The Development Phase of Technological Change

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The Development Phase of Technological Change INTRODUCTION THOMAS P. HUGHES Because the history of technology is a recently cultivated field of scholarly activity, not many of its critical research problems have been identified. As research and reflection continue, however, problems will emerge and in some cases will be identified as critical ones worthy of the attention of a number of scholars over a considerable period of time. In the history of science, a comparable field firmly established earlier, scholars long ago focused upon the nature of the scientific method as a critical problem. As a result, probing and enlightening monographs and books have been published about the subject. It seems likely that the nature of technological change, a subject for study comparable to that of the scientific method, will be identified as a critical problem for the history of technology. Technological change will probably prove to be more complex and difficult to define than the scientific method. For this reason, in order to study it, it may prove advisable to break it down into subcategories. One set of categories already widely used in discussing this process includes in­ vention, research, development, and innovation. Nevertheless, definitions of these still complex and difficult subcategories are numerous and differ considerably. Among these phases of technological change, development has re­ ceived the least attention. Many popular books have been written about invention, because it is an activity that appeals to the imagina­ tion. Economic historians have cultivated the study of innovation, for they associate innovation with the bringing of new machines, devices, and processes on to the market. Development, in contradistinction, has been neglected as a research problem, probably because it lacks Dr. Hughes, of the University of Pennsylvania, is the author ofElmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer, which was awarded the Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology in 1972. Most recently he has edited a volume on Changing Attitudes toward American Technology. He organized the program at the 1972 SHOT meeting at which the following papers were presented and edited them for publication. 423 424 Thomas P. Hughes the presumed excitement of invention and seems to lack the general social and economic significance of innovation. Yet those of us in the history of technology who have studied the process of technological change have found that those populating the world of technology—inventors, engineers, appliers of science, and entrepreneurs—give much of their time and resources to an activity that they label development, even though they do not clearly define it. Therefore I asked historians of technology Lynwood Bryant, Richard Hewlett, Thomas Smith, and Charles Siisskind, who like me had found development a central subject and conceptual problem in their studies, to participate in a program session that would raise and probe questions about the development phase of the process of technologi­ cal change and perhaps help the discipline decide if development is in fact a critical problem deserving further research. The following three papers and commentary were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology held in Washington, D.C., in December 1972. Since then the papers have been revised for publication in this issue of Technology and Culture. * * * Elmer Ambrose Sperry (1860-1930), a professional inventor who greatly admired Thomas Edison, contradicted that eminent Ameri­ can on at least one point: invention, Sperry asserted, is not 99 percent sweat and 1 percent genius; it is 110 percent sweat. Sperry was not a great mathematician, but he was wise in the ways of invention, and his statement adds up well. He perceived invention as an instant of genius followed by months of persistent work, sometimes culminating in a new device or process. The months of sweat are not often written about or even understood well; focus has been placed upon the more dramatic manifestations of genius. The brilliant flashes, the “Eureka” moments, and the sharp insights of invention are legion. Histories of invention, ranging from the intel­ ligent literary essays of Samuel Smiles to more recent surveys of economic and technological history, seldom fail to recount moments like those on Glasgow Green when James Watt conceived of the sepa­ rate condenser or when Alexander Graham...

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