Scientific Practice for Technology
Hermann Aron's Development of the Storage Battery
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4763443 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shaul Katzir (0000-0003-4634-0070, Tel Aviv University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 481-500 |
| Publication date | 2013-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0073-2753 • E-ISSN: 1753-8564 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/007327531305100405 |
| OpenAlex | W1781446615 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 14 |
In 1880 Hermann Aron, a lecturer in physics at Berlin University, invented a high capacity lead storage battery, i.e. an electrochemical cell that could store and release considerably higher amounts of electric energy than earlier accumulators. At the time, the storage rechargeable battery promised to play an important role within the rapidly developing system of electric power, which attracted more attention than any other contemporary technology. Consequently, research on the storage battery flourished. Indeed, Aron was not the only inventor of a high-capacity lead battery; at least three other individuals developed similar ideas independently.Simultaneous inventions, like this one, are familiar in the history of technology. The telephone, the electric incandescent light, and the roll film camera are just a few contemporary examples that come to mind.1 Cases of inventions are perhaps even more common than those of discoveries. Of course, only rarely do two individuals separately invent or discover exactly the same thing. Yet often the ideas and the artefacts are close enough to be regarded equivalent by contemporaries and/or by later commentators. Historians of science found such cases of independent (or partly independent) discoveries particularly illuminating. In his classical analysis of the discovery of energy conservation, Thomas S. Kuhn employed the phenomenon to reveal the dependence of apparently independent geniuses and their ideas on their scientific, intellectual and social contexts. Following Kuhn, historians have exploited cases of discovery to illuminate and compare the works and concepts of simultaneous discoverers and to study the origins of their ideas and practices, and the central factors that led to and shaped the discovery and its establishment in the scientific community.2 Although historians of technology recognized many cases of discoveries, they have paid less attention to the concept and its implications for historical understanding.3In a rare discussion of the concept Charles Susskind observed that [sjimultaneous invention occurs when technology has reached a certain level at which the prerequisites have been achieved and the next step occurs to several minds at once.4 Like historians of science, Susskind saw in the analysis of co-inventions a means to identify the tools, intellectual and material alike, necessary for the innovation. While the recognition of these resources is highly important for technological innovations, such an emphasis misses the equally important question of motives:5 What led different researchers to search for a particular technology, in the case at hand, the improved storage battery? What were the problems that they attempted to solve, why did they try solving them at that time, and what were the techno-social conditions that made the question important for the protagonists? A comparison among different inventors can illuminate the question, no less than the question of available resources. The interest in the storage battery circa 1880 suggests that the emergence of electric lighting stimulated the development of the battery. While the question of motives is important for the history of science, it is crucial for the history of technology, since one develops technology only in expectation for its possible use. In other words, while discoveries originate from common sources, knowledge, beliefs and open questions, the immediate stimulations for inventions often originate from a common aim. Technological developments can point at such an aim, like that of preventing an anticipated waste of resources, and thus money, in the uneven demand (technically load) for electric power for the storage battery. Current knowledge of technology and science can make such an aim feasible. Still, societal conditions determine if it is an aim at all.In his history of the storage battery, Richard Schallenberg identified the design of its high-capacity kind as a case of innovation
Battery (electricity) · Physics · Thermodynamics · Alexander von Humboldt Studies · History · History of Science and Natural History · Philosophy and History of Science
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |