ABSTRACT
There is certainly nothing new about technology, as typified by the vast literature stretching back to antiquity in fields such as mechanics, warfare, time measurement, and fishing (e.g. descriptions of how to build a bacteria lamp to attract fishes). In the early modern period, too, there is a considerable body of technological texts, e.g. Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Apian on astronomical instruments (sixteenth century), Leibniz on machines using wind energy in mining (seventeenth century), or by Jacob Leupold in his multi-volume Theatrum (eighteenth century). As in the field of science, there was an eventual shift from Latin to the vernacular, and by 1800 many fields of technology had estalished themselves as pre-industrial Fachsprachen. By the end of the eighteenth century, a number of technological innovations (e.g. steam energy) led in Europe to the complex process that we call industrialization, although unfavourable socio-political constellations meant that the ununited Germany remained largely unaffected until the nineteenth century. Technical innovations and industrialization brought about fundamental changes in the organization of labour, production and social relations and involved the establishment of new vocabulary zones, new words, specialized meanings in areas such as steam engines, machines, automation, the railway, steel production, telephone, photography, canalization, automobile technology, the rotation press, central heating, etc. At the same time, many vocabulary zones (e.g. animal-powered agriculture) were marginalized, which eventually led to lexical loss (e.g. Kummet ‘yolk for horses’).
