The History of Chemical Technology

698 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE finance” (his p. 111). Edison also misread Gould, choosing to believe that the laconic financier was “after money and money only” (p. 789). He observed but overlooked the significance of Gould’s passion for maps and statistics, which reflected a vision of something that proved quite as essential to the progress of telecommunications as advances in electrical engineering—the creation of a national distribution system. C. M. Harris Dr. Harris is the editor of the Papers of William Thornton project. The History of Electrical Technology: An Annotated Bibliography. By Ber­ nard S. Finn. New York: Garland, 1991. Pp. xvi + 342; illustrations, indexes. $48.00. This is a most welcome addition to the Garland “Bibliographies of the History of Science and Technology” series. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Bernard Finn because he provides a basic research tool for beginner and expert alike. This is a book that invites rummaging and entices the reader to look up entries, for it is filled with little gems. I found valuable information on practically every page. The coverage of this annotated bibliography runs through 1986. A total of 1,559 entries were selected after a thorough examination of a number of relevant journals (Technology and Culture, Isis, Annals of the History of Computing, Technikgeschichte, Bulletin d’histoire d’électricité, and others) for appropriate articles and book reviews. Also, a number of libraries were searched, including those of the Smithsonian Institu­ tion, Library of Congress, National Institute of Science and Technol­ ogy, Science Museum in London, Cornell University, and New York Public Library. The entries were divided into four major categories: Broad Historical Works (383 entries), Communications (533), Power (330), and Miscellaneous (311). This material is further broken down into smaller categories. There is some overlap, but that is not an irritant. The annotations are usually good indicators of the quality of the material and the references on which it is based. They separate the wheat from the chaff, and I found myself in agreement whenever I was personally familiar with entries or had looked them up for this review. I shall, therefore, limit my critical remarks to several weak­ nesses that are bound to occur in any work of this scope. Every reader and user of this bibliography will find his or her own glaring omissions. This is to be expected, and I have space for only one that at this point I would plead for. Henry Guerlac’s Radar in World War II (New York: American Institute of Physics) was finally published in 1987 and was thus excluded by the strict and necessary observance of the 1986 cutoff date. But this masterpiece was available in manuscript in several places, including the library at Cornell University. Written more than four decades earlier, it is a gem that technology and culture Book Reviews 699 could have been used as a standard to evaluate some of the lesser contributions on radar that were included. Second, comments concerning the 20 percent of the entries in foreign languages. Some Russian-language entries have annotations that fall below the standards so well demonstrated everywhere else. Some are just translations of the title or are limited to such laconic comment as “Kostenko was an electrical engineer” (entry 165). There are bad translations, when for instance, Litve is rendered as Latvia rather than Lithuania (entry 458). The name of the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo is consistently transformed to Quevado. A larger proportion of the foreign entries have annotations limited to “not seen,” which may be excusable if the material is not easily accessible. What is less tolerable is to see the same label on a number of entries in English, especially doctoral dissertations located in the United States or Britain. Finally, stricter editorial control might have prevented minor glitches from slipping through. My copy of E. Scott Barr’s An Index to Biographical Fragments in Unspecialized Scientific Journals was published in 1973 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press) rather than 1974 as stated (entry 59). There are also several typographical errors. But these deficiencies are minor and detract little from an otherwise excellent contribution. Perhaps there is room for a similar annotated

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