Instrumentation Between Science, State and Industry

by Joerges, Bernward; Shinn, Terry

• ISBN13: 9780792367369
• ISBN10: 0792367367
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

This book explores a little-studied arena that exists between science and technology, an arena in which a singular and important variety of open-ended, multi-purpose instrumentation is developed by practitioners (neither scientist nor engineer, call them research-technologists) for use in academia, industry, state metrology and technical services, and considerably beyond. The generic instrumentation designed in this almost subterraneously institutionalized/professionalized, interstitial arena fuels both science and engineering work. This involves intermittent crossings of the boundaries that demarcate and protect the conventional cognitive and artefact cultures familiar to many historians and sociologists. Research-technologists thereby comprise a distinctive (but never distinct) transverse science and technology culture that generates a species of pragmatic universality, which in turn provides multiple and diversified audiences with a common repertory of vocabularies, notational systems, images, and perhaps even paradigms. Research-technology practitioners deliver a lingua franca that contributes to cognitive, material, and social cohesion. Research-technology is about the complementarity between boundary-crossing and the stability/maintenance of boundaries.

Table of Contents

A Fresh Look At Instrumentation: An Introduction	1	(17)
Bernward Joerges
Terry Shinn
Research-Technology	2	(5)
Science and Society	4	(1)
Science and Engineering	5	(1)
Theory and Experiment	6	(1)
A Specific Kind of Instrumentation	7	(4)
Interstitial Communities	7	(2)
Generic Devices	9	(1)
Metrology	9	(1)
Dis-Embedding, Re-Embedding	10	(1)
The Book	11	(6)
PART I ORIGINS OF THE RESEARCH-TECHNOLOGY COMMUNITY
From Theodolite To Spectral Apparatus: Joseph Von Fraunhofer And The Invention Of A German Optical Research-Technology	17	(12)
Myles W. Jackson
Fraunhofer's Metrology of Optical Glass Manufacturing	18	(2)
The Practice of Secrecy: Public and Private Knowledge at Cloister Benediktbeuern	20	(2)
The Invention of a Research-Technological Tradition	22	(4)
Conclusion	26	(3)
The Research-Technology Matrix: German Origins, 1860--1900	29	(22)
Terry Shinn
The Backdrop	31	(2)
The Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Mechanik und Optik	33	(3)
Prosopography	36	(7)
Staatliche Forschung	37	(2)
Academia	39	(1)
Industry	40	(1)
Artisans and Consultancy	41	(1)
Engineering	42	(1)
Instrument Politics	43	(2)
Conclusions: Trajectory and Structure	45	(6)
PART II INTERSTITIAL WORLDS
Displacing Radioactivity	51	(18)
Xavier Roque
The Uses of Accumulation	52	(3)
The Curie Laboratories and the Radium Industry	55	(3)
The Metrology of Radioactivity	58	(2)
The Institut du Radium as a ``Generic Institution''	60	(3)
Conclusion	63	(6)
Strange Cooperations: The U.S. Research-Technology Perspective, 1900--1955	69	(28)
Terry Shinn
Success and Paradox, 1900--1930	71	(3)
A Narrow-Niche Ground-Swell	72	(2)
A New Focus	74	(5)
The Review of Scientific Instruments	75	(2)
Instrument Citation	77	(2)
Research-Technology versus Narrow-Niche Instruments	79	(5)
Narrow-Niche Initiatives	79	(1)
The Instrument Publishing Company	80	(2)
The Instrument Society of America	82	(2)
Strange Cooperations	84	(2)
Crossing Boundaries	86	(7)
Men out of Academia	87	(4)
Men out of Industry	91	(2)
Exit	93	(4)
Mediating Between Plant Science and Plant Breeding: The Role of Research-Technology	97	(24)
Patricia Nevers
Raimund Hasse
Rainer Hohlfeld
Walther Zimmerli
The Emergence of Research-Technology in Plant Genetics and Plant Breeding in Germany (1900--1990): A Case Study	98	(2)
Plant Genetics and Plant Breeding in the 1990s	100	(1)
Three Types of Research	101	(2)
Research-Technology in the Form of Plant-Gene Technology and Plant-Cell Biology	103	(8)
Organizational Structures and Processes -- Managing Heterogeneous Networks	103	(2)
Research Practice -- Developing Generic Devices	105	(4)
Interpretational Framework -- Competing Repertoires	109	(2)
Between Theory-Oriented and Product-Oriented Plant Biology	111	(4)
Theory-Oriented Research	111	(1)
Product-Oriented Research	112	(3)
The Role of Research-Technology in Biology and Its Future	115	(6)
PART III PURVIEWS OF GENERIC INSTRUMENTS
In Search Of Space: Fourier Spectroscopy, 1950-1970	121	(22)
Sean F. Johnston
The Technology and Its Proponents	122	(5)
Finding a Common Line: The 1957 Bellevue Conference	127	(1)
New Communities and Their Patrons	128	(1)
Provoking Opposition	129	(1)
Tactics of the Fourier Community	130	(8)
Fate of the Community	138	(1)
Conclusion	139	(4)
Putting Isotopes To Work: Liquid Scintillation Counters, 1950-1970	143	(32)
Hans-Jorg Rheinberger
Radiolabels in Biological and Medical Research	145	(2)
Early Steps in Radiation Measurement	147	(2)
Liquid Scintillation Counting	149	(3)
Testing a Commercial Prototype	152	(6)
Automation: Making the Instrument Work for ``Inexperienced Personnel''	158	(6)
Between Industry and Customers	164	(2)
An Interdisciplinary and International Network	166	(4)
Instead of a Conclusion	170	(5)
Making Mice and Other Devices: The Dynamics Of Instrumentation In American Biomedical Research (1930-1960)	175	(24)
Jean-Paul Gaudilliere
Patronage and Instruments in the 1930s: The Rockefeller Foundation, Ultracentrifuges and Mice	176	(4)
Making Ultracentrifuges	177	(1)
The Jackson Laboratory and the Origins of Inbred Mice	178	(2)
Scientific Mobilization During the War: Electron Microscopy and Big Biomedicine	180	(3)
Postwar Research-Technology: Mass Production, Instrument-Centered Research and Flexible Uses of Mice	183	(9)
Screening Drugs and Producing Mice	184	(2)
From Quantity to Quality: Making Mouse Mutants at the Jackson Laboratory	186	(3)
Research-Technology, Standard Mice and Flexible Uses	189	(3)
Conclusion	192	(7)
PART IV STANDARDIZED LANGUAGES
From Dynamometers To Simulations: Transforming Brake Testing Technology Into Antilock Braking Systems	199	(20)
Ann Johnson
False Hopes: The Inertia Dynamometer	200	(2)
Skidding and the Research Programs of the Road Research Laboratory	202	(3)
Enter Dunlop Rubber Company	205	(3)
Formation of a Research-Technology Community	208	(4)
Constraints and Problems in Brake Testing	212	(1)
Bridging the Gap from Research-Technology to Antilock Braking Systems	213	(6)
From The Laboratory To The Market: The Metrological Arenas Of Research-Technology	219	(22)
Alexandre Mallard
From Atmospheric Chemistry to Urban Pollution Monitoring	221	(2)
DOAS as a Research-Technology	223	(2)
The Calibration of DOAS Instruments: A Metrological Puzzle	225	(2)
Experimental Metrology in Action	227	(3)
Official Metrology and the Practices of Precision	230	(3)
A Market for DOAS Instruments	233	(3)
Research-Technology and the Diversity of Metrological Arenas	236	(5)
IN CONCLUSION
Research-Technology In Historical Perspective: An Attempt At Reconstruction	241	(8)
Bernward Joerges
Terry Shinn
The Place of Research-Technology in Social Studies of Science and Technology	241	(4)
Discipline-Related Science and Technology Studies	242	(1)
Transitory Science and Technology Studies	243	(1)
Transverse Science and Technology Studies	244	(1)
Generic Instrumentation, Divisions of Labor and Differentiation	245	(1)
Generic Instrumentation, Re-Embedding and Cohesion	246	(3)
Bibliography of Selected References	249	(10)
List of Contributors	259	(2)
Bibliographical Notes on Contributors	261	(4)
Author Index	265