Synopses & Reviews
It is an article of faith that technological change moves steadily and logically, with new technologies taking over when old ones are shown to be inferior. We believe that technological change, despite adjustment pains, always represents progress. Eric Schatzberg shows here that this process is not always so logical; even successful technologies can be shaped in strange ways by culture and ideology. He demonstrates this by revealing the cultural biases behind the shift from wood to metal in American aircraft between the World Wars.
Schatzberg shows that American aeronautical engineers and airplane designers were swayed by the symbolism of airplane materials that linked metal with technological progress and wood with preindustrial craft traditions. This symbolism encouraged the aeronautical community to focus research and development on metal airplanes at the expense of promising projects involving wood--despite the fact that other countries continued to produce highly successful aircraft with wood through the end of World War II. According to Schatzberg, technical personnel in the American military played the key role in this process. They had little evidence for metal's superiority, but used their dominant influence to press the case that metal was the wave of the future and that airplanes would inevitably follow ships and abandon wood.
Generously illustrated, tightly argued, and meticulously researched, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal shows clearly that culture and ideology help determine the most basic characteristics of modern industrial technologies. The book also underlines the historically powerful influence of the military on twentieth-century technology.
Review
"A major contribution to the history of aircraft. . . . A greater contribution to the cultural history of technology. . . . Schatzberg has richly defined a cultural system and then shown how it shaped technological artifacts. In doing so, he has put momentum into the cultural history of technology."
--Glenn E Bugos, Technology and Culture
About the Author
Eric Schatzberg is Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Table of Contents
| List of Tables | |
| List of Figures | |
| Acknowledgments | |
1 | Materials, Symbols, and Ideologies of Progress | 3 |
2 | Engineering Enthusiasm: World War I and the Origins of the Metal Airplane | 22 |
3 | Metal and Its Discontents | 44 |
4 | An Old Role for the Military: Government Support for Metal Airplane Construction | 64 |
5 | Metal and Commercial Aviation I: Henry Ford Takes Flight | 96 |
6 | Neglected Alternative I: Plywood Stressed-skin Construction | 114 |
7 | Persistence Pays Off: Military Success with Metal Airplanes | 135 |
8 | Metal and Commercial Aviation II: The Triumph of the All-metal Airliner | 155 |
9 | Neglected Alternative II: Synthetic Resin Adhesives | 175 |
10 | World War II and the Revival of the Wooden Airplane | 192 |
11 | Epilogue: Culture and Composite Materials | 223 |
| Notes | 233 |
| Index | 305 |