Technology: A Chain-Linked Web through History

• The Chain of Technology
• From Black Powder to Mining
• Coal and Its Link to the Steam Engine
• The Steam Engine: Factory, Waterways and Rails
• The Expansion: The Railroads
• Telecommunications: Railroad's Partner - The Telegraph
• Nuclear Physics
• The Manhattan Project and the Nuclear Age
• Technology Begets Technology

The Chain of Technology

From the beginning of civilization, technology has affected society, including politics, economics and the environment. As technology has developed, it has also affected itself. Much in the way that societies have borrowed or further developed ideas from other societies, different fields of technology have branched off and contributed to each other, much like a chain-linked fence that is webbed together by cause and effect, inspiration, and need. As technologies and their links to each other are examined in their entirety as well as individually, their inter-reliance on each other for development becomes evident through a historical perspective. From the time of early civilizations and continuing to the present includes a vast number of technological advancements hae occurred. It is impossible to review them all however a discussion of just several industries and their related technology leads to many examples of the inevitability of links between various technologies as well as an interesting review that establishes the complexity of the history of technology and industry.

From Black Powder to Mining

The origins of black powder, or gun powder as it is more commonly called, are somewhat smudged in history. There is indication that as early as the 10th century in China where the mixture of potassium nitrate, sulfur and carbon was first used for fireworks and sending up signals, however, by the 1300s it was the Arabs who made the first gun out of iron and bamboo which used black powder to shoot arrows. There are also suggestions of its development for use in weaponry in England in the 13th century and Germany in the 14th century. Regardless of where it originated from, by the early 1600s its use had developed beyond military purposes (Students). According to the timeline published online by Society of Explosives Engineers (SEE), black powder was first used for blasting in Hungary in 1627. The collection and use of coal dating back the Medieval England was at first characterized by the collection of coal in fields followed by poorly designed mines, and offensive and unhealthy coal burning technology, it was also complicated by taxes and prohibitions (Lord).

With the need for energy resources and the development of black powder blasting, the technology for mining coal also improved. The SEE timeline demonstrates this development of further use in Cornwall by 1670 where Germans used it in tin mines. Although the history of mining goes back to XXXX times blasting technology has enabled mining operations to reach previously untouchable sources of precious metals, tin, iron and graphite. The use of black powder started to diversify as early as 1696 with its use in road construction in Switzerland. The technology of explosives continued to undergo many developments including its compression into cartridges by Benjamin Franklin in 1750 and the use of electricity to ignite black powder as patented by Moses Shaw of New York in 1830 (Society History). In 1860, Alfred Nobel invented the much stronger explosive, TNT, enabling the mining industry to produce a hundred times more coal, iron and copper. Mining became quite the commercial enterprise. Its environmental impact and health risks related to its use created the impetus for government regulation such as the. Besides its use in obtaining raw minerals, explosives technology became ingrained in the construction of many structures including roads for automobile travel, railroads and dams for the generation of electricity (Society How).

Coal and Its Link to the Steam Engine

As industry grew in the 17th and 18th centuries, so did the use of resources and more and more, coal was turned to as a fuel. Trees were typically burned or made into charcoal for burning as fuel; however, there were limitations to using up the forests due to the time it took to renew them. Although it only took 10 years to grow trees suitable for making into coal, the growth of fuel-consuming industry was greater (Pacey 109-110). Agriculture was also expanding in response to population increases, and forest land was consumed by its industry (Lord). The environmental impact of deforestation by both the charcoal and agriculture industries and the subsequent rise in cost of firewood was a great part of the impetus for the increased use of coal and coke as fuel (as well as creating the need to adapt industrial technologies to the use of coal) (Pacey 111). Blasting with black powder to create deeper mines, while helping the industry, also led to the problem of removing water from the mines. Technology for pumping the water out was initially borrowed from Cornish tin and copper miners who had the same experience and used windlasses and steam engines to solve their problem (Lord). In 1698, Thomas Savery invented one of the initial pumps that used steam to generate a vacuum (Lira). Savery himself touted other uses for his pump such as water supply to houses and draining marshes. The Savery pump was only effective in shallow depths, however and it was Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine that became renowned for its use in the mines and was used for 60 years (Lira).

At this point coal was mainly used in the iron industry, though the steam engine itself also used it as its fuel. Interestingly, while initially made in bronze, the steam engine pistons were being made in cast-iron by the 1720s creating a cycle between these two industries (Pacey 114). Pacey’s table on the production of iron demonstrates the increase in iron production with the use of coal. By the 1800s production rates per person were increased 6-fold over pre-industrial periods and over 3-fold above production one 100 years prior (115).

The Steam Engine: Factory, Waterways and Rails

Other industry was also increasing, particularly the textiles industry, however these factories were typically still using energy resources such as the water wheel and horse-gins. In the late 1700s, both the steam engine and the iron industry made strides in industry as James Watt introduced a steam engine that could be used indoors, and iron columns began to be used to support floors that held heavy machinery (Pacey 116). Watts’s steam engine was used in both textile factories and mills (Lira). The steam engine went through several other generations, including some with the purpose of locomotion. While Isaac Newton proposed the first design for a steam engine for locomotion in 1680, the first steam-carriage was actually built by Nicholas Cugnot in 1760. The steam carriage went through many versions that were driven on the roads (Thurston) but the most successful modes of steam-powered transport were the steamship and the railroad locomotive. The first streamliners to breach oceanic travel (such as the American ship the Savannah in 1819) were actually powered by a combination of steam engine, paddle-wheels and windsails however in 1838 the coastal steamer, Sirius, did cross the Atlanitic powered only by steam (PBS Ocean). The 1930s began the Steamboat Age, a time romanticized by such authors as Mark Twain when many rivers were traversed by steamboats.

The Expansion: The Railroads

The use of rails on roads had also gone through several evolutionary turns, from tracks discovered in the rubble of Pompeii to the wooden tramways built in late 17th century England and still further to the addition of edged iron rails on which flanged wheels ran in 1789. The first steam engine to operate on tram tracks rolled in 1804 (Thurston). There were still some improvements to be made however, including tracks to withstand the weight of the locomotives, and the first effective railroad, the Stockton and Darlington, went into operation in Pennsylvania in 1825 (Pacey 135). The mining boom in the western United States spurred large companies such as the Anaconda Copper Company to build many railroads for the infrastructure the needed in the 1850s (Norton, p. 460). By 1890 the railroad system into the resource rich west included the Great Norther, the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Sante Fe and the Southern Pacific Rail Roads (Norton, p. 461). World-wide the railroad was growing with such construction as the British Trans-Indian Railroad in 1870 and the Russian Tran-Siberian Railway in 1904 (Norton, p. 597) but by 1900 one-third of railroads were in the U.S. - some 200,000 miles of track (Norton, p. 468) grown from a mere 23 miles in 1830 (PBS Timeline).

As the railroad grew so did other technology. Railroad expansion increased demand for coal, the construction of depots and freight and passenger cars. The railroad safety brought demands on technology that resulted in devices such as George Westinghouse's air brakes in 1869 and his automatic electric block signal in 1881 (PBS Timeline). Engineering had to answer the demand for gradings, bridges and the blasting of tunnels. The scheduling demands of the railroads necessitated the use of time zones where as clocks had previously been set by the position of the sun (Norton, p. 469) although it wasn't until later, in 1918, that the Standard Time Act was was passed (PBS Timeline). Telegraphs were used to coordinate the rail traffic. In the 1890s refrigerator cars increased the availability of fresh and varied foods which in turn prompted a new perspective of food and health by nutritionists and scientists (Norton, p. 499). Advances in engineering had yielded yet another marriage between technologies had been made as coal, the steam engine and iron came together to decrease the size of the world through an effective mode of long-distance transport. It was inevitable, however, that man's drive to improve on technology led to other innovations that would outmode the steam engine - Rudolf Diesel introduced his internal combustion engine in 1893 and by the early 1900s the mass production of automobiles such as Henry Ford's Model T would change the face of transportation.

Telecommunications: Railroad's Partner - The Telegraph

Telecommunications comingling with railroad technology in the form of the telegraph deserves a special note. Advances in electromagnetics such as British inventor William Sturgeon's electromagent in 1825 and American scientist Joseph Henry's use of the electromagnet and wire to transmit a signal over distance in 1830 (Bellis) set the groundwork for Samual Morse and his peers, Alfred Vail and Leonard Gale, to develop a successful telegraph device in 1837 (HistoryWired). Morse also developed Morse Code, a simple alphabet based code that could be easily transmitted along telegraphically and resulted in a strip of coded paper at the receiving end (Bellis). Morse's original line was laid in a trench and buried in a lead pipe however this technique did not result in proper insulation and lines were redesigned to be strung above ground on poles (Madere). The majority of telegraph lines were laid along right of way of the transcontinental railways (Madere). Lines were copper and insulated with a combination of glass and copper (CPRR). By 1839 the telegraph was used as a system for dispatching trains in Europe resulting in a much safer and more efficient system (Madere). Charles Minot, superintendent of the New York & Erie Railroad persuaded his Board of Directors, with some effort, that allowing the telegraph company to build along side of the rails would benefit the company financially as train depots could also be telegraph offices and the train companies could have unlimited telegraph use. Innitially the telegraph was used to report train loads and transfers but in 1851 this use was expanded to include dispatching (Madere). However, the telegraph was certainly not limited to the rail system. In 1866 the first successful trastlantic cable was built allowing international communications at a speed never known before (Norton, p. 483). Telegraph lines were laid through Latin America to Chile in 1890, to the Philippines in 1903, and to Japan and China in 1906 (Norton, p.603). The telegraph affected society in many ways including the economy, international relations and the spread of news.

Nuclear Physics

The 19th century in-roads were being made into another area of technology, nuclear physics. Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the radioactivity of uranium, as well as the discovery of the radioactive elements, polonium and radium, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for their discoveries in 1903 (Health). Radium was extracted from uranium and valued for its luminescent quality. Large quantities of uranium were mined in order to produce small amounts of radium which was valued for its flourescent quality. Uranium was considered a waste product and ended up being used to color glazes for pottery and ceramic tiles.

Marie Pierre continued her study of radioactivity and dedicated most of her study to its use in cancer therapy. Another physicist, James Chadwick, discovered the existence of the neutron, and when Ernest Rutherford changed sub-atomic particles to turn nitrogen into oxygen, newspapers claimed he had “split the atom” (Health). Many more advances in nuclear technology were made in the field of medicine from Roentgen’s x-rays to the use of isotopes in medical imaging through the next decades but it wasn’t until1939 that nuclear fission was accomplished by Otto Hahn in Germany. With the hostile state of world affairs at that time, the harnessing of the energy created by nuclear fission became focused on military purposes and scientists, including Albert Einstein, urged the governments of the United States and Great Britain to support research in nuclear weaponry, arguing that they were in a race with German scientists who could also develop atomic bombs. Interestingly, it was the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese that support for the A-bomb was declared.

The Manhattan Project and the Nuclear Age

The project, called the Manhattan Project, was born in August 1942, and was led by the famous scientist Enrico Fermi (Fretwell). Fermi led the team that created the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and controlled nuclear energy for the first time in history on December 2, 1942, the day the Nuclear Age is said to have been born (Angelo, p. 35). The reactor, dubbed the CP-1, required 57 layers consisting of 6 tons uranium metal and 40 tons of uranium oxide embedded 380 tons of graphite blocks which acted as a neutron moderator and used control and safety rods made of cadmium, which absorbs neutrons, and wood (Angelo, p.33). The Manhattan Project was authorized officially by President Roosevelt on December 28, 1942 (Angelo, p. 36). The nuclear program advanced quickly with several locations set up including Los Alamos, New Mexico and Oak Ridge, Tennessee (Fretwell). Fermi's CP-1 was a very small reactor compared to what was to come. At the Oak Ridge site three plants were required on three different sites - an electromagnetic separation plant, a plutonium production reactor based on the CP-1 and large gaseous diffusion plant. A thermal diffusion plant was added later (Angelo, p.36). The development of the atom bomb was well underway.

The success of the Manhattan project was demonstrated for the entire world to see the power and devastation caused by the atom bomb when two were dropped in Japan, in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The dropping of the bomb was successful in ending the war; however, the nuclear arms race was just beginning as the cold war became a time of continued development in nuclear weaponry (Fretwell).

After the war, the U.S. Congress signed the Atomic Energy Act which allowed the use of nuclear technology for non-military purposes (Josef). The U.S. Atoms for Peace program promoted the use of nuclear energy as safe and allayed people’s concerns that it could explode like a bomb (Fretwell). The 1950s showed itself to be a time of multiple developments from the first experimental breeder reactor in Idaho Falls and the development of a nuclear water reactor to propel submarines, to the first nuclear power plant running in Obininsk, Soviet Union. Shippingport was the first commercial nuclear power plant put in to operation in the U.S. in 1956. Subsequently, plants were opened in Canada and France (Josef).

While the benefits of nuclear energy may have been heralded as clean energy compared to fossil fuels, the well-known accidents the Three Mile Isle and Chernobyl plants in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated to the public the severe health and environmental risks to this relatively new technology and nuclear energy lost some of the support it had before. While this debate continues, it is important to note the potential of nuclear technology in other fields. Nuclear medicine continues to make advances using radioisotopes for diagnoses of disease. Nuclear technology is used in dating archeological findings and examining structures such as statues and buildings. It also has applications in building construction and industrial excavation. Radioisotopes are also used to measure microscopic thicknesses. Irradiation is also used in preserving food (U.S.).

Technology Begets Technology

The nuclear accidents associated with nuclear energy are a case in point. Devastating though they were, they have not stopped the research in the field to come up with safer power plants. This can be seen in other technologies as well. Initially, mining technology was very harmful to the miners with the risk of mines caving in and succumbing to gases released in the process. As the industry progressed, the technology improved to make the mines safer. These are further links to the development of technology, although the technologies are linked to themselves.

These snapshots of history illustrate the linking of the development of technologies to each other in a number of ways. The use of resources often spurs the need for new resources, and the technology to support them. Developments in technologies often lead to developments in other fields. As one technology advances it can bring other linked technologies along with it as seen by the relationships between the use of coal (and black powder for blasting in coal mines), the steam engine and iron-works. The mining of coal was supported by blasting; the steam engine advanced mining technology; coal was burned in the steam engine; the first railway trains were powered by steam engines; telegraph wires and railroads had a symbiotic relationship - the lines could be more easily placed along the rails and the railroads functioned more efficiently and safely with the instant communication provided by telegraphic messages; telegraphs were made possible with the mining of copper for wire and the advent of electromagnetic devices; radioactive elements and graphite had to be mined to provide the supplies for nuclear technology; nuclear reactors require electromagnetic separation of particles... The list goes on. This linking can be seen with the progress of industry and transportation with the advent of the steam engine, and the military uses of nuclear technology that was originally investigated for medical purposes such as imaging and radiotherapy, and still later directed at use as an energy resource. All these links together create a web that binds technologies together. It can easily be wagered that any technology is somehow beholden to another in this complicated age of science and engineering.