Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867–1914 and Their Lasting Impact Vaclav Smil OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Creating the Twentieth Century This page intentionally left blank Creating the Twentieth Century (cid:1) Technical Innovations of 1867–1914 and Their Lasting Impact Vaclav Smil 1 2005 1 OxfordUniversityPress,Inc.,publishesworksthatfurther OxfordUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellence inresearch,scholarship,andeducation. Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright(cid:1)2005byOxfordUniversityPress,Inc. PublishedbyOxfordUniversityPress,Inc. 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NewYork10016 www.oup.com OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,orotherwise, withoutthepriorpermissionofOxfordUniversityPress. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Smil,Vaclav. Creatingthetwentiethcentury:technicalinnovationsof1867–1914andtheirlasting impact/VaclavSmil. p.cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN-13:978-0-19-516874-4 ISBN:0-19-516874-7 1.Technologicalinnovations—History—19thcentury.2.Technological innovations—History—20thcentury.I.Title. T173.8.S6152004 609'.034—dc22 2004054757 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica onacid-freepaper Preface Thisbookhasbeenonmymindformorethanthreedecades.Myfirstmusings about the technically exceptional nature of the two pre-WWI generations go backtothelate1960s,beforeEvaandIescapedfromanewlyinvadedprovince of the Soviet Empire to Pennsylvanian ridge and valley countryside. Iworked on some of its topics (for other publications) during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, and I finally began to write it in 2002. In the words that my favorite composer used in dedicating his quartets, it is the result of lunga, e laboriosa fattica—and yet I wish that the task could continue. I have a selfish and an objective reason for this: further immersion in the world of pre-WWI innovations would bring more revelations, surprises, and confir- mations, and I would also like more space as there are many topics that I addressed only cursorily, many reflections and considerations that I had to leave out. At the same time, I have always followed Faraday’s great dictum— work, finish, publish—and so here is my incomplete and imperfect story of one of the greatest adventures in history, my homage to the creators of a new world. My great intellectual debt to hundreds of historians, engineers, and econ- omists without whose penetrative workthis volumecouldnothavebeenwrit- ten is obvious, and I must thank Douglas Fast for completing the unusually challenging job of preparing more than 120 images that are an integralpartof this book. And I offer no apologies for what some may see as too many numbers: without quantification, there is no real appreciationoftheera’sfun- damental and speedy achievements and of the true magnitude of its accom- plishments. Metric system and scientific units and prefixes (listed and defined below) are used throughout. Finally, what not to expect. This is neither a world history of the two pre-WWI generations seen through a prism of tech- nical innovations nor an economic history of the period written with an en- gineering slant. The book is not intended to be either an extended argument for technical determinism in human affairs or an uncritical exaltation of an era. I amquite vi preface content to leave its genre undefined: it is simply an attempt to tell a story of amazing changes, of the greatest discontinuity in history, and to do so from a multitude of perspectives in order to bring out the uniqueness of the period and to be reminded of the lasting debt we owe to those who invented the fundamentalsofthemodernworld.Or,toparaphraseBraudel’s(1950)remarks offered in a different context, I do not seek a philosophy of this great discon- tinuity but rather its multiple illumination. Contents Units and Abbreviations ix 1 The Great Inheritance 3 2 The Age of Electricity 33 3 Internal Combustion Engines 99 4 New Materials and New Syntheses 153 5 Communication and Information 199 6 A New Civilization 259 7 Contemporary Perceptions 303 References 313 Name Index 337 Subject Index 343 This page intentionally left blank