1606 



public and professional anxiety. Imperfections in technology are more 

 and more coming under attack, as in the cases of air and water pollu- 

 tion, noise, radiation, thermal effects, solid waste, and accumulations 

 of toxic materials. Problems of information overload confront tech- 

 nologists in fields of medicine, of properties of materials, and of scientific 

 discoveries generally. With continued global growth in both the uses 

 and the adverse side effects of technology in prospect, the leading 

 technological nations — of which the United States is the foremost — 

 are increasingly confronted with awkward diplomatic problems. 



U.S. Involvement 



Many factors — geographic, historical, sociological, and economic — 

 contributed to the emergence of the United States as the technologi- 

 cally most d^aiamic Nation of the world : 



An unpeopled continent with rich natural resources and temperate climate was 

 settled by immigrants who tended to be self-selected for initiative [and] inde- 

 pendence. ... A chronic labor shortage automatically placed value on labor- 

 saving devices and machinery. These combined to sustain rapid progress in 

 technological innovation toward high manpower productivity and swift economic 

 growth. 



Foremost among the new Nation's needs were roads, canals, and a postal 

 system, all of which the early Government undertook to provide. Later, the 

 railroad and telegraph were eagerly seized upon to link up throughout all parts 

 of the Nation the flow of goods and information. 



The American Civil War had a profound effect on technology. For the first 

 time, ". . . the technological resources of a whole Nation were ultimately mobil- 

 ized to overwhelm an opponent. There was mass production of weapons and 

 ammunition, of uniforms and boots; canned food was .supphed to armies trans- 

 ported for the first time by rail."'22 



Thereafter came great industrial growth, characterized by the 

 expansion of the railroad network throughout the United States, 

 heavy output of steel, the mass production of lighter engineering 

 products (agricultural equipment, the typewriter, the sewing machine, 

 and the bicycle), and radical improvements in the metalworking 

 machine tool — wdiich (to quote Walt W. Rostow) : 



. . . comes as close to being a correct symbol for the second phase of industrial 

 growth as the railway is for the first. And, by the 1890s, electricity, chemical, and 

 automobile industries, which were to play an extremely important part in the third 

 phase, were commercially in being, the first two rooted in new and expanding 

 fields of science and technology. '^^ 



The opening of the 20th century was marked by two important 

 new trends which heightened the intensity of U.S. exploitation of 

 industrial technology. One was the appearance of the large industrial 

 laboratory; the other was the rapid spread, by the Taylor Societies, 

 of the doctrine of "scientific management." The great industrial 

 laboratories made products better and scientific management made 

 them lower in cost. 



"World War II dramatized the importance of science for military 

 power, but as a practical matter it was technology that proved itself 

 of importance": 



Trained American scientists, with an impressive supi)lement of refugee and 

 British scientists, were able to turn themselves into technologists to serve a 

 great national and international purpose. In 194.'i, when the scientists called 

 attention to the opportunities of the "endless frontier" of science, and urged its 

 public support, they based their claim on the proposition that investment in 



'" Ibid., p. (322. 

 ■23 Jhid., p. 022. 



