106 COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 



As chemistry opened out at the beginning of the 18th century, the 

 metallurgists' processes were still a challenge to chemists, whose 

 studies ultimately put them in position to ofiFer the working metallur- 

 gist a rationalization of his practice: ore is made metal as phlogiston 

 passes into the ore from the charcoal. But this rationalization sug- 

 gests no improvement in metallurgical practice, and had little if any 

 ejffect on that practice. Toward the end of the century Lavoisier 

 created his new oxygen theory, oflFering a new rationalization: ore is 

 made metal as oxygen is taken out of the ore by the charcoal. But 

 again the working metallurgist is no better off for the explanation. 

 The impact of La\'oisier's inno\^ation in chemistry is not felt in the 

 metallurgical industry until long after Lavoisier's death. 



Today the situation is dramatically different, in metallurgy and 

 elsewhere. Binkley seeks to pinpoint the time at which science first 

 became a major factor in technology: 



Comment on the Great Exhibition [London, 1851] usually linked 

 mechanical arts and science, but not in the sense that science was the 

 leader and art the follower. Whewell, the historian of science, . . . 

 took it for granted that the natural and "proper sequence" was for 

 creative activity in the arts to go first, and science to follow after 

 with its speculations— exactly the process that was taking place in the 

 development of the doctrine of theiTnodynamics from the steam en- 

 gine. In 1867, when Paris held its second World Exhibition, the place 

 of science in its relations to industry was noticeably changing. By that 

 time the aniline dyes had arrived as the products of organic chemistry, 

 and a number of electric dynamos were on exhibit. When Michel 

 Chevalier, the free-trade economist, wrote his introduction to the jury 

 reports of the Exhibition, he attributed increase in productive power 

 to the advance of science. . . . the difference between Whewell's at- 

 titude in 1851 and Chevalier's in 1867 can be taken as marking the 

 point at which science established before the public a claim to the 

 leadership in the industrial arts. . . . 



Probably the transition is not quite so abrupt as Binkley suggests. 

 Even a century earlier than this science had already contributed 

 actively to technology— improved navigational aids, a preparation of 

 sulfuric acid (fundamentally the alchemists') operable on an indus- 

 trial scale, and so on. From the middle of the 18th to the middle of 

 the 19th century the applied arts derive from science an ever increas- 

 ing number of small but crucially important contributions, e.g., chlo- 



