Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
History of technology
Table of Contents
Introduction
General considerations
Technology in the ancient world
From the Middle Ages to 1750
The Industrial Revolution (1750–1900)
The 20th century
Perceptions of technology
History of technology, the development over time of systematic techniques for making and doing things. The term technology, a combination of the Greek technē, “art, craft,” with logos, “word, speech,” meant in Greece a discourse on the arts, both fine and applied. When it first appeared in English in the 17th century, it was used to mean a discussion of the applied arts only, and gradually these “arts” themselves came to be the object of the designation. By the early 20th century, the term embraced a growing range of means, processes, and ideas in addition to tools and machines. By mid-century, technology was defined by such phrases as “the means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment.” Even such broad definitions have been criticized by observers who point out the increasing difficulty of distinguishing between scientific inquiry and technological activity.
A highly compressed account of the history of technology such as this one must adopt a rigorous methodological pattern if it is to do justice to the subject without grossly distorting it one way or another. The plan followed in the present article is primarily chronological, tracing the development of technology through phases that succeed each other in time. Obviously, the division between phases is to a large extent arbitrary. One factor in the weighting has been the enormous acceleration of Western technological development in recent centuries; Eastern technology is considered in this article in the main only as it relates to the development of modern technology.
Within each chronological phase a standard method has been adopted for surveying the technological experience and innovations. This begins with a brief review of the general social conditions of the period under discussion, and then goes on to consider the dominant materials and sources of power of the period, and their application to food production, manufacturing industry, building construction, transport and communications, military technology, and medical technology. In a final section the sociocultural consequences of technological change in the period are examined. This framework is modified according to the particular requirements of every period— discussions of new materials, for instance, occupy a substantial place in the accounts of earlier phases when new metals were being introduced but are comparatively unimportant in descriptions of some of the later phases—but the general pattern is retained throughout. One key factor that does not fit easily into this pattern is that of the development of tools. It has seemed most convenient to relate these to the study of materials, rather than to any particular application, but it has not been possible to be completely consistent in this treatment. Further discussion of specific areas of technological development is provided in a variety of other articles: for example, seeelectronics; exploration; information processing. General considerations
Essentially, techniques are methods of creating new tools and products of tools, and the capacity for constructing such artifacts is a determining characteristic of humanlike species. Other species make artifacts: bees build elaborate hives to deposit their honey, birds make nests, and beavers build dams. But these attributes are the result of patterns of instinctive behaviour and cannot be varied to suit rapidly changing circumstances. Humanity, in contrast with other species, does not possess highly developed instinctive reactions but does have the capacity to think systematically and creatively about techniques. Humans can thus innovate and consciously modify the environment in a way no other species has achieved. An ape may on occasion use a stick to beat bananas from a tree, but a man can fashion the stick into a cutting tool and remove a whole bunch of bananas. Somewhere in the transition between the two, the hominid, the first manlike species, emerges. By virtue of his nature as a toolmaker, man is therefore a technologist from the beginning, and the history of technology encompasses the whole evolution of humankind.
In using rational faculties to devise techniques and modify the environment, humankind has attacked problems other than those of survival and the production of wealth with which the term technology is usually associated today. The technique of language, for example, involves the manipulation of sounds and symbols in a meaningful way, and similarly the techniques of artistic and ritual creativity represent other aspects of the technological incentive. This article does not deal with these cultural and religious techniques, but it is valuable to establish their relationship at the outset because the history of technology reveals a profound interaction between the incentives and opportunities of technological innovation on the one hand and the sociocultural conditions of the human group within which they occur on the other. Social involvement in technological advances
An awareness of this interaction is important in surveying the development of technology through successive civilizations. To simplify the relationship as much as possible, there are three points at which there must be some social involvement in technological innovation: social need, social resources, and a sympathetic social ethos. In default of any of these factors it is unlikely that a technological innovation will be widely adopted or be successful.
The sense of social need must be strongly felt, or people will not be prepared to devote resources to a technological innovation. The thing needed may be a more efficient cutting tool, a more powerful lifting device, a laboursaving machine, or a means of utilizing new fuels or a new source of energy. Or, because military needs have always provided a stimulus to technological innovation, it may take the form of a requirement for better weapons. In modern societies, needs have been generated by advertising. Whatever the source of social need, it is essential that enough people be conscious of it to provide a market for an artifact or commodity that can meet the need.
Social resources are similarly an indispensable prerequisite to a successful innovation. Many inventions have foundered because the social resources vital for their realization—the capital, materials, and skilled personnel—were not available. The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci are full of ideas for helicopters, submarines, and airplanes, but few of these reached even the model stage because resources of one sort or another were lacking. The resource of capital involves the existence of surplus productivity and an organization capable of directing the available wealth into channels in which the inventor can use it. The resource of materials involves the availability of appropriate metallurgical, ceramic, plastic, or textile substances that can perform whatever functions a new invention requires of them. The resource of skilled personnel implies the presence of technicians capable of constructing new artifacts and devising novel processes. A society, in short, has to be well primed with suitable resources in order to sustain technological innovation.
A sympathetic social ethos implies an environment receptive to new ideas, one in which the dominant social groups are prepared to consider innovation seriously. Such receptivity may be limited to specific fields of innovation—for example, improvements in weapons or in navigational techniques—or it may take the form of a more generalized attitude of inquiry, as was the case among the industrial middle classes in Britain during the 18th century, who were willing to cultivate new ideas and inventors, the breeders of such ideas. Whatever the psychological basis of inventive genius, there can be no doubt that the existence of socially important groups willing to encourage inventors and to use their ideas has been a crucial factor in the history of technology.