Inside Newcomen's fire engine, or: The scientific revolution and the rise of the modern world

History of Technology

Volumn 25, Issue , 2004, Pages

  Cohen, H Floris ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33644592750     PISSN: 03075451     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (23)

1. The Economist, 31 December 1999 (vol. 353, no. 8151), 10-12. The cover offers as dates 'January 1st 1000-December 31st 1999', and carries the following slogans: 'Millennium special edition' and 'Reporting on a thousand years'
2. H.F. Cohen, The Scientific Revolution. A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago, 1994), 13
3. Problems (1)-(4) form the subject of my near-completed book provisionally entitled 'How Modern Science Came Into the World. Three Revolutionary Transformations and the Dynamics Behind Them'. I have treated problem (5) in an article in Dutch, 'Het ontstaan van onze moderne wereld: wat natuunvetenschap en techniek ermee van doen hadden', Theoretische Geschiedenis 25, 4 (1998), 322-49
4. The explanation of the action of Newcomen's fire engine that follows here owes most to D.S.L. Cardwell, Turning Points in Western Technology (New York, 1972), 66-72
5. (also idem, The Fontana History of Technology (London, 1994), p. 121-5))
6. Much detail about the snap action of the valves and cocks and about a whole range of later varieties of the engine is provided in L.T.C. Rolt and J.S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen (Hartington, 1977)
7. Engraving by H. Beighton, 1717, reproduced from R.J. Law, 'The Steam Engine. A Brief History of the Reciprocating Engine' (London: Science Museum Monograph, 1965), 9
8. Reproduced from J. Needham, Clerks and Craftsmen in China and the West. Lectures and Addresses on the History of Science and Technology (Cambridge 1970), 211
9. Reproduced from R.J. Law, 'The Steam Engine. A Brief History of the Reciprocating Engine'. (London: Science Museum Monograph, 1965), 9
10. The indispensability of the Scientific Revolution for at least some key events and developments that went into the making of the Industrial Revolution has been defended previously in rather different ways by A.E. Musson and Eric Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969)
11. and by Margaret C. Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (Oxford, 1997)
12. The expression alludes to A.R. Hall's paper 'The Scholar and the Craftsman in the Scientific Revolution', in M. Clagett (ed.), Critical Problems in the History of Science. Proceedings of the Institute for the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin, September 1-11, 1957 (Madison, 1959), 3-23
13. Together with many another contribution to the debate about science and the crafts during the Scientific Revolution, I have discussed it in my The Scientific Revolution. A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago, 1994), section 3.4.3
14. The section that follows is taken almost fully from my book-in-progress mentioned in note 3
15. L. Reti made this point in his contribution to the article 'Leonardo da Vinci' in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 8, 206-14
16. D.S.L. Cardwell, Turning Points in Western Technology. A Study of Technology, Science and History (New York, 1972), 42-3
17. and idem, The Fontana History of Technology (London, 1994), 87
18. Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes 9, 272-91; p. 289 (report, in Dutch, to the Dutch East India Company of 1688)
19. R.S. Westfall, 'Robert Hooke, Mechanical Technology, and Scientific Investigation', in J.G. Burke (ed.), The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton (Berkeley, 1983), 85-110
20. also enlightening on the 'science' portions in Watt's accomplishment is Arthur L. Donovan, 'Toward a Social History of Technological Ideas: Joseph Black, James Watt, and the Separate Condenser', in G. Bugliarello and D.B. Doner (eds.), The History and Philosophy of Technology (Urbana/Chicago, 1979), 19-30
21. This phrase alludes to the core thesis of J. Goldstone, 'Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Reframing the "Rise of the West" and the British Industrial Revolution', Journal of World History, October 2002
22. In my book-in-progress mentioned in note 3
23. Elements of such answers are to be found in work by Margaret C.Jacob and in J. Uglow, The Lunar Men. The Friends Who Made the Future (London, 2002)