Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact (Technical Revolutions and Their Lasting Impact)

362 Pages·2005·8.1 MB·English

by  Vaclav Smil

Creating the Twentieth
Century:
Technical Innovations of
1867–1914 and Their
Lasting Impact
Vaclav Smil
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Creating the Twentieth Century
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Creating the Twentieth Century
(cid:1)
Technical Innovations of 1867–1914
and Their Lasting Impact
Vaclav Smil
1
2005
1
OxfordUniversityPress,Inc.,publishesworksthatfurther
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Smil,Vaclav.
Creatingthetwentiethcentury:technicalinnovationsof1867–1914andtheirlasting
impact/VaclavSmil.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN-13:978-0-19-516874-4
ISBN:0-19-516874-7
1.Technologicalinnovations—History—19thcentury.2.Technological
innovations—History—20thcentury.I.Title.
T173.8.S6152004
609'.034—dc22 2004054757
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
onacid-freepaper
Preface
Thisbookhasbeenonmymindformorethanthreedecades.Myfirstmusings
about the technically exceptional nature of the two pre-WWI generations go
backtothelate1960s,beforeEvaandIescapedfromanewlyinvadedprovince
of the Soviet Empire to Pennsylvanian ridge and valley countryside. Iworked
on some of its topics (for other publications) during the late 1980s and
throughout the 1990s, and I finally began to write it in 2002. In the words
that my favorite composer used in dedicating his quartets, it is the result of
lunga, e laboriosa fattica—and yet I wish that the task could continue. I have
a selfish and an objective reason for this: further immersion in the world of
pre-WWI innovations would bring more revelations, surprises, and confir-
mations, and I would also like more space as there are many topics that I
addressed only cursorily, many reflections and considerations that I had to
leave out. At the same time, I have always followed Faraday’s great dictum—
work, finish, publish—and so here is my incomplete and imperfect story of
one of the greatest adventures in history, my homage to the creators of a new
world.
My great intellectual debt to hundreds of historians, engineers, and econ-
omists without whose penetrative workthis volumecouldnothavebeenwrit-
ten is obvious, and I must thank Douglas Fast for completing the unusually
challenging job of preparing more than 120 images that are an integralpartof
this book. And I offer no apologies for what some may see as too many
numbers: without quantification, there is no real appreciationoftheera’sfun-
damental and speedy achievements and of the true magnitude of its accom-
plishments. Metric system and scientific units and prefixes (listed and defined
below) are used throughout. Finally, what not to expect. This is neither a
world history of the two pre-WWI generations seen through a prism of tech-
nical innovations nor an economic history of the period written with an en-
gineering slant.
The book is not intended to be either an extended argument for technical
determinism in human affairs or an uncritical exaltation of an era. I amquite
vi preface
content to leave its genre undefined: it is simply an attempt to tell a story of
amazing changes, of the greatest discontinuity in history, and to do so from a
multitude of perspectives in order to bring out the uniqueness of the period
and to be reminded of the lasting debt we owe to those who invented the
fundamentalsofthemodernworld.Or,toparaphraseBraudel’s(1950)remarks
offered in a different context, I do not seek a philosophy of this great discon-
tinuity but rather its multiple illumination.
Contents
Units and Abbreviations ix
1 The Great Inheritance 3
2 The Age of Electricity 33
3 Internal Combustion Engines 99
4 New Materials and New Syntheses 153
5 Communication and Information 199
6 A New Civilization 259
7 Contemporary Perceptions 303
References 313
Name Index 337
Subject Index 343
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