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Show American inventiveness was, in fact, culmination of events that began in a Europe in the middle Ages, when nonhuman sources of power first mechanized metal working and textile production. I1 . AT CHANGE beneath the level of what came to be called pure science. In the United States this bias was reversed. Democracy was the ideal, and monarchical institutions such as academies of science were rejected. The eminent mechanic was honored in America both socially and economically. Thus Franklin, Henry, and Edison represent phases in the relationship of science and technology. Franklin was intellectually a European, a scientist - inventor imbued with Baconian ideas. Henry was a scientist in an America where scientists were held in low esteem. Edison was a technologist in an America where the eminent mechanic reigned unchallenged. Useful Science But other phases were to follow. Even as Edison enjoyed his triumph, Bacons long disregarded assumption that science could abe useful to technology was becoming a reality. In 1856, A.W. von Hofmann, a German who headed the Royal College of Chemistry in London, was appalled when his student, William Henry Perkin, tried to salvage an unsuccessful experiment that yielded a messy purple sediment by marketing the stuff as a dye. It was the first of many artificial dyes that were commercially profitable, and eventually scientifically in- teresting. By the 1870s the production of dyes had become too complicated for the uneducated and required the special knowledge of the scientist. Only Germany possessed many such chemists and by 1900 a near monopoly on artifical dyes. By the 1920s others began to imitate the Germans, and the chemical industry everywhere came to be dominated by chemists holding university degrees. In other fields the eminent mechanic held on for a time, but one industry after another has fallen under the shadow of academic science. Edison lived to see this happen in his own field. Electricity had continued, through the invention of radio, to reward the uneducated genius. But by the 1920s the electrical engineer was finding mathematics and physics unavoidable, and the eminent mechanic found himself an outsider. In one of his last interviews, Edison predicted that man would invent a weapon so horrible that he would abandon war forever. Such a weapon was indeed developed, not under the leadership of eminent mechanics but of university trained scientists and engineers. Scientists and engineers have found a psychologically acceptable middle ground in while military necessity and applied science, government support enable them to produce marvels far beyond the capacity, if not the imagination, of the now legendary Edison. Since 1945 science and technology have become virtually indistinguishable, except as preferences of particular individuals. have Improvements gushed forth across the whole spectrum of science and technology, and Francis Bacon has been justified. The late - 20th - century American no longer laughs at science, while his enthusiasm for technology has dimmed considerable, and he has increasing difficulty telling which is which. It seems that we have entered not just another phase in the relationship between science and technology, but another era, with a different question: the relationship between science technology and society. -- The views expressed in Courses by Newspap r" are those of the authors only and do not necessai ily reflect those of the University of California, he National Endowment for the Humanities, or he participating newspapers and colleges. Preview NEXT WEEK : Engineer and historian Eugene Ferguson of the University of Delaware explores the impact of engineering demands on technology and, consequently, on society. S. About the Author Robert P. Multhauf Robert P. Multhauf has been with the Smithsonian Institution since 1954, serving as Chairman of the Department of Science and Technology of the U.S. National Museum, as Director of the Museum of History and Technology, and as a senior researcher. He is also Adjunct Professor at George Washington University. He is president of the History of Science Socity and for many years was editor of its journal, Isis. His publications include The Origins of Chemistry and Neptunes Gift: A History of Common Salt. |