Graham Spinardi
Biographic Data
| ID | 245258 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Graham Spinardi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Graham |
| FAMILY NAME | Spinardi |
| SIGNATURE | SPINARDI G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2631-2240 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Freedom without responsibility
Professional status rests upon a social contract in which society allows specialists to monopolise certain roles on the understanding that they will do so ethically and with appropriate competence. Mechanisms to police such behaviour can be left to professional groups to organise or be legislated for by government, or some combination of the two. In the UK an opportunity to formalise the professional status of engineers arose with the publication…
Vive La Résistance? Standard fire testing, regulation, and the performance of safety
Because fire safety cannot be measured directly, building regulation uses test ratings to determine whether materials and products meet societal expectations. Fire resistance constitutes the most enduring means of gauging fire safety, providing ratings for how elements of structure perform in a standard furnace test. Although it has long been known that this test is unrepresentative of real building fires, fire resistance testing remains central …
Performing Expertise in Building Regulation
Fire safety expertise was in great demand following the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June 2017. The government established a review of building regulations and an expert panel to inform its responses to Grenfell, and many other relevant organisations also formed their own expert panels. However, expert knowledge in fire safety is a highly contested domain, with knowledge claims based on differing sources. Fire fighters can claim expertise bas…
Fire risk reduction on the margins of an urbanizing world
Purpose Globally, over 95% of fire related deaths and injuries occur in low- and middle-income countries. Within informal settlements, the risk of fire resulting in injury or death is particularly high. This paper examines fire risks in informal settlements in New Delhi and Cape Town, and tented informal settlements in Lebanon. Design/methodology/approach Our analysis draws on primary sources, secondary literature, statistical data and qualitativ…
The green airliner that never was
Two aerodynamic concepts theorized in the early twentieth century – laminar-flow control and flying wings – offer the potential for more efficient aircraft. However, despite compelling advantages on paper and optimistic predictions, the fuel-saving benefits of these technologies have not yet been fully realized. This paper documents British work on these concepts, with a particular focus on laminar-flow control. Faced with an increasingly difficu…
Proximal design in South African informal settlements
In many countries, deaths and injuries due to fire in urban areas have been reduced by more equitable infrastructure, more affordable and accessible formal housing, and the provision of state services, including urban planning, professional fire-fighting services, and building regulations (Rush et al 2020). Such developments have proved more challenging in low-and-middle-income-countries, where 95% of the world’s fire deaths and morbidity remain …
Performance‐based design, expertise asymmetry, and professionalism
Fire safety has traditionally been regulated by prescriptive rules that stipulate requirements according to the type and size of a building, with the regulator's job being to check that these rules have been followed. However, many jurisdictions now allow performance‐based design regulation in which approval depends on the regulator assessing the prospective performance of a bespoke fire safety design for a particular project. Regulators thus nee…
On a wing and hot air
The aviation and livestock agriculture sectors are major producers of greenhouse gas emissions, and have been the subject of extensive examination to develop lower impact, more energy and resource efficient technologies. Yet little attention has been paid to the challenges faced in the adoption of these lower impact technologies in these industry sectors. In this paper we seek to understand the interactions between technological innovation and so…
Up in the air
Greater automation of air traffic control (ATC) could reduce aviation’s climate change impacts, but improvements predicted long ago have been slow to happen. This resistance to ATC modernisation is framed as an issue of lock-in, and the detailed case study described here enables an analysis of the factors involved in slowing change. Although the classic lock-in effects of ‘increasing returns’ and ‘network externalities’ are important, a major bar…
Technical Controversy and Ballistic Missile Defence
Public debate about Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) has long centred on the question of feasibility, particularly as regards the realism of testing. Thus BMD opponents have argued that flight-tests are insufficiently similar to operational use to provide a reliable guide to real-world performance. However, an in-depth account of the development of US hit-to-kill technology—an approach to BMD that relies on the direct impact of an interceptor on t…
The limits to ‘spin-off’
UK defence R & D played a leading role in the development of gallium arsenide and other III–V semiconductor materials. Often touted as the semiconductor of the future because of its potential for high-speed computing, gallium arsenide had unique properties compared to silicon that made it attractive for military applications. Some consumer applications were also developed, and these eventually became significant with its use in mobile phone hands…
The rise and fall of Safeguard
The Safeguard anti‐ballistic missile system was the first (and up until 2002 the only) system deployed to defend the USA from nuclear‐armed ballistic missile attack. It was finally declared operational in September 1975 after many years of development and fierce controversy over both its feasibility and its desirability. However, almost immediately Congress voted to close the system down and it was dismantled within a few months. This paper draws…
Technological Controversy and US Ballistic Missile Defense
Controversy over the technical feasibility of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) has typically been seen as correlated to judgments of that technology's desirability.Opponents of BMD tend to question its feasibility whereas supporters argue that it is technically possible, at least to a degree adequate to enhance national security.However, this categorization is a simplification; two camps of BMD supporters have emerged over the years, with distinct…
Science, Technology, and the Cold War
A post-war symbol of Big Science in the UK, and primarily built for scientific purposes, the large radio telescope at Jodrell Bank was nevertheless caught up in the politics of the Cold War. This occurred not because the UK government sought to utilise the telescope's potential for space surveillance (for example, to observe satellites or obtain warning of ballistic missiles) but rather as result of Bernard Lovell's struggle to obtain funding to …
Golfballs on the Moor
The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) at Fylingdales in Yorkshire was designed to provide early warning of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Doubts about its technical performance (whether it would work reliably without causing false alarms) and about the utility of short warning times faded in the light of the organisational utility of Fylingdales to the RAF. The credibility of the V-bombers depended on their ability to scramble bef…
Defence and the decline of UK mechanical engineering
This article asks whether the UK's defence technology base is a potential solution to industrial underachievement or whether it is perhaps at the heart of the problem. In the UK, firms seem often to have opted for defence as the best route to business success. This is often portrayed as the result of short-sighted management, but it is perhaps more analytically useful to consider the ways in which this comes about. Drawing on a wide range of sour…
Aldermaston and British Nuclear Weapons Development
This paper addresses the proposition put forward by Solly Zuckerman that the nuclear arms race has been driven by scientists and engineers. The history of British nuclear weapons developments is described with particular attention to both their changing organizational relationships and the fluctuating interface between the UK and the USA on the exchange of nuclear weapons assistance. The relationships between the nuclear weapons communities and t…
EDI and business network redesign
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for communication between different corporate computer systems was expected to transform relationships between firms. However, this detailed study of three sectors of the UK publishing industry—the book trade; the magazine and newspaper trade; and newsprint supply to newspapers—found that EDI developed in a slow and incremental manner. This calls into question the radical visions of proponents of business network…
From Polaris to Trident
This book provides a complete history of the US Fleet Ballistic Missile programme from its inception in the 1950s and the development of Polaris to the deployment of Trident II in 1990. Writing in an accessible yet scholarly manner, Graham Spinardi bases his historical documentation of FBM development on interviews with many of the key participants. His study confronts a central issue: is technology simply a tool used to achieve the goals of soci…
Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons
Tacit Knowledge, embodied in people rather than words, equations, or diagrams, plays a vital role in science. The historical record of the development and spread of nuclear weapons and the recollections of their designers suggest that tacit knowledge is also crucial to nuclear weapons development. Therefore, if design ceases, and if there is no new generation of designers to whom that tacit knowledge can be passed, then in an important (though qu…
Nuclear Weapons and the New World Order
Talk of a 'new world order1 stemmed from two inter-related developments at the beginning of this decade. One was the process of disintegration of the Soviet bloc set in train by Gorbachev. The other was the international action taken under the auspices of the UN (and made possible by the changes in the Soviet Union) which culminated in the Operation Desert Storm action against Iraq. What this new world order seemed to promise was a world in which…
Anthony Giddens on Nuclear Strategy
Why the U.S. Navy went for Hard-Target Counterforce in Trident II
The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology
This paper (published in two Parts) presents a detailed historical case study of the evolution of the Polaris, Poseidon and Trident weapons programmes, and of the development of the guidance and navigation technologies which are essential to their role in nuclear strategies. Over the last thirty years, these technologies have changed in the direction of greatly increased missile accuracy. Simultaneously, the strategic rationale of these weapons h…
The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology
This paper (the second of two Parts) continues the historical case study of the evolution of Fleet Ballistic Missile guidance and navigation technologies by tracing the origins and development of the Trident system. This comprises a new submarine and two different missiles, Trident I (C4) and Trident II (D5), the latter of which is considered to be optimized for the destruction of `hardened' targets such as missile silos and command posts. It thu…
Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons
Tacit Knowledge, embodied in people rather than words, equations, or diagrams, plays a vital role in science. The historical record of the development and spread of nuclear weapons and the recollections of their designers suggest that tacit knowledge is also crucial to nuclear weapons development. Therefore, if design ceases, and if there is no new generation of designers to whom that tacit knowledge can be passed, then in an important (though qu…
The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology
This paper (published in two Parts) presents a detailed historical case study of the evolution of the Polaris, Poseidon and Trident weapons programmes, and of the development of the guidance and navigation technologies which are essential to their role in nuclear strategies. Over the last thirty years, these technologies have changed in the direction of greatly increased missile accuracy. Simultaneously, the strategic rationale of these weapons h…
Performance‐based design, expertise asymmetry, and professionalism
Fire safety has traditionally been regulated by prescriptive rules that stipulate requirements according to the type and size of a building, with the regulator's job being to check that these rules have been followed. However, many jurisdictions now allow performance‐based design regulation in which approval depends on the regulator assessing the prospective performance of a bespoke fire safety design for a particular project. Regulators thus nee…
On a wing and hot air
The aviation and livestock agriculture sectors are major producers of greenhouse gas emissions, and have been the subject of extensive examination to develop lower impact, more energy and resource efficient technologies. Yet little attention has been paid to the challenges faced in the adoption of these lower impact technologies in these industry sectors. In this paper we seek to understand the interactions between technological innovation and so…
Performing Expertise in Building Regulation
Fire safety expertise was in great demand following the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June 2017. The government established a review of building regulations and an expert panel to inform its responses to Grenfell, and many other relevant organisations also formed their own expert panels. However, expert knowledge in fire safety is a highly contested domain, with knowledge claims based on differing sources. Fire fighters can claim expertise bas…
Defence and the decline of UK mechanical engineering
This article asks whether the UK's defence technology base is a potential solution to industrial underachievement or whether it is perhaps at the heart of the problem. In the UK, firms seem often to have opted for defence as the best route to business success. This is often portrayed as the result of short-sighted management, but it is perhaps more analytically useful to consider the ways in which this comes about. Drawing on a wide range of sour…
The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology
This paper (the second of two Parts) continues the historical case study of the evolution of Fleet Ballistic Missile guidance and navigation technologies by tracing the origins and development of the Trident system. This comprises a new submarine and two different missiles, Trident I (C4) and Trident II (D5), the latter of which is considered to be optimized for the destruction of `hardened' targets such as missile silos and command posts. It thu…
Golfballs on the Moor
The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) at Fylingdales in Yorkshire was designed to provide early warning of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Doubts about its technical performance (whether it would work reliably without causing false alarms) and about the utility of short warning times faded in the light of the organisational utility of Fylingdales to the RAF. The credibility of the V-bombers depended on their ability to scramble bef…
Aldermaston and British Nuclear Weapons Development
This paper addresses the proposition put forward by Solly Zuckerman that the nuclear arms race has been driven by scientists and engineers. The history of British nuclear weapons developments is described with particular attention to both their changing organizational relationships and the fluctuating interface between the UK and the USA on the exchange of nuclear weapons assistance. The relationships between the nuclear weapons communities and t…
Proximal design in South African informal settlements
In many countries, deaths and injuries due to fire in urban areas have been reduced by more equitable infrastructure, more affordable and accessible formal housing, and the provision of state services, including urban planning, professional fire-fighting services, and building regulations (Rush et al 2020). Such developments have proved more challenging in low-and-middle-income-countries, where 95% of the world’s fire deaths and morbidity remain …
Technical Controversy and Ballistic Missile Defence
Public debate about Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) has long centred on the question of feasibility, particularly as regards the realism of testing. Thus BMD opponents have argued that flight-tests are insufficiently similar to operational use to provide a reliable guide to real-world performance. However, an in-depth account of the development of US hit-to-kill technology—an approach to BMD that relies on the direct impact of an interceptor on t…
The limits to ‘spin-off’
UK defence R & D played a leading role in the development of gallium arsenide and other III–V semiconductor materials. Often touted as the semiconductor of the future because of its potential for high-speed computing, gallium arsenide had unique properties compared to silicon that made it attractive for military applications. Some consumer applications were also developed, and these eventually became significant with its use in mobile phone hands…
Trident
Given the potentially apocalyptic nature of our nuclear predicament, any detailed studies of the development of nuclear weaponry are welcome. However, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) are especially interesting because they have traditionally epitomized what many considered to be the ideal deterrent. Not only are they virtually invulnerable, once at sea, but they have also lacked sufficient accuracy to threaten protected enemy target…
The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology
This paper (published in two Parts) presents a detailed historical case study of the evolution of the Polaris, Poseidon and Trident weapons programmes, and of the development of the guidance and navigation technologies which are essential to their role in nuclear strategies. Over the last thirty years, these technologies have changed in the direction of greatly increased missile accuracy. Simultaneously, the strategic rationale of these weapons h…
The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology
This paper (the second of two Parts) continues the historical case study of the evolution of Fleet Ballistic Missile guidance and navigation technologies by tracing the origins and development of the Trident system. This comprises a new submarine and two different missiles, Trident I (C4) and Trident II (D5), the latter of which is considered to be optimized for the destruction of `hardened' targets such as missile silos and command posts. It thu…
Why the U.S. Navy went for Hard-Target Counterforce in Trident II
Anthony Giddens on Nuclear Strategy
Nuclear Weapons and the New World Order
Talk of a 'new world order1 stemmed from two inter-related developments at the beginning of this decade. One was the process of disintegration of the Soviet bloc set in train by Gorbachev. The other was the international action taken under the auspices of the UN (and made possible by the changes in the Soviet Union) which culminated in the Operation Desert Storm action against Iraq. What this new world order seemed to promise was a world in which…
From Polaris to Trident
This book provides a complete history of the US Fleet Ballistic Missile programme from its inception in the 1950s and the development of Polaris to the deployment of Trident II in 1990. Writing in an accessible yet scholarly manner, Graham Spinardi bases his historical documentation of FBM development on interviews with many of the key participants. His study confronts a central issue: is technology simply a tool used to achieve the goals of soci…
Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons
Tacit Knowledge, embodied in people rather than words, equations, or diagrams, plays a vital role in science. The historical record of the development and spread of nuclear weapons and the recollections of their designers suggest that tacit knowledge is also crucial to nuclear weapons development. Therefore, if design ceases, and if there is no new generation of designers to whom that tacit knowledge can be passed, then in an important (though qu…
EDI and business network redesign
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for communication between different corporate computer systems was expected to transform relationships between firms. However, this detailed study of three sectors of the UK publishing industry—the book trade; the magazine and newspaper trade; and newsprint supply to newspapers—found that EDI developed in a slow and incremental manner. This calls into question the radical visions of proponents of business network…
Aldermaston and British Nuclear Weapons Development
This paper addresses the proposition put forward by Solly Zuckerman that the nuclear arms race has been driven by scientists and engineers. The history of British nuclear weapons developments is described with particular attention to both their changing organizational relationships and the fluctuating interface between the UK and the USA on the exchange of nuclear weapons assistance. The relationships between the nuclear weapons communities and t…
Defence and the decline of UK mechanical engineering
This article asks whether the UK's defence technology base is a potential solution to industrial underachievement or whether it is perhaps at the heart of the problem. In the UK, firms seem often to have opted for defence as the best route to business success. This is often portrayed as the result of short-sighted management, but it is perhaps more analytically useful to consider the ways in which this comes about. Drawing on a wide range of sour…
Science, Technology, and the Cold War
A post-war symbol of Big Science in the UK, and primarily built for scientific purposes, the large radio telescope at Jodrell Bank was nevertheless caught up in the politics of the Cold War. This occurred not because the UK government sought to utilise the telescope's potential for space surveillance (for example, to observe satellites or obtain warning of ballistic missiles) but rather as result of Bernard Lovell's struggle to obtain funding to …
Golfballs on the Moor
The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) at Fylingdales in Yorkshire was designed to provide early warning of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Doubts about its technical performance (whether it would work reliably without causing false alarms) and about the utility of short warning times faded in the light of the organisational utility of Fylingdales to the RAF. The credibility of the V-bombers depended on their ability to scramble bef…
Technological Controversy and US Ballistic Missile Defense
Controversy over the technical feasibility of Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) has typically been seen as correlated to judgments of that technology's desirability.Opponents of BMD tend to question its feasibility whereas supporters argue that it is technically possible, at least to a degree adequate to enhance national security.However, this categorization is a simplification; two camps of BMD supporters have emerged over the years, with distinct…
The rise and fall of Safeguard
The Safeguard anti‐ballistic missile system was the first (and up until 2002 the only) system deployed to defend the USA from nuclear‐armed ballistic missile attack. It was finally declared operational in September 1975 after many years of development and fierce controversy over both its feasibility and its desirability. However, almost immediately Congress voted to close the system down and it was dismantled within a few months. This paper draws…
The limits to ‘spin-off’
UK defence R & D played a leading role in the development of gallium arsenide and other III–V semiconductor materials. Often touted as the semiconductor of the future because of its potential for high-speed computing, gallium arsenide had unique properties compared to silicon that made it attractive for military applications. Some consumer applications were also developed, and these eventually became significant with its use in mobile phone hands…
Technical Controversy and Ballistic Missile Defence
Public debate about Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) has long centred on the question of feasibility, particularly as regards the realism of testing. Thus BMD opponents have argued that flight-tests are insufficiently similar to operational use to provide a reliable guide to real-world performance. However, an in-depth account of the development of US hit-to-kill technology—an approach to BMD that relies on the direct impact of an interceptor on t…
Up in the air
Greater automation of air traffic control (ATC) could reduce aviation’s climate change impacts, but improvements predicted long ago have been slow to happen. This resistance to ATC modernisation is framed as an issue of lock-in, and the detailed case study described here enables an analysis of the factors involved in slowing change. Although the classic lock-in effects of ‘increasing returns’ and ‘network externalities’ are important, a major bar…
On a wing and hot air
The aviation and livestock agriculture sectors are major producers of greenhouse gas emissions, and have been the subject of extensive examination to develop lower impact, more energy and resource efficient technologies. Yet little attention has been paid to the challenges faced in the adoption of these lower impact technologies in these industry sectors. In this paper we seek to understand the interactions between technological innovation and so…
Performance‐based design, expertise asymmetry, and professionalism
Fire safety has traditionally been regulated by prescriptive rules that stipulate requirements according to the type and size of a building, with the regulator's job being to check that these rules have been followed. However, many jurisdictions now allow performance‐based design regulation in which approval depends on the regulator assessing the prospective performance of a bespoke fire safety design for a particular project. Regulators thus nee…
Fire risk reduction on the margins of an urbanizing world
Purpose Globally, over 95% of fire related deaths and injuries occur in low- and middle-income countries. Within informal settlements, the risk of fire resulting in injury or death is particularly high. This paper examines fire risks in informal settlements in New Delhi and Cape Town, and tented informal settlements in Lebanon. Design/methodology/approach Our analysis draws on primary sources, secondary literature, statistical data and qualitativ…
The green airliner that never was
Two aerodynamic concepts theorized in the early twentieth century – laminar-flow control and flying wings – offer the potential for more efficient aircraft. However, despite compelling advantages on paper and optimistic predictions, the fuel-saving benefits of these technologies have not yet been fully realized. This paper documents British work on these concepts, with a particular focus on laminar-flow control. Faced with an increasingly difficu…
Proximal design in South African informal settlements
In many countries, deaths and injuries due to fire in urban areas have been reduced by more equitable infrastructure, more affordable and accessible formal housing, and the provision of state services, including urban planning, professional fire-fighting services, and building regulations (Rush et al 2020). Such developments have proved more challenging in low-and-middle-income-countries, where 95% of the world’s fire deaths and morbidity remain …
Performing Expertise in Building Regulation
Fire safety expertise was in great demand following the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June 2017. The government established a review of building regulations and an expert panel to inform its responses to Grenfell, and many other relevant organisations also formed their own expert panels. However, expert knowledge in fire safety is a highly contested domain, with knowledge claims based on differing sources. Fire fighters can claim expertise bas…
Vive La Résistance? Standard fire testing, regulation, and the performance of safety
Because fire safety cannot be measured directly, building regulation uses test ratings to determine whether materials and products meet societal expectations. Fire resistance constitutes the most enduring means of gauging fire safety, providing ratings for how elements of structure perform in a standard furnace test. Although it has long been known that this test is unrepresentative of real building fires, fire resistance testing remains central …
Engineering (21 works) · Political science (20 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Nuclear Issues and Defense (11 works) · Business (10 works) · Aeronautics (9 works) · Aerospace Engineering (9 works) · Ballistic missile (8 works)