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In his paper, “The Publication of Works on the History of Engineering and Technology”, published in Transactions, Volume 51, 1979-80, Ian McNeil sets out the scene from the beginning of the last century to 1980. Particularly useful is his bibliography, with its list of significant publications, 1920-1980.
The author begins by examining the field at the beginning of the century. Before 1920 there was very little published on this subject, and little evidence of interest on the part of readers or publishers. Dr H W Dickinson was a pioneer of publication in this field, but it was not until the 1920s that the subject began to be widely studied.
Dickinson had, in fact, published his first full length work, a biography of Robert Fulton in 1913, six years before the idea of the "Engineering & Industrial Historical Society" was voiced, leading to the formation of the Newcomen Society in 1920, publishing its first volume of Transactions in 1922.
Apart from the publication of the English translation of Mantoux's The Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century, nothing much else of note appeared in print from 1920 to 1940 except from the academic presses of Manchester, Oxford and particularly of Cambridge University. Dickinson, E C Smith and R H Parsons, all Newcomen Society members, were the principal authors, the works of the last two having the sponsorship of Babcock & Wilcox. The fact is that, in those pre-war days, the market was inadequate: there just weren't enough readers interested in technological history for viable publication. Shorter papers of a high standard appeared quite often in the pages of The Engineer and Engineering which is not surprising with editors like Loughnan Pendred and J Foster Petree, both prominent members of this Society. The other most prolific writer of the period to get major works into print was a member too, Charles Dollfus, who produced his splendid transport tetralogy between 1934 and 1942 in Paris.
Several influences were at work in the decade of the fifties which were to alter the author-publisher-reader relationship in our field. The primary cause of the British public becoming so much more aware of its heritage and the past was possibly the spread of television. Some admirable historical programmes were broadcast and penetrated into British homes, reviving a widespread interest in every aspect of the past. Concurrently, I believe, engineers came to a belated realisation that, in the accelerating pace of technological progress, it was the very tools of future progress and construction that were destroying the extant remains of the past.
It is possible to look on 1950 as a turning point for it saw the publication of both Rolt's Inland Waterways of England and Charles Hadfield's British Canals. Four years later Rex Wailes' classic The English Windmill was published, in the same year as the first volume of the Oxford History of Technology, probably the finest and most comprehensive work of its kind in the world. It is significant, if not surprising, that the publication of a work of such scope, size and scholarship was only made possible by a handsome endowment from ICI. Volumes 4 and 5 were published in 1958. In these same years 1954 58 the first two of Rolt's splendidly readable biographical trilogy on the younger Brunel. Telford, and George and Robert Stephenson were put out by Longmans.
The same trend continued into the sixties gathering momentum as it went. Rolt followed his Stephensons with works on Watt, Trevithick and Newcomen while the Oxford University Press satisfied the needs of the less opulent scholar with their Short History of Technology. A notable contribution was made by Faber & Faber with their publication in 1961 to 1963 of Armytage's A Social History of' Engineering, Dunsheath's A History of' Electrical Engineering and Burstall's A History, of Mechanical Engineering. In 1963 and 1966 the Institution of Mechanical Engineers put out their invaluable collections of papers, the two volumes of Engineering Heritage. The papers, previously published in the Chartered Mechanical Engineer in the two series The Great Masters and The Evolution of Engineering had had a wide circulation in that journal and have done much to make mechanical engineers, at least, conscious of the historical background of their profession. The Faber trilogy was completed by another publishing house, Thames and Hudson, with J P M Pannell's Illustrated History of Civil Engineering.
Two other factors arose in this decade. First, the formation of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in 1958 led to the publication in 1960 of the first quarterly volume of Technology and Culture, probably the first of the few periodicals in the English Language to approach the high standards of our own Transactions. Second was the publication of the first of many works in which illustrations played as great a part as the text or an even greater part, of large format and now known as 'Coffee Table' books. In spite of the high cost of production, such works found a willing market of readers. Eric de Mare's Bridges of Britain is the first that I can recall followed three years later, in 1967, by Wilson & McKeown's London's Industrial Heritage. When fine pictures are accompanied by an illuminating text, a valuable historical contribution results, as in Bracegirdle's The Archaeology of the Industrial Revolution.
Although there are engineering historians to whom the term 'industrial archaeology' is anathema, history and archaeology seem to me but two sides of the same coin, the study of history through archives or through artefacts. The objective is the same: only the methods are different. The first use of 'industrial archaeology' (IA) in print is credited to Michael Rix in The Amateur Historian in 1955. The first book on the subject appeared from John Baker in 1963, written by Kenneth Hudson.
An outstanding characteristic of the seventies was the number of books that flowed from the presses on the subject of industrial archaeology including three standard works by R A Buchanan, A Raistrick and N Cossons, all published between 1972 and 1975. The first of these is of particular significance in that its original edition was not in hard covers but a Pelican paperback. (Raistrick was later to come out from Paladin similarly bound, as was Sir Arthur Elton's superb revision of Klingender's 1947 classic, Art and the Industrial Revolution).
To revert to books on industrial archaeology: apart from the works listed above, three types of book can be noted. First, the 'how to do it' type, pioneered by Pannell's Techniques of Industrial Archaeology of 1966. Second, industrial archaeology by area, notably the David & Charles series, The Industrial Archaeology of the British Isles edited by E R R Green. Lastly industrial archaeology by subject, on which Longmans went in with a series of 24 volumes under the editorship of Tom Rolt. Both historians and archaeologists owe a debt to David & Charles for many pioneering publishing efforts.
1979 and 1980, have been exceptional having seen the bicentenary of Ironbridge and the 150th anniversary of the Rainhill Trials and the Liverpool Manchester Railway, events which captured the attention of the media and led to the publication of a plethora of books of very varying content, presentation and quality. Some figures on British book publication in 1979 may be of interest. A record number of titles were published - 41,940, of which the highest number of 4,551 was in the fiction category. History came seventh with 1,421 titles, well ahead of literature, art, biography and natural sciences. Engineering was ninth with 1,334.
NB The above list is far from exhaustive but is intended only to indicate trends in the publishing of works on the history of engineering and technology. Facsimiles, reprints, new editions in paperback and self financed company histories have been excluded, as have most foreign publications. Similarly Aircraft, Railways, Vintage & Veteran Cars etc. having a long established and extensive readership, are given little space.
Biograpical Note: Ian McNeil MA (Cantab) was Executive Secretary of the Newcomen Society from 1979 to 1988.
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