Technological discussions in iron and steel, 1871-1885

Carol Siri Johnson
Assistant Professor of Technical Communication, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Peter B. Meyer
Research Economist, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Before 1870, most North American iron was locally produced. By 1885, most U.S.-made iron and steel came from large plants near the Great Lakes, operating new high-volume production processes. Starting in 1871, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers (TAIME), a professional engineering journal, published papers which discussed changes in iron and steel making, mining, engineering, and management. These documents recorded significant economic and technological changes as high-volume production processes were developed. We will analyze the scanned contents of TAIME journal -- its 670 articles, tables of article topics, changes in word choice and changes in the journal’s format to reconstruct the economic and industrial changes in the time period. We have researched the educational and professional background of the 270 authors, providing trend data about their stated profession, degrees, ages, and educational backgrounds. This analysis of TAIME will provide a lively portrait of the 19th century iron industry as its members worked collaboratively to create the paradigm of Big Steel.

We shall test hypotheses are that written expressions of uncertainty decreased in number as the new processes were developed; that the educational level of authors increased between 1871 and 1885; and that the geographical distribution of the authors expanded during that same time. We discuss whether the evidence supports the proposition that Big Steel was a new “technological paradigm” which matches the sense of Thomas Kuhn’s scientific paradigms and the propositions Kuhn made about pre-paradigmatic versus paradigmatic literatures. If so, this can help technological history be integrated in a better way into economic history and business history.

For the latest draft of this paper, the scanned journals in PDF format, our tables of the authors and articles, and other background material please see http://techterms.net/ironwork/TAIME/.

SHOT (Society for the History of Technology) Conference Oct. 12 - 14, Las Vegas. Paper presented Fri., Oct. 12, at 9:30 am. Click here for slides.