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Show Courses By Newspapers TECHNOLOGY IX Science and Technology EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the ninth in a series of articles exploring Connections: Technology and Change. In this article, historian Robert P. Multhauf of the Smithsonian Institution explains how science and technology, once quite distinct, are becoming increasingly interdependent and practically indistinguishable. This series was written for Courses by Newspaper, a program developed by University Extension, University of California, San Diego, and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. ConA related 10 - part television series, nections, co - produced by the BBC and Time - Life Films, is being shown over PBS stations concurrently with this newspaper series. Check your local television listings for viewing times. 15 By ROBERT P. MULTHAUF Although scientists and technologists still think of the former themselves as doing different things the latter natures satisfying mysteries, exploring human needs they have come to recognize their increasing interdependence, and many people today have trouble distinguishing between them. To the 19th century American, the puttering of pure scientists seemed in ridiculous contrast to the ever more fruitful business of inventors. A century before, Benjamin Franklin, a distinguished practitioner of both science and technology, favored science, but he was remembered mainly as a political hero. Joseph Henry, probably the most important American scientist of the mid - 19th century, also practiced both, and clearly preferred science. He deplored the American mania for novelty and, as first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, convinced Congress to establish in the Smithsonian the nations first scientific research laboratory. But science was dull stuff compared to the inventors apparently inexhaustible bag of tricks. Before 1850 the inventor turned out such wonders as the cotton gin, patent leather, the harvesting machine, clipper ship, Colt revolver, and mass -- produced clocks and guns. A Genius for Invention Europeans began to suspect that Americans had a peculiar genius for invention. By the 1880s they were convinced of it by the inventions of Thomas Alva Edison, who was entertained as an equal by the greatest scientist of France, Louis Pasteur. Edison called himself an inventor, and was as emphatic about it as Henry had been in calling himself a scientist. Like Franklin before them, Henry and Edison worked in electricity, a field that changed in Franklin's youth from a collection of lore about sparks and attractions into a new science. But even while electricity remained largely a mystery, it was readily exploited by inventors. Always alert for utility, Franklin supplemented his science by inventing a toy electric machine that turned a wheel. In the 19th century, such electrical toys evolved into practical machines. Edison combined the steam driven generator with the electric light and a distribution system to inaugurate the modern era of electric power. By the 1880s the cornucopia of technology had yielded artificial plastics, aluminum, the calculating machine, typewriter, and machine gun. But the most startling inventions were still in electricity, where Americans remained preeminent. The electromagnetic telegraph had cut the time for communicating between cities and countries from days to seconds. The most successful was that of Samuel F.B. Morse, a painter who knew little of electricity, but who had an indispensable idea, the Morse code. Morse consulted Henry, whose annoyance at this exploitation of his favorite science increased when Morse utilized one of Henrys incidental inventions, the electromagnetic relay. Henrys indignation had scarcely subsided when he was visited by a teacher of speech named Alexander Graham Bell, who wanted to transmit speech by electricity but admitted knowing nothing about electricity. Henrys gruff advice that he learn it" masked a willingness to help, and Bell became in 1878 the most successful of numerous inventors of the telephone. Eminent Mechanics American inventiveness was, in fact, a culmination of events that began in Europe in the Middle Ages, when nonhuman sources of power first mechanized metal working and textile production. Anonymous craftsmen in Italy and Germany were mainly responsible for these innovations, but by the 18th century Britain had taken the lead, with the invention of the steam engine and its development into a versatile source of power for factories, railroads, and steamships. These inventors were no longer anonymous laborers in the vineyard of technology. James eminent Watt, Henry Maudslay, and other were predecessors of 19th century mechanics American inventors. These events paralleled a revival of the rational a explanation of nature which we call science more visible development since it involved educated upper and middle class men such as Rene Descartes, Christian Huygens, and Isaac Newton. Science also became a hobby of the wealthy, thanks largely to new instruments, such as the telescope and microscope. There was no gulf between science and technology in the 17th century. Scientists agreed with the English philosopher Francis Bacon that science should be applied to the useful arts, and many scientists tried their own hands at invention. The scientist - inventor, however, proved to be a dud. Science and technology seemed, in the last analysis, to require different kinds of talent. In time the European scientist decided to stick to his specialty, which was, after all, more intellectual, less commercial, and clearly a higher calling. Eminent mechanics were still mechanics, |