Journal of Glass Studies (review)

728 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE suggestion that a TA be done of TA is not likely to be adopted (p. 318). It is well established that bureaucrats overestimate benefits and underestimate costs of projects they favor (and vice versa). Thus, a favorable “official” verdict can be expected on TA-RTA. The “real” verdict is much less clear. Louis P. Cain* Engineering in the Ancient World. By J. G. Landels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Pp. 224. $12.50; bibliography, index. This is an excellent book on Classical or Graeco-Roman technology—or at least the dynamic side of it—written in a readable, informal style and illustrated by clear diagrams. The author discusses sources of power: muscle, water, wind, and steam; then waterworks, pumps, cranes and hoists, catapults, ships, and land transport. Two final chapters deal with theoretical knowledge of statics and hydrau­ lics and with the main sources: Heron, Vitruvius, Frontinus, and Plinius. Especially interesting are the author’s detailed discussions of the relative advantages of equines and bovines for traction (e.g., the abil­ ity of bovines to thrive on cheaper food); the problems of maintaining pumps of various kinds; tensioning catapult skeins, and the dangers of catapults to their operators; and the design of axle hubs to minimize wear. Landels’s focus is rather narrow compared with the breadth of his title. He does not deal with Egyptian or Mesopotamian engineering, let alone with that of India or China. Neither has he much if anything to say about the technical aspects of building styles, road construction, or metallurgy. On the other hand, on subjects he does discuss he goes into their technical features intensely but lucidly. The book is compa­ rable with Brumbaugh’s Ancient Greek Gadgets and Machines, Drachmann’s The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity, and Lynn White’s Medieval Technology and Social Change, while adding to their contributions by many quantitative calculations. L. Sprague de CampT Journal of Glass Studies. Vol. 19. Corning, N.Y.: Corning Museum of Glass, 1977. Pp. 225. $15.00. The “mystery” ofmaking glass has, by and large, been elucidated by the scientists, but the historians are still in the dark as to when and *Dr. Cain is visiting associate professor of economics at Northwestern University and author of Sanitation Strategyfor a Lakefront Metropolis: The Case of Chicago.|Mr. de Camp is the author of Citadels ofMystery and The Ancient Engineers. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 729 where glassmaking began. While archaeologists continue their search for evidence which might illuminate these questions, close attention is being directed toward discovering where and when that major technological advance in glassmaking, the use of the blowpipe, first occurred. Slowly, if not always surely, improved techniques for dating the archaeologists’ finds are making it possible to narrow the margins ofdate and location, but at present only approximations are possible. A very welcome contribution to this volume is the summary of the literary, pictorial, and archaeological evidence of glassblowing some 2,000 years ago by David F. Grose, curator of glass at the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. Fragments of blown glass excavated in 1970 in a bath in the Old City of Jerusalem have been dated on stratigraphical and numismatic evidence as no later than 50-40 b.c., and so Grose concludes that the initial invention and development of glassblowing took place in the eastern Mediterranean region if not actually along the Phoenicio-Syrian coastline. Some rather questionable evidence suggesting that glassblowing was invented or exploited in Rome or in Italy is examined, but it is pointed out that the first direct reference to glassblowing does not occur until well into the 1st century a.d.: Seneca in hisEpistulaeMorales addressed shortly before his death in a.d. 65 to his friend Lucilius stating “vitrearium . . . qui vitrum in habitus plurimos format”—translated as “the glassblower who by his breath alone can fashion vessels in countless shapes.” Pitfalls to be encountered in the study of ancient glass are empha­ sized by Sidney M. Goldstein of the Corning Museum of Glass who contributes a disturbing article on forgeries and reproductions, some notable examples of which have found a home at Corning. Axel

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