a good proportion of what was valuable took place. I should say, in fairness also, that even at the breakneck pace at which the official programme was pushed along it was a rewarding experience. The

Graham Hollister-Short

175

waters were not only promising but also full of fish. I should be less flippant. Looking through the pages of notes I took at the time I am simply staggered at the riches that were on offer. At the same time, however, one had a poignant sense of what it must be like to be an ortolan. But I come back to my first point in order to address again the problem of conference format. The social mastery of technology has arisen as a serious issue of our times for reasons which scarcely need rehearsing. It seems blindingly obvious to me, as a historian of technology, that the business of the conference itself would have been brought into much sharper focus had a discussion paper attempting to put our contemporary situation into historical perspective been distributed in advance of the meeting. There seems no need for historians of technology to be reticent on the point: it is obvious that if they are unable to explain how we have got to where we are now, then certainly others can have even less idea. If some preliminary overview of our current position, and how we have reached it, had been attempted, this would have made clear, I think, that to talk of social mastery in our present posture really amounts to shutting the stable door . . . This is not to say, of course, that debate is otiose and that nothing is to be done. It merely injects some realism into the debate and suggests that to talk of social mastery is altogether too grandiose a notion. What we may be able to attempt is social mitigation, a multi-disciplinary attempt to show how we can slow down what (to our contemporary perceptions) appear to be unduly damaging or, in the present state of technology, unsustainable procedures. The organizers of MASTECH '91 are planning already to create a communications network to facilitate further exchanges. Preliminary moves are also afoot to arrange further meetings in the future. Perhaps MASTECH II will be held in Kiev in 1994 or 1995. If these plans become a reality, one will by then be enjoying the excitements of a three-ring circus: SHOT going international for the first time in 1992, ICOHTEC already close to celebrating its 21st meeting, and MASTECH. I do not even mention the prospect of a EURO-SHOT evolving. The degree of overlap between the three is slight. The Balkanization of the history of technology is well under way. But does it matter? If it does, is Balkanization, at this stage anyway, not a positive process? It has negative aspects as well in the sense that it impedes the formation of the invisible college that is badly needed in default of adequate institutional structures. It is positive, however, in that the protean energies contained within technology, which any historian of technology with the least spark of imagination must be constantly aware of, are at length attracting something like the degree of attention that may in the end bring the study in from the outer margins of the intellectual enterprise. If the history of technology ends by becoming an important discipline, it will have taken a long time, but at least, looking back, one will be able to see that these were essential steps to that end. Graham Hollister-Short

A n n o u n c e m e n t : T h e

G e o r g i u s

A g r i c o l a

C o m m e m o r a t i o n s ,

1 9 9 4

On 24 March 1494, the noted German humanist Georgius Agricola was born in Glachau, Saxony. It is intended to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Agricola's birth in the eyes of the German and international public in 1994, and to celebrate his outstanding achievements and those of his era, the sixteenth century. Agricola is remembered internationally by the mining industry, not least because of his famous book De re metallica UbriXII (Mining, twelve volumes), published in 1556, which was highly valued in mining countries all over the world for several centuries as the primary encyclopaedia of mining and metallurgical knowledge. With this book, Agricola laid the foundation for his reputation as the true founder of the sciences of mining and metallurgy. Agricola's activity was very widespread and his influence can still be found today in many scientific fields. Not only was he a physician, pharmacist, scientist in the fields of mining, metallurgy and geology, an economist, educationalist and philosopher, he also deserves to be remembered as a historian, diplomat and mayor in the service of Saxony. Agricola worked mainly in Chemnitz, in the silver mining industry of the Erzgebirge mountains of Saxony and Bohemia, and in Venice, Leipzig and Zwickau (Saxony). The three cities of Chemnitz (in which Agricola spent 24 years of his working life), Freiberg (Saxony's mining capital, with the oldest mining academy in the world) and the Saxon capital, Dresden, feel especially part of the Agricola tradition. It is for this reason that the initiative to form the Committee for the 'Georgius-AgricolaCommemorations 1994', which has already started work, came from these cities. We would like to give a brief account of the aims of this committee and to appeal for your cooperation and help, for example as a future member of one of the four working groups, as an author or lecturer, as a sponsor and organizer of press work and the publication of books, magazines and newspapers, as someone who can lend exhibits for Agricola exhibitions, or as a sponsor of the Jubilee activities. AIM OF THE AGRICOLA COMMEMORATIONS The Agricola Jubilee is felt to be of national and international significance, such that it should be publicized by the German government at federal level and by UNESCO. The Agricola year, 1994, should be used 176

Announcement: The Georgius Agricola Commemorations, 1994 to commemorate Agricola himself, his period (the sixteenth century, or the Renaissance) and the traces left by his widespread activity, and to bring them to the attention of the German and international public. The Committee intends to portray Agricola as one of the great personalities of the Renaissance and as one of the most significant German humanists, and to publicize his correspondingly great achievements so that these are acknowledged as significant contributions to the development of the natural, mining and metallurgical sciences and several other fields. FORM OF ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMITTEE The Committee's office is located in Chemnitz, Agricola's main place of work. A working committee with members from the Chemnitz, Freiberg and Dresden areas has already formed, with the following working groups: • Ceremony (Federal Republic of Germany, and the Land of Saxony • Central Exhibition (Schlossbergmuseum Chemnitz) • Conferences • Excursions Readers are invited to contact the office of the Organizing Committee if they would like to take part in one of the working groups mentioned above, giving their ideas and the extent to which they would like to participate. For queries of a general nature and concerning the working groups on the Exhibition, Ceremony and Conferences, please contact: Stadtverwaltung Chemnitz AGRICOLA-Ehrungen 1994 Sekretariat des Vorbereitungskomitees Postfach 847 O-9010 Chemnitz, Germany Please direct all queries relating to Mining, Metallurgy and Excursions to: Bergakademie Freiberg AGRICOLA-Ehrungen 1994 Komitee Montanwesen Postfach 47 O-9200 Freiberg, Germany It should be emphasized that the Committee wants the activities arranged for the Jubilee to be as broad, both thematically and territorially, as possible. It is intended to follow Agricola's influence not only in the regions where he worked, but also to trace the areas in which Agricola and his era have had practical effects that are still with us today. Dr Gert Richter Secretary, Organizing Committee Chemnitz, 2 March 1992

Dr Herbert Pforr Secretary, Mining Committee Freiberg, 3 March 1992

177

Contents of Former

Volumes

FIRST ANNUAL VOLUME, 1976 D.S.L. CARDWELL and RICHARD L. HILLS, Thermodynamics and Practical Engineering in the Nineteenth Century. JACQUES HEYMAN, Couplet's Engineering Memoirs, 1726-33. NORMAN A.F. SMITH, Attitudes to Roman Engineering and the Question of the Inverted Siphon. R.A. BUCHANAN, The Promethean Revolution: Science, Technology and History. M. DAUMAS, The History of Technology: Its Aims, its Limits, its Methods. KEITH DAWSON, Electromagnetic Telegraphy: Early Ideas, Proposals and Apparatus. MARIE BOAS HALL, The Strange Case of Aluminium. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, Leads and Lags in Late Seventeenth-century English Technology. SECOND ANNUAL VOLUME, 1977 EMORY L. KEMP, Samuel Brown: Britain's Pioneer Suspension Bridge Builder. DONALD R. HILL, The Banu Musa and their 'Book of Ingenious Devices'. J.F. CAVE, A Note on Roman Metal Turning. J.A. GARCIA-DIEGO, Old Dams in Extremadura. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, The Vocabulary of Technology. RICHARD L. HILLS, Museums, History and Working Machines. DENIS SMITH, The Use of Models in Nineteenth-century British Suspension Bridge Design. NORMAN A.F. SMITH, The Origins of the Water Turbine and the Invention of its Name. THIRD ANNUAL VOLUME, 1978 JACK SIMMONS, Technology in History. R.A. BUCHANAN, History of Technology in the Teaching of History. P.B. MORICE, The Role of History in a Civil Engineering Course. JOYCE BROWN, Sir Proby Cautley (1802-71), a Pioneer of Indian Irrigation. A. RUPERT HALL, On Knowing, and Knowing How to . . . FRANK D. PRAGER, Vitruvius and the Elevated Aqueducts. 178

Contents of Former Volumes

179

JAMES A. RUFFNER, Two Problems in Fuel Technology. JOHN C. SCOTT, The Historical Development of Theories of Wave-Calming using Oil. FOURTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1979

P.S. BARDELL, Some Aspects of the History of Journal Bearings and their Lubrication. K.R. FAIRCLOUGH, The Waltham Pound Lock. ROBERT FRIEDEL, Parkesine and Celluloid: The Failure and Success of the First Modern Plastic. J.G. JAMES, Iron Arched Bridge Designs in Pre-Revolutionary France. L.J. JONES, The Early History of Mechanical Harvesting. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, The Sector and Chain: An Historical Enquiry. FIFTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1980 THOMAS P. HUGHES, The Order of the Technological World. THORKILD SCHIOLER, Bronze Roman Pistol Pumps. STILLMAN DRAKE, Measurement in Galileo's Science. LJ. JONES, John Ridley and the South Australian 'Stripper'. D.G. TUCKER, Emile Lamm's Self-Propelled Tramcars 1870-72 and the Evolution of the Fireless Locomotive. S.R. BROADBRIDGE, British Industry in 1767: Extracts from a Travel Journal of Joseph Banks. RICHARD L. HILLS, Water, Stampers and Paper in the Auvergne: A Medieval Tradition. SIXTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1981 MARJORIE NICE BOYER, Moving Ahead with the Fifteenth Century: New Ideas in Bridge Construction at Orleans. ANDRE WEGENER SLEESWYK, Hand-Cranking in Egyptian Antiquity. CHARLES SUSSKIND, The Invention of Computed Tomography. RICHARD L. HILLS, Early Locomotive Building near Manchester. L.L. COATSWORTH, B.I. KRONBERG and M.C. USSELMAN, The Artefact as Historical Document. Part 1: The Fine Platinum Wires of W.H. Wollaston. A. RUPERT HALL and N.C. RUSSELL, What about the Fulling-Mill? MICHAEL FORES, Technik: Or Mumford Reconsidered.

180

Contents of Former Volumes

SEVENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1982 MARJORIE NICE BOYER, Water Mills: A Problem for the Bridges and Boats of Medieval France. Wm. DAVID COMPTON, Internal-combustion Engines and their Fuel: A Preliminary Exploration of Technological Interplay. F.T. EVANS, Wood since the Industrial Revolution: A Strategic Retreat? MICHAEL FORES, Francis Bacon and the Myth of Industrial Science. D.G. TUCKER, The Purpose and Principles of Research in an Electrical Manufacturing Business of Moderate Size, as Stated by J.A. Crabtree in 1930. ROMAN MALINOWSKI, Ancient Mortars and Concretes: Aspects of their Durability. V. FOLEY, W. SOEDEL, J. TURNER and B. WILHOITE, The Origin of Gearing. EIGHTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1983 W. ADDIS, A New Approach to the History of Structural Engineering. HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN, The National Association of German-American Technologists and Technology Transfer between Germany and the United States, 1884-1930. W. BERNARD CARLSON, Edison in the Mountains: The Magnetic Ore Separation Venture, 1879-1900. THOMAS DAY, Samuel Brown: His Influence on the Design of Suspension Bridges. ROBERT H.J. SELLIN, The Large Roman Water Mill at Barbegal (France). G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, The Use of Gunpowder in Mining: A Document of 1627. MIKULAS TEICH, Fermentation Theory and Practice: The Beginnings of Pure Yeast Cultivation and English Brewing, 1883-1913. GEORGE TIMMONS, Education and Technology in the Industrial Revolution. NINTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1984 P.S. BARDELL, The Origins of Alloy Steels. MARJORIE NICE BOYER, A Fourteenth-Century Pile Driver: the Engin of the Bridge at Orleans. MICHAEL DUFFY, Rail Stresses, Impact Loading and Steam Locomotive Design. JOSE A. GARCIA-DIEGO, Giovanni Francesco Sitoni, an Hydraulic Engineer of the Renaissance. DONALD R. HILL, Information on Engineering in the Works of Muslim Geographers.

Contents of Former Volumes

181

ROBERT J. SPAIN, The Second-Century Romano-British Watermill at Ickham, Kent. IAN R. WINSHIP, The Gas Engine in British Agriculture, c. 1870-1925. TENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1985 D de COGAN, Dr E.O.W. Whitehouse and the 1858 trans-Atlantic Cable. A. RUPERT HALL, Isaac Newton's Steamer. G.J. HOLLISTER-SHORT, Gunpowder and Mining in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe. C.J. JACKSON, Evidence of American Influence on the Designs of NineteenthCentury Drilling Tools, Obtained from British Patent Specifications and Other Sources. JACQUES PAYEN, Beau de Rochas Devant la Technique et I'lndustrie de son Temps. ORJAN WIKANDER, Archaeological Evidence for Early Water-Mills—An Interim Report. A.P. WOOLRICH, John Farey and the Smeaton Manuscripts. MIKE CHRIMES, Bridges: A Bibliography of Articles Published in Scientific Periodicals 1800-1829. ELEVENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1986 HANS-JOACHIM BRAUN, Technology Transfer under Conditions of War: German Aero-technology in Japan during the Second World War. VERNARD FOLEY, with SUSAN CANGANELLI, JOHN CONNOR and DAVID RADER, Using the Early Slide-rest. J.G. JAMES, The Origins and Worldwide Spread of Warren-truss Bridges in the Mid-nineteenth Century. Part 1: Origins and Early Examples in the UK. ANDREW NAHUM, The Rotary Aero Engine. DALE H. PORTER, An Historian's Judgments about the Thames Embankment. JOHN H. WHITE, More Than an Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Beginnings of Steel Freight Cars. IAN R. WINSHIP, The Acceptance of Continuous Brakes on Railways in Britain. TWELFTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1990 KENNETH C. BARRACLOUGH, Swedish Iron and Sheffield Steel. IAN INKSTER, Intellectual Dependency and the Sources of Invention: Britain and the Australian Technological System in the Nineteenth Century. M.T. WRIGHT, Rational and Irrational Reconstruction: The London SundialCalendar and the Early History of Geared Mechanisms.

182

Contents of Former Volumes

J.V. FIELD, Some Roman and Byzantine Portable Sundials and the London Sundial-Calendar. R.T. McCUTCHEON, Modern Construction Technology in Low-income Housing Policy: The Case of Industrialized Building and the Manifold Links between Technology and Society in an Established Industry. Book Review by Frank A.J.L. James: Andre Guillerme, Le Temps de VEau: La Cite, I'Eau et les Techniques: Nord de la France Fin IIIe-Debut XIXe Siecle. Eng. trans.: The Age of Water: The Urban Environment in the North of France, AD 300-1800. THIRTEENTH ANNUAL VOLUME, 1991 BRUCE J. HUNT, Michael Faraday, Cable Telegraphy and the Rise of Field Theory. IWAN R. MORUS, Telegraphy and the Technology of Display: The Electricians and Samuel Morse. BRIAN GEE, Electromagnetic Engines: Pre-technology and Development Immediately Following Faraday's Discovery of Electromagnetic Rotations. GRAEME GOODAY, Teaching Telegraphy and Electrotechnics in the Physics Laboratory: William Ayrton and the Creation of an Academic Space for Electrical Engineering in Britain 1873-1884. W.J. READER, 'The Engineer Must Be a Scientific Man': The Origins of the Society of Telegraph Engineers. C.A. HEMPSTEAD, An Appraisal of Fleeming Jenkin (1833-1885), Electrical Engineer. A.C. LYNCH, The Sources for a Biography of Oliver Heaviside. W. BERNARD CARLSON, Building Thomas Edison's Laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey: A Case Study in Using Craft Knowledge for Technological Invention, 1886-1888. BRIAN BOWERS, Edison and Early Electrical Engineering in Britain. R.W. BURNS, The Contributions of the Bell Telephone Laboratories to the Early Development of Television. JONATHAN COOPERSMITH, Technology Transfer in Russian Electrification, 1870-1925. G. HOLLISTER-SHORT, ICOHTEC XVIII Conference Report: A Personal View.