Ingles

Ian Mcneil

( ) It is strange that, in the study and teaching of history, so little attention is paid to the history of technology. Political and constitutional history, economic history, naval and military history, social history— all are well represented and adequately stressed. The history of technology is neglected in comparison yet,

in a sense, it lies behind them all. What monarchs and statesmen did in the past, how they fought their wars and which side won, was largely dependent on the state of their technology and that of their enemy. […] So far as social history is concerned, the lot of Ian Mcneil

( ) It is strange that, in the study and teaching of history, so little attention is paid to the history of technology. Political and constitutional history, economic history, naval and military history, social history— all are well represented and adequately stressed. The history of technology is neglected in comparison yet,

in a sense, it lies behind them all. What monarchs and statesmen did in the past, how they fought their wars and which side won, was largely dependent on the state of their technology and that of their enemy. […] So far as social history is concerned, the lot of the common man, as of his king and his lords, was usually directly related to the state of technology prevailing at any particular time and place, whatever political and economic factors may also have been of influence.

( ) Technology is all around us: we live in a world in which everything that exists can be classified as either a work of nature or a work of man. There is nothing else. We are concerned here with the works of man, which are based on technological and, to some extent, aesthetic factors. It is a sobering thought that every man-made object of practical utility has passed through the process of conception, testing, design, construction, refinement, to be finally brought to a serviceable state suitable for the market. Aesthetics may have entered into the process of development and production at some stage, increasingly so in our present consumer age, although from a glance at some of the products on the market, one might well question the makers’ artistic sensibility.

( ) It is even more sobering, however, to try to contemplate a world in which one had absolutely no knowledge of history, of one’s own country or of the world at large. It is almost impossible to imagine a citizen of an English-speaking country being in a state of total ignorance of William the Conqueror, of Henry VIII and his six wives, of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, of Lord Nelson, of Abraham Lincoln and Gettysburg, of Kaiser Wilhelm, of Adolf Hitler and Auschwitz. These are the very stuff and characters that make up the pages of conventional history. Yet there are also Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg, Leonardo da Vinci, McAdam and Telford, the Stephensons and the Brunels, Edison and Parsons, Newcomen and Watt, Daimler, Benz and Ford, Barnes Wallis, Whittle, von Braun, Cockcroft, Shockley, Turing and von Neumann and many others. It is interesting to consider which group had the greater influence on the lives of their contemporaries. Even more, which group has had the more long-lasting influence on the man in the street of later generations. It is a matter of regret that space does not allow us, in the present volume, to deal in a biographical