Technological discussions in iron and steel,
1871-1885
Peter B. Meyer, Research Economist,
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics*
Carol Siri Johnson, New Jersey
Institute of Technology, USA
Outline
1. Iron and steel developments
SSHA conference,
Chicago, Nov. 18, 2007
*Views expressed here do not reflect
official policies or measurements of the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
2. The TAIME journal
3. Hypotheses about the text
4. A few findings
1,800,000
1,400,000
1,000,000
160.00
Open-hearth steel production (new
technology)
Price of
steel rails
140.00
Crucible steel production (old technology)
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
120.00
100.00
80.00
60.00
40.00
20.00
0
0.00
18
67
18
68
18
69
18
70
18
71
18
72
18
73
18
74
18
75
18
76
18
77
18
78
18
79
18
80
18
81
Short tons
1,200,000
Bessemer steel ingots (new technology)
Dollars per gross ton
1,600,000
180.00
Year
1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881
Year
U.S. steel production quantity and price
Output grew and costs fell because of technological advance and scale
Source: Historical Statistics of the United States
Our questions
We analyze the text of an American engineering
journal (TAIME, 1871-1885), looking for:
• Diverse expectations of the future: social
“uncertainty”
• Evidence that a technological “paradigm” for the
business and technology of mass production steel
is being established
Transition to mass production
From craft:
toward industrial machines:
With the Bessemer converter, steel-making
became less craft-like, more industrial
More chemical
knowledge would be
necessary
Transactions of the American Institute of
Mining Engineers (TAIME)
We have scanned this
professional engineering
journal from 1871-1885
where iron and steel
making was discussed
Authors include
professors, employees in
iron industry, consultants,
and others
712 articles so far
135 have the word
“Bessemer”
Scans of the journal
A nonprofit contractor, Digital Divide Data
• Photocopied and scanned the journals to make image files
• Ran optical character recognition (OCR) software on the images to
make PDF files
• Ran spell checks to reduce errors
Most of this computer work was done in Cambodia.
The PDF files are at http://techterms.net/ironwork/TAIME/
Quality varies, and some sections are missing.
The resulting files can be:
• searched for particular words
• copy-and-pasted from
• patched to make corrections
Data: article length, word counts
We have counted particular words in articles. We can imperfectly but
systematically compare iron and steel articles to other articles.
Data Exploration: Author Biographies
Thomas Kuhn’s hypothesis
(from Structure of Scientific Revolutions)
An established scientific paradigm has a precise vocabulary
• for its methods, measurements, tools, and natural laws
• agreed-on by the relevant practitioners
• shared with prospective group members by standardized, formal
education
As a new paradigm develops, communication involves:
• inventing and exploring alternative definitions
• wordy translation between reader and writer concepts
(“The price is often sentences of great length and complexity.” Kuhn, p. 203)
Claim: “early”, pre-paradigm scientific articles are long; later
ones assume more, are short, and use specialized vocabulary.
Stretching Kuhn’s hypothesis to
industrial technology (from science)
A technological paradigm might have the same property (a working hypothesis)
For example, the Big Steel “paradigm” involves
• High volume, speedy, mass production
• Big equipment; capital-intensive production;
• Big plants; large staff employers
• Chemistry and physics relevant
• Centralized geographically
• Contents of inputs and outputs more precisely understood
• Mechanical, chemical, and industrial engineering have roles
Do steel articles shrink over time? No strong evidence.
• We find that TAIME articles on average got a little longer over time
• Articles with steel words grew longer, but a little less so.
Percentages of
TAIME articles
years
an author lists no
advanced degree
an author
has PhD
articles which do
not have the word
"Bessemer“
(~570 of these)
1871-1875
28%
26%
1876-1880
44%
30%
1881-1885
59%
21%
1871-1875
35%
26%
1876-1880
49%
27%
1881-1885
74%
11%
steel articles (with
"Bessemer")
(135 of these)
Related hypothesis: education of technologist becomes more formal, standardized
(paradigmatic).
Trends: A decreasing fraction of articles in TAIME were by people with
advanced degrees. This is especially true of the Bessemer articles.
Possible interpretation: This technological paradigm draws from science and is
taken over by industrial engineers (unlike the airplane’s invention which was led
by tinkerers not academics.) (Or: scientists increasingly publish elsewhere.)
Kuhn idea, cont’d: We do see discussion of definitions
1875:
1880:
Paradigm shift to chemistry
In an 1872 letter, a general manager of an important iron-works wrote:
“The president of our company thinks we ought to follow the fashion and have a chemist.
To my mind it is a waste of money. When I want an analysis I can have it made—and
that is very seldom; for the furnace-manager who needs a chemist to tell him the
quality of ore or limestone, or whether his pig-iron is soft or hard, had better resign and
go to farming. However, if the president says chemist, chemist it is.
“My object in writing is to know if you can recommend a young man competent to fit up a
laboratory and take charge of it. We have very little society here, and it is desirable that
he should be a gentleman. My wife plays the piano and I do a little on the flute; and if
we can get a chemist who plays the violin, we could have some music evenings. If you
can suggest a man who combines these qualifications, I could employ him. I do not
know what a chemist would expect; but I should not care to pay more than $10 a
week.”
This predisposition was getting wiped out. By 1884 an iron manager would have to know
the wage and capabilities of chemist.
Source: Bayles, 1884
Other formative discussions in TAIME
•
•
•
•
Discussion about relevant new inventions
When and whether patenting is appropriate
What makes a good rail
Whether chemical information is enough to
know whether a rail is good
• Educational institutions for iron workforce
Uncertainty hypothesis: count “uncertainty”
Hypothesis: development of technology occurs in an environment of
technological uncertainty, meaning its future is unknown and to
some extent all the people are guessing.
• Count the fraction of words in each article made up of iron-related
phrases: (“hot blast”, “Bessemer”, “puddling”, “open hearth”,
“Siemens”, “Martin”, “spiegel”)
• Count fraction of words containing "uncert"
• These counts across the 712 articles have a tiny positive
correlation: .0071.
 So articles with iron-related terms are slightly more likely to use
literal “uncertainty” than other TAIME articles were.
Also steel articles are more likely to have “question” and “whether”
Early tentative conclusions
• Steel articles use “experiment” and “test” more than others
• “Uncertainty”, “question”, “whether” are a bit more common in
steel articles than others
• Some statistical evidence for a Kuhnian or uncertainty story
– Maybe the big paradigm/uncertainty transition is before 1871
• Articles were increasingly authored by people without advanced
degrees, especially Bessemer steel articles.
• We are trying to count whether the authors were academics,
employee engineers, or consultants
• The text data and databases can improve and we plan to extend
them past 1885
• Would welcome advice and comment
Advancing productive processes in layers
Iron and steel, 1871-1884
Earlier,
more basic,
"upstream"
levels
Blast furnaces making pig iron
Materials science and solid state physics
Bessemer and open hearth steel
production
Chip design and electrical engineering
Iron and steel plants
Railroads (transportation)
Later,
“downstream"
levels
Production of information
technology goods, in recent decades
Business process of railroad
companies (cost
accounting, personnel
departments, time setting,
timekeeping)
Semiconductor memory and
microprocessor chips
Microcomputers
Applications software (word processors,
spreadsheets, databases, chip design
software)
Net software and business process
(e-commerce, auctions, search engines)
In both cases there were feedback processes by which downstream
advances affected earlier stages of production