ABSTRACT
Technology became the spur to science; it took, for instance, seventy-five years until Clausius and Kelvin could give a scientific formulation to the thermodynamic behavior of Watt's steam engine. Science could, indeed, have had no impact on the Technological Revolution until the transformation from craft to technological discipline had first been completed. Most of us also know that the Technological Revolution has resulted in something even more unprecedented: a common world civilization. It is corroding and dissolving history, tradition, culture, and values throughout the world, no matter how old, how highly developed, how deeply cherished and loved. The historians of technology, for their part, tend to be historians of materials, tools, and techniques rather than historians of technology. The rare exceptions tend to be nontechnologists such as Lewis Mumford or Roger Burlingame who, understandably, are concerned more with the impact of technology on society and culture than with the development and dynamics of technology itself.
