On Writing the History of Technology

On Writing the History of TechnologyNetworks of Power by Thomas P. HughesReview by: David E. NyeScience, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Spring, 1984), pp. 78-82Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/689547 .

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Book Review On Writing the History of Technology

David E. Nye

Review of Networks of Power, by Thomas P. Hughes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press, 1983.

The present world is unthinkable without electrification, yet the historical literature on this subject has remained sparse and largely technical. The lack was already an embarrassment in 1941, when Marc Bloch noted in The Historian's Craft:

In reproaching 'traditional history,' Paul Valery has cited 'the conquest of the earth' by electricity, as an example of one of those 'notable phenomena' which it neglects, despite the fact that they have 'more meaning and greater possibilities of shaping our immediate future than all the political events combined.' . . . For this, he deserves our heartiest applause. It is unfortunate, but all too true that this vast subject has still received no serious treatment.

As Bloch went on to note, however, Val6ry erred in thinking "that this phenomenon must of ne- cessity elude the historian" because "there are no documents which refer to it specifically."' In- deed, since the 1940s, an entire field has developed which deals with technology and culture, and the chief problem of this discipline has not been finding materials but rather deciding what questions to ask.

From the beginning, the discipline has been uneasy with deterministic conceptions of technology as a governing principle of history, yet equally uneasy with attempts to reduce technological changes to secondary effects of economic

or social policy. Was the spread of electrification a technical expansion with an internal dynamic, or was it an expression of nontechnical factors and choices? In Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930, Thomas P. Hughes confronts these questions through a comparative analysis of the United States, Germany, and Eng- land. Hughes has been a signal influence in the development of the history of technology as a field, and this book synthesizes the work of his many colleagues and associates in this enterprise. It is at once an examination of the announced subject and a meditation upon the formation and development of technological systems.

Hughes offers a far more sophisticated perspective than the first authors who treated the history of electrification. Where John Hammond wrote from the perspective of a single corporation in Men and Volts, where Arthur A. Bright and Paul Keating charted the progress of electrical lighting as a series of successful inventions, where Harold Passer examined the formation of an American duopoly in electrical manufacturing at the end of the last century, where a host of authors studied individual lives in the biographies of founders such as Thomas Edison or Elihu Thom- son, Hughes has struggled to create a unified ver- sion of all these elements.2 He has written not the story of a useful device, a company, a series of mergers, or an inventor, but rather that of an entire technological system. He is the first to write from the position of those system builders who created the utility industry, a perspective that leads him to shift attention from invention to the implementation and diffusion of technology. Hughes announced this project in an article published in 1979 on "system builders" such as Samuel Insull, who developed the nascent electrical system

David Nye is Associate Professor of American Studies and History, Odense University, Denmark.

? 1984 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Published by John Wiley & Sons Science, Technology, & Human Values, Volume 9, Issue 2, pp. 78-82 (Spring 1984) CCC 0162-2439/84/020078-05$04.00



Nye: Book Review 79

that Edison had created into an enormous utility corporation. Insull led many others toward rapid expansion through development of differential rates which maximized the load carried by his utility, and permitted economies of scale.3 But Networks of Power, despite the possible ambiguity of its title, does not emphasize those powerful individuals who are dwarfed by the technological system itself.

In the earlier literature cited, historical actors are easily identifiable: companies, managers, inventors, investors, and engineers who make things happen. In Networks of Power, the agents are less clearly identifiable as Hughes studies the complex interaction between public policy, technical in- novation, economic cycles, and regional geography. The actor which emerges from these intertwining factors is the sociotechnical power system, a vast assemblage that has its own momentum, its own direction and goals, and its own "style." Even a cataclysm such as World War I could only deflect this system temporarily from the paths of development most congenial to it in each cultural setting.

In essence, Hughes demonstrates first that the electrical system was not and is not the same everywhere-that cultural factors are important. He then argues that regional variation only reg- isters the system's adaptation to different circum- stances and does not show the primacy of nontechnological factors. At each time and place, the mix of variables changed. In London, between 1880 and 1910, for example, political problems prevented anything resembling a uniform and rational development of electrification, despite the early merger of the Swan and Edison interests. Even as late as 1913, London had little capacity compared with other large cities, and what it did have was divided into "forty-nine different types of supply systems, ten different frequencies, thirty- two voltage levels for transmission and twenty- four for distribution, and about seventy different methods of charging and pricing" (p. 227). By contrast, Chicago politicians pliably gave way before Insull and other commercial interests: "The electric supply industry in Chicago did not face the challenges posed by the forces of parochialism in London or the strong-willed, rational government of Berlin" (p. 201).

At other times technical problems, not politics, prevented system growth. To generalize about these difficulties, Hughes adopts the term "reverse salient" from military theory. He argues that: "This

concept is preferable to 'disequilibrium' or 'bot- tleneck,' which some economists and economic historians use, because the concept of a reverse salient refers to an extremely complex situation in which individuals, groups, material forces, historical influences, and other factors have idio- syncratic, causal roles, and in which accidents as well as trends play a part." By contrast, he notes, "'Disequilibrium' suggests a relatively straight- forward abstraction of physical science, and 'bot- tleneck' is geometrically too symmetrical" (p. 79). As a prime example of a "reverse salient," Hughes offers the transmission problems that power companies had with direct current in the 1880s. Al- though the entire system of power generation and use had been developed rather quickly, direct current could not be transmitted over long distances, and the first companies had to create many small, urban powerstations rather than focus on efficient large installations. To reach less densely populated regions at all, they had to overcome this transmission problem. (Because Hughes is a trained engineer as well as a historian, he can explain deftly the technical solutions offered, from new wiring systems to storage battery substations, to the successful development of alternating current transformers, which permitted AC high-voltage transmission.) A few years later, however, the AC system likewise developed a "reverse salient"- the need for a practical motor, a problem attacked simultaneously by inventors in many countries. Indeed, Hughes proposes that the notion of "reverse salient" accounts for why certain problems are solved by many persons at virtually the same time: Each perceives that the whole march of a system has been delayed at one resistant point.

The solution of political or technological problems, however, does not ensure the creation of a particular kind of electrical network. Hughes takes pains to show that geography also plays a determining role. One entire chapter deals with Cal- ifornia's pioneering development, between 1885 and 1910, of turbine-powered, hydroelectric systems to supply distant markets. In this case, the absence of other energy sources in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the need for irrigation in the San Joaquin valley, and the existence of rushing streams in the distant Sierra Nevada mountains combined to make hydroelectric power preferable to the already perfected coal central stations used in the East and Middle West. Thus, Hughes uses the comparative method both within the United States and among his three major countries to



80 Science, Technology, & Human Values-Spring 1984

demonstrate how electrical systems vary as forms of technology.

Given this variation, however, he confronts a serious problem. He has rejected technical de- velopments, corporate growth, and individual bi- ography as possible underlying "plots" for the book, in order to emphasize the developing electrical system as a whole. But is there really one system? If a great deal of regional and international variation exists, technology would appear to be- come a dependent variable. Each nation could choose between alternating or direct current, cen- tralized or decentralized systems, public or private ownership, fixed or variable rate structures, pri- marily commerical or residential use, local or na- tional regulation, hydroelectric or coal-burning systems. Some of these choices would seem to be dictated by an economic logic, but in practice other factors may defeat that rational calculus. Given the many potential kinds of electrical systems, the idea that at bottom there is an underlying commonality between them that explains their development might seem rather tenuous. Not surprisingly, Networks of Power is organized to prevent such a conclusion, by emphasizing in its arrangement of chapters a model of system development rather than one of cultural variation. Hughes' work falls into three parts: description and illustration of the model of system development (Chapters I-VI); regional variations among the three nations examined (VII-X); and a comparison of these three systems as they evolved, reacted to World War I, and solidified their regional styles in the 1920s (XI-XIV).

The larger purpose of this chapter organization is to provide a framework for "the history of all large scale technology ... studied effectively as a history of systems." The electrification of these three nations is meant to show how systems (1) begin with invention and development at one site (here, Edison's interests), (2) transfer and expand their technology (e.g., to London and Berlin), (3) grow through the defeat of "reverse salients," (4) develop momentum as systems with "inertia of directed motion," moving toward certain goals, and (5) mature with "the rise of financiers and consulting engineers to preeminence as problem solvers." In this last phase, "major reverse salients became essentially problems of funding extremely large regional systems and clearing political and legislative ground" (pp. 13-17). The organization of Hughes' work around such a model illustrates the growth of the history of technology, from narrow case studies and too great an emphasis on

technical processes, to a more holistic vision of technology as part of an ensemble of cultural factors. His use of a host of previous, narrow studies as part of a larger vision is a considerable scholarly achievement. Certainly Hughes is correct in emphasizing "sociotechnical systems rather than technological systems" as the proper terminology. And surely he is also right to conclude that theseee sociotechnical systems had high momentum, force, and direction because of their institutionally structured nature, heavy capital investments, supportive legislation, and the commitment of know-how and experience. This momentum was a conservative force reacting against abrupt changes in the line of development.. .. the system builders' efforts were usually directed to increasing the size of the systems incrementally, but not changing their direction to fulfill radically different economic or social goals" (p. 465).

Yet, when Hughes' work is extended to other economic systems such as Mexico, India, or Russia, will this model prove particularly apt? Is it ap- plicable only to nations where a new system first develops, and not to those which receive it later? Politics, which plays a minor role in Hughes' model until the third stage and thereafter, seems inti- mately involved in technology transfer to Third World countries. Even within the nations he does examine, can the model be used to understand other systems? Today, most technical development is highly politicized from its very inception, as may be seen in the cases of atomic power, the American SST aircraft (versus the Concorde), and earth-orbiting satellites. In these cases, the impetus for development and much of the funding came from government. The case of electrification would seem characteristic of a previous era when private enterprise acted more independently of government.

In short, the model seems to apply best to en- terprises such as railroads that developed, along with electrification, in the late 19th and early 20th century in leading capitalistic countries (al- though even railroads received land grants, government investment, etc.). The larger our social and historical vision, the less technology per se appears to be central in comparison to a host of economic, social, and political factors. Hughes' work can thus be used to question the autonomy of technology as an independent force or as an isolated object of study.

This conclusion is all the more remarkable when we compare utilities with most other technological systems, and realize that they ought to be custom-



Nye: Book Review 81

made for just such an argument as Hughes develops. First, utilities are capital-intensive, em- ploying very few blue-collar workers. Their history scarcely confronts any of the questions asked by labor historians, and their development was not contingent upon production nearly so much as upon consumption. Second, they produce but one product, which they sell directly to consumers, with no middlemen. Third, because of the com- plexity and cost of their distribution systems, utilities do not compete within geographical areas, but hold monopolies on service to particular regions. Few industries are more likely to search for means of standardization. That the electrical systems of England, Germany, and the United States nevertheless offer great diversity suggests, finally, not a single model of system development, even within the restricted area of electrification, but the primacy of nontechnological factors. In more labor-intensive industries with more product lines and more competition, would we find similar systems from one nation to the next?

It seems likely that in retrospect Hughes' book will be a landmark in the movement away from emphasis on technology per se toward histories of cultural systems, in which technologies are vital but hardly determining elements. His conceptions of reverse salients, of systemic momentum, and of regional style should all prove heuristic. The individual chapters on the deploy- ment of electrical systems in particular localities will no doubt prove to be models of the presen- tation and synthesis of diverse materials. But it seems unlikely that his overarching design will provide an exemplary model for the histories of other large-scale systems. Rather, the book's ultimate value can be reconceived: It could underpin another kind of the history of technology that emphasizes energy systems as foundations upon which other systems are built.

If the unit of analysis is to be the sociotechnical system rather than individual inventors, sequences of inventions, entrepreneurial activity, or the large corporation, then perhaps technology and culture cease to be opposing terms. Oppositions exist instead between rival systems, separated from one another either spatially or temporally. And within each cultural system exists a hierarchy of sociotechnical systems, with the form of energy production as a crucial underlying pattern. For example, in America during the 1830s a sociotechnical system based on water power implied certain possible social relationships, such as those at Lowell or those somewhat different relationships

at Rockdale. Steam engines implied other sets of possibilities, but neither power system caused social relations. Rather, each created a certain range of possibilities. Electrification made possible en- tirely new forms of cultural organization, including the streetcar suburb, the streamlined factory whose facilities could be remodeled easily after the in- troduction of the electric motor, the skyscraper serviced by electric elevators, lights, and air con- ditioning, and the servantless, electrified home. As this sketch suggests, would it not be more accurate to consider electrification as a crucially important sociotechnical system, rather than treat it, as Hughes does, as a model for a wide range of other systems?

What should be the direction of studies in technology and culture? If we follow the line Hughes' book suggests, the study of systems will be par- amount. While these systems do change in re- sponse to cultural pressures, ultimately they ex- ercise what he terms a "soft determinism." This world of systems that Hughes offers us does not seem to express any larger order than that of the expansion of technical possibilities. If we read Networks of Power not as the story of an exemplary system but as the story of cultural choices that electrification made possible, then it leads at once to a more variegated social landscape whose organization is transformed periodically by the ap- pearance of new energy systems.

However we choose to read Hughes' book, it provides a benchmark for future comparative studies. And it leaves us with these questions: Will these studies concern the development of technical systems as they adapt to new environ- ments, or will they focus upon electrification as a crucial element in the transformation of the workplace, the home, and the forms of urban life during the half century between 1880 and 1930? Will the field opt for a discourse whose terms are laid down implicitly by the system builders themselves, with their dual concern for technics and economics? Or will it include the worker and the consumer in determining the ultimate exten- sions of electricity's "conquest of the earth"?

Notes

1. Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (New York: Ran- dom House, 1953), p. 66.

2. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrifi-



82 Science, Technology, & Human Values-Spring 1984

cation in Western Society: 1880-1930 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). For Hughes' predecessors in this effort, see John W. Hammond, Men and Volts (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott, 1941); Arthur A. Bright, The Electric Lamp Industry: Technological Change and Economic Development from 1800 to 1947 (New York: Mac- millan Company, 1949); Paul W. Keating, Lamps

for a Brighter America (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1954); Harold C. Passer, The Elec- trical Manufacturers, 1875-1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953); and Robert Conot, A Streak of Luck (New York: Seaview Books, 1979).

3. Thomas P. Hughes, "The Electrification of America: The System Builders," Technology and Culture, Volume 20, Number 1 (January 1979): 124-161.



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On Writing the History of Technology