History of Technology
Professor of Global History Research Professor of International History Nottingham Trent University Department of International Affairs Clifton Lane Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages Nottingham NG11 8NS 80793 Kaohsiung
[email protected] Taiwan R.O.C.
and
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History of Technology Volume 30, 2010 Edited by Ian Inkster and Angel Calvo
Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London, SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com copyright © Ian Inkster, 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2011 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1441-14011-1 ISSN 0307-5451
Designed and typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
The Contributors
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Antoni Roca-Rosell: Overview. An Approach to the Historiography of Technology in Spain
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Knowledge 1 Juan Helguera Quijada (University of Valladolid): The Beginnings of Industrial Espionage in Spain (1748–1760)
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2 Irina Gouzevitch (Centre Maurice Halbwachs, EHESS) & Dmitri Gouzevitch (Centre d’Etudes des mondes russe, caucasien et est-européen, EHESS): Augustin Betancourt and Mining Technologies: From Almadén to St Petersbourg (1783–1824) 13 3 Antoni Roca-Rosell and Carles Puig-Pla (Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain): The Beginnings of Mechanical Engineering in Spain: The Contribution of Francesc Santponç i Roca (Barcelona, 1756–1821)
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4 Nadia Fernández de Pinedo (Autonomous University of Madrid); David Pretel (University of Cambridge); J. Patricio Sáiz (Autonomous University of Madrid): Patents, Sugar Technology and Sub-Imperial Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Cuba
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5 Manuel Silva (University of Zaragoza), The Engineering Profession in Spain: From the Renaissance to Modern Times
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Manufacturing 6 Isabel Vicente Maroto (University of Valladolid): The Art of Shipbuilding in Spain’s Golden Century
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7 Alex Sánchez (University of Barcelona): Technology Transfer and Industrial Location. The Case of the Cotton Spinning Industry in Catalonia (1770–1840)
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8 Àngels Solà (University of Barcelona): Silk Technology in Spain, 1683–1800. Technological Transfer and Improvements
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9 Esteve Deu and Montserrat Llonch (Autonomous University of Barcelona): Textile Technology Entrepreneurs in a Non-Innovative Country: Casablancas and Picañol in Twentieth-century Spain
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10 Miquel Gutiérrez-Poch (University of Barcelona): Foreign Machines and National Workshops: Spanish Papermaking Engineering (1800–1936)
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11 Núria Puig (Complutense University of Madrid): Foreign Firms, Local Business Groups and the Making of the Spanish Chemical Industry 154 Energy 12 Joan Carles Alayo Manubens (Polytechnic University of Catalonia): Electricity in Spain: its Introduction and Industrial Development 167 13 Francesc X. Barca-Salom (Polytechnic University of Catalonia): Secrecy or Discretion: The Transfer of Nuclear Technology to Spain during the Franco Period
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Telecommunications and public works 14 Ángel Calvo (Centre of Studies “Antoni de Capmany”, University of Barcelona): Telecommunications in Spain: High Technologies for the Periphery, 1877–1952
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15 Jesús Sánchez Miñana (Telecommunications School, UPC, Madrid): The International Adventures in Wireless Telegraphy of Franco-Austrian Engineer Victor Popp and their Epilogue in Spain 211 16 Santiago López (University of Salamanca): Franco’s Dams as Evidence of Technological Regression
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The Contributors
Joan C. Alayo Manubens UNESCO Chair of Technology and Culture Polytechnic University of Catalonia Spain Email:
[email protected] Francesc Barca Salom Polytechnic University of Catalonia Barcelona 08028 Spain Email:
[email protected] Angel Calvo Associate Professor, Economic History Centre of Studies ‘Antoni de Capmany’, University of Barcelona Avda. Diagonal, 696 Barcelona 08034 Spain Email:
[email protected] Esteve Deu-Baigual Lecturer of Economic History Faculty of Economics and Business Studies Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Campus Universitari, edifici B Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona) 08193 Spain Email:
[email protected] Nadia Fernández de Pinedo Lecturer of Economic History Autonomous University of Madrid Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco 28049 Madrid Spain Email:
[email protected] Irina Gouzevitch Docteur en histoire des techniques; ingénieur d’études au Centre Maurice Halbwachs École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales 48 bd Jourdan 75013 Paris France E-mail:
[email protected] Dmitri Gouzevitch Docteur en histoire des techniques ; Ingénieur d’études au Centre d’Etudes des Mondes russe, caucasien et est-européen École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales 44 rue de l’Amiral Mouchez 75014 Paris E-mail :
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The Contributors
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Miquel Gutiérrez-Poch Associate professor, Economic History Department of Economic History and Institutions; Centre of Studies ‘Antoni de Capmany’, University of Barcelona Avda. Diagonal, 696 Barcelona 08034 Spain Email:
[email protected] Juan Helguera Lecturer, Economic History Faculty of Economics and Business Studies University of Valladolid Avda. Valle de Esgueva,6 Valladolid 47011 E-mail:
[email protected] Montserrat Llonch-Casanovas Lecturer of Economic History Faculty of Economics and Business Studies Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Campus Universitari, edifici B Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona) 08193 Spain Email:
[email protected] David Pretel Research Student in History University of Cambridge Trinity Hall Cambridge CB2 1TJ UK Email:
[email protected] Nuria Puig Lecturer, Economic History Complutense University of Madrid Faculty of Economics and Business Studies 28223 Madrid Spain Email:
[email protected] Carles Puig-Pla Lecturer, History of Science Research Center of History of Technology, School of Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain ETSEIB, Diagonal 647 08028 Barcelona Spain Email:
[email protected] Antoni Roca-Rosell Lecturer of History of Science Centre de Recerca per a la Història de la Tècnica UNESCO Chair for Technology and Culture Universitat Politechnica de Catalynya ETSEIB, Diagonal 647 08028 Barcelona Spain Email:
[email protected] J. Patricio Sáiz Lecturer, Economic History Campus de Cantoblanco, Ctra. de Colmenar Viejo, Km. 15 Autonomous University of Madrid 28049 Madrid Spain Email:
[email protected] History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
The Contributors
Alex Sánchez Associate professor, Economic History Centre of Studies ‘Antoni de Capmany’, University of Barcelona Avda. Diagonal, 690 Barcelona 08034 Spain Email:
[email protected] Jesús Sánchez Miñana Professor, Signals, Systems and Radiocommunications Telecommunications School, Polytechnic University, Madrid ETS de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación-UPM Avenida Complutense s/n 28040 Madrid Spain E-mail:
[email protected] Manuel Silva Suárez Professor, Engineering of Systems and Automatics University of Zaragoza Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering c/ María de Luna, 1 50.018 Zaragoza Spain Email: Manuel Silva <
[email protected]>
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Angels Solà Associate professor, Contemporary History University of Barcelona Centre Ciutat, Facultats de Filosofia i de Geografia i Història Montalegre, 6 08001 Barcelona Spain Email:
[email protected] Isabel Vicente Maroto Professor Departament of Applied Physics School of Industrial Engineering Francisco Mendizábal 1 47014 Valladolid Spain Email:
[email protected] Santiago López Full Professor, Economic History Edificio FES (Campus Miguel de Unamuno) University of Salamanca 37008 Salamanca Spain Email:
[email protected] History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
Overview. An Approach to the Historiography of Technology in Spain A n t o n i Ro c a - Ro s e l l Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona
Introduction1
Transfer of technology is a major subject in the history of technology. Modern societies have been constructed in many different ways, and in such periods transfer of knowledge and technology has played an important role. Nevertheless, the historiography of technology, just as the historiography of science, has been dominated by creativity more than by transfer. This priority has left contemporary Spanish contributions in a subordinate position. In recent decades, the historiography of technology has changed its focus. Several factors are involved, but perhaps the economic relevance of technology has directed interest towards the actual role of technology in society, whether or not it is traditional or new, and whether or not it is generated within the same country or transferred from elsewhere. David Edgerton has developed a new perspective on the uses of technology in history, stressing the need for an in-depth study of the role of technology as it is actually used in society. He made his proposal in a paper that has been translated into many languages, and also in a book in which he applies his ideas to the twentieth century.2 Another motivation for the study of transfer of technology and its role in society comes from general historical studies, technology increasingly being seen as a relevant historical factor. In such cases, there is a tendency towards a deterministic view, a question widely debated in the literature. Finally, transfer of technology is an important focus in regions where development has arisen as a result of the spread of European industry. The situation of Spain and its economic development have been strongly influenced by European industry, mainly from the early nineteenth century. In Spain, the historiography of science has been marked by what is called ‘la polémica de la ciencia española’, the controversy about Spanish science. This controversy arose in the late seventeenth century and was centred on whether or not the Spanish were prepared for modern science. Two opposing
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points of view surround this issue. One states that the influence of the Catholic Church, by resisting modern ideas, constituted a definitive force excluding Spain from the scientific and technological mainstream after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. The power of the Catholic Church in Spain and its influence until the twentieth century were thereby the main reasons for this lack of interest in modern science. This position has been supported by the left and by freethinkers. According to the opposing point of view, conservative thinkers consider that true Spanish science was simply ignored, either because of the Black Legend or its idiosyncratic aspects, which placed it at a great distance from the generally accepted centres of Western science. The supporters of this view claim recognition for the ‘special’ Spanish contributions to modern science.3 It should be pointed out that the debate on the Polémica has had a significant impact on Spanish society, above all on the belief in a complete absence of original contributions to modern science and technology made by Spaniards. According to this view, current scientific and technical activity in Spain is almost always regarded as something foreign. At the same time, the development of the historiography of science in central and northern Europe in the twentieth century appears to confirm this idea. In fact, references to Spain in this period are few and far between. Since then, however, modern Spanish historiography of science has changed its objective. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of the role played by science and technology in Spanish society, i.e. in industry, agriculture, communications, research and education. One of the results of this new research approach has been greater acknowledgement of the high relevance of technology in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Spain was the leading major power in the world.4 Origins of Spanish History of Technology
In Spain, during the twentieth century, studies on the history of technology underwent a process of professionalization.5 In the early twentieth century, the new museums of technology impressed travelling Spanish teachers. This was indeed the case for Agustín Murúa, chemist and professor at the University of Barcelona, who spent two years in Munich between 1903 and 1905. In 1909, he cited the new Deutsches Museum, inaugurated in 1903, as a reference point for technical and scientific culture (Murúa Valerdi 1909). Murúa had a great interest in the history of science, probably due to the influence of Wilhelm Otswald and his historiographical project. Otswald, as well as other German scientists such as Ernst Mach, believed that the development of science should be based on the critical analysis of its conceptual history. During the first third of the twentieth century, several contributions to history of technology were made by engineers. These professionals played an important role in A period during which Spanish industry experienced a phase of diversification. Engineers contributed to a new vision of cultural heritage and provided a different analysis of the economic trajectory of Spain. As regards the industrial and technical heritage, the most interesting contributions were made by Antoni Gallardo-Garriga (1887–1942) and Santiago Rubió Tudurí History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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(1892–1980). In 1930, they published a book on the so-called ‘Catalan forge’, a metallurgical system developed in the Pyrenees since medieval times, and one which was widely used until the nineteenth century.6 These forges, which were used for the production of several kinds of iron objects, also formed the basis of an arms industry. Gallardo-Garriga and Rubió-Tudurí researched the technical basis of the system and carried out field work on the location of the remains of these forges in Spain and in France. The publication of their book was accompanied by the reproduction of a Catalan forge that was displayed at the 1929 International Exhibition of Barcelona. Gallardo-Garriga and RubióTudurí were both industrial engineers. Gallardo-Garriga was also an outstanding photographer and the author of an extraordinary collection of pictures of the Catalan electrical company Riegos y Fuerzas del Ebro (later to become Fuerzas Eléctricas de Cataluña and subsequently taken over by Endesa).7 GallardoGarriga contributed to anthropology with studies on popular rural constructions in Catalonia. Rubió-Tudurí designed the first underground railway in Barcelona, opened in 1924. He became the director of the School of Industrial Engineering during the Spanish Civil War, after which he went into exile. The booklet on the Catalan forge is an early presentation of what we now call ‘industrial archeology’, the context of which was the new role of engineers in Spain, particularly relevant in Catalonia, a region that resisted the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–30) and was in the vanguard of the Republican movement. Engineers continued to play an important role after the Spanish Civil War, during the Franco regime. In a first phase of this regime (from 1939 to c.1959 approx.), autarky was imposed, and within this policy engineers were needed to build the new economy in which technology played an important role. In this context, the book by José M. Alonso-Viguera (1900–74), published in 1944 on the centenary of industrial engineering in Spain, paid homage to the engineers who had been involved in the process of Spanish industrialization.8 Alonso-Viguera was an industrial engineer and worked as a state official. In 1948, an 800-page bibliography of industrial engineers was published by Manuel de Foronda Gómez (1907–69), an industrial engineer who became Count of Torre Nueva de Foronda.9 His work was the result of research in 15 libraries. Foronda-Gómez stated that technical bibliography was not appreciated, and he believed that many historical studies could be developed thanks to his book. Nevertheless, the main objective was to provide engineers and researchers with an instrument of bibliographical information. In the following years some institutional histories were published, such as the history of the Barcelona association of industrial engineers on its centenary.10 Apart from the literature produced by engineers or for engineering institutions, there was some interest in the history of technology by different specialists. It is worth mentioning the work on rural and popular technologies by Julio Caro-Baroja (1914–95), who directed an anthropological museum, the short-lived museum at the Spanish village in Madrid.11 It seems that interest in historical studies of technology diminished during the period of industrial development in the 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless, at the end of the Franco regime in 1975, the way was open for new reflections on the history of technology. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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New Orientation
In the 1970s, several researchers made important contributions to a new era in studies on the history of technology in Spain. It is interesting to notice the coincidence between several projects concerning different engineering specialities. For civil engineers, the historian Antonio Rumeu de Armas (1912–2006) was commissioned to write a history of the origins of this speciality in Spain, giving a prominent role to Agustín de Betancourt (1758–24), the pioneering Spanish engineer who promoted the first institutions in the country.12 For the history of civil engineering, Fernando Sáenz Ridruejo studied the development of the engineers’ collective and its main contribution to the modernization of the network of infrastructures in Spain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.13 A new study on industrial engineering in Catalonia in the nineteenth century by the historian Ramon Garrabou-Segura (born in 1937) appeared in 1982, and constituted the first modern study of an engineering community.14 The renewal of the historiography of science promoted by José María López Piñero (born in 1933) included technology. We should mention his programmatic study of science and technology in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which appeared in 1979.15 López-Piñero stated that an impressive system of technology including navigation, ship building, mining, metallurgy, fortifications, artillery and architecture was developed during the Spanish empire. Some Spanish contributions were instrumental in the renewal of Western technology in that period. López-Piñero and his collaborators, such as Víctor Navarro-Brotons, Eugenio Portela and Thomas Glick, brought together the history of science, the history of technology, and the history of medicine in their Diccionario histórico de la ciencia moderna en España (1983).16 In Valladolid, Nicolás García Tapia (born in 1940) developed research into technology in Spain during the Renaissance. He made use of the royal archives at Simancas and analysed contributions from leading engineers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.17 In Barcelona, Guillermo Lusa (born in 1941) promoted a research group on the history of science and technology, one of whose main objectives was the history of the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering, created in 1851.18 The group created by Lusa founded the journal Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria in 1995, the only journal devoted to the history of technology in Spain.19 On the history of technical and vocational education, it is necessary to mention the work of Ramón Alberdi (1929–2009), an excellent case study on the Barcelona experience.20 Also in Barcelona, Horacio Capel (born in 1941) promoted a research group on the history of geography and earth sciences, with a special interest in urban and territorial planning. This led him and his collaborators to the study of the role played by engineers, including military engineers, forestry engineers, and agriculture engineers.21 Capel and his group have also been interested in technical networks, including telegraphy, electricity, telephony, and gas.22 In the case of telecommunications, Sebastián Olivé and Jesús Sánchez Miñana published new approaches to this type of engineering in Spain.23 Economic historians have also contributed to the history of technology. In this regard, the focus is on the technologies relevant for industry. The work
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coordinated by Jordi Maluquer de Motes in 2000 consists of a collection of studies carried out in the previous period by authors such as Jordi Nadal or Alex Sánchez.24 Other historians have devoted work to technology in Catalonia and Spain, such as J. K. J. Thomson, who studied the origins of the cotton industry in Barcelona and the transfer of textile technology in the eighteenth century.25 Angel Calvo is interested in the history of telecommunications and has studied the foundation and the first phase in the history of the main telephone companies.26 The historiography of science has included the analysis of technology. In this sense, there is the work of the Arabist Joan Vernet (born in 1923) in his studies on Islamic science in Spain or in his History of Science in Spain.27 This is also the case in recent collective works on history of science in Spain, such as the work supervised by Josep M. Camarasa and Antoni Roca-Rosell on Catalan scientists; the history of science and technology in the Crown of Castille, supervised by Luis García Ballester (1936–2000); or the history of science in the Catalan lands supervised by Vernet and Parés.28 In recent times, perhaps the most noteworthy contribution to the historiography of technology was the result of an initiative by Manuel Silva-Suárez (born in 1951), a professor at the University of Zaragoza. He organized a two-yearly course on the history of engineering, and on the basis of these courses and other contributions he has published five volumes on the history of engineering in Spain, from the Renaissance until the nineteenth century.29 He plans to publish two more volumes on the nineteenth century, and perhaps four on the twentieth century. Despite the fact that the collection is not complete, the five volumes represent the most substantial contribution to the history of Spanish technology. Thanks to initiatives like Silva-Suárez’s, the landscape of the history of technology in Spain has changed significantly in the last decade. The contributors to this issue of the History of Technology constitute a very good example of the research being carried out at present. Acknowledgements
The author wish to thank Àngel Calvo for his invitation to write this overview and for his comments on this paper. Notes
1. This paper should be included in the research project of the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation HUM2007-62222/HIST and in the research project of the Generalitat de Catalunya 2009 SGR 887. 2. Edgerton (1998, 2007). 3. See López Piñero (1979). 4. See Garcia-Tapia (1997, 2003). 5. Roca-Rosell (1993). 6. Garriga and Rubió (1930). 7. On the development of the electrical industry in Catalonia, see Alayo (2007). 8. Alonso-Viguera (1944). 9. Foronda (1948). 10. Del Castillo-Riu (1963). 11. Among his contributions, see Caro-Baroja (1988).
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12. Rumeu de Armas (1980). There are a number of recent studies on Betancourt. See Chatzis, Gouzévitch and Gouzevitch (2009), in addition to essays by Gouzevitch and others in the present volume. 13. Sáenz-Ridruejo (1990, 2005). 14. Garrabou-Segura (1982). This author has devoted his career to agrarian history and has turned only occasionally to the history of engineering. 15. López-Piñero (1979). 16. López-Piñero et al. (1983). 17. Garcia-Tapia also studied steam engine technology and has made some reflections on the history of technology, and also published in the present journal. See Garcia-Tapia (1992, 1994). 18. See the 19-volume collection Documentos de la Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona (https://e-revistes.upc.edu/handle/2099/82). See also: Lusa (1994a, 1994b, 1996); Lusa and Roca-Rosell (1999, 2005). 19. The journal has a online version: https://e-revistes.upc.edu/handle/2099/5. 20. Alberdi (1980). 21. Capel et al. (1988). 22. Arroyo (1996); Capel (ed.) (1994); Casals (1996); Cartañá (2005). 23. Olivé (2004); Sánchez-Miñana (2004). 24. Maluquer de Motes (ed.) (2000). See, for example, Nadal (1975) and Nadal and Carreras (eds) (1990). 25. See Thomson (1992, 1998, 2003). 26. Calvo (2002, 2008). 27. Vernet (1975, 1978). 28. Camarasa; Roca-Rosell (1995); García Ballester (ed.) (2002); Verneta and Parés (eds) (2005–2009). 29. Silva-Suárez (ed.) (2004–2009).
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titanes de la rutina. Encuentro de investigadores Hispano-franceses sobre la historia y la filosofía de la matemática. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid/CSIC, pp. 335–65. — (1994b), ‘Industrialización y educación: los ingenieros industriales (Barcelona, 1851–1886)’, in R. Enrich, G. Lusa, M. Mañosa, X. Moreno and A. Roca (eds) Tècnica i Societat al món contemporani. Sabadell: Museu d’Història de Sabadell, pp. 61–80. — (1996), ‘La creación de la Escuela Industrial Barcelonesa (1851)’, Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, I, 1–51. Lusa, Guillermo and Antoni Roca-Rosell (1999), ‘Doscientos años de técnica en Barcelona. La técnica científica académica’, Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, vol. 3, 101–30. Lusa-Monforte, Guillermo and Antoni Roca-Rosell (2005), ‘Historia de la ingeniería industrial. La Escuela de Barcelona 1851–2001’, Documentos de la Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona, vol. 15, 13–95. Maluquer de Motes, J. (ed.) (2000) Tècnics i tecnologia en el desenvolupament de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana. Murúa y Valerdi, Agustín (1909) ‘El desarrollo histórico de la química según se representa en el ‘Deutsches Museum’ (Museo Alemán) y la alta significación cultural del mismo’, Memorias de la Real Academia de Ciencias y Artes de Barcelona Barcelona, 3ª época, vol. 8, nº 5. Nadal, Jordi (1975), El fracaso de la revolución industrial en España 1814–1913. Barcelona: Ariel. Nadal, Jordi and Albert Carreras (eds) (1990), Pautas regionales de la industrialización española siglos XIX y XX. Barcelona: Ariel. Olivé Roig, Sebastián (2004), El Nacimiento de la telecomunicación en España : el cuerpo de telégrafos (1854–1868). Madrid: Fundación Rogelio Segovia para el desarrollo de las telecomunicaciones. Roca-Rosell, Antoni (1993), ‘Una perspectiva de la historiografia de la ciència i de la tècnica a Catalunya’, in Víctor Navarro, Vicent L. Salavert, Mavi Corell, Esther Moreno and Victòria Rosselló (eds), II Trobades de la Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Técnica. Barcelona-Valencia: Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, pp. 13–26. Roca-Rosell, Antoni, Guillermo Lusa-Monforte, Francesc Barca-Salom, Carles Puig-Pla, (2006), ‘Industrial engineering in Spain in the first half of the XX century: from renewal to crisis’, History of Technology, XXVII, 147–61. Rumeu De Armas, Antonio (1980), Ciencia y tecnología en la España Ilustrada. La Escuela de Caminos y Canales. Madrid: Turner. Sáenz Ridruejo, Fernando (1990) Ingenieros de caminos del siglo XIX. Madrid: Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos. Sáenz Ridruejo, Fernando (2005) Una historia de la Escuela de Caminos: la Escuela de Caminos de Madrid a través de sus protagonistas: primera parte, 1802–1898. Madrid. Sánchez Miñana, Jesús (2004), La Introducción de las radiocomunicaciones en España (1896–1914). Madrid: Fundación Rogelio Segovia para el Desarrollo de las Telecomunicaciones. Silva-Suárez, M. (ed.) (2004–2009) Técnica e ingeniería en España. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, Real Academia de Ingeniería. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Thomson, J. K. J. (1992), A Distinctive Industrialization Cotton in Barcelona, 1728–1832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — (1998), ‘The arrival of the first Arkwright machine in Catalonia’, Pedralbes, 18, 63–71. — (2003), ‘Transferencia tecnológica en la industria algodonera catalana de las indianas a la selfactina’, Revista de Historia Industrial, 24, 13–49. Vernet. J. (1975), Historia de la ciencia española. Madrid: Instituto de España. — (1978), La cultura hispano-árabe en Oriente y Occidente. Barcelona: Ariel. Vernet, J. and R. Parés (eds) (2005–2009), La Ciència en la Història dels Països Catalans. Valencia-Barcelona: Universitat de València, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 3 vols.
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The Beginnings of Industrial Espionage in Spain (1748–60) J ua n H e l g u e r a Q u i jada University of Valladolid
It is well known that by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October 1748 Spain ended an almost continuous succession of dynastic wars, which had been draining most of its financial resources to the detriment of the national economy since the early eighteenth century. Thereafter, Spain’s enlightened rulers, free from the burden of excessive military expenditure, were able to allocate an increasing amount of the budget towards modernizing the economy and rebuilding the national infrastructures. The main agent of this new reformist policy was the Marquis of Ensenada, Ferdinand VI’s most influential minister,1 who simultaneously served as Secretary of the Treasury, War, the Navy, and the Indies. It was under his direction that a comprehensive tax reform was set in motion with the goal of implementing a single tax (Única Contribución). An ambitious transport network improvement plan was implemented, resulting in new roads and canals being built, and local industries were encouraged to reduce the reliance on foreign imports. Ensenada’s reformism eventually went on to encompass the military. After a prolonged peace had indeed been achieved, and under a foreign policy of active neutrality, no resource was spared in the pursuit of expanding and modernizing the military industries, with a particular focus on shipbuilding. Such a seeming contradiction was only in appearance, as Ensenada intended that Spain should have a strong navy in the medium-term; not just for the purpose of commanding the respect of the European great powers, but mainly for the defence of the colonies and the overseas trade. With this goal in mind, Ensenada heavily developed the shipbuilding industries in the three naval departments’ arsenals at El Ferrol, Cartagena and La Carraca (Cádiz), and the Guarnizo (Santander) shipyard, which resulted in an increased demand for guns and ammunition to outfit the warships, as well as cordage, spars and sails for their rigging. Compared with its European counterparts, Spanish military-industrial technology had become obsolete due to the time constraints imposed by the continuous fighting, which prioritized short-term productivity over long-term technological advances. As a matter of fact, warship construction methods used by Spain in the wars fought during the first half of the eighteenth century barely differed from those used during the previous century.
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From 1748 onwards, the Marquis of Ensenada resorted to a most expeditious procedure to overcome Spain’s technological backwardness at short notice. This was industrial espionage.2 His project involved sending particularly able military agents on a journey to the main European powers, have them inspect the principal arsenals and armouries in order to collect information on the most recent technical developments used therein, and, when possible, have them recruit foreign technicians who would introduce modern techniques in the Spanish military industries, as well as provide training to the local workforce.3 It is in no way an exaggeration to describe such journeys as espionage, for they were carefully planned. The agents received detailed instructions stating their itinerary, where they should break their journey, their main and secondary targets, and codes to encrypt their communications with Madrid.4 And Spanish diplomats serving in the countries on their itinerary were ordered to assist them by any means necessary to facilitate their mission. The Naval Spies: Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa
For the first espionage tasks Ensenada enlisted the help of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, two young naval officers who had earned significant renown for their services in the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission that measured the length of a degree of longitude at the Equator in South America. The instructions given to Jorge Juan and Ulloa by Ensenada for their journey are dated October 1748 and June 1749, respectively, and share a similar structure, with the second set being considerably longer.5 In both of them two clearly defined parts can be discerned. The first one was dedicated to the itinerary and to the designation of its goals, while the second one established a set of rules of conduct for the agents to maintain the secrecy of their mission’s true purpose. Both missions shared the same goals, which were three in number: to acquire information about the shipbuilding industries; to find out the official and actual policies that the target countries followed regarding their trade with the Spanish colonies; and, lastly, to gain knowledge regarding the economic measures those countries were applying in order to boost their industries, particularly those that were competing directly with the Spanish, both in national and colonial trade. Jorge Juan was the first agent to depart. After a stopover at Cádiz where he met with his travel companions, young Midshipmen José Solano and Pedro de Mora, he sailed for London, arriving there early March 1749.6 Jorge Juan’s main goal was to collect information about British shipbuilding methods, and to recruit several British engineers and technicians who might introduce these methods in the Spanish arsenals. He applied himself to the task with extraordinary effort and skill, in such a way that, after just 15 months in London, he had managed to send (according to Merino Navarro’s estimates7) more than 50 naval technicians and, in some cases, their families to Spain via Oporto and Calais so as to hide their final destination, including the three main shipwrights: W. Rooth, E. Bryant and M. Mullan. Additionally, Jorge Juan gave Ensenada not just comprehensive information regarding the mission’s main goal and the composition of the Royal Navy, as well as Britain’s strategy in America, but History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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much additional intelligence on several diverse matters of differing technical nature, including many collections of books and scientific instruments for the naval observatory in Cádiz, and a working model of a Newcomen steam engine, one of the first steam engines to arrive in Spain, which 20 years later would be used as template to produce local copies at the arsenal of Cartagena under Jorge Juan’s direction. Such exceptional results could only be obtained by Jorge Juan at great personal risk, by assuming several false identities and forging all manners of alliances with the locals, from the strictly mercenary in nature, to others based on religious affinity; and, at the very end of his mission, having to hurriedly flee the country after the British authorities had ordered his arrest. He managed to return to Madrid on June 1750, where, with Ensenada’s unconditional support, he promptly began implementing British shipbuilding methods (the so-called sistema inglés8) in the three Spanish naval arsenals. Around the same time as Jorge Juan’s rushed return to Spain, his old companion, Antonio de Ulloa, had spent just over half a year on his journey around mainland Europe,9 which, despite mainly involving French territories, encompassed the Netherlands and Scandinavia as well. This delay arose because he had to perform some duties in Barcelona and the arsenal of Cartagena during the summer of 1749. In Barcelona he inspected the bronze artillery foundry and wrote some reports on copper refining methods, which he sent to Ensenada. There he met with three young officers, his own brother, Fernando de Ulloa, and midshipmen Salvador de Medina and José de Azcarrati who would accompany him on part of his journey, and provide his cover, for Ulloa would pose as a supervisor for the three officers’ study trip, focusing on subjects such as mathematics, nautics, and hydrography. The first leg of the journey went through southern France, crossing the regions of Roussillon, Languedoc and Provence, which would last through most of the autumn of 1749. The main military objective of this journey was the visit to the great naval base of Toulon, which, despite arousing some suspicion, allowed Ulloa to write a comprehensive description and detailed plans of the base, which, some months later, were sent by Ensenada to the directors of the arsenals of El Ferrol and Cartagena to be used as reference. His main successes on the civil side were his reports on the Canal du Midi and the Carcassonne wool industry. For the first one he traversed the whole Canal, writing a very detailed report describing its main works of engineering, and collecting very interesting data on its river traffic organization and the conditions under which it was exploited. This report undoubtedly encouraged Ensenada to set in motion the project for the construction of the Canal of Castile. The report on the Carcassonne wool industry is of great interest as well, for it contains the first description (alongside a small informative drawing) of a flying shuttle to ever reach Spain. This device had been introduced in the French textile industry very recently (1747) by its own inventor, British technician John Kay. From Marseille, Ulloa and his companions headed towards Lyon following the Rhone upstream. There they stayed for a while since Ulloa, in accordance with Ensenada’s instructions, had to gather in-depth information about the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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city’s silk industry.10 From Lyon, Ulloa decided to make a detour to Geneva despite this being an unplanned destination in his itinerary, and there he spent the last weeks of 1750, unsuccessfully negotiating the employment of Swiss clockmaker Jacques François de Luc, who had shown some initial interest in relocating to Spain. They finally reached Paris in mid-1750, where they would establish their operations base for over a year. The original purpose of their visit was for Ulloa’s companions to study mathematics under his apparent supervision while he would have the freedom to work towards accomplishing his goals. This plan gave way shortly after their arrival due to the indiscretion of the father of one of his companions, revealing the true nature of the mission. Despite this setback, Ulloa did not relent, but his degree of success suffered as a result. During the following months, while writing reports on diverse topics, he failed to hire the famous mapmaker D’Heuland, but succeeded in recruiting hydraulic engineer Charles Le Maur, whom he would collaborate with several years later on the Canal of Castile project. Moreover, he managed to surreptitiously visit the artillery foundry at the arsenal of Paris, watched the new machines used for drilling the bore of solid cast cannons in action, and sent to Ensenada a blueprint and a report on them. After leaving his companions behind in Paris, Ulloa travelled along the coast of Brittany and Normandy between April and August 1750, his purpose being to inspect the main ports and arsenals of the French navy in those regions. Since his cover had been blown, he did not hesitate in asking the French navy minister, Antoine-Louis Rouillé, for permission, which was granted alongside all manners of assistance and recommendations to see the military facilities. As a result of this expedition he wrote several reports on ports such as Lorient, Nantes, and St Malo.11 Once he returned to Paris, Ulloa kept on working on diverse matters, from the French land transport network, to the organization of municipal sanitation services in Paris, during which time the he was constantly acquiring scientific and technical books in vast quantities, and contacting experts who might be interested in relocating to Spain, the most important of whom was Irish naturalist William Bowles. In early 1751 Ulloa began to prepare the next stage of his journey, which would go through Flanders and the Netherlands, and he had to convince Ensenada to stick to the original itinerary, as the impatient Marquis wanted to limit the length of his stay in the Netherlands to the bare minimum. He reached the Netherlands in June, and there he collaborated with the Spanish ambassador, the Marquis of Puerto, in recruiting six master craftsmen who specialized in the manufacture of cordage, spars and sails to work at the Spanish arsenals. He also managed to enter the artillery foundry in The Hague, where he could confirm that the new solid casting method had been implemented as in Paris, and that they were using similar machines for drilling the cannon bores. In August 1751, Ulloa and his associates began the last leg of the journey around the Nordic countries. But what had started as a semi-clandestine and private mission, became an official diplomatic mission of sorts. In Denmark, Ulloa visited the main arsenals with the Admiral of the Danish Fleet, and History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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when the following month he left for Stockholm, he brought with him several letters of introduction written by the Swedish ambassador. In Sweden he was received by the monarchs themselves, and had no trouble visiting the arsenal of Karlskrona where he saw a large dry dock that would become the basis upon which the dry docks of the arsenal of Cartagena would be built. From Stockholm he headed to Berlin where he was also well received, since the letters of introduction written by the Swedish queen, sister of Frederick II of Prussia, paved the way for a favourable welcome. Frederick II himself received Ulloa at Sanssouci, where they had a private dinner in the company of the famous mathematician Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis. On 20 November, Ulloa and his companions began the journey back to Spain. They reached Paris after three weeks, where Ulloa received a letter from Ensenada urging him to visit some central European mines before returning to Spain despite this not being included in the original instructions. Ulloa excused himself from this task, and without waiting for Ensenada’s reply, left Paris on the 26 of December 1751 for the Spanish border, and arrived in Madrid sometime in early 1752, ending a European expedition that had lasted for just over two years. A Failed Improvisation: Enrique Enriqui’s Journey
After the encouraging results of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa’s missions, the Marquis of Ensenada decided to expand his industrial espionage operations, this time with the aim of gathering intelligence in the fields of metallurgy and artillery and obtaining information about the new cannon making techniques. The first of these new missions was a fairly improvised one, and could be seen as a side extension to Ulloa’s journey. When Ulloa reached Marseille in November 1749, he received a letter from Ensenada who, after examining Ulloa’s reports regarding Barcelona’s bronze artillery foundry, urged Ulloa to widen his goals to include collecting information on metal casting techniques. Ulloa, not considering himself qualified for such a task, suggested that Ensenada should organize a new industrial espionage mission targeting specifically the main European foundries, and recommended for this Enrique Enriqui, an artillery lieutenant he had met during his stay in Barcelona. The minister approved and gave Ulloa the task of producing instructions for the lieutenant‘s journey. Enriqui arrived in Paris in March 1750, where Ulloa gave him the instructions that specified the metallurgical aim of the mission: to acquire information about everything relative to the treatment of copper and iron for the casting of artillery parts. The expected itinerary would comprise three main stages: the first stage, after a short stay in Paris, would be visiting mines and foundries in Alsace and Lorraine and end in the Netherlands. The second stage would encompass the Nordic countries, focusing particularly on the Swedish copper mines, and end at St Petersburg. The last stage would cover the central European mining regions, passing through Prussia, Austria and Hungary, and ending in the north of Italy, from where Enriqui would return to Spain around the summer of 1752, that is, after two and a half years’ travelling. However, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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the reality of this journey differed greatly from Ulloa’s original itinerary, and the resulting failures were due mainly to Enriqui’s own incompetence. He only managed to complete the first leg of the journey, obtaining very poor results in terms of information gathered, and from which he derived some conclusions that were as ironic as they were unexpected: that Spanish artillery guns were vastly superior to anything he encountered during his travels, both in the quality of their alloys, and in their design and construction. Once he reached the Netherlands, in November 1750, he requested Ensenada to cancel the second stage of his journey, for he considered there was nothing to be learnt from the Nordic countries’ copper mining and metalworking. His request was granted, but as the alternative he was ordered to leave for England immediately, and to expect new instructions there. Enriqui arrived in London in early 1751, where he languished into an almost complete lack of activity due to his ignorance of the English language until, after repeated complaints, Ensenada ordered him to return to Spain in March, thus aborting the mission completely. Enriqui went back to Spain two months later, where he was coldly received by the minister, who simply asked him to write a comparative report on the different machines employed to drill the bore in solid cast cannons. And it was this report that completed the discrediting of Enriqui, as he seized the opportunity to present a project of his own devising, and this was unanimously rejected by the experts. After that Enriqui was never given any task related to technical matters. The Journey of the Four Artillery Officers
The truth of the matter is that, since the previous year, once it was becoming evident that Enriqui’s mission was a failure, the Secretariat of War began planning another two industrial espionage journeys aimed at acquiring new metallurgical and mining technology in general, and more specifically, that targeted towards artillery production. Everything points to Lieutenant General Juan del Rey, head of the Artillery Corps at the Secretariat of War, being the organizer. He selected four officers to travel in pairs: Dámaso Latre and Agustín Hurtado for Northern Europe, and José Manes and Francisco de Estachería for Central Europe.12 They gathered in Madrid and, over the course of several months (from October 1750 to January 1751), every detail pertaining to their missions was prepared in a coordinated fashion. Finally, they received their orders, including a detailed itinerary for each journey, the specific goals they would have to reach for each stage, as well as keys for encrypting their communications. Latre and Hurtado’s Journey The first stage of Latre and Hurtado’s journey – which was very similar to the one that had been originally assigned to Enriqui by Ulloa – was in England. They most likely arrived in London during April 1751, their main goal being to gather information on a new metal alloy for cannons that was being experimented with at the Chelsea artillery foundry and was scheduled for general testing shortly after.13 The travellers managed to get in contact with Moore and History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Stark, the inventors of the alloy, and even reached an agreement in principle for them to reveal the secret of the alloy composition. Meanwhile the alloy underwent a general testing, which despite showing promise, was regarded as inconclusive by the spies. The inventors used this as an excuse to increase their fees. They were now asking for the massive sum of £15,000. Ensenada found this change unacceptable and thus ordered the spies to adopt stalling tactics in order to gain time. But this strategy extended their stay in London indefinitely, so in the meantime they spent their time collecting diverse technological information of little worth. Dámaso Latre showed particular interest in meeting with alleged inventors looking for financial sponsors and, following in Enriqui’s footsteps, since no progress was made in the negotiations with Moore and Stark, he dared to propose his own project to develop a new metal alloy, a proposal which was rejected by the Secretariat of War. Finally, in mid-1752, negotiations broke down and Ensenada ordered them to continue their journey according to the original itinerary but Latre, using several excuses, managed to extend their stay in London for another year with the purpose of maintaining contact with the inventors with whom he had become acquainted. This behaviour created disagreement between both travellers. After receiving new orders from Ensenada telling them to go through the Netherlands before heading towards the Nordic countries, Agustín Hurtado decided in June 1753 to leave on his own, with Latre grudgingly following him several weeks later. The reason for this unplanned diversion was for the spies to interview a certain Benjamín Aires who had offered the Spanish ambassador a new optical instrument of his invention that apparently would allow for a substantial increase in the accuracy of guns. Their stay in the Netherlands lasted for the whole summer and ended again in failure, as they never even got to see this supposed invention. In view of this development they went onwards towards Denmark ignoring the fact that Spain had just broken off diplomatic relations with this country. However, they did not encounter any trouble during their brief and unsuccessful stay under the guise of their journey’s purpose, being to ‘learn and acquire the sciences’. After travelling separately once again, they reached Stockholm on November 1753 where, despite the good work of the Spanish ambassador, the Marquis of Puentefuerte, the results of their technology information gathering were disappointing, much poorer than those obtained there by Ulloa just two years earlier. They sent only two reports: one on a new type of cannon made of wrought iron, and the other on gunboats. In view of this outcome, Hurtado decided on his own to write a letter to Juan del Rey requesting him to persuade Ensenada to abort the mission. Regardless, they stayed in Sweden over six months and continued towards St Petersburg, arriving there in August 1754. They received Ensenada’s reply shortly after. He agreed to abort the mission, but they were ordered to go to Saxony before returning and to meet with Manes and Estachería who were carrying out a parallel industrial espionage mission, and had been undertaking mining courses in Freiburg for over a year while they were in Saxony. Latre and Hurtado began their journey to Freiburg in September 1754, and after arriving there they parted once and for all. Latre quickly went back History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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to Spain to work as a bureaucrat in the Secretariat of War. As for Hurtado, it seems he wanted to join Freiburg’s school of mines but by the end of 1754 he was ordered to return to Spain. Neither of them had to carry out any task of a technical nature for the rest of their careers. The Journey of Manes and Estachería This mission shows a very different profile. Manes and Estachería reached the first stage of their journey, Paris, in March 1751 and stayed there for over half a year. They also visited the arsenal artillery foundry, but what was a cursory glance in Ulloa’s case, now turned into a comprehensive inspection that allowed them to draw two large blueprints of the bore drilling machines, as well as scale drawings of their main pieces, alongside an extensive explanatory report. They also submitted information on the methods used in France for remelting scrap iron, and a copy of Reaumur’s treatise on transforming iron into steel, which could prove helpful in attaining such an objective.14 In early October they headed towards Alsace to visit the Strasbourg bronze artillery foundry. This was France’s most modern one, for it was barely ten years since Jean Maritz had renewed its facilities to implement the new solid casting method, so the travellers profited greatly from this visit. First they drew a blueprint and built a model of the bore drilling machines, much more efficient and precise than the ones seen before since they were horizontal and hydraulic powered. They also submitted two plans of the blast furnaces that highlighted their main advantages compared to the current Spanish design. But the most interesting fact is that as a result of this visit they made the first comparative study written by Spanish technicians on the characteristics and respective advantages of hollow casting and solid casting, claiming the latter to be clearly superior. In early 1752 they briefly travelled through the Swiss cantons, and in Bern they got the chance to interview the director of the city’s artillery foundry, Samuel Maritz, the eldest son of the inventor of solid casting and brother of Jean, the one who implemented this method in the French artillery.15 On April 1752 Manes and Estachería arrived in Turin, capital of the Kingdom of Piedmont, where they stayed for almost half a year. They did not gather much information of any importance, merely some references to steelmaking in the north of Italy, but it was there where they first heard about the mining and metallurgy courses taught at the Bergakademie of Freiburg (Saxony). They considered these courses interesting and worthwile, so that they asked Ensenada for permission to undertake them, claiming that the knowledge they would acquire would make them more efficient when carrying out their mission, and could be applied to the Spanish and American mines. Ensenada was persuaded by such arguments, and approved of this course of action, reminding them that after their stay in Freiberg they would still have to visit some of the main central European mines, as was originally planned. Manes and Estachería arrived in Freiberg on August 1753 after going through Vienna and Dresden where they had no trouble obtaining the necessary permits to enrol in the Bergakademie. They stayed there for two years, but did not send many letters since, as they had warned Ensenada, Saxon History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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authorities normally opened foreigner’s mail, and that would compromise their mission’s secrecy. They weren’t affected by Ensenada’s dismissal, since his replacement as Secretary of War, Sebastián de Eslava, authorized them to remain in Freiberg until they finished their studies. In March 1755, with that day approaching fast, Manes and Estachería asked Eslava to be allowed to continue their mission, to visit the main mines and foundries of Germany and Sweden. The minister not only approved this request,16 but made arrangements with the Secretariat of State to provide them with letters of credence. Before leaving Freiberg they notified Eslava about them having managed to obtain information on two industrial procedures classified as state secrets in Saxony, cobalt extraction and porcelain making. From that point, news about the travellers becomes scarce. We don’t know what itinerary they followed through Germany. In November 1755 they were in Goslar, after passing through important mining centre of Clausthal, where they met with the wives of two technicians working in the mines of Almadén. We don’t hear about them until October 1756, when they notified Eslava of their arrival in Stockholm. They stayed in Sweden for almost six months, where they visited the main mines and metalworking facilities to their full satisfaction, thanks to the good work of the Spanish ambassador. During their journey they heard that British mining technology was far more advanced than in continental Europe, and that they had started using coal to fuel their foundries. In view of this, they did not hesitate to ask for permission to extend their journey, and went to the Netherlands to wait for an answer. Permission was granted again, so they left for England on July 1757 and stayed there for over nine months, leaving no evidence of the information they obtained. They did not apparently consider returning to Spain even when their stay in England was coming to an end. They then became attached to the armies engaged in the Seven Years’ War as neutral observers in order to ‘acquire proficiency in the practical use of cannons’. Such a rare privilege was attained thanks to the mediation of Spanish ambassador in Paris, Jaime Masones, who had recently been appointed General Director of Artillery, and would be their mentor from then on. Estachería spent 1758’s campaign in Field Marshal Daun’s Austrian army while Manes was attached to the Bas-Rhin French army. Both of them intended to continue in the following year’s campaign but Masones decided they shouldn’t take unnecessary risks and, with the approval of the Secretariat of War, had them return to Paris to broaden their studies at the French artillery academies under his personal supervision, before they would finally go back to Spain. Manes and Estachería’s second stay in Paris lasted over a year, but there are no documents describing their technological achievements. In early 1760 Masones considered that their training was complete and that it was time to end their journey. So he told the new Secretary of War, Ricardo Wall, advising him to give them a job according to their technical knowledge, and in March they were ordered to come back. Their return was delayed until June because Manes was visiting an artillery foundry in Liège. The return journey took a long time since Manes and Estachería used it to visit some French naval foundries and, once in Spain, some forges in Vizcaya and the artillery History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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factories of La Cavada and Liérganes. They did not arrive in Madrid until August 1760, almost 10 years after their departure, thus making this industrial espionage journey the longest ever made in the eighteenth century. Sadly, the practical results of this journey did not correspond with its breadth nor with the privileged technical training acquired by its protagonists. After their return, they were well received by Minister Wall, who promoted them to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and retained them as technical advisors for the Secretariat of War. In July 1761 he assigned them the task of introducing the solid casting procedure at the artillery factories of La Cavada but, after over a year of experimentation, the cannons built under their direction did not pass the endurance tests. Both of them were demoted to the rank of Captain as a consequence of their failure and returned to the army to perform tasks unrelated to the technical matters they had worked on, and to which they would never be assigned again. Conclusions
As can be seen, the results of these first industrial espionage journeys were quite irregular. This was due mainly to the very different levels of ability of those who undertook them. Jorge’s Juan journey was exemplary, doubtless the most beneficial of all for its accomplishments. In a short span of time (slightly over a year) he acquired the technical and human resources necessary for a radical modernization of the naval industry. However, the assessment of Ulloa’s journey is more difficult. It’s true that he contributed a great deal of information, mainly descriptive, pertaining to the situation of the European navy and that on occasion he also provided valuable data about concrete matters of industrial technique. But for all that, as a whole his mission presents a very heterogeneous appearance and, with a single exception, that of the Cartagena dry docks, did not foster any important practical application. Regarding Enriqui’s journey there is nothing to add. It was a mistake from beginning to end, starting with the selection of the agent, in which Ulloa was the man responsible. The two journeys undertaken by the four artillery officers show a very different profile. In principle they were well planned and had clearly defined goals, and it’s because of this that the unevenness of the results becomes the more striking. Latre and Hurtado’s journey was a clear failure since they did not manage to obtain intelligence on Moore and Stark’s new metal alloy, which was their mission’s main objective. After that, they lost their goal and wasted their time collecting and submitting data of very little interest. Manes and Estachería’s case is again a very different one. They accomplished two main things: submitting to Spain the first example of rigorous and contrasted information on the procedure for solid casting and being the first Spanish students at Freiberg’s Bergakademie. But after 1755 the technological yield of their journey was clearly diminishing, in spite of which they managed to delay their return to Spain for five more years, giving all kinds of excuses. The worst part came after their return, for they were unable to put in to practice the technical knowledge they had so costly acquired over the course of their decadal European tour. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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The industrial espionage journeys were not continued immediately as a means of technology transfer in eighteenth-century Spain. The political fall from grace of Ensenada and the dismantlement of the Real Giro, which had been the system of financing such expensive missions in foreign lands, were responsible for this. It was only in the last decade of Charles III’s reign, when new industrial espionage operations of a scale comparable to those undertaken during the Marquis of Ensenada’s time, were organized once more. Notes
1. The most complete exposure of Ensenada’s police can be found in Gómez Urdáñez (1996). 2. The classic reference on industrial espionage in that century is Harris (1997). 3. Paraphrasing Lafuente and Peset (1985), it could be said that after 1749 we move to an authentic ‘militarization of technique’, in so much as most of the effort exerted in introducing new techniques is done in order to accomplish military goals. 4. Regarding the organizational, technical and logistic aspects of espionage during Ensenada’s era, the work of Taracha (2001) is essential. 5. The text for both sets of instructions can be found transcribed in their entirety in Lafuente and Peset (1981: 249–60). 6. On Jorge Juan’s journey, besides Lafuente and Peset (1981), refer to Morales Hernández (1973) and Gómez Urdáñez (2006). 7. Merino Navarro (1981: 50). 8. On the technical characteristics of the so called ‘sistema inglés’, refer to Merino Navarro (1981: 49 et seq. and 374). 9. On Ulloa’s journey, refer to Merino Navarro (1984) and Helguera Quijada (1995). 10. Above all else Ulloa had to find out if the recent ban on the export of Spanish raw silk had a negative impact on Lyon’s silk production. 11. The information collected in said report was used by Ulloa several years later to write an extensive treatise on the navy, which remained unpublished for more than two centuries. See Ulloa (1995: 45 particularly et seq.). 12. A general view of these journeys with precise references can be found in Helguera Quijada (1988). 13. This is likely the reason for the change of plans that was behind the order that forced Enriqui to travel to London. 14. Ensenada sent Reaumur’s work to Jorge Juan and Ulloa so they could evaluate its possible applications to industrial practice. However, while recognizing its scientific value, they claimed it barely had practical implications and did not believe it would help solve the problem of how to re-use scrap iron. 15. On the solid casting procedure, see Helguera Quijada (1986). 16. The favourable influence of Leuteniant General Juan del Rey (who remained in charge of Artillery at the Secretariat of War after Ensenada’s dismissal) can be seen behind Eslava’s decisions.
Bibliography Gómez Urdáñez, J. L. (1996), El proyecto reformista de Ensenada. Lérida — (2006) ‘El ilustrado Jorge Juan, espía y diplomático’ Canelobre, 51, pp. 107–27. Harris, J. R. (1997), Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer. Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century. Aldershot. Helguera Quijada, J. (1986), ‘La invención del procedimiento de fundición de artillería en sólido y su recepción en España a mediados del siglo XVIII’, in Actas del I Congreso Internacional de Historia Militar. Zaragoza, t. 1, pp. 327–45. — (1988), ‘Las misiones de espionaje industrial en la época del Marqués de la Ensenada, y su contribución al conocimiento de las nuevas técnicas
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metalúrgicas y artilleras a mediados del siglo XVIII’, in VV. AA., Estudios sobre la Historia de la Ciencia y de la Técnica. Valladolid, vol. II, pp. 671–95. — (1995), ‘Antonio de Ulloa en la época del marqués de la Ensenada: del espionaje industrial al Canal de Castilla (1749–1754)’, in Actas del II Centenario de Don Antonio de Ulloa. Sevilla, pp. 197–218. Lafuente, A. and J. L. Peset (1981), ‘Política científica y espionaje industrial en los viajes de Jorge Juan y Antonio de Ulloa (1748–1751)’, Melanges de la Casa de Velazquez, XVII, pp. 234–62. — (1985) ‘Militarización de las actividades científicas en la España ilustrada (1726–1754)’, in J. L. Peset (ed.), La ciencia moderna y el Nuevo Mundo. Madrid, pp. 127–47. Merino Navarro, J. P. (1981), La Armada española en el siglo XVIII, Madrid. — (1984) ‘La misión de Antonio de Ulloa en Europa’. Revista de Historia Naval, II, 4, pp. 5–22. Morales Hernández (1973), ‘Jorge Juan en Londres’, Revista General de Marina, 184, pp. 663–70. Solano Pérez-Lila, F. from (1999), La pasión de reformar: Antonio de Ulloa, marino y científico (1716–1795). Cádiz Taracha, C. (2001). ‘El Marqués de la Ensenada y los servicios secretos españoles en la época de Fernando VI’ Brocar, 25, 109–22. Ulloa, A. (1995), La Marina: Fuerzas navales de la Europa y costas de Berbería, Cádiz. Preliminary study and editing by J. Helguera Quijada.
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Augustin Betancourt and Mining Technologies: From Almadén to St Petersburg (1783–1824) I r i n a G o uz e v i t c h Centre Maurice Halbwachs, EHESS D m i t r i G o uz e v i t c h Centre d’Etudes des mondes russe, caucasien et est-européen, EHESS
Introduction
This paper explores one of the aspects of Augustin Betancourt’s polyvalent activity, his work in the field of mining. The choice of this topic requires an explanation because the name of this Spanish engineer is usually associated with the other domains of excellence, such as the steam engine, the theory of machines or public works.1 There is however a key work which raises Betancourt to the rank of eminent expert in the field of mining: his three Memorias de las Reales Minas de Almadén (1783). 2 Made famous thanks to a series of recent publications,3 these memoirs are rightly considered as a masterpiece of the Spanish Enlightenment giving evidence of the great technical and artistic talent of his author. The fact remains, however, that in the career of Betancourt, this early and brilliant intervention in the field of mining appears as an occasional or extra-mural one rather than integral to his central concerns. Our long-time researches concerning Betancourt’s engineering activities convinced us, however, that the experience of Almadén, far from being only episodic, had a life-long impact on his work. It manifested itself at various levels and inspired a series of important works in Spain and in France, in England and later in Russia. It is this dimension that we wish to investigate. Our analysis will include three parts. At first, we shall revisit the episode of Almadén by bringing some nuances to the well established thread of this story. Then, we shall analyse, in the light of this experience, a much less known work on the purification of stony coal carried out by Betancourt in 1785 in Paris. Finally, we shall examine a series of pioneering works initiated by the engineer
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in this domain during the last period of his life where, charged with the general direction of the means of communication of the Russian Empire, he applied the experience of Almadén to public works. Almadén
The inspection of the Almadén Royal Mercury Mines was the first professional mission entrusted to Betancourt after three years of study in two scholarly institutions of Madrid, – the Royal Studies of San Isidro and the Academy of the Noble Arts of San Fernando (1779–81). Although the thread of this story has been well established, some points still remain unclear and among them, the circumstances which incited the chief of the government, the Count of Floridablanca, to appoint Betancourt for this mission. Thus, most of the authors tend to ignore the fact that in 1783, not one, but three people were commissioned by the Count of Floridablanca to inspect the Almadén mines. They were, in chronological order, Tomás Pérez Estala (March),4 Augustin Betancourt (June–July) and Fausto de Elhuyar (October). Moreover, it was precisely following the inspection of Pérez Estala and in order to corroborate his conclusions that two other commissioners were appointed. In order to understand this decision, it is worth giving a brief reminder of the history of the Almadén mines and the problems they were confronted with. Situated in the province of La Mancha, 300 km south of Madrid, the mercury deposit of Almadén was one of the biggest natural properties of the Spanish Crown as well as being an enormous concentration of cinnabar (mercury ore). The mines were driven deeper over the centuries so larger quantities could be extracted. Mercury has been used since antiquity, and the Almadén mines had been functioning since then, but from the sixteenth century onwards, with the discovery of the New World and of its immense reserves of gold and silver, the production of mercury exploded because it was an indispensable ingredient in the production of these precious metals. Given their major economic potential, in 1645 the Almadén mines were transferred from private ownership to state ownership.5 This change was the origin of a series of reforms aiming, on the one hand, to intensify production, and on the other, to improve the technical conditions of exploitation. During the eighteenth century, several measures were tried in order to reach these two objectives. The discovery of the new deposits of ore allowed the opening of some new mines while the ancient ones were completely exhausted. However, as extraction continued to be intensified, the mines became deeper: by the end of the eighteenth century, the mine of Castillo for example, reached the record depth of 628 metres, and this strongly aggravated the problems, already complex enough, of extraction, ventilation and drainage. At the same time, the techniques of water extraction did not evolve much after the sixteenth century: the traditional leather buckets (zaca) of about fifty litres bailed out by the manual hoisting drums were still in use at the end of the eighteenth century. In the 1750s–70s, some discreet innovations were introduced in this field such as manual iron and wooden suction pumps, pumps with gears and pumps with a pendulum as well as the horse winches (malacates). However, all History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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these measures brought only a partial solution of the global problem so that, by the beginning of 1780s, the techniques of water extraction reached the limit of their capacity. As a result, the exploitation of the Almadén mines became both dangerous and less profitable. The mission of Tomás Pérez Estala thus consisted, first of all, in inspecting the state of the drainage systems and in recommending improvements. Who was this man and why was he appointed? He was a technician of the same generation as Betancourt but came from a more modest Aragonese family He was born in 1754, had to work from the age of ten, first as an apprentice, then as a worker-craftsman in the different mechanical workshops in Valencia, Zaragoza and Barcelona. Attracted by the progress of mechanical arts in France, Estala hastened there and, from 1776 to 1780, he travelled through the country while diversifying his training. In 1778, the Junta de Comercio of Barcelona assigned him a one year grant of 500 pesos to support his training.6 This support gave him the access to the big centres of industrial production, and among others, the coalmines of Fresnes7 where he could see in action a steam engine undertaking drainage. At the end of this stay, the Spanish consul in Le Havre who supervised the work of the fellow-trainees, recommended Pérez for additional training in London. However, this proposition remained a dead letter, and the trainee left without means of subsistence and spent two long years in forced inactivity. To remove him from this situation, the consul had to intervene with the Secretary of State who, in spring, 1783, decided to entrust Estala with the inspection of water extraction systems in the Almadén mines. However, the conclusions of Pérez Estala made the minister doubtful. Indeed, the Aragonese showed himself to be extremely critical of the old-fashioned drainage installations at Almadén and suggested replacing the horse winch with an innovation observed in France. However, the Fresnes steam engine quoted as a reference, was in reality an old Newcomen model which had been used in this mine from 1732, and was thus already out-ofdate. It had however a big advantage as it only required two workers for its maintenance, whereas the malacate technique required 20 men and two horses. Nevertheless, even this proposition of Estala appeared too advanced to the official authorities for the simple reason that the use of the steam engines in the mining industry had been ignored in Spain. Before deciding to engage in such an investment, Floridablanca thus preferred to wait for Betancourt and Elhuyard’s opinions, men who were both due to visit Almadén during the same year. The journey of Fausto de Elhuyard planned for October finally did not take place.8 Would Betancourt’s opinion have been judged sufficient? We can suppose that it was, principally because of the enormous success of his three memoirs on the Almadén mines drafted between July and November 1783. Each of them concerned a different subject: if the first one was dedicated to the problems of water extraction, the second concerned the extraction and the transport of ore, while the third dealt with the process of mercury production. As for the spirit of his propositions, Betancourt took the trouble to honestly declare to have done this job ‘sin espíritu de reformador ni de proyectista, porque no tenía misión para le primero, ni lo segundo es de mi genio’.9 The fact remains that from the point of view of presentation, Betancourt produced History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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a real masterpiece with its concise and precise style, clear presentation, calligraphy and especially, the magnificent drawings worthy of an artist. As for the contents, it shows the solid stamp of a conscientious technician who was able to study the problem at depth and propose honest solutions within the framework of the original mission. The three memoirs have a similar structure: the author attempts at first to explain the specific terminology by providing a small glossary. He then offers a general overview of the situation and proposes a detailed description of the technologies used, by criticizing if necessary the observed failures and by proposing in conclusion measures of improvement and recovery. As regards the systems of drainage, his preference was for the pumps rather than the zacas which, given their ineffectiveness, he advises against using. In case this cannot be avoided, Betancourt proposes some timely improvements aiming to make them more profitable. The devices used to transport the cinnabar inside and outside the mine are described in the second report. Improvements are also proposed, and in particular the use of conical drums instead of cylindrical ones or the application of the brake (his invention) on the existing manual hoists. The study of the process of production of the pure mercury is full of detail on the construction of the furnaces, their loading and unloading, and on the methods of washing and packaging the mercury. Moreover, Betancourt states that his observations were drawn from experiments with the various furnaces which he had visited and he criticizes certain foreign authors, such as William Bowles and Bernard de Jussieux – who, while describing the Almadén mines, sometimes distorted the reality.10 The patriotic bombast which breaks the neutral tone of the presentation is not the only feature which distinguishes the third report; it is also the most substantial and the only one to finally allow us to approach the most natural of questions. How was this young man who had never studied mining specifically, able in merely a few months to become an expert? The three memoirs reveal that his method was logical, rigorous, and step-by-step, sticking meticulously to the facts drawn from the study of documents and from personal observations. The third report contains, in addition, numerous references to English, German and French works, which specialized in mining and evoked the case of Almadén11. The way Betancourt quotes them bears witness to a reflex of synthetic and critical reading which is in itself a way of learning. Such an approach was learnt at school, and in suitable institutions where the ‘enlightened’ sciences and languages were taught. The quality of the plates gives evidence that besides classic drawing, Betancourt had mastered technical drawing as well as levelling and the rudiments of geodesy which helped him to approach the specific geodesy of mines. We can thus suggest that the knowledge of the first group was acquired at the Academy of San Fernando, in its classic drawing course, while those of the second group could be a part of the geometry course at the Royal Studies of San Isidro. As for machines and their composition, the Canarian prelude12 already offered a good introduction, one that the training in Madrid was supposed to enrich. From this standpoint, the inspection of the Almadén mines appears as a test which Betancourt passed perfectly. On one hand, it allowed him to test the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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cognitive potential of his training which offered, besides a scientific and artistic background, a universal method of progressing. On the other hand, it was not only proof of his talent for techniques but also of his capacities to undertake an official mission. In the light of his own admission concerning the nature of this work, this last capacity could probably be enough in explaining a little the innovative character of the memoirs of Almadén. Because it is necessary to face the evidence: its proposals recommended the continuation of a regime of traditional techniques. One can object that there are situations where a well tried traditional technique is worth replacing by a successful innovation. It all depends on the context.13 In Almadén, for example, the timely improvements brought to certain failing elements aimed at maintaining the balance of the system as a whole, and at making it continue as for long as possible at minimum expense. In the light of the difficulties that the introduction of the steam pumps in the Almadén mines later encountered, such a concern with simplicity had its reasons.14 It remains to be seen whether Betancourt’s choice was deliberate or intuitive. We can surely not ignore that he was then lacking in necessary experience and that he did not appear to be influenced by any open-mindedness resulting from his journeys? The apparent relief caused by his conclusions was in any case short lived: Two years later, the disastrous state of the drainage systems of the Almadén mines caused the Superintendent of Mercury to re-launch the proposition of Pérez Estala and to equip Almadén with the steam engines for subterranean water extraction. In 1786, Tomas Pérez Estala was sent to England for this reason.15 However, at that moment Betancourt was no longer in Spain, since the inspection of Almadén was a springboard which propelled him very far. His talent was considered as a resource worthy of investment. According to the enlightened Bourbons’ policy, this meant learning abroad. Ûcole des Mines of Paris: A Missed Opportunity
When Betancourt went to Paris in March 1784 he did so as a fellow of the Secretaria de Indias to study there ‘the architecture and the subterranean geometry’.16 The grant of 12,000 reales per annum was a way of engaging him for the future, in particular with the aim of exploiting the American mines. Considering the orientation of these studies, we can wonder at the choice of France rather than Germany, Bohemia or England, the more usual destinations for improvement of mining knowledge in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Did his knowledge of French influence this choice or was it the recent creation of a new royal mining school in Paris, the École des mines? Upon a decision of the Royal State Council in March, 1783, this school’s objective was to train the ‘intelligent and well formed managers of mines’.17 Two professors were be appointed to teach disciplines such as chemistry, mineralogy, docimasy (experimental assaying of metals), physics, subterranean geometry, hydraulics and ‘the most safe and economic way of driving galleries and of renewing the air in mines in order to maintain the healthiness there’, and finally the devices needed for their exploitation and for the construction of furnaces. The studies were intended to last three years. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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In the light of the problems faced by the Almadén mines, such an educational project could only stimulate the Spanish mining administration to send a trainee to Paris in order to sample the new teaching. Betancourt, with his recent mining experience, was the right man for such an opportunity. The fact that he received his grant at the beginning of 1784 testifies to the alert functioning of, most probably, the diplomatic services, which would have informed the relevant authorities in Spain of the existence of the Parisian school at the very moment when it had just welcomed its first students. Five to eight were admitted at the end of 1783. But, contrary to the founding regulations, these student graduated after only six months of studies. The next intake entered the school in 1785 and after one year, ten more students graduated. On his arrival in Paris in April, 1784, Betancourt thus had a good opportunity to find out about the École des mines when its first intake had already left it and the second had not yet enrolled. Such a hypothesis seems plausible because there is no information giving evidence that Betancourt had ever attended this school. By contrast, we know that from the beginning of his stay in Paris, he was in contact with the École des Ponts et Chaussées directed by the famous French engineer-bridgebuilder Perronet and that this somewhat removed him from his original intentions. In view of the training given by this institution, Betancourt conceived his own project, which aimed to promote in Spain a profile for a new technical expert, the hydraulic engineer. When this project received royal approval, he was awarded a new grant by the Spanish government to manage in Paris a special ‘hydraulic team’, a group of fellowtrainees who were supposed to study mechanics and hydraulics at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées and establish a collection of machines for future training needs of hydraulic engineers in Spain. The professional career of Betancourt thus followed, from this moment, a different path. The Paris-Oviedo Axis
This pathway was marked in the work entitled Memoria sobre la purificación del carbón, y modo de aprovechar las materias que contiene (Memoir on the purification of coal, and the way to extract the products it contains). Elaborated at the request of the ambassador Aranda in November 1785, and dedicated to Charles III, it was addressed to the Societá económica de amígos del país of the Asturias. The history of this work can be clarified thanks to Antonio Bonet Correa.18 Besides describing Betancourt’s original contribution to the treatment of ores, this publication allowed him to penetrate the circles of the learned naturalists and mineralogists of the French capital.19 But first of all, what were the motives which incited the interest of the Asturian society in the problems of the purification of stony coal? A glance at the early history of this society suggests a paradoxical answer: it was interest in the mineral coal that made it possible to carry the idea of its creation to execution. The problem was then one of the central concerns of the Spanish enlightened elites. Indeed, the industrial modernization initiated by Charles III was directly dependent on the more rational exploitation of energy resources. At the same time, in Spain as everywhere else in Europe, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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the traditional use of charcoal began to show its limits, and this awareness encouraged active minds to look for alternative solutions. In 1773, Asturian coal became an object of a study which aimed to investigate its possible use in the state foundries, and soon afterwards the Council of Castile invited the local authorities to stimulate the prospecting for coal deposits in the region. This enthusiasm was not unfounded, and when in 1780, the king promulgated a law authorizing the creation of companies which specialized in the extraction of the coal, the creation of the Societá económica de amígos del país of the Asturia’s five-year-old local initiative could at last be finalized. Concretely, this society owed its existence to the perseverance of two men: Pedro Rodrigez de Campomanes (1723–1802), a writer and economist promoted to the rank of Minister of Finance of Charles III, and Joaquin José Queipo de Llano y Valdés, Viscount Torreno (1727–1805), an enlightened aristocrat Lord and an enthusiastic mineralogist. The former was the instigator of the order issued by the Council of Castile in 1777 which formalized the call for prospecting. The latter was involved on his own account in mineralogical prospecting. He regarded the society as a wonderful opportunity for bringing to light the problems in dealing with the exploitation of the stony coal. In 1784, the society elected as an honorary member, the Count of Aranda, Spanish ambassador in Paris. On 28 November 1785, the count informed his Asturian colleagues that he had sent them a box containing a collection of the ‘best reports and works published in the kingdom by the most famous authors’, and among them, the Memoria sobre la purificacion del carbón by Betancourt. In the absence of documents specifying the conditions in which Betancourt had to carry out this work, we can however suppose that being a trainee of the Spanish mining administration he must have been interested in the problem of coal purification that generally preoccupied mining engineers in several European countries.20 Working under the supervision of the embassy, he also had the wish to please the ambassador.21 In both cases, the young man could only accept the invitation to consider the questions which interested Aranda’s Asturian correspondents. And although this episode is not dated, the conversation could have taken place during a public demonstration of the extraction of tar from stony coal undertaken by Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, in the Jardin du Roi. The content of the report confirms this suggestion. This text of 16 handwritten pages, with three plates drawn by the author, consists of three parts. Part 1 is a brief overview of the way in which the industrial properties of stony coal were discovered in different countries of Europe, and in particular Germany (Becher), Sweden (Swedenborg) and England. Having underlined the pioneering contribution of everyone in the process of coal distillation, Betancourt mentions the French mining engineers, in particular Jars22 and Gensanne,23, who thanks to their famous metallurgical journeys introduced the innovations of their European colleagues in France. The last of the French travellers quoted by Betancourt is Barthélémy Faujas de Saint-Fond whose demonstration in the Jardin du Roi on 15 April 1785 is analysed in the second part of the report. The author compares the technical qualities of the distillation devices used in Great Britain and in Nassau (Saarbrücken), History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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and concludes in favour of the first device, reckoned to be more simple and cheaper, invented by certain ‘Lord d’Wadonnal’, the owner of a factory in ‘Yrlanda’, that the French naturalist could observe thanks to some ‘artisanos inadvertidos’. The device under discussion was designed to recover the products of coking released during the combustion of coal, in particular the tar and the volatile alkali whose contribution to medicine and arts was then predicted. Betancourt judges Faujas de Saint-Fond severely because the design of his distillation furnace was inspired by the invention of the ‘Milord’. Even though his first attempts were successful, the furnaces had a complication which was difficult to verify consequently, even if he copied them from those of Ireland, they were very far from being invented with the same economy and simplicity with which Englishmen executed their big operations of art.24 In the end, the Spanish engineer proposed a model of a closed furnace carefully modified by him. Compared with the memoirs of Almaden, this text is more academic. The technical part reveals a good knowledge of the examined systems and an alert creative mind, while the historic incursion is surprisingly well informed. Curious to know more about this last point, we undertook to look again at Betancourt’s references starting with those of Faujas de Saint-Fond. The result turned out to be paradoxical: Betancourt’s erudite incursion into the history of distillation of coal drafted in 1785 appears, on some points, to be a reduced version of a wider historical overview offered in Faujas’ book dedicated to the distillation of tar and published in 1790. Some fragments in both texts are even almost identical, with the only difference being the language used. So, the second paragraph of Betancourt’s memoir dealing with Johann J. Becher is the Spanish version of the same passage of Faujas. Even the reference to the work of Becher with a publication date of 1783 instead of 1782– is similar in both authors.25 It is, however, difficult to suppose that Betancourt’s skills in the matter of purification of coal were then comparable to those of Faujas de Saint-Fond, a recognized expert in mineralogy. The opposite seems much more plausible, and even the earlier date of the Spanish memoir with regard to the French book does not contradict this assertion. Certain peculiarities of the memoir suggest that Betancourt would have been able to take notes during the oral presentation. So, the names of the quoted mineralogists are transcribed according to the conventions of French spelling rather than the established spelling, for example ‘Beccher’ for Becher, and ‘Suedenbourg. for Swedenborg. Finally, Milord d’Wadonnal of Yrlanda was transcribed as Lord Dundonald of Scotland:26 quite an understandable confusion when one tries to remember it afterwards or to consult a working document written quickly. Nevertheless, the first two names are those of eminent scientists in the field of mineral chemistry, while the third distinguished himself by his inventions in the field of distillation and the industrial use of tar and volatile alkali for which he obtained patents in England. Faujas of Saint-Fond mentions these three experts and their work, stressing in particular those of Dundonald whose brochure in French version he includes in his book. Betancourt seems to ignore its content, and this confirms our hypothesis concerning the origin of the information which he supplies in the introduction to his own text, based on what was available and History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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accessible. From this point of view it is worth examining the third part of his memoir. The changes that Betancourt brings to Faujas de Saint-Fond’s device aim at improving the shortcomings observed during the experience in the Jardin du Roi. He tries to improve the process of ore combustion, to facilitate the evacuation of vapours and to optimize the process of condensation and separation of the products of coking. So that the mass of the coal diminishes away regularly on the circumference of the furnace, it is necessary to obtain a more uniform heat by adjusting the proportion of necessary air and by insuring its optimum circulation inside the furnace. In this perspective, Betancourt aims to give to the combustion space a cylindrical shape rather than a parabolic one and to reduce the size of the grid by two-thirds in order to prevent its metal bars breaking under the weight of coal. To facilitate the evacuation of vapours, he proposes that the furnace should be a unique body with the envelope and a fireplace that can be closed and opened at will at the summit. To finish, Betancourt replaces the Faujas’s sophisticated distillation device (three chambers and a multitude of tubes difficult to adjust) by a more primitive system consisting of a single square pipe arranged as a coil inside which the vapours are condensed. The products of condensation come down in a large receptacle filled with water where the tar, the oil and the volatile alkali are separated according to their specific weights to be finally collected in different bowls. The spirit in which these improvements were conceived indicates a certain trend which was to become afterwards a typical feature of Betancourt’s creative activity. We can summarise it as follows: ‘to optimize by simplifying’. Far from being fortuitous, this approach had a lively source. In the light of the known facts, we must recognize here the implicit influence of a specific technical culture that was his originally. This culture was naturally that of Spain, with its still mainly artisanal technical regime, but also the more modern technology of the Almadén mines. In this concrete work, the aforementioned experience manifested itself in two registers: an antecedent (Almadén) and the place of the possible application (Asturias). The context, in both cases, was specifically Spanish and thus quite different from those of Germany, England or France. This was a context in which risks were taken for the most promising projects, because of the lack of skills, material and adequate equipment. To ‘simplify’ they had to take into account the local conditions, to protect the expected results from the vagaries of incompetence, to adapt the process of implementation to the available means, to insure its functioning and thus, to optimize in the wide sense. From this point of view, the lessons of Almadén, even if this locality is not quoted, were significant. It is enough to look at the furnaces for the processing of mercury described by Betancourt in 1783, to find cylindrical internal chambers ending in a segment of a sphere and forming a single body with the envelope, or the fireplaces at the top for the extraction of excess vapours.27 Of course, as regards the different mines, this comparison has its limits. For us here, it is important to delimit the field of referential knowledge available to Betancourt at that time. In this respect, in the universe of our time, Almadén was at a History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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shorter cognitive distance from Paris than Culross in Scotland or Saarbrücken in Nassau. However, the case of Almadén is not only a reference, it is also an anticipation, a springboard towards such knowledge in Europe. Two years later, enriched by new experience, he mobilizes for the benefit of Spain the potential of his Parisian contacts, in addition to his vast knowledge. At the same time, unlike the three memoirs of Almadén, that of the Asturias would be soon forgotten. Even Faujas de Saint-Fond, although directly involved in this work, did not mention it in his book of 1790. Two hypotheses may explain this silence: either the French mineralogist ignored the existence of the memoir, or he did not consider it worth mentioning. The first one seems however less likely than the second: the susceptibility to criticism, the condescending attitude towards a young foreigner, or the self-sufficiency of the scholar are so many very human qualities that could provoke such an attitude, even without surmise concerning Faujas de Saint-Fond’s view of the failed application of Betancourt’s device. Quite cunning and adapted to the conditions of Spain, the project failed because the Asturians did not manage to build the device correctly. From the project to its execution the distance is indeed enormous because the action on the ground has to take into account a multitude of local factors which often manifest themselves only in the building process. Without having visited Asturias nor even managed a construction of this type, how could Betancourt guarantee the feasibility of his invention when the local industrialist turned out to be unable to do it? And it was hardly due to lack of resolve. On the contrary, the Asturian Society welcomed the project enthusiastically. At the beginning of 1786, Betancourt was elected as a member of merit and his project was immediately put to execution. In summer of the same year, Joseph Townsend, English traveller in Oviedo, witnessed having visited ‘una refinería de petróleo que ha sido instalada recientamente cerca de la ciudad y está organizada según un plan que ha enviado desde París el conde de Aranda y que creo es similar al que ideó Lord Dundonald’28. However, the satisfaction caused by the rise of the furnace quickly yielded to disappointment, because in spite of its considerable cost, the furnace was split by fire. The material losses dissuaded the Asturian society from trying a second test, and the project was abandoned. Thus, the local situation got the better of the innovative effort, and it is necessary to admit that the history of technology abounds in examples of the same kind. We also have to recognize that the perspicacity of Betancourt had its limits and that he lacked practical experience. Another question would be to know if he was effectively anxious to acquire it. Nothing indicates that his relations with the Asturian Society went beyond the exchange of correspondence relative to his election. Did he even know about the final failure of the project? Or, as looks most probable, once the memoir was presented to the ambassador, he simply did not worry about it any more. Changing of Optics: The Cabinet of Machines
Curiously, these two works of Betancourt in the field of mining – the three memoirs of Almadén and that on the purification of stony coal – appeared in History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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neither of the two catalogues of the cabinet of machines (that of Betancourt, 1792, and that of Peñalver, 1794) whose creation and direction occupied the engineer for the following decade.29 These catalogues contain, nevertheless, in their diverse parts, several entries relevant to mining. So, according to Fernández Pérez and Gonsález Tascon, ‘with regard to mining and metallurgy there is a model of a washer and separator of minerals used in Hungary, perhaps supplied by Peñalver, a smelting furnace taken from the Périer’s workshop, a furnace for smelting copper in melting pots without needing bellows, and others for heating bullets. Also plans 334 to 340 correspond to the Montcenis smelting works and foundry in which the large bellows that blew air into the forges are driven by five steam engines’.30 They quote, besides, the other pieces of the collection (models and plans) relative to mines, in particular all sorts of drainage pumps, such as ‘the water column machine’ used in the mines of Saxony and Hungary (another contribution of Peñalver, mining engineer and student at the School of Schemnitz) or ‘a suction pump made on a framework of square section planks but with a cylindrical piston’ of the type observed by Betancourt in Almadén (finally, a link), without mentioning the steam engines used for drainage. Finally, in the second catalogue at least, there is a mention of a ‘China mill’ used at the china factory of Madrid.31 All this bring us towards a conclusion that meanwhile, the interest of Betancourt in mining changed its nature: from the punctual inventions anchored in the industrial reality of concrete sites, he passes to the work of synthesis. Indeed, the cabinet of machines appears as a true inventory of the techniques of this time but also, on a different note, as the reflection of a specific technical culture of its author. It is from this double point of view that we need to examine the place accorded to mining in the organization of the collection32. The mining experience of both authors of the catalogue influenced their choices. At the same time, a collection oriented essentially to public works obeyed its own logic, and this probably explains the absence of a chapter explicitly dedicated to mining in which the memoirs of Almadén and Asturias would have naturally found their place. The various devices issued from the mining area are rather merged into a multitude of machines relative to the diverse aspects of the art of construction, and one perceives there an attempt, albeit fragile, to consider them in application to public works. But the main problem seems to lie in the fact that the two versions of the catalogue are just early attempts to classify various machines and mechanisms, and this classification still obeys the functional principle. However, even in this initial stage, the indications concerning the localization of objects according to their purpose in manufacturing or use, in the case of machines at least, are reduced to the bare minimum in order to stress their prevailing role as prototypes. The following step, the total abstraction of all which is not typical, will be made later, during the creation of the Essai sur la composition des machines published in Paris in 1808.33 The absence of the explicit references to Almadén seems to be indicative of this awareness. Nevertheless, it did not prevent Betancourt from applying his mining experience to another concrete work about which, until now, very few things are known. It was a mill to crush flint driven by a water wheel and History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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designed for the pottery factory located on the Severn, near Coalbrookdale. Known essentially thanks to some watercolours and sketches found in various academic collections,34 this mill was designed by Betancourt in 1796, within the framework of his collaboration with William Reynolds, a protagonist in the British industrial revolution.35 These two trends characterize the second stage of Betancourt’s professional life, – the effort of synthesis and the approach by application – and explain the evolution of his attitude towards mining, which received a strong new impetus during his Russian period. Changing of Scale: Russia
In Russia, where Betancourt spent the last 15 years of its life (1808–24), his technical initiatives increased in scale. He was Chief Director of Ways of Communication (1819–22) and the engineering corps of the same name reported to him, and he was also chief of the institute of this corps which trained qualified specialists in public works36 (1809–22). It was as a highranking expert, initiator of prospectings and organizer of the large-scale works that he intervened this time in the domain of mining by privileging their applications for public works, such as technical geology and building materials. These activities were organized according to two axes: scientific research and training. Thus, the Institute of the Engineers of Ways of Communication was one of the first technical high schools in Russia to include in its curriculum a set of disciplines relative to the diverse aspects of mining, such as mineralogy, technical geology and engineering prospectings.37 As for the scientific research, it was oriented, first and foremost, to the problem of hydraulic binders which, from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, was one of the central preoccupations of European engineers. The connection between this initiative of Betancourt and his Almadén experience is not evident at first glance. The processes of mercury production and that of manufacturing binders consist, however, of two technological stages; they also require the use of equipment and devices of the same type. It is the nature of the deposits that makes the difference. On the one hand Almadén (extraction of cinnabar) goes very deep under ground, but on the other hand there are open-cast mines in the vicinity of St Petersburg (for the extraction of limestone). The following processes, which can be inverted, are also of the same order: the grinding of ores, the products of firing and the firing itself. Thus, in both cases mills and furnaces need to be used. From the construction point of view, the differences between the equipment designed for the treatment of cinnabar and of limestone are not fundamental: they appear rather in the details of the respective technological processes. The problem of binders was common in all European countries where the hydraulic works were carried out on a large scale particularly in England and France, Spain and Russia. Once in Russia and charged with the general direction of its ways of communication, Betancourt had to face this problem on quite an unpredicted scale. The necessity of importing binders from Europe at enormous cost weighed heavily on the the national budget. This History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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problem could be solved by organizing the production of binders locally, and this was the undoubtedly strategic task which conditioned the development of hydraulic works and transport networks of the immense Russian empire, and finally the recovery of an economy weakened by the war. Betancourt did all that was possible to resolve the problem. He had to face all kinds of proposals which assailed him from all manner of prospectors wanting to sell their projects 38. Among the more serious attempts was that quoted by the French mechanician Poidebard.39 However, this project like many others, proposed artificial mixtures which neither by their quality, nor by the technologies of their manufacturing, often most excessively expensive, could claim to resolve the problem on the scale required. To do so, it would be necessary to find suitable deposits, elaborate the technologies of the treatment of ores and then train specialists able to apply them and to develop the field later. It is on these objectives that Betancourt focused his efforts. The breakthrough took place in 1821–2 when French polytechnician Antoine Raucourt, freshly hired by the Crown service, was commissioned by Betancourt for two concomitant missions, managing the construction of the Narva bridge and teaching the constructions course at the Institute of the Corps of Engineers of Ways of Communications. The Narva was a deep tidal stormy river with a strong current. For that reason, the structures of the bridge had to be made of solid materials, particularly those parts beneath the water line. The question of hydraulic binders thus became central. From this point of view, Raucourt was the right man for performing this task: his name was indeed already famous in French professional milieux as a pupil of Vicat who had distinguished himself by his experiences with binders in Toulon in 1819–20. These experiences demonstrated, in particular, that it was possible for France to stop using very expensive Italian puzzolanes ‘thanks to the easy and cheap transformation of some local air lime of Provence to hydraulic lime’.40 Having been informed of these results, Betancourt asked this engineer to study Russian lime in the Narva region. The scale of research organization carried out on this occasion catches the imagination: according to ZnackoÂvorskij, this involved more than 1,500 individual experiences (and some of them reproduced) on 2,000 samples of different natural and artificial lime. The famous work of Raucourt, Traité sur l’art de faire de bons mortiers .â•›.â•›., issued from these researches and published in St Petersburg in 1822 was dedicated by its author to Betancourt. The dedication said: ‘Mon Général, Vous avez désiré sur les mortiers en Russie des expériences analogues à celles que j’avais faites en France pour l’application des procédés de Mr. l’ingénieur Vicat; votre ardent amour pour les choses utiles, vous fesant (sic!) souhaiter que l’empire de Russie jouisse de suite des bienfaits, de l’une des plus importantes découvertes modernes. Je dois aux moyens que Votre Excellence a mis à ma disposition, ainsi qu’à l’amitié éclairée de mes deux collègues, MM. Lamé et Clapeyron, d’avoir pu faire en peu de temps un grand nombre d’expériences sur les chaux en Russie.’ 41 One could argue that the aforementioned dedication was due to the highranking position of Betancourt. However, this argument does not work so aptly with regard to the second strongly reviewed edition of the treaty published in History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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1828 in Paris, which the engineer dedicated this time ‘A la mémoire de M. le lieutenant-général Augustin de Bétancourt, y Molina ; Souvenir respectueux d’affection et de reconnaissance de l’auteur’.42 The meaning of this dedication would be better understood in the light of the fact that Raucourt, an emotional and fretful man, who fell out meanwhile with most of his former colleagues, was hardly inclined to show gratitude. Thus, he did not mention in this second edition three other persons who had closely collaborated with him in the framing of this project: Lamé, Clapeyron and Bazaine. As for Betancourt, the gratitude of Raucourt towards him remained intact. The experiences were held in the workshops of the Ist district of ways of communication headed by another professor of the Institute, French polytechnician Pierre-Dominique Bazaine, and their results were immediately integrated into the syllabus of the construction course43; a quarter of a century later they were taken into account during the organization of a cement factory near St Petersburg, the first enterprise of this kind in Russia.44 Raucourt’s treatise became famous in Russia and in France and together with his lithographical works earned him the title of corresponding member of the Academy of Science of St Petersburg (1827). These researches, initiated by Betancourt, made it possible to discover the properties of the lime of the Narva region and to save considerable sums allocated for the purchase of Roman cement in England. The next development was made in 1824 by Clapeyron, a French polytechnician and mining engineer working in Russian who was interested in the problem of binders thanks to the experience acquired during his collaboration with Raucourt. The discovery that he made of the hydraulic lime of Volhov meant that Russia no longer had to import binders. All these activities had a considerable impact on the training of civil engineers. The Institute of the Corps of Engineers of Ways of Communication adopted a pioneering role in this field. To begin with, Raucourt as a professor of construction, integrated hydraulic lime into his syllabus. Later on, his work on mortars served as a base for drafting the first Russian textbooks in this topic, such as The presentation of rules to compose cements of the lime by the native engineer Matvej Volkov who succeeded to Raucourt as professor of construction.45 So, the inheritance of Betancourt was, developed, strengthened and formalized. The last initiative of Betancourt to be mentioned, before concluding, is somewhat hypothetical because until now, no documents could be found to support it. It seems to us, however, that the axis ‘Almadén-Betancourt-Russia’ allows us to elucidate an obscure point in the history of the construction of St Petersburg – the mercury gilding of the domes of the cathedral of St Isaac. The builder of this cathedral, the French architect Auguste de Montferrand, was Betancourt’s pupil who helped him, from the beginning of the works in 1818 till the end of his days, with the solution of the technical problems. The technical inheritance of the Spanish engineer from which the architect benefited well beyond his death, included a complex of mechanisms to transport, raise and settle the weights of scaffolding and rope, which served to erect this patrimonial building. Betancourt died in 1824, whereas the gilding History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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works took place in 1835–43, and this gap explains probably the fact that the link between Betancourt and the process of mercury gilding was never established. As a result, the origins of this technology remained unexplained. The problem will be better understood if we are reminded that in Russia mercury gilding, or fire gilding, was hardly a common process, in the domain of construction at least. The case of St Isaac is quoted to highlight the pioneering and innovative character of this technology. The enormous surface to be gilded is another peculiarity which makes this example exceptional. It is worth noticing that even today the tendency is to consider that this method ‘which gives a very solid and long-lasting gilt, can be applied only to small-sized objects for reasons of manipulation, and supporting the treatment by fire’.46 According to our hypothesis, this process that Betancourt could get to know while working on the problems of Almadén mercury mines, was a part of the technical inheritance bequeathed by him to Montferrand, along with the capstans, scaffolding and railways of his invention. Among the arguments which can support this hypothesis is the fact that the gilding were undertaken by Charles Baird, Scottish engineer and manufacturer, the owner of the most important mechanical works in St Petersburg, a close friend and permanent collaborator of Betancourt. A contemporary of the Spaniard, he was the main manufacturer of all the metallic works and devices needed to fulfil Betancourt’s projects, including those of the cathedral of St Isaac. If we suppose that there was somebody, other than Montferrand, that Betancourt would have informed about this process, it was doubtlessly Charles Baird to whom this work was entrusted. Regrettably, the information relative to this process which can be found in different sources is extremely concise. It hardly exceeds the following quotations: Among the technical innovations, it is necessary to count the fire gilding of the domes of the cathedral which preserve, this day, their primitive shine, without having been subject to any restoration.47 The gilt of the main dome, of the domes of bell towers and of the crosses was performed from 1835 to 1843 using the process of fire gilding: one covered the brass sheets of a liquid mixture of gold and mercury and, by warming them above a brazier, one evaporated the mercury. The procedure of gilding was repeated three times. Every sheet was marked with a stamp of the master responsible for the quality of the gilt.48 Conclusions
The experience acquired by Betancourt during the inspection of the Almadén mercury mines turned out to be a key moment in building his professional identity. In some respects, its impact on his specific technical culture is even comparable with that of his further work in the cabinet of machines. Despite lacking decisiveness, Almadén could be considered the first example of the work of an engineer of the Enlightenment. Whatever our current judgement of this episode of Betancourt’s life, one thing is clear: even if he did not choose mining as his main field, he never definitely abandoned this domain.
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He simply reinvented it in quite a different creative mode, by applying it to the other spheres of his abundant activity. As we can see, the experience of Almadén gave an implicit or explicit impetus to some of his initiatives as an engineer, pedagogue or teamwork organizer. From Paris to Oviedo, from Coalbrookdale to St Petersburg, Betancourt used it in many different ways. His main works analysed in this article are directly linked to his experience in the fields of mining technology. These works can be summarized in three words: furnaces, mills, firing. But besides this, Betancourt also tried to improve water pumps and this work finally led him to the threshold of discovery of the principle of double action49 as it allowed him to penetrate the secret of James Watt’s famous invention and to elaborate the law relative to the elasticity of vapours (the so called ‘PronyBetancourt’ law that is part of the history of thermodynamics).50 Finally, during his whole life, and in particular in Russia, Betancourt was strongly preoccupied with the question of industrial hygiene, to which he was made sensitive while observing, and trying to improve, the working conditions of the Almadén miners. Thanks to the mediating action of Betancourt, all these applications and developments are today an inherent part of the patrimony of both Spain, his homeland, and Russia, his adoptive land. The gilded domes of St Isaac which glitter in the sun, their perfect shine intact, are there to remind us of him. Notes
1. The bibliography relative to Betancourt currently consists of more than 500 items. For e publications previous to 1996, see the catalogue of the exhibition: CEHOPU (1996), Betancourt: Los inicios de la inginería moderna en Europa Madrid: Ministerio de Obras Públicas, Transportes y Medio Ambiente. Main reference works: A. Cioranescu (1965), Agustin de Betancourt: su obra technica y cientifica. Tenerife: La Laguna de Tenerife; A. Rumeu de Armas. (1980), Ciencia y tecnología en la España ilustrada: La Escuela de Caminos y Canales. Madrid: Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos; A. Bogoliubov (1973), Un héroe español del progreso: Agustín de Betancourt. Madrid, Seminarios y Ediciones; A. Cullen Salazar (2008), La familia de Agustín de Betancourt y Molina: Correspondencia íntima. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Domibari. 2. A. Betancourt A. Memorias de las reales minas de Almadén, 1783. 3 v. Biblioteca Nacionalde España, Madrid: Mss/10427-10429 3. See A. Betancourt y Molina (1990), ‘Memoirs of the Royal Mines of Almadén, 1783’, in I. González Tascón and J. Fernández Pérez (eds), ed. facsímil, Madrid: Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología; Idem [2009], Memorias de las Reales Minas del Almadèn, 1783. [Almadén]: Fundación Almadén, Fco. Javier Villegas. 4. Among the rare exceptions, with the reference to the pioneering works of J. Helguera Quijada and J. Torrejon Chaves, see A. Hernández Sobrino and J. Fernández Aparicio, (2005), La bomba de fuego en Almadén. Almadén: Fundacion Almadén-Francisco Javier de Villegas. 5. I. González Tascón and J. Fernández Pérez, J. (1990), The Almadén mines and amalgamation techniques in Spanish-American metallurgy, in I. González Tascón and J. Fernández Pérez (eds), A. Betancourt y Molina, A. Memoirs of the Royal Mines of Almadén, 1783. Ed. facsímil. Madrid: Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología, pp. 31–9; J. Sánchez Gómez (2005), ‘Minería y metalurgia en España y la América hispana en tiempo de IIlustración: El siglo XVIII’, in M. Silva Suárez (ed.), Técnica e ingeniería en España, vol. III: El siglo de las Luces: De la industría al ámbito agroforestal. Zaragoza: Institución ‘Fernando el Catolico’, Prensas Universitarias; Madrid: Real Academia de Ingeniería, pp. 237–80; L. Mansilla Plazaand R. Sumozas García-Pardo (2008), ‘La ingeniería de minas: de Almaden à Madrid’, in M. Silva Suárez (ed.), Técnica e ingeniería en España. vol. V: El Ochocientos: Pensamiento, profesiones y sociedad. Zaragoza: Institución ‘Fernando el Catolico’, Prensas Universitarias; Madrid: Real Academia de Ingeniería, pp. 81–126.
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6. For his biography, see J Helguera (1999), ‘Tomás Pérez Estala y la introducción de la primera máquina de vapor en las Minas de Almadén a finales del siglo XVIII, in M. Gutíerrez (ed.), La industrializació i el desenvolupament econòmic d’Espanya: [Homenaje] Dr Jordi Nadal. vol.2. Barcelona: Univ. de Barcelona, pp. 827–44. 7. Fresnes is located in the district of Valenciennes, the northern area of Pas-de-Calais department (old province of Hainaut). It is there that in February 1720, the first low volatile coal in the north has been discovered. 8. Helguera J. (1999: 833). 9. ‘Without the spirit of a reformer or designer, because I did not have any mission for the first, nor is the second of my genius’. A. Betancourt Primera Memoria Sobre las aguas existentes en las Reales Minas de Almadén en el mes de julio de 1783 y sobre las máquinas y demás concerniente a su extracción. Texte facsímile, f. 2 v. 10. William Bowles (c. 1721–80), Irish scientist, author of Introducción a la historia Natural y a la geografía física de España [An Introduction to the Natural History and Physical geography of Spain] (Madrid, 1775); Bernard de Juissieu (1699–1777), author of the ‘Observations sur qui se practique aux mines d’Almaden en Espagne pour en tirer le Mercure .â•›.â•›.’ published in the Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (1719, pp. 349–62). 11. See, for example, the Beschreibung des Quecksilber Bergwerks zu Idria in Mittel Grahn by Johann Jacob Ferbers and the Traité de la fonte de mines par le feu du charbon de terre by Etienne de Gensanne. 12. Augustin Betancourt as well as his father and his elder brother José were members of the Societá económica de amígos del país of La Laguna. 13. Such an example is well illustrated in: Cantelaube, J. (2005), La forge à la Catalane dans les Pyrénées ariégeoises. Une industrie à la montagne, XVIIe et XIXe siècles. Toulouse: CNRS-FramespaUniversité Toulouse Le Mirail. 14. J. Helguera Quijada and J. Torrejon Chaves, J. (2001), ‘La introducción de la máquina de vapor’, in F. J. Ayala-Carcedo (ed.), Historia de la Tecnología en España, t. 1. Barcelona: Valatenea, pp. 241–52; J. Helguera Quijada, J. (1998), ‘Transferencias de tecnología británica a comienzos de la revolución industrial: un balance del caso español, a través del sector energético’, in J. L. García Hourcade, J. M. Moreno, Y. and G. Ruiz Hernández (eds). Estudios de Historia de las Técnicas, la Arqueología industrial y las Ciencias. V. I. – VI Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1998, pp. 89–106. 15. A. Hernández Sobrino, and J. Fernández Aparicio (2005: 43–71). 16. A. Rumeu de Armas (1980: 36),. 17. See A. Thépot (1998), Les ingénieurs des mines du XIXe siècle: Histoire d’un corps technique d’Etat. T. I: 1810–1914. Paris: Editions ESKA, pp. 23–4. 18. A. Bonet Correa (1988), ‘Un manuscrito inédito de Agustin de Betancourt sobre la purificación del carbón’, Fragmentos, 12, 13, 14, pp. 279–85 19. F. Crabiffosse Cuesta (1996), ‘El horno de Agustin de Betancourt: Ciencia, tecnica y carbon en la Asturias del siglo XVIII’, in CEHOPU, Betancourt: Los inicios de la ingenieria moderna en Europa. Madrid: Ministerio de Obras Públicas, Transportes y Medio Ambiente, pp. 71–7; CEHOPU; CEDEX, Betancourt: Los inicios de la ingenieria moderna en Europa: Textos de los paneles. Madrid: Ministerio de Fomento, pp. 29–30. 20. Charbon (Le) de terre en Europe occidentale avant l’usage industriel du coke (1999), in P. Benoît and C. Verna (eds). Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. 21. F. Crabiffosse Cuesta (1996), p. 77. 22. Or ‘Yars’ in Betancourt’s ortography. This manner of writing the foreign names beginning with an ‘I’ (Yrlanda = Ireland) or with an ‘J’, gave way to the errors of reading which proliferate in the historical works. See, f. ex.: Rumeu de Armas, A. (1980), p. .â•›.â•›.: ‘il difunto MrJars’ quated by Betancourt became ‘Fars’. In reality, it is Antoine Gabriel Jars (1732–69), author of the famous Voyages métallurgiques, 3 vols, 1774–81. 23. Étienne de Gensanne, mining engineer and metallurgist, author of numerous works on these domains. 24. A. Bonet Correa (1996: 283). 25. This edition of Narrische Weissheit und weise Narrheit is indeed very rare. Some accessible references we could consult gave all 1782 as year of publication. 26. Archibald Cochrane, ninth Count of Dundonald (1748–1831), chemist and entrepreneur, producer of alkali, British gum and white lead; had built in Culross the retorts for the distillation
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of tar. A. Cochrane (1983), The Fighting Cochranes: A Scottish Clan over Six Hundred Years of Naval and Military History. London: Quiller Press, pp. 419–23. On Dundonald’s works in Shropshire, see B. Trinder (2000), The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire. Chichester; Sussex: Phillimore & Co.Ltd.: Shropwyke Hall, pp. 92–5. 27. Betancourt y Molina, A. de (1990), Tercera memoria .â•›.â•›., ff. 36–7, pp. 262, 265. 28. ‘a petroleum refinery that has been installed recently near the city and is organized according to a plan that the count of Aranda has sent from Paris and which I guess is similar to that designed by Lord Dundonald’. Quoted after: F. Crabiffosse Cuesta (1996), p. 77. 29. A. de Bethencourt y Molina (1792), Catálogo De la colección de Modelos, Planos y Manuscritos que de orden del Primer Secretario de Estado ha recogido en Francia Don Agustín de Betancourt y Molina, Manuscript, Real Biblioteca (Madrid), II/823, f. [4v.–5r.]; published in Antonio Rumeu de Armas (1990), El Real Gabinete de maquinas del Buen Retiro: Origen, fundacion y vicisitudes: Una empresa técnica de Agustin de Betancourt: Con el facsimile de su catalogo inédito, conservado en la biblioteca del Palacio Real, asi como un estudio sobre las maquinas e indice por Jacques Payen. Madrid: Fundacion Juanelo Turriano, Castala; J. López de Peñalver, J. (1991), in J. Fernández Pérez and I. González Tascón (eds) Descripción de las Máquinas del Real Gabinete. Madrid: Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología. 30. J. López de Peñalver (1991: 84). 31. J. López de Peñalver (1991: 49, 135, 138–9), pp. 49, 135. 32. A thorough study of the ‘mining’ contents of the two catalogues is now in progress and its results will be presented by Irina Gouzévitch in her monograph on Betancourt (to be published in 2011). 33. J. M. de Lanz and A. de Betancourt y Molina (1808), Essai sur la composition des machines: programme du cours élémentaire des machines pour l’an 1808 par M. Hachette. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale; Ed. facsímil in J. M. de Lanz, and A. de Betancourt y Molina (1990), Ensayo sobre la composición de las máquinas. Madrid: Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos. 34. See, f. ex.: CEHOPU (1996), p. 247. 35. There is still research to do on this collaboration. For its elements, see: H. W. Dickinson (1921–2), ‘An 18th century engineer’s sketch book’, in The Newcomen Society for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology Transactions, vol. 2: 1921–1922, London: Courier Press, Leamington Spa, 1923, p. 132–40. Description of W. Reynolds Sketch Book which contains eight entries relating to Betancourt. 36. Korpus inženerov putej soobšeniâ [Corps of Engineers’ Ways of Communication] Institut Korpusa inženerov putej soobšeniâ [Institute of the Corp of the Engineers of Ways of Communication] 37. The course of mineralogy including the rudiments of mining technologies was taught in 1816/17 by J. Résimont. See A. Larionov (1910), Istoriâ Instituta inženerov putej soobŝeniâ Imperatora Aleksandra I za pervoe stoletie ego sušestvovaniâ: 1810–1910. SPb, p. 58. 38. There exists a following anecdote on one of them: ‘To a French man who claimed the reward for the “hydraulic lime” of his invention, a kind of puzzolane, Betancourt, while examining the sample of this false Putzolano (sic!) answered: It is of Putzolano, of Putzolano .â•›.â•›. My dear, this resembles Putzolano like my behind the sky’. See: Boguslavskij (1879), ‘Istoričeskie rasskazy i anekdoty’, Russkaâ starina, 26. 1879, p. 115. 39. I. Značko-Âvorskij I. (1963), Očerki istorii vâžuŝih veŝestv: ot drevnejшih vremen do serediny XIX veka. M.; L.: Izd-vo AN SSSR, pp. 405–8. 40. I. Značko-Âvorskij I. (1961), ‘Deâtel’nost’ Antuana Rokura de Šarlevilâ v Rossii’, Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniâ i Tehniki, 11, p. 126. 41. My General, You wished that be made on the binders in Russia the experiences similar to those which I had made in France for the application of the processes of Mr. Engineer Vicat; your burning love for the useful things, pushing you to wish that the empire of Russia enjoys the benefits of one of the most important modern discoveries. I owe to the means that Your Excellency provided me with, as well as to the enlightened friendship of my two colleagues, MESSRS. Lamé and Clapeyron, to have been able to make in a short time a large number of experiences on the lime in Russia’. A. Raucourt de Charleville (1822), Traité sur l’art de faire de bons mortiers et notions pratiques pour en bien diriger l’emploi... SPb, p. [7] 42. ‘To the memory of Mr. lieutenant-general Augustin of Bétancourt y Molina < >; respectful Souvenir of affection and gratitude of the author’. Raucourt de Charleville A. (1828), Traité sur l’art de faire de bons mortiers et d’en bien diriger l’emploi.â•›.â•›. 2e éd. Paris: De Malher, p. [V].
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43. A. Raucourt de Charleville (1822), pp. I–IV, 96–7. 44. I. Značko-Âvorskij. (1954), ‘K istorii razvitiâ otečestvennoj cementnoj promyšlennosti’, Trudy po istorii tehniki, 8, pp. 109–11. 45. M. Volkov (1830), Izloženie pravil sostavleniâ izvestkovyh cementov, SPb. 46. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorure 47. O. Čekanova and A. Rotač (1994), Ogûst Monferran. Leningrad: Strojizdat, p. 60; O. Čekanova (1994), Ogûst Monferran. SPb: Strojizdat, p. 38. 48. G. Butikov G. (1990), Gosudarstvennyj muzej-pamâtnik ‘Isaakievskij sobor. Leningrad: Znanie, p. 18. 49. A sketch of a double action water pump drafted by Betancourt most probably before he left for England, in November 1788, has been recently discovered and identified by D. Gouzevitch in the family archives, in La Orotava. See: I. Gouzévitch ‘Matthew Boulton and Augustin Betancourt: Enlightened Entrepreneur Face to Philosophical Pirate (1788–1809)’ – to be published in 2011 in the book to be issued by the conference ‘Where Genius and the Arts Preside’: Matthew Boulton and the Soho Manufactory 1809–2009 (Ashgate), 25 p. This topic will be studied in detail in the chapter ‘The first traveil of Betancourt in England’ of the aforementioned monograph by I. Gouzévitch. 50. See M. Gouzévitch (2009), ‘Aux sources de la thérmodynamique ou la loi de Prony/ Betancourt’, Quaderns d’Historia de l’Enginyeria, 10: special issue Agustin de Betancourt y Molina (1758–1824), 119–47.
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The Beginnings of Mechanical Engineering in Spain: The Contribution of Francesc Santponç i Roca (Barcelona, 1756–1821)1 A n t o n i R o c a - R o s e l l a n d Ca r l e s P u i g - P l a Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona
Some Preliminary Remarks on Mechanical Engineering in Spain
First of all, we should clarify that in Spain when we refer to mechanical engineering we are talking about industrial engineering. Industrial engineering was constituted as an academic subject in Spain in 1850. The government wanted to promote industry and it was thought that the creation of a new engineering speciality would provide a solid basis for this scheme. Two degrees were created, one in mechanical and one in chemical engineering. The term ‘industrial’ engineering was coined to describe graduates in either subject. In 1851, the new degree was taught in four Spanish cities: Barcelona, Seville, Vergara and Madrid. Initially, only the school of Madrid was authorized to award the degree in industrial engineering. As Lusa points out, there were two pathways that led to the creation of industrial engineering: the ‘official’ pathway and the ‘social’ pathway (Lusa and Roca 2005: 13–14). The official route included the initiatives promoted by the central state, such as the Conservatorio de Artes de Madrid (1824). The ‘social’ route consisted of initiatives resulting from local conditions, such as the schools and chairs promoted by the Catalonian Junta de Comercio (Board of Commerce) (Barca et al. 2009). In 1851, the Industrial School of Barcelona began bringing the technical and scientific schools of the junta together. In this article we analyse the origins of one these schools, the Escuela de Mecánica (School of Mechanics), initiated by Francesc Santponç i Roca. In Barcelona, engineering sprang from a local initiative related to the development of industry and the diffusion of the new sciences. Catalonia had endured the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–14) during which the Catalans had offered stiff resistance to the Bourbon army. The cessation
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of hostilities brought about the abolition of Catalan institutions and the imposition of Castilian law. Despite this political setback, the Catalan economy would continue to grow, incorporating new industries such as cotton textiles. Productive agriculture, trade, and industry were the basis for Spain’s first industrialized region. Francesc Santponç i Roca: from Medicine to Mechanics
Francesc Santponç i Roca (Barcelona, 1756–1821) studied medicine in Cervera and in Barcelona, where he completed his graduate studies in 1779.2 He spent the following year travelling outside Spain ‘on his own resources’, studying ‘Mathematics, Experimental Physics, Medicine and the other Natural Sciences’ (Santponç 1793). He said that he travelled ‘in foreign countries’, in France, no doubt, certainly staying in Paris and probably in other cities, too. His brilliant career brought him recognition and he was elected as a member of the Academy of Practical Medicine of Barcelona in the same year 1780. He specialized in clinical medicine (paediatrics) and also studied natural springs, analysing the composition of the water and its suitability for human consumption. He became a corresponding member of the Société Royale de Médecine of Paris, to which he sent several medical studies, one winning him the annual prize of the society in 1787. Francesc Salvà i Campillo (Barcelona, 1751–1828) was another active member of this society and also received recognition in the form of prizes. It is not difficult to find references to the reputation of Dr Santponç. The British physician Joseph Townsend (1739–1816) who travelled to Spain in 1786–7, said that Francesc Santponç and his colleague Francesc Salvà were ‘the doctors most distinguished and most practical of the seventy that Barcelona has’ (Townsend 1988: 426–7). When the astronomer Pierre Méchain was in Barcelona, in 1793, he suffered a serious accident when visiting a pumping installation with Francesc Salvà. The right side of the chest collapsed; he suffered crushed ribs and his collarbone was broken in several places. However, thanks to Santponç he made a recovery (Alder 2003). Santponç was interested in mechanical research. In 1783, he collaborated with Salvà in the construction of a new machine for dressing hemp and flax. They worked with artisans such as the master carpenter Pere Gamell. Salvà and Santponç justified the interest taken by medical doctors such as themselves in mechanical work because of the contributions they could make to improving the conditions of workers in charge of operating those machines. In 1786, Santponç, Salvà and Gamell were elected to the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. Santponç and Salvà were chosen for their contributions to experimental physics and mechanics. In the case of Gamell, it may seem strange that a master carpenter should be elected a member of the academy. Because of its interest in useful science and the advancement of the arts and crafts, the Barcelona Academy appointed academicians from a wide range of artisan or craft backgrounds with the title of ‘Artistic Academician’. Some of these Artistic Academicians, particularly the machinists and instruments makers, collaborated with other scholars in the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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construction and maintenance of scientific machines and instruments for the academy (Puig-Pla 1999). Santponç presented communications on theoretical and practical mechanics, such as hydraulics (pumps, canals, bridges, harbours) or the use of animal and wind power. He was interested in scientific instruments such as barometers. He studied how to improve portable barometers, and in particular the one that the Artistic Academician, José Valls, had made under Salvà’s supervision. In 1801, he presented a ‘Report on water steam as power and its new applications’. The entrepreneur Jacint Ramon who ran his own cotton calico printing factory, sought to extend his activities to include spinning. He thought of using the new ‘English machines’, i.e. the Arkwright waterframe. Although these machines had been known in Catalonia since 1789, they were not installed until 1793 (Sánchez 2000). Around 1800 a number of Catalan companies were already using the full Arkwright system. The prohibition on the importation of thread in 1802 served to stimulate its production in Spain. Ramon visited England where he was able to see these machines driven by powerful water wheels and also by the steam engine as improved by James Watt. Back in Barcelona he was unsuccessful in his attempt to construct a steam engine on his own, however. Thus, in 1804 he decided to ask Santponç to help him carry out fresh trials. At that time Santponç was the director of Statics and Hydrostatics of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. It should be noted that communication between the academic world and society at large was dynamic. The Junta de Comercio was funded by a tax on the commerce of Barcelona’s port. This junta had been organizing schools and chairs for training since 1769. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of schools already existed: the School of Navigation, the School of Arts and Crafts, and a chair of chemistry was being planned. In 1804, following the example of the Madrid gabinete, a Gabinete de Máquinas was also set up in Barcelona. Santponç’s Research
Some years ago, Jaume Agustí located and subsequently edited the most important report by Santponç on the steam engine, which was entitled ‘Notes on a new fire pump’ (Santponç 1805–6). These notes included the research development he had undertaken since 1804 and its analysis provides us an outstanding case of technology transfer to Spain. First of all, he studied the state of the art at the time. It seems that his main reference source was the Nouvelle Architecture Hydraulique by Gaspard Riche de Prony, in which a detailed account of steam engines is presented, including the latest version, that is to say the double-acting engine designed by Betancourt in 1789, after his visit to England (Jones 2009; Payen 1969). It was well known at the time that James Watt had introduced important modifications to his steam engine in what he called the double-acting machine. Nevertheless, the technical solution introduced by Watt was still secret. Betancourt visited the Boulton &Watt factory in Soho, but he was not shown the engine. On a visit to the Albion Mills, where a double-acting engine was working, he was able to work out how the machine History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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was designed. Returning to Paris, Betancourt published his technical solution and it was adopted by his colleagues, the Périer brothers. The double-acting steam engine designed by Betancourt was incorporated into the book by his French colleague Prony. However, Santponç had begun by constructing a conventional steam engine with a power that according to him was equivalent to 17 3/5 horses. Agustí says that we should not interpret this figure too literally. Based on the drawings of Santponç, Agustí estimates that the actual power was less than 2 hp, given that 17 3/5 referred to the pressure resulting from the force generated by the atmospheric piston. Agustí reckoned that this machine was of Newcomen type, but it was probably a Watt engine with a simple action (Roca-Rosell 2005). Despite the fact that there is no explicit mention of this, and also that it is difficult to conclude anything from such a short description, it should be noted that Santponç refers to the Newcomen engine as an ‘old’ machine, and it would be very strange if he had decided to design such an obsolete engine. Referring to the Newcomen steam engine and its subsequent developments, Santponç says: ‘These machines, more or less modified, were in use for many years, but they executed their movements using very complicated mechanisms and gears .â•›.â•›.’ (Santponç 1805–6: 144). Santponç mentions that Watt (‘Wats’ in the original) solved the problems of these machines. Nevertheless, the engine constructed by Santponç and his collaborators in 1804 did not satisfy him, or the entrepreneur Ramon who considered that the movements were too ‘violent’, the operation of the machine was too complicated, and the parts too fragile. Santponç suggested an ‘improvement’ or ‘simplification’,3 but this would need a certain amount of money to fund the trials. Ramon agreed, thereby displaying, according to Santponç in his Noticia, ‘great patriotism’. Assisted by artisans hired by Ramon, Santponç constructed a small engine, which would be the model for a new and bigger engine to be installed in the factory. Santponç mentioned all his collaborators: Ignasi March, architect; Francesc Coromina, locksmith; Antoni Pujades, carpenter; Joan Pau Peradejordi, boilermaker. It is worth mentioning that Ignasi March was an outstanding builder who had studied mathematics at the Military Academy of Barcelona, taking advantage of the fact that a certain number of non-military students were admitted (Arranz 1991: 290–1). Santponç describes the series of experiments conducted by him and the artisans. He says that his collaborators suggested that modifications should be made, which in Santponç’s opinion were not viable. He agreed to go ahead and to learn from their mistakes. Nevertheless, some proposals by the artisans led to a simplification of the engine, many valves being replaced by what Santponç called a ‘register’. According to Santponç, this innovation had the following advantages: the use of a smaller boiler, less ‘violent’ circulation of steam, reduced fuel consumption, a smoother cylinder, and an absence of a counterweight to maintain the movement of the inertial wheel. Santponç believed that his ‘register engine’ was an innovation which would play a key role in the development of the double-acting steam engine. We should note, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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therefore, that Santponç had in fact slightly modified the Betancourt version of the double-acting system. After tests to improve the design of the steam engine, Santponç and his collaborators prepared another series of trials for the engine to be applied in the factory. The first test was the direct connection of his model with an ‘English’ spinning machine, i.e. an Arkwright machine. The engine was able to work at 16 strokes per minute, moving the spinning machine regularly and uniformly, with results comparable to those achieved using horses. A high quality thread was obtained. The comparison was easy, given that the test was done in the spinning section of the factory. This trial lasted three weeks. The entrepreneur suggested an additional test, the elevation of water by means of the steam engine. This experiment was twofold. First, the engine was connected to two pumps in such a way that the cylinder of the engine moved one pump in its double movement. Second, they used the elevation of water to produce a waterfall in order to move a water wheel. This wheel was connected to several machines. The water could thus be used several times, with little waste. Both experiments were successful. Santponç says that these tests drew large crowds. He mentions the Head of the Service Corps in Catalonia, who wrote to the Minister of Economy and who, in turn, on 23 August 1805, requested a report on the new engine from Santponç – a report that the Imprenta Real (Royal Printers) would publish. In the event the report was never published, although a manuscript has survived in the Santponç family archive.4 After this success with the prototype, the entrepreneur Ramon asked Santponç to construct a full-scale ‘register’ engine. In his study, Agustí considered that this full-scale engine was a completely new machine. However, we believe that what Santponç actually says is that they ‘arranged’ the register machine, i.e. they modified the first engine with the devices tested in the model. This new phase of construction demanded additional tests. Santponç describes the different options for the design of the boiler in order to optimize its fuel consumption. The entrepreneur Ramon suggested testing a Rumford fireplace, but the results were not satisfactory; March constructed a new boiler that gave very good results. Santponç gives many details of the construction of the machine. He describes the shape of the boiler, the cylinder, the piston, the condenser, and the air pump, but also the additional mechanical devices that he designed himself. Finally his account explains its operation. Santponç was very proud of the invention of the register. This was a device to direct the steam alternately from one end of the piston to the other. Watt’s technical solution was not then known. Prony reproduced Betancourt’s design, which had been implemented by the Périer brothers. We believe that Santponç and his collaborators produced a simpler version. The register consisted of a double tap with three pipes. The tap was operated by the piston, opening alternately. Santponç does not mention how he managed to construct components such as the cylinder, a metallurgical operation of some importance. In 1983, Agustí reckoned that it was made at the Royal Cannon Foundry of Barcelona (Segovia 2008). History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Thanks to Agustí’s study, we have a good drawing of the engine, whose wheel was 356 cm in diameter; piston 114 cm in length and 35,6 cm in inner diameter (the last figure is the only one given by Santponç). The power of the steam engine is calculated to have exceeded 7 hp. The register machine functioned in Ramon’s factory, creating a fall of water to turn a waterwheel that powered several spinning machines. This particular way of using the engine has been regarded as inadequate, but it should be remembered that the use of steam engines to create a fall of water was very common at this time. In fact, hydraulic mechanics had shown very good performances, and the steam engine would require many developments to arrive at the same level (Hills 1989). The shortage of coal in Catalonia interrupted the regular operation of the engine. Two years later, when the Peninsular War broke out (1808), the steam engine ceased to operate. Indeed, the factory remained closed until the end of the war (1814). When it was reopened, Ramon did not resume the operation with the steam engine. In the collection belonging to the Baron de Castellet, who presided over the Junta de Comercio for several periods, there is a draft of a letter from Santponç to the prime minister Pedro Ceballos dated in October 1815.5 His letter is a reaction to a report published in the Gaceta, the journal of the Spanish government, in which there is an account about the use of the steam engine in ‘Schulselburgo’ (Shlisselburg) in Russia. In the letter, Santponç recounts his experience when constructing an engine for Ramon’s company. He says that he needed to do difficult ‘combinations and calculations’. Given the public success of the trials of the machine, Santponç was asked to write a report, but the account was not printed before the war. According to Santponç, the manuscript may have been seized by French troops, and he says that the ‘steam engine made in Russia is perhaps a daughter of our [steam engine]’. Santponç was mistaken; the steam engine was already well known in Russia (Gouzévitch and Gouzévitch 2007). Santponç informed the prime minister that the steam engine in Ramon’s factory remained inactive. After the Peninsular War, indeed, wood became increasingly expensive and there was no coal available. He explains that before the war the English ships carried coal as ballast, but there were no more English ships coming into the harbour of Barcelona. This marked the end of the first experiment to install a steam engine in a factory in Barcelona. Helguera and Torrejón have studied the installation of the first steam engines in Spain (Helguera and Torrejón 2001). There were some previous attempts with double-acting engines but they failed. It would not be until 1833 that industry in Catalonia adopted steam power. Teaching Mechanics
The involvement of Santponç in the research on steam engines was part of his interest in mechanics. Between his election to the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona in 1786 and 1808, he presented ten reports on several subjects: applications of machines, including a study on the water mill and History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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another on the steam engine, transportation by canals and also a report on theoretical mechanics (Puig-Pla 2006: 284). His interest in mechanical subjects included teaching mechanics to artisans and factory owners. In 1804 the Professor of Mathematics at the Academy of Sciences, Francesc Bell, became ill and had to be replaced (Barca 1993). On 21 March 1804 Santponç wrote to the president of the academy offering himself as a teacher of mathematics. He stated that he was able to teach pure and mixed mathematics as it had been envisaged by the former Professor Bell, and he offered to supplement the course with ‘the laws of statics and hydrostatics which are so needed in this country for the benefit of Useful Arts’. On 22 March, Santponç was appointed to fill the chair of mathematics.6 Nevertheless, he soon left this post because the academy asked him to create a chair in mechanics instead. In a manuscript preserved in the Santponç family archive, there is a plan dated August 1804 for an independent teaching programme in mechanics, i.e. in addition to the chair of mathematics. The plan justified the teaching of statics and hydrostatics for the ‘Artists, Fabricantes,7 and factory owners’ separately from the teaching of higher mathematics, in order to emphasize the applied orientation of the new course. One of the objectives of this new chair was to provide enough knowledge to entrepreneurs so as to prevent ‘useless expenses in less meditated projects of machinery’. The new chair, according to this plan, would need one teacher, one machinist, and a Gabinete de Máquinas, which included models, projects, and drawings of machines. As for the content, he insisted that the course needed to be elementary, presenting the principles of the mechanics of solids and of hydrodynamics, and also insisting on the explanation of the steam engine. Santponç tells that he translated a textbook on mechanics by the Abbé Sauri into Spanish, the printing of which was very expensive because of the figures. Santponç presented a new proposal for a chair of mechanics in 1805, this time to the Junta de Comercio. The proposal contained a few variations, for example the Gabinete de Máquinas, created in 1804 by the junta, was now included in the proposal. This proposal probably formed the basis for the creation, in March 1806, of a new chair of mechanics on the initiative of the Junta de Comercio, after approval from the Junta General de Comercio, in other words the Spanish Ministry of Economy. Given the fact that the proposals and the final approval took place during 1804–6, it is clear that the experience with the double-acting steam engine in Ramon’s factory had had an influence on the creation of the chair. Nevertheless, it is also clear that Santponç’s interest in the creation of this course in technical education preceded the experience. The classes finally began on 2 January 1808. In the minutes of the Academy of Sciences meeting of 13 January 1808, Santponç presented the edition of Sauri’s textbook and another elementary textbook on geometry by Martin. In the Santponç family archive there is a notebook containing a list of the students on the course. In 1808, there were 111 inscriptions. In May 1808 the classes were interrupted by the war, and after 1814 the number of students was more than 40 per year. Among the students there were artisans, but also members of the professional classes and entrepreneurs who were interested History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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in becoming acquainted with the new mechanical technology, i.e. the steam engine. The initial syllabus of the course is known thanks to a letter from Santponç dated 1813.8 Santponç joined the Spanish army as a doctor to fight the Napoleonic troops. In 1813 he was in Cádiz where the Spanish parliament was established, and made a proposal to the new authorities for the creation of chairs of mechanics in all the Spanish provinces. He justified the need for these creations as follows: ‘for the prompt encouragement of Agriculture and of Arts through the opening of canals, and other objects of general utility’ (Santponç 1813). It is interesting that he made the construction of canals a priority in accordance with the ideas of Betancourt and his colleagues. To build canals in Spain was really a great challenge, indeed an almost impossible objective, given the low level of rainfall in the country and the complicated topography of the Iberian Peninsula. Betancourt and the first group of civil engineers were committed to the planning of a network of canals to improve communications in the interior of Spain. However, this project was a complete failure. In his 1813 letter, Santponç gives an account of his experiences as a teacher of mechanics in Barcelona. The mechanics syllabus consisted originally of two courses. In the first (the only one he delivered from January to May 1808) he taught the ‘mechanics of solid bodies’, including the description of the physical properties of bodies, the laws of motion, elastic and ‘soft’ collisions; the resistance of environments, friction, centre of gravity, ‘living forces’, centrifugal forces, simple and composite machines, and so on. Santponç says that learning should be combined with the study of models and the making of drawings. The second year should be dedicated to the mechanics of fluids and liquids. This would include the study of their gravity, pressure and equilibrium and currents; the laws of solids submerged in liquids; the properties of atmospheric air; and the study of the expansion of air and steam. As Santponç puts it, ‘all related to hydraulics, hydrostatic, and pneumatics’. This year of study should also embrace pumps, the construction of canals, levelling, and constructional planning through technical drawing. Santponç maintained that each course of mechanics ‘would advance the Nation by two centuries’. Technical education would produce good state officials and mayors in the cities; entrepreneurs would educate their sons properly (more useful than studying philosophy at university according to Santponç), and manage more effectively factories and the organization of agricultural production. Unfortunately we do not know how this proposal was received by the Spanish parliament, but no initiative was taken in this field until 1850. Santponç was able to resume his courses in mechanics in Barcelona in 1814. He would be in charge of the school until his death, in 1821. In 1816, he introduced what he called the ‘technographic method’, based on a system at the École Polytechnique of Paris. This method was a pedagogical system for teaching mechanics, adapted to students with different levels of knowledge.
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The Beginnings of Mechanical Engineering in Spain
The Gabinete de Máquinas of the Junta
The establishment of the School of Mechanics had a close link to the Gabinete de Máquinas of the Junta de Comercio (Barca et al. 2009). The headquarters of the junta were in the Barcelona Llotja (trade exchange building). In early nineteenth century, the locksmith Gaietà Faralt (Barcelona, c.1758–1828) was in charge of the Llotja workshop (Iglésies 1969: 55). It should be pointed out that locksmithing involved working with iron; locksmiths acted as welders or blacksmiths but also as designers, sculptors and goldsmiths (Agustí 1983: 117). In 1779, Faralt obtained a grant from the junta in order to perfect his craft in Madrid. In December 1786, he requested admission to the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona and he would become an Artistic Academician at the beginning of 1787.9 The interest shown by the junta in the new machinery for manufacturing led in 1804 to another grant for Faralt to go to Madrid. The aim of this trip was to visit the Gabinete de Máquinas at the Royal Palace of the Buen Retiro, and there to copy the designs made by Betancourt and his team. In accordance with the proposals of Agustín de Betancourt, who had spent some years in Paris, in 1791 the Spanish Crown founded in Madrid the Real Gabinete de Máquinas (Royal Cabinet of Machines), and in 1802, the Escuela de Caminos y Canales (School of Roads and Canals) (Rumeu de Armas 1980; Gouzévitch and Gouzévitch 2009). The gabinete would become a pioneering centre for the propagation of new technologies among students, engineers, and artisans. As a result of Faralt’s mission, the junta created a Gabinete de Máquinas at the Llotja. It was opened to the public for two hours every Monday, Thursday and Saturday morning. Faralt provided teaching there for the artisans and interested persons. He revealed details of the drawings or models of machines and also answered questions.10 The junta advertised all these activities in the Diario de Barcelona on April 1 180511 as follows: Completely free of charge, artists will acquire knowledge of several machines closely related to our industry, and will thereby be able to use them for their own advancement and for general manufacturing. Following the orders of the Junta de Comercio, the best examples of these models or designs [.â•›.â•›.] have been installed in a hall of the Llotja, and other pieces will be added in the future. Despite the fact that the collection is already remarkable, the junta intends to make it larger [...]. The machinist D. Cayetano Faralt, academician of the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts in this city, will provide explanations of these machines and their effects, not only for artisans, but even for the curious, who may take notes if they so desire.
We are able to gain an approximate idea of what the collection of the Barcelona gabinete contained because, after the Peninsular War, through the committee formed by Baron de Castellet, Llorenç Clarós and Joan Aleu, the junta asked for an inventory of the gabinete and for a list of the tools for which Faralt was responsible.12 Between 21 July and 2 August 1814, Faralt gave a detailed account of this material. It consisted of a number of models of machines for different purposes, such as piercing the pulleys, cutting holes in the keys to the pipes, winding several spindles simultaneously, cutting and
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bending the ends of carded fibres, winding and spinning in turn, cropping the fibres of plush cotton, the loading and unloading of ships, lifting weights and directing them at will. There were other models, too: a lathe that engraved as well as turned; a hammer to drive in stakes; a flour mill moved not by draft animals but by manpower, a Swedish stove, another smoke consumer stove or a stool that could be converted into a ladder. There was also a small platform for cutting teeth on cog and another large platform ‘to make wheels and teeth or “repartimientos” [distributions?] in all kind of wheels and cutting them in all directions.’ In addition, there was a collection of drawings of similar machines, all well framed and protected with glass.13 Finally, there were other machines for removing the seed from cotton, making silk and cotton braids, turning cylinders or threads and iron bars, stamping cutlery and other metal parts, cutting the grass along navigable canals and rivers or drawing water from lakes. In the list of drawings there is also a gate lock for water, two pumps ‘operating with uniform movement by means of two heart curves [cardioids]’, a press for engraving on any kind of plate, and also the double-effect ‘stopper [?]’.14 The type of training for artisans established at the gabinete constituted a novelty in Barcelona (Puig-Pla 2006: 64–7). This gabinete was among the pioneering Machine Galleries open to the public. It had been preceded by the gabinete of Madrid (Gouzévitch 2009), and by the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The gabinete of the junta also had a further function as a centre for the propagation of technology, as it was the task of the junta to facilitate such transfers (Thomson 2003). The Memorias de Agricultura y Artes
After the Peninsular War, the three schools of the junta – mechanics, chemistry, and agriculture – promoted a new journal, the Memorias de Agricultura y Artes, which appeared from 1815 to 1821 and can be regarded as the first journal of its kind in Catalonia (Puig-Pla 2002–3). Santponç was in charge of the mechanics section. There, he published papers on the new techniques, and on machines or mechanisms. He wrote about Spanish inventions and also about European technological developments with the clear intention of contributing to the transfer of technological knowledge. The French influence was remarkable: a number of articles were prepared by selecting, translating, summarizing, commenting or adapting articles originally in French, most of them from the Annales des arts et manufactures (Puig-Pla 2009). Santponç himself wrote several papers. We may mention his history of ‘the origins and progress of the steam engine’, published in two parts (August and September 1816) and based on Prony’s Nouvelle architecture hydraulique (Santponç 1816). The author describes his experiments in Ramon’s factory. He mentions the efforts of the Paris Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale to improve the steam engine, and refers to the prize of 6.000 francs launched by the société in 1807. Santponç also reviews several English experiences in the field of steam engines. He demonstrated his knowledge of the subject and his conviction as to the need for an expansion of steam power in industry. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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When Santponç died in 1821, the School of Mechanics was on the verge of being closed down because of difficulties in finding a successor. In 1821 the junta organized a theoretical-practical mechanics syllabus. It was shared by the professors of mathematics and physics (Onofre J. Novellas, and Pere Vieta, respectively), and by the director of the Gabinete de Máquinas (Gaietà Faralt) until his death in 1828. This tripartite system of teaching failed because of the reluctance of artisans to follow machinery courses ‘according to principles’. They were only interested in copying and understanding those machines that they thought that would be useful to themselves. After Faralt’s death, the junta entered upon a period of reflection and looked for a new candidate. Finally, in 1833, it opened a new chair of machinery under Hilarión Bordeje, an engineer trained in Paris and London. This chair, which had a strongly practical bias, functioned until 1851 (Puig-Pla and Sánchez Miñana 2009). From the point of view of the teaching of theoretical mechanics, there was a hiatus until 1847 when Llorenç Presas was appointed professor of Rational Mechanics at the University of Barcelona. Presas and Bordeje were responsible for teaching mechanics at the new Industrial School of Barcelona which was created in 1851. Presas taught ‘pure and applied mechanics explained analytically’ and Bordeje, ‘mechanics and industrial technology’ (Puig-Pla 1996). The School of Santponç and Industrial Engineering in Spain
The Junta School of Mechanics experienced a serious crisis after the death of Santponç in 1821. The junta had doubts about the continuity of the approach adopted by Santponç because most of the students in the school preferred a practical training. However, in 1821, the junta launched other establishments in which theoretical aspects could be developed such as the School of Physics and the School of Mathematics. Finally, the School of Mechanics reopened as the School of Machinery, with an emphasis now on practical training under the supervision of an engineer, Bordeje, who had been trained with eminent engineers such as Brunel, in London. This new approach located the School of Machinery more firmly in the sphere of engineering. The Escuela de Mecánica founded by Santponç, the Gabinete de Máquinas created by Faralt, and the subsequent School of Machinery directed by Bordeje should be regarded as the direct forerunners of industrial engineering in Spain, where a new degree course was established in 1850–1 (Lusa 1996). Industrial engineering became a university subject, thereby joining the elite of Spanish engineering. Nevertheless, the junta and the teachers of the schools had little interest in awarding degrees; they wished only to train citizens, such as artisans, scientists, or technicians, for the purpose of assisting them in their work in industry. Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Carlota Basil and her uncle Pere Basil, who were kind enough to provide us with access to the Santponç family archive in Olot, in August 2004. We express gratitude to Ángel Calvo for his proposal to History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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participate in this volume. We would also like to express our gratitude to Irina Gouzévitch and Peter Jones for their help and comments. Notes
1. This paper should be included in the research project of the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation HUM2007-62222/HIST and in the research project of the Generalitat de Catalunya 2009 SGR 887. 2. There are several ways of writing the name Santponç. As the Catalan language was repressed after 1714, there were no grammatical rules, and the name was written as ‘Sanpons’, ‘Santpons’ or Sanponts’. According to the rules of the present Catalan Oficina d’Onomàstica, all the names registered before 1870, when the Spanish register of names was established, should be spelt according to modern grammatical rules. On Santponç, see Agustí, (1983: 73–96); Nieto (2001); Roca-Rosell (2005). 3. For Santponç, ‘simplification’ meant ‘improvement’. 4. The Santponç family archive have been preserved by Pere Basil, from Olot in northern Catalonia. 5. Lligall 207/1, Fons Baró de Castellet, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona. 6. See the ‘Santponç’ papers of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona, Archive RACAB. 7. At that time, the word ‘fabricante’ could refer to the owner of the company or the technician who supervised the production. Probably, Santponç is referring to this second meaning. See Thomson (1990). 8. Reproduced in Roca-Rosell and Puig-Pla (2007: 347–58). 9. On the academic artists, see Puig-Pla (2000). See also Faralt papers, Archive of Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts (RACAB). 10. Puig-Pla, ‘L’establiment dels cursos (1996: 133). 11. Diario de Barcelona (1 April 1805). 12. After Peninsular War, some models were found to be missing or damaged. In September 1814, the junta wanted to reclaim some pieces from the Casa de Moneda, such as a fly-press for minting coins and a flour mill model (Biblioteca de Catalunya-Arxiu de la Junta de Comerç (BC-JC), caixa 141, lligall cvi, 6, 64–5). 13. BC-JC, caixa 141, lligall cvi, 6, 59. 14. There are difficulties in the reading of this manuscript. In Spanish, it could be read as ‘tapón’.
References Agustí Cullell, J. (1983), Ciència i tècnica a Catalunya en el segle XVIII o la introducció de la màquina de vapor. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Alder, K. (2003), The Measure of All Things: the Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that transformed the world. New York: Free Press. Arranz i Herrero, M. (1991), Mestres d’obres i fusters: la construcció a Barcelona en el segle XVIII. Barcelona: Col·legi d’Aparelladors i Arquitectes Técnics de Barcelona. Barca, F. X. (1993), ‘La càtedra de matemàtiques de la Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona. Més de cent anys de docència de les matemàtiques’ in, V. Navarro, V. L. Salavert, M. Corell, E. Moreno, V. Rosselló (eds), Actes de les II Trobades d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica. Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, pp. 91–105. Barca-Salom, F. X., P. Bernat, M. Pont and C. Puig-Pla, (eds) (2009), Fàbrica, taller, laboratori: La Junta de Comerç de Barcelona: ciència i tècnica per a la indústria i el comerç (1769–1851). Barcelona: Cambra de Comerç. Chatzis, K, D. Gouzévitch and I. Gouzévitch (eds) (2009), ‘Agustin de
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Betancourt y Molina (1758–1824)’, Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, X, special issue. Gouzévitch, I. (2009), ‘Le Cabinet des machines de Betancourt: à l’origine d’une culture de l’ingénieur des lumières’, Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, X, 85–118. Gouzévitch, I. and D. Guozévitch (2007), ‘El Grand Tour de los ingenieros y la aventura internacional de la máquina de vapor de Watt: un ensayo de comparación entre España y Rusia’ in, A. Lafuente, A. Cardoso de Matos, and T. Saraiva (eds), Maquinismo Ibérico. Madrid: Doce Calles, pp.147–90. Helguera, J. and J. Torrejón (2001), ‘La introducción de la máquina de vapor’ in, F. J. Ayala-Carcedo (ed.), Historia de la Tecnología en España, vol 1. Barcelona, Valatenea, pp. 241–52. Hills, R. L. (1989), A History of the Stationary Steam Engine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Iglésies, J. (1969), L’obra cultural de la Junta de Comerç 1760–1847. Barcelona: Rafael Dalmau. Jones, P. (2009), ‘Commerce des lumières: the international trade in technology, 1760–1820’. Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, X, 67–82. Lusa, G. (1996), ‘La creación de la Escuela Industrial Barcelonesa (1851)’. Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, I, 1–39. Lusa G. and A. Roca (2005), ‘Historia de la ingeniería industrial. La Escuela de Barcelona 1851–2001’. Documentos de la Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona, 15, 13–95. Nieto, A. (2001), La seducción de la máquina. Madrid: Nivola. Payen, J. (1969), Capital et machine à vapeur au XVIIIe siècle: Les frères Périer et l’introduction de la machine à vapeur de Watt. Paris: Mouton. Puig-Pla, C. (1996), ‘L’establiment dels cursos de mecànica a l’escola industrial de Barcelona (1851–1852). Precedents, professors i alumnes inicials’. Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, I, 127–96. Puig-Pla, C. (1999), ‘From the academic endorsement of the mechanical arts to the introduction of the teaching of machinery in Catalonia (Spain)’. ICON, 5,: 20–39. Puig-Pla, C. (2000), ‘Els primers socis artistes de la Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (1764–1824)’ in, A. Nieto Galán and A. Roca-Rosell (eds), La Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts als segles XVIIII i XIX. Barcelona: RACAB, IEC, pp. 287–309. Puig-Pla, C. (2002–2003), ‘Las memorias de agricultura y artes (1815–1821): innovación y difusión de tecnología en la primera industrialización de Cataluña’. Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, V, 27–58. Puig-Pla, C. (2006), Física tècnica i il·lustració a Catalunya. La cultura de la utilitat: assimilar, divulgar, aprofitar. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Available at: http://www.tesisenxarxa.net/TDX-1106107-172655. Puig-Pla, C. (2009), ‘L’influence française dans les premiers périodiques scientifiques et techniques espagnols: Les Memorias de agricultura y artes (1815–1821)’ in, P. Bret, K. Chatzis and L. Hilaire-Pérez, (eds) La presse et les periodiques techniques en Europe 1750–1950. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 51–70. Puig-Pla, C. and J. Sánchez Miñana, (2009), ‘Conèixer i dissenyar màquines: El History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Gabinet de Màquines: L’Escola de Mecànica, La Càtedra de Maquinària’ in, F. X. Barca, P. Bernat, M. Pont and C. Puig-Pla (eds) Fàbrica, taller i laboratori: La Junta de Comerç de Barcelona: ciència i tècnica per a la indústria i el comerç (1769–1851). Barcelona: Cambra de Comerç de Barcelona, pp. 113–37. Roca-Rosell, A. (2005) ‘Técnica, ciencia e industria en tiempo de revoluciones: la química y la mecánica en Barcelona en el cambio del siglo XVIII al XIX’ in, M. Silva (ed.) Técnica e ingeniería en España: El siglo de las luces. Zaragoza: Real Academia de Ingeniería, III, pp. 183–35. Roca-Rosell, A. and C. Puig-Pla (2007), ‘Francesc Santponç i Roca (1756– 1821) i el projecte per crear escoles de mecànica a totes les províncies espanyoles [1813]’. Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, VIII, 343–58. Rumeu de Armas, A. (1980), Ciencia y tecnología en la España ilustrada: la Escuela de Caminos y Canales. Madrid: Turner. Sánchez, A. (2000), ‘Les berguedanes i les primeres màquines de filar’ in, Maluquer de Motes, J. (ed.) Tècnics i tecnología en el desenvolupament de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, pp. 161–75. Santponç, F. (1793), ‘Resumen de los méritos literarios del Doctor Don Francisco Sanponts y Roca, médico de la ciudad de Barcelona’, unpublished manuscript, Barcelona, (2 pages). Santponç, F. (1805–1806), ‘Noticia sobre una nueva bomba de fuego’. Barcelona, Manuscript, family archive Santponç (Olot). Reproduced in J. Agustí (1983), Ciència i tècnica .â•›.â•›., pp. 143–78. Santponç, F. (1813), ‘Sobre el modo de establecer en España escuelas de mecánica para fomento de las Artes y de la Agricultura’ [Cadiz]. Manuscript, Family Archive Santponç (Olot). Reproduced in, A. Roca-Rosell and Puig-Pla, C. (2007), ‘Francesc Santponç .â•›.â•›. ’. Santponç, F. (1816), ‘Noticia sucinta del origen y progresos de la máquina de vapor’. Memorias de Agricultura y Artes, III, 81–96, 125–43. Segovia, F. (2008), Les Reials Drassanes de Barcelona entre 1700 y 1936: astillero, cuartel, parque y maestranza de artillería, Real Fundición de bronce y fuerte. Barcelona: Museu Marítim de Barcelona. Thomson, J. K. J. (1990), La indústria d’Indianes a la Barcelona del segle XVIII. Barcelona: L’Avenç. Thomson, J. K. J. (2003), ‘Transferencia tecnológica en la industria algodonera catalana: de las indianas a la selfactina’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 24, 13–49. Townsend, J. (1988), Viaje por España en la época de Carlos III (1786–1787). Madrid: Turner. (Original (1791), A Journey through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787. London: C. Dilly)
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Patents, Sugar Technology and Sub-Imperial Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Cuba n ad i a f e r n á n d e z d e p i n e d o Autonomous University of Madrid D av i d P r e t e l University of Cambridge J . P a t r i c i o Sá i z Autonomous University of Madrid
Introduction
The history of technology in Spain’s two remaining American colonies in the nineteenth century has been largely neglected by the specialized literature. The paucity of scientific and inventive activity by the Spanish empire and its technological dependence on the industrialized countries from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards seemed to be the main reason of this lack of interest. Likewise, the ubiquitous presence of sugar might have ‘sweetened’ and simplified the way in which historians tackled issues relating to the Spanish Caribbean plantation economy.1 This situation differs from the increasing research on the historical relationship between technology and colonialism that has been published over the last two decades. This recent scholarship has illuminated how the networks of technological exchange globalized to an extent in the nineteenth century such that they included the colonial world.2 In contrast to the myriad literature on technology and colonialism in the British and French worlds, the history of technology in the Spanish Caribbean has received relatively little attention, despite its importance. The scant literature on the technological changes within the nineteenth-century Cuban plantation economy has mostly paid attention to the relationship between technical improvements and slave labour.3 Recent research, however, has revealed the relevance of the efforts by the Creole elite to promote the modernization of the Cuban sugar industry. Among others, recent works by Alan Dye, Jonathan Curry-Machado, Reinaldo Funes, Stuart McCook, Pedro Pruna and Dale Tomich have shown how modern machinery and organizational innovations were disseminated in nineteenth-century Cuba.4 These new History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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studies have also examined the measures adopted by Cuban institutions so as to promote scientific advancement, such as the commissions to study foreign technological progress, the creation of research laboratories, the setting up of advanced botanical gardens and the proliferation of scientific and technical societies. Furthermore, some of these works have stressed the role of British and American technicians and engineers in this modernization process. As Curry-Machado has shown, these foreign technical experts acted in Cuba as ‘sub-imperial’ agents in the process of technical change of the sugar industry.5 Herein the term ‘sub-imperial’ refers to the nineteenth-century Cuban internal process of economic and technological liberation from the metropolis before the attainment of political independence in 1898. This paper offers an overview of a recently born vast research project that results from the confluence of three lines of research: Spanish patent history, Cuban commercial history and the modern history of technological globalization. More specifically, this paper studies the nature of the Cuban innovation system6 through the analysis of the functioning of the Spanish patent institution at the colony. Section one examines the technological and institutional evolution of Cuba during the nineteenth century. This section will summarize how Spanish colonial institutions in charge of fostering technological innovations acted in the overseas territories in a very different manner to how they did in the metropolis. Cuban institutions such as the Junta de Fomento, Real Consulado or Sociedad Patriótica de Amigos del País were more active in promoting technology transfer than their equivalents in metropolitan Spain. These institutions acted in Cuba as ‘sub-imperial’ institutions that were administered independently. They were ‘captured’ and seized by the Creole elite of sugar planters to favour their interests: the investment in technology and the increase in exportations. Section 2 offers an overview of the particular characteristics of the Spanish patent system overseas by focusing on Cuba as the most important Spanish colony of the nineteenth century. The analysis of the practical management of the Spanish patent institution overseas yields an understanding of the increasing nineteenth-century extension of patent systems throughout the North Atlantic economies and the colonial world.7 This process led to a progressive globalization of markets for technology and the mushrooming of international patent agencies which facilitated transfers of technological information to Cuba. Finally, Section 3 offers an interpretation of foreign patenting activities and technology transfer in the Cuban sugar industry in the late nineteenth century. This section stresses the role of hacendados (sugar-mill owners) as agents of diffusion of foreign patented technology in Cuba. In the nineteenth century, sugar planters acted as the chief agents of technology transfer, establishing agreements and partnerships with foreign inventors and mechanical manufacturers. Therefore, the Cuban patent system, as a ‘sub-imperial’ institution, was linked to the world economy through ‘sub-imperial’ agents. These agents connected the Cuban sugar industry to the international networks of information and knowledge exchange. In the last decade, economic historians have provided extensive knowledge as to the functioning of the Spanish patent system throughout nineteenth History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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century.8 These works have shown that Spain was, throughout this period, extremely dependent on European technology in developing its own industry. However, patent dynamics overseas are still largely ignored. Before 1898, metropolitan Spain and Cuba had the same patent legal regime, but their practical management seemed to have been rather different. Similarly to other Cuban institutions in charge of the promotion of economic development, the Spanish patent system became progressively self-governed. These independent institutional practices in nineteenth-century Cuba led to the establishment of an autonomous ‘colonial innovation system’ before the political separation of Cuba in 1898. The Cuban innovation system consisted of ‘sub-imperial’ institutions that helped to insert the Cuban economy in the global networks of technological exchange.9 These autonomous institutions favoured technology transfers beyond the capacity of Spanish control. In this context, patent networks were a relevant vehicle for the transmission of technological knowledge and information to the colonies. Sugar, Technology and Institutions
From the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Cuba entered the international world market thanks to its specialization in sugar production and its inclusion in the international network of technological exchange. Cuba filled the void left by the French colony of Saint Domingue10 after the 1791 slave rebellion. This fact, added to the increasing international demand for sugar as a result of the industrial revolution and the ensuing globalization, forced Cuban sugar planters to reduce costs progressively in the wake of the arrival of new competitors such as sugar beets and new producing countries such as Java, Formosa or the Philippines. The Spanish, European (especially the British and French) and the United States customs policy also shaped the future of sugar export.11 Yet, to explain the remarkable transformation that turned Cuba into the world’s largest sugar producer, it is necessary to understand the important role played by Cuban institutions in promoting measures, namely technological policies, that allowed the specialization in a sugar monoculture economy. These Spanish colonial institutions acted on the island very differently from how they did in the metropolis. Our hypothesis is that these ‘sub-imperial’ institutions were more active and immersed in the international networks of technology exchange, as well as more connected to the recent globalized international market than the metropolis. Three aspects explain the process through which Cuban creoles achieved this economic and technological independence. First, Spain was not as large a sugar consumer as England. Therefore, the metropolis was not a market for Cuban sugar.12 Second, Spain was not a great re-exporter of colonial foodstuffs. Third, Spain could not offer the technology required by the sugar industry due to the lack of refineries and scientific and technological expertise. The elite planters had thus to find their own way to access the globalized market and to bring advanced technology to the island. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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How did planters succeed in biasing commercial Spanish rules? Cuba was an agricultural colony with a clear specialization in sugar monoculture, with a few other subsidiary goods, such as coffee and tobacco. As it dedicated the greatest part of its land, human labour and capital resources to sugar production, the island was highly dependent on foreign trade, both to sell what it produced and to meet its food needs such as wine, flour, dried beef, and so on. Lacking a qualified craft industry, it also had to import manufactures. The Cuban economy grew by increasingly binding itself to the exterior. The island elite managed to take advantage of the situation through the enactment of a tariff system and the use of neutrals.13 The authorities of Havana faced this set of circunstances with successive licences for trading with neutrals – and with the repeals of these – decided to act independently,14 thereby ignoring the orders coming from Spain and allowing the entry of United States businessmen whenever they believed it to be appropriate.15 This was one of the means of legalizing contraband. The assault of Havana from England (1762) is considered to be a turning point. Spanish policies turned back to liberalÂ� ization beginning in 1765 in order to attempt to expedite business relations between the metropolis and the colonies.16 However, the incapacity of the Spanish military forces to control smuggling and to maintain sea trade in times of war opened maritime trade to foreign nations. The royal decree passed on the 18 February 1818 allowed Cuban free trade with foreign nations,17 given the constant complaints and difficulties in maintaining regular trade. The second problem related to commerce was customs tariffs. In general, custom duties were high and brought much fiscal revenue to Spain. This was the only way for the metropolis to receive any fiscal revenue from sugar planters, given that the Cuban fiscal system was based on indirect taxes. Planters were not only exempted from several indirect taxes,18 but also from the unique direct tax, the diezmos,19 a privilege that other primary industries such as cattle breeding did not enjoy. In addition, they obtained the exemption of customs duties in the importation of utensils for the agriculture and reductions in tariffs related to machinery. Planters also maintained a de facto prohibition of the transfer of debt of their ingenio at least until 1843.20 Even if the Spanish custom tariff policy regarding Cuba was quite complex,21 it was obvious that there was complicity between the elite and the colonial authorities, which was also reflected in the modification of the assessments. For instance, Ramón de La Sagra,22 a Spanish naturalist and politician, explained how a committee formed by planters, merchants and members of the colonial administration met yearly in Havana to look through custom duties.23 Indeed, the Royal Decrees of 4 February 1822 and 25 March 1825 became the most effective tools to change assessments and to act beyond the Spanish rules. However, not only did planters manage to have sway over Spanish trade rules, but they also promoted the transfer of technology. The main Spanish colonial institutions throughout the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, such as the town council, the Real Hacienda or the Real Consulado, which was renamed Junta de Fomento in 1832, worked together to promote agriculture and import every type of modern apparatus and innovation that would benefit the sugar industry. The Count of Ricla and History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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a group that Le Riverend24 called the ‘first reformists’, which included Captain General Luis de las Casas and the planter and politician Francisco Arango y Parreño, supported the development of Cuban agriculture and above all the sugar culture.25 These institutions, especially the Junta de Fomento26 and the economic societies,27 clearly prioritized the planters’ interests over the metropolis’s concerns, acting as autonomous institutions within the Spanish administration. The Economic Society of Havana in turn created diverse entities that encouraged the transfer of technology. Examples of these are its public library28 (1793), the botanical garden (1817) (which promoted a botany school (1824) and established the first chair and chemistry laboratory (1819)),29 the Junta Central de la Vacuna and the School of Mechanics (1845). The society also published its own conscientious reports30 and several journals such as the Papel Periódico de La Habana and the Revista Bimestre Cubana (1831), where the planters published their opinions and circulated technological advances. Observing the names of the sugar planters belonging to these institutions, we discover that most of them were present in more than one: Pedroso, Diago, O’Farrill, Peñalver, Herrera, Betancourt, De Escovedo or Villa Urrutia. Some institutions were created thanks to networks of active planters such as the Real Consulado de Agricultura y Comercio, which was established on the request of Francisco de Arango y Parreño. Through all of these ‘sub-imperial’ institutions, Cuba managed to access the new advanced technology available in the rest of the West Indies, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the United States before metropolitan Spain did. Therefore, several expeditions were financed by the Junta de Fomento to see in situ all the techniques put into practice in Europe and in the rest of the colonies in the Caribbean,31 so that they could be applied in Cuba. The source of patented technology was found in foreign countries and not in the metropolis. Some of the most advanced technologies were registered and introduced in Cuba before introducing them in metropolitan Spain. Indeed, the most widely used to illustrate this edample is the railway.32 It was devised by the Economic Society, the town council and Real Consulado of Havana in 1830.33 As early as 1837, the first railway line in Cuba, which travelled between Havana and Bejucal, was opened.34 It was also the first one in Latin America and it was introduced on the island a decade earlier than in metropolitan Spain. Something similar occurred with another communication system, the telephone, tested first in Havana in October 1877 rather than in metropolitan Spain.35 Less known is the partnership between the inventor Thomas Edison and the Basque businessmen José Francisco Navarro in order to set up the firm ‘Edison Spanish Colonial Light Company’ in New York in 1881, later renamed ‘The Havana Electric Light Company’.36 This company was set up in Havana with the declared purpose to ‘own, manufacture, sell, operate and licence’ technology patented in Cuba.37
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The Metropolitan and Colonial Patent Systems in Nineteenth-Century Spain
Another significant example of how Spanish institutions functioned rather differently overseas than in metropolitan Spain was the patent system. During the ‘Ancien-Regime’ the Spanish Monarchy as well as other European powers made use profusely of royal privileges of invention, introduction and manufacturing monopolies to promote innovations. The first of this kind of concession was granted in Madrid in 1478 and, together with government posts or monetary awards for new technologies, remained the only system to encourage invention and innovation activity in an increasingly competitive mercantilist atmosphere up until the beginning of the nineteenth century.38 Those privileges were also bestowed on Spaniards or Foreigners for the protection of new technologies in the Castilian dominions throughout the modern era. Thus, many of them, especially those associated with mining, were granted for the American territories through the Consejo de Indias between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.39 Yet, contrary to that of England and France, Spain never passed a general law regarding their concession, which was arbitrary until the early nineteenth century. The final crisis of the ‘Ancien-Regime’ at the end of the eighteenth century and the independence movements in Spanish America brought about the end of the empire, accompanied by a complex process of liberal revolution that lasted until at least 1833. As occurred with other property rights, there was a rather rapid transition from traditional royal privileges of invention to modern regulations concerning industrial property.40 The 1811, 1820 and 1826 patent laws41 inaugurated a new era of regulation of inventive activity in Spain, which was soon extended to its remaining territories overseas: Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Indeed, the origin of the first modern Spanish patent law is to be found in Cuba. The 1820 law – the first one to be completely Spanish, as the 1811 decree had been passed by Joseph Bonaparte’s government – was enacted as a consequence of the insistent demands of the Cuban inventor Fernando Arritola, a mechanic from Havana. Arritola’s request to patent ‘a new and improved still’ reached the Spanish parliament, where it was debated. The Cuban high authorities, the captain general and the governor of Havana, supported his demands. The new liberal parliament of 1820 accepted Arritola’s request and decreed the new patent law, which was slightly revised in 1826 under Fernando VII’s new government.42 The Royal Charter of the 30 July 183343 officially extended the Decree of 27 March 1826 on patents of invention and introduction to the three mentioned overseas islands, although after 1820 some modern patents had already been granted in Cuba and the Philippines.44 Nevertheless, that legal extension was necessary to specify some significant points, especially related to Cuba, where: Art. 2: Attending (its) particular state, non-encouragement is necessary in order to promote the agricultural industry, principally in sugar manufacturing, because both planters and institutions are paying much attention to foreign advances, taking and adopting machines, instruments, artefacts, processes and scientific methods; thus privileges are limited in Cuba to inventors and improvers, and
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introductions go beyond the discretion of the Gobernador Capitán General and the Intendente, (.â•›.â•›.) after hearing the Council, the Junta de Comercio o Fomento and the Sociedad Económica, to establish (.â•›.â•›.) the industrial or agricultural sectors and districts in which there must not be (that kind of) privilege.
The rest of the Royal Charter of 1833 practically reproduced the 1826 law, thereby setting up the general rules by which inventions and new technologies would be protected in Cuba and the other islands. They would grant patents for Spaniards or Foreigners; for completely unknown mechanisms or processes in the case of inventions; for five, ten or 15 years duration (five for introductions); conditioned to a compulsory working clause within one year after the concession; after paying a quite expensive fee;45 and with the usual requirements for official publication, assignments record, expiration statement, property right infringements and judicial penalties.46 These nineteenth-century laws introduced a patent system formed by different ‘sub-systems’. Each of the different subsystems had, in practice, their own patent and trademarks offices. The ‘Real Conservatorio de Artes y Oficios’ in Madrid was created to obtain monopolies in metropolitan Spain, while the ‘juntas de fomento’ were in charge of patent protection in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Half of the patent fees collected by the juntas de fomento overseas had to be sent to the conservatorio. This in fact quadrupled the cost of patent protection in all the Spanish territories insofar as it was necessary to obtain four different patent titles. For this reason, the majority of Spanish patents obtained in Madrid for the Peninsula seemed to have never come into effect in Cuba Puerto Rico or the Philippines as it was costly and not usual to extend the property rights to overseas, except in some few sugar technologies.47 On the other hand, there also had to be hundreds of patent applications and grants in Cuba, directly administered within the island, whose technical information did not reach Madrid. Cuban institutions just sent a list of patents to control the payments from time to time. All of that suggests, up to a certain point, an autonomous conception of the patent management in Cuba that could facilitate capturing the institution by the Creole elite and using it by both local rulers and ‘sub-imperial’ agents in a rather different manner than in metropolitan Spain. Evidence in the same direction is that the Royal Charter of 1833 was not published in Spain until 1849.48 The 1880 Royal Decree on industrial property extended the 1878 patent law to ‘overseas provinces’. 49 The administration of patent rights remained autonomous in the colonies in the same way in which it had been established previously. However, from that moment on, the patent fees had to be paid once and the extension to overseas territories (or vice versa) was free, although agent costs continued to make the operation expensive. The Royal Decree of 14 May 1880 maintained the autonomous administration of the patent system in Cuba due to ‘the substantial delay that patent administration from the Peninsula would cause .â•›.â•›. Art. 6: Patents of invention which have to only and exclusively be used in the overseas provinces will still be granted by the respective Gobernadores Generales, in the same way it is currently established’, although overseas patents could easily be extended to metropolitan Spain
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by an uncomplicated free application.50 In 1897, just before the Cuban war, another order indefinitely widened the period (four months) to send those applications from overseas to the Peninsula because of continuous post delays among ministries.51 Table 4.1╇ Patents recorded at the OEPM (Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas) in Madrid applied for by Spanish residents (1820–1898)
1820–1829 1830–1839 1840–1849 1850–1859 1860–1869 1870–1879 1880–1889 1890–1898 TOTAL
Cuba
Puerto Rico
2 40 15 5 2 7 174 254 499
1 3 18 22 1 1 7 8 61
Philippines 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 9 15
Total Spanish Residents 89 148 451 902 1,021 1,022 3,645 5,420 12,698
Cuban residents % 2.2 27.0 3.3 0.6 0.2 0.7 4.8 4.7 3.9
Source: Archivo Histórico Nacional and Gaceta de Madrid for privileges from 1820 to 1826. Between 1826 and 1898: original documents of patents at the Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas (OEPM).
As Table 4.1 demonstrates, less than 4 per cent of patents applied for by domestic residents and presented in the Madrid register between 1820 and 1898 were from Cuba. The percentages vary according to the decade and that of 1830s must be highlighted, when almost 27 per cent of domestic patents were registered by Cuban residents, probably in response to the Royal Charter of 1833 being enacted. Nevertheless, after 1840, patents from Cuba seem to practically disappear until the 1880s, when the new law of 1878 was passed and extended to Cuba, allowing overseas applicants the free extension of their rights to the Peninsula, as we have seen above. That meant an immediate rise in overseas applications in Madrid of almost 5 per cent up until their independence. Our interpretation notwithstanding, in-depth knowledge of the patent system is still incomplete. Historical patent records in Havana strongly suggest that there were two patent systems working in the Spanish empire during the nineteenth century: the metropolitan one in Madrid and that of Cuba in the framework of a peculiar ‘colonial innovation system’. We have found, for instance, that approximately 4,000 patents were directly registered in Havana between 1830 and 1880, which practically represent 40 per cent of all patents granted in the whole Spanish empire in the same period.52 That amount of registered patents in Havana during the nineteenth century puts the island at the top of the ranking of all innovative areas of Spain before the independence. Further research will provide a better understanding of patenting activity in both sub-systems. For example, how difficult the previous
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technical exams to grant a patent were compared with those of Madrid,53 how other ‘sub-imperial’ institutions (Junta de Fomento, Sociedad Económica) captured the system beyond the metropolis limits to promote technological changes and sugar industrial expansion, or how British, French and very often Anglo-American technicians and the Creole elite used the patent protection system. Yet we can already affirm in this overview that, whilst Catalonia was ‘the factory of Spain’, as the economic historian Jordi Nadal has asserted,54 Cuba seems to have been its laboratory and technological workshop, and as has commonly occurred with many laboratories, scientists and technicians in Spanish modern history, Cuba also wound up in exile. Crossing Empires: Foreign Patenting Activities in the Cuban Sugar Industry
During the nineteenth century the Cuban plantation economy underwent a remarkable transformation. The Cuban sugar-cane industry became, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, a modern tropical enterprise. For instance, by 1870 Cuba produced 30 per cent of the total world market of this commodity.55 In a context of increasing competition in the world sugar market, Cuban planters managed to transform their former small-scale slave plantations into large agro-industrial complexes. As Moreno Fraginals has asserted, there was a ‘jump from manufacture to big industry’, a sort of ‘sugar industrial revolution’.56 Both production levels and productivity multiplied exponentially. This process of modernization and industrialization of sugar production cannot solely be explained by the expansion of the sugar frontier, a fertile soil and an ideal climate. Nor can it be explained by the use of coercive labour before the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1886. The technical changes and organizational innovations introduced in the mid-nineteenth century also had a critical role in this significant change. During those years, Cuban sugar mills became the most technically advanced in the world.57 Cuba emerged as an advanced industrial region where sugar planters, sugar masters and prominent businessmen were aware of the latest innovations and participated in transnational networks of commercial and knowledge exchange. The introduction of modern refining techniques and estate railways in Cuba followed well-defined patterns. Technology was not introduced via the Spanish metropolis. On the contrary, the inter-imperial and inter-colonial technological exchanges were far more important. In developing its sugar industry, Cuba thus became extremely dependent on technology from rival Atlantic empires. The relative importance of technology transfer mechanisms varied considerably throughout the nineteenth century, from relatively informal ones, such as the direct migration of skilled engineers in the middle of the century, to the implementation of more formal technical institutions such as patent rights in the last decades of the century. Similarly, the nature of technical improvements evolved during this period from the diffusion of steam-powered artisanal grinding mills to the assembly of large-scale and capital-intensive steel machinery. The shifting nature of technological relationships in the late nineteenth-century globalized economy and the wave of History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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science-based innovations associated with the second industrial revolution had also an important impact on how sugar machinery was transferred to Cuba. Technology transfer through patenting turned out to be more noticeable in the 1880s. In the late nineteenth- century Cuba, foreign patent activity became routine for economically valuable inventions in a context of increasing corporate capitalism. Before that date, expert migration and the circulation of technical literature appeared as prominent transfer mechanisms. However, as patent records show, the transfer of patented technology to the Cuban sugar industry and auxiliary sectors is as old as the institution itself. From the 1820s onwards, some of the most economically valuable technologies, or ‘elite’ inventions, using Ian Inkster’s terminology,58 transferred from advanced economies to Cuba were channelled through the Spanish patent system. These transfers were carried out through either the metropolitan office located in peninsular Spain or, mostly, the Cuban patent register. As we have seen above, the latter office was based in Havana and functioned, in practice, independently from the metropolis. Interestingly, the diffusion of technical information contained in the patents granted at the Cuban patent ‘sub-institution’ was regularly published in La Gaceta de La Habana. An example of an early attempt to usher in patented technology in Cuban plantations is the introduction of Derosne’s vacuum pan. This refining system was first set up in 1841 on the sugar estate La Mella owned by Wenceslao de Villaurrutia. It was the inventor himself, the prominent French chemist Charles Derosne, who provided all the machinery and supervised the assembly of the new system in Villaurrutia.59 The crop of May 1843 was the first one made entirely with the new apparatus. According to a report by Villaurrutia on the performance of Derosne’s new ‘sugar machinery’ on the 1843 crop, the new system of vacuum pan evaporation significantly saved labour and reduced charcoal consumption.60 However, the initial investment was considerably higher than was required for technically inferior vacuum boilers. The new system reduced dependence on slave labour but needed skilled labour to operate it. In their 1844 treaty describing the new method, which was translated into Spanish by the renowned Cuban Chemist José Luis Casaseca, Derosne and Cail recognized that the new apparatus needed a skilled sugar master to operate it; yet, they also underlined that the new mechanical system simplified the tasks of unskilled slave labour.61 It was Derosne himself who trained Villaurrutia’s technicians to use the new innovation. Derosne and his business partner Jean François Cail, a French boilermaker, had already secured the patent right of his invention in France and Britain, thereby making a fortune selling his vacuum boiler. In 1836, both had set up the firm ‘Derosne et Cail’ that would become, from the middle years of the century, one of the world’s foremost sugar machinery manufacturers.62 After the successful introduction of the new vacuum pan in Cuba, Derosne and Cail tried to secure the property rights of their apparatus also in the Cuban patent ‘sub-system’. In June 1842, they applied for a 15-year ‘royal privilege of invention’ to Havana’s Junta de Fomento. Their agent in Cuba was Joaquín de Arrieta, a sugar planter, who acted as intermediary in the application process to obtain this patent. Not only did Arrieta act as an agent, but also as a business History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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partner, as he introduced Derosne’s apparatus in 1843 in his ingenio ‘Flor de Cuba’. The patent application was officially rejected by the Havana’s Junta de Fomento y agricultura. The reasons put forward to reject patent rights on this invention were two-fold. First, it was argued that, according to Spanish law, the new technology had been already introduced on the island. Second, Cuban institutions such as the Junta de Fomento and Real Sociedad Económica, had already invested significant capital in order to introduce Derosne’s invention in Cuba’s sugar mills. 63 Although Derosne’s patent application was rejected, this episode yields an understanding of the patenting activity and transnational operations of foreign sugar machinery manufacturers in the Spanish Caribbean plantation economy during the mid-nineteenth century. Cuban sugar planters and engineering firms based in New York, Paris, Liverpool and Glasgow began to be closely interÂ� connected during those years. Steam engineering and manufacturing companies like the British Fawcett Preston, the North American Novelty Iron Works and the French Derosne et Cail were some of the most important suppliers of the sugar machinery in Cuba.64 Although the political ties were maintained with the declining Spanish metropolis, the technological links were drawn with the most industrially advanced Atlantic empires. In a period of accelerated globalization, the most industrialized nations began to dominate the trade of modern industrial technologies in the Caribbean. Cuban planters, through their ‘sub-imperial’ institutions, were inserted into an international network of technology circulation in which patent activity became, along with technical journalism and expert migration, a major vehicle of knowledge dissemination. As the international patenting of valuable inventions progressively became routine in colonial settings, western manufacturers of refining equipment begun to actively protect and commercialize their innovations in Cuba. It was during the two last decades of the century that an increasing number of complex sugar technologies ranging from industrial chemical processes to capital-intensive mechanized mills were channelled through the proprietary system. From the mid-nineteenth century, American and British companies had begun to introduce the overwhelming majority of machinery used at central sugar factories in the Spanish Caribbean. Only French firms managed to compete with Anglo-Saxon machinery manufacturing companies. Firms such as the Glasgow-based Duncan Stewart & Co. and the French firms Compagnie de Fives Lilles, Société Anonyme des Anciens Établissements Cail and Frères Brissoneau et Compagnie made an extensive use of the Spanish patent system. Once their patents had been secured, those firms could go ahead in their manufacturing and exporting activities or eventually commercialize the patent rights in Cuba. This pattern would seem to confirm Ian Inkster’s statement that from the mid-nineteenth century ‘securing patent rights was very often a prelude of technology transfer by active change agents’.65 The 1880s and 1890s were the decades of the great technological turnover of the Cuban sugar industry. Cuban mills initiated a merging and modernization process in a period of crisis of the sector rooted in the increasing competition from beet sugar producers and the extension of sugar-cane History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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plantations to new regions. The total number of sugar estates was significantly reduced and the Cuban mills became the largest in the world. The change in the business size was closely associated with the introduction of technical and organizational innovations related to the second industrial revolution.66 Incentives to patent modern technology related to sugar-cane exploitation increased. Machinery producers and engineering firms in Europe and the United States had one of their largest markets in Cuban sugar plantations. The control and management of patented technology in colonial settings became therefore fundamental. In this context, active transfer agents, from patent professionals to businessmen, not only carried technological information from rival empires to Spain, but they also assisted inventors in the commercialization of patented technology in the colony. As patent applications for sugar technology rocketed, patent agents and other intermediaries transferring inventions to Cuba multiplied. Foreign machine and engine manufacturers required agents who were experts in Spanish regulations and administrative procedures. Agents guided and assisted foreign patentees in registering, publicizing and commercializing their inventions in Cuba. Agents’ assistance in mechanical drawing had already become essential around 1870. The extension of patent rights to colonial territories was a lucrative activity. For example, Moss and Company, the largest nineteenthcentury patent agency in the United States, began publication of the journal La América Científica e Industrial in New York in 1890. This technical journal advertised services to extend patent rights to Spanish-speaking countries. The Cuban economy and the improvement in sugar technology were highlighted contents in this journal. An agent working intensively for foreign manufacturers, such as Duncan Stewart and Fives Lille, was the renowned lawyer Julio Vizcarrondo.67 A Puerto Rican based in Madrid, Vizcarrondo was an important politician, senator and one of the leaders abolition of slavery movement. He began practising as an agent in 1875 and founded the intellectual property agency Elzaburu, still one of the largest agencies in international patenting and trademarks application in Spain.68 The patent activity of the sugar machinery manufacturer Duncan Stewart and Co. is a good example of Vizcarrondo’s role as an intermediary in ‘colonial patents’. This machinery manufacturing company, based in Glasgow, used the service of Vizcarrondo’s agency in several of its patent applications in the Spanish overseas territories. For instance, in April 1887, Vizcarrondo presented in the Madrid register the application for a patent of introduction for ‘an improvement in sugar mills’.69 Vizcarrondo supported Duncan Stewart in the patent application process, translated the technical memorandum and arranged the necessary mechanical drawing services. A year later this agent would also assist Duncan Stewart to officially certify that the new invention was put into practice in Cuba, following the legal requirements of the 1878 Spanish patent law extended to Cuba in 1880. The new mill was set up in the ‘Soledad’ sugar estate, a large modern central property of the Boston firm E. Atkins and Company and one of the first major direct investments of American firms on the island.70
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Conclusion
In the course of the nineteenth century the institutions that made up the innovation system in the Spanish colonies experienced a progressive independence. Although still constrained by political and legal ties with declining metropolitan Spain, these overseas institutions which devoted themselves to fostering the modernization of colonial industries began to be controlled by Creole elites. The preliminary findings of an ongoing research on the circulation of technology in nineteenth-century Cuba has revealed that it was actually colonial elites who controlled these institutions in their objective to promote the transfer of technological innovations to the island. Cuban institutions such as the junta de fomento and the Sociedad Económica were dominated and administered by sugar-mill owners, who managed to place the Cuban plantation economy within the global networks of technological exchange. This situation was not inevitable but a conscious decision on the part of the Creole elite, given that metropolitan Spain was unable to provide the necessary technological innovations. Like other colonial or post-colonial sugar producers such as the British West Indies, Brazil, Hawaii or Java, Cuba had to look abroad for its technology. However, there is a significant, albeit hardly surprising, contrast. Whilst in these other colonies or formerly colonized nations the metropolis supplied an important part of the technology, as well as the capital and experts necessary for its introduction, in the case of the Spanish Caribbean colonies the role of the metropolis was highly irrelevant. Inter-imperial connections smooth away the obstacles of the ‘Spanish innovation system’ to develop indigenous technical capabilities through the setting up of a ‘colonial innovation system’ and autonomously administered ‘sub-imperial’ institutions. This picture appears clearer when we look at the patenting activity in the Cuban ‘sub-system’ and at the model of institutional organization of the patent administration itself. Although our knowledge of the functioning of the Spanish patent system overseas during the nineteenth century is still incomplete, this paper has offered a tentative explanation of patent activity and management in colonial Spain. From the study of nineteenth-century industrial property law concerning the colonies and the original historical patent records in Havana and Madrid, we suggest that Cubans self-administered the patent institution at the island. Furthermore, the high number of patent applications, both in the Madrid and Havana patent offices, which protected inventions in Cuba indicates that this colony was, at least between 1830 and 1880, the most innovative Spanish ‘province’. In 1880 the extension of the 1878 patent law to the overseas territories introduced significant practical changes. Patenting activity in Cuba, however, seemed to have remained relatively higher than in other Spanish ‘provinces’ until 1898. The increasing commercial prospects in the Cuban and Puerto Rican plantation economies during the last two decades of the century led foreign manufacturing firms from advanced economies to systematically protect their inventions in the Spanish system, either through metropolitan patent offices or directly at the Cuban patent ‘sub-institution’. Foreign and corporate patent activity in Cuba reveals that the view of empires
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as bound entities cannot be sustained. Technology transfer and patent dynamics in nineteenth-century Spanish colonies can only be explained as the result of a larger interacting system whereby rival empires acted as ‘shadow’ metropolis. Notes
1. For relevant works related with sugar technology in Cuba see: J. H. Galloway (1989), M. Moreno Fraginals (1964), A. Dye (1998), N. Derr (1986), S. W. Mintz (1985), D. Denslow (1988), M. Fernández (1988), H. B. Hagelberg (1974), G. R. Knight (1985), A. Méndez (1964), C. Scott (1984), D. Turu (1981), F. Charadán (1982), A. Sánchez-Tarniella (2002) or C. Schnackenbourg (1984). 2. Much has been written on the relationship between technology and colonialism. Among them are particularly valuable: Michael Adas (1990), Machines as Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Albany, NY: Cornell University Press; Daniel R. Headrick (1998), The Tentacles of Progress. Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940. Oxford,; Ian Inskter (1991), Science and Technology in History: An Approach to Industrial Development. New Jersey; or Jeniffer Tann (1997), ‘Steam and sugar: the diffusion of the station and steam engine to the Caribbean sugar industry 1770–1840’, History of Technology, 19, 63–84. 3. Manuel Moreno Fraginals (1964), El ingenio, complejo socioeconómico cubano. La Habana, 1964; Manuel Moreno Fraginals (1982) Between Slavery and Free Labor. Baltimore; Stanley L. Engerman (1965), The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and the Society of the Slave South. New York; David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (2000), ‘The importance of slavery and the slave trade to industrializing Britain’, Journal of Economic History. 60, 123–44; R. Fogel and S. L. Engerman (1995), Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York; Sidney W. Mintz, (1985), Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York. 4. Alan Dye (1998), Cuban Sugar in the Age of Mass Production. Technology and the Economic of the Sugar Central, 1899–1929. California; Stuart George McCook (2002), States of Nature, Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760–1940. Austin; Jonathan Curry-Machado (2009), ‘Rich flames and hired tears: sugar, sub-imperial agents and the Cuban phoenix of empire’. Journal of Global History, 4, 33–56; Reinaldo Funes (2008), From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba. An Environmental History Since 1492. Chapel Hill; Reinaldo Funes and Dale Tomich (2009), ‘Naturaleza, tecnología y esclavitud en Cuba. Frontera azucarera y revolución industrial, 1815–1870’ in, J. A. Piqueras (ed.) Trabajo Libre y Coactivo en Sociedades de Plantación. Madrid:, pp. 75–117; Pedro M. Pruna (1994), ‘Nacional science in a colonial context. The Royal Academy of Sciences of Havana, 1861–1898’. Isis, 85, 3, 412–26. 5. See Jonathan Curry-Machado (2007), ‘Privilege scapegoats: the manipulation of migrant engineering workers in mid-nineteenth-century Cuba’. Caribbean Studies, 35–1, 207–45 and especially ‘Rich flames .â•›.â•›.’, 34–5. 6. Herein a ‘national innovation system’ is understood as the analysis of technological change into the institutional, educational, entrepreneurial, political and socio-cultural environment in which it occurs following: Christopher Freeman (1987), Technology and Economic Performance: Lessons from Japan. London: . See also Bengt-Ake Lundvall (1988), ‘Innovation as an interactive process: from user-producer interaction to the national system of innovation’ in, G. Dosi, C. Freeman, R. R. Nelson and G. Silverger (eds), Technical Change and Economic Theory. London:, pp. 349–69. 7. On the internationalization of patent systems see Edith T. Penrose (1951, The Economics of the International Patent System. Baltimore: . See also Eda Kranakis (2007), ‘Patents and power. European patent-system integration in the context of globalization’, Technology and Culture, 48. 689–728. 8. See J. Patricio Sáiz (1999), Invención, patentes e innovación en la España contemporánea. Madrid:. Also J. Patricio Sáiz (2002), ‘The Spanish patent system (1759–1907)’. History of Technology, 24, 45–79; and José María Ortiz-Villajos 9. We follow here the main hypothesis of Jonathan Curry-Machado in ‘Rich Flames.â•›.â•›.’, 54–6. 10. The world’s richest sugar island up to 1791. 11. Pierre Chalmin (1983), Tate & Lyle, géant du sucre. Paris :, p. 13. See also J. H. Galloway (1989), The Sugar Cane Industry: A Historical Geography from Its Origins to 1914. Cambridge:, pp. 95–6. 12. With regard to sugar consumption see Alexander von Humbolt (1826), Essai politique sur l’île de Cuba, Paris: 2:, pp. 56–62; J. Canga Argëlles (1834), Diccionario de hacienda, con aplicación a España.
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Madrid:, p. 1, Word azúcar; A. Fernández García (1971), El abastecimiento de Madrid en el reinado de Isabel II. Madrid:, 114–15; Manuel Martín y Antonio Malpica (1992), El azúcar en el encuentro entre dos mundos. Madrid:, 145. 13. The authorities of the island, in many occasions, decided to act by their own account and allowed the landing of foreign neutrals ships for supplies. The interest of the colonial administration and mainly those of the Cuban landowners coincided with those of the neutral Anglo-American ship-owners. J. H. Coastworth (1967), ‘American trade with European colonies’, William and Mary Quarterly, 24, 2, 252. 14. In 1783 the port of Havana allowed the arrival of ships from the US. Legislation accepting this trade existed since the Royal Order of 21 January 1790 until 1804. 15. The Royal Order of 12 October 1780 granted the permission to trade with foreign countries to lay in supplies Havana. Archivo Nacional de Cuba (AHN), Intendencia General de Hacienda, leg. 377, exp. 26. See also Nadia Fernández de Pinedo (2001), ‘Commercial relations between the USA and Cuba in times of Peace and war, 1803–1807’, Illes E Imperis, 4, 5–23. 16. The neutral country was in the great majority of these cases the so-called AngloAmericans. National Archives of the United States, T. 20 ‘Despatches from USA consuls in Havana, 1783–1807’. 17. Felix Erenchun (1856), Anales de la isla de Cuba. La Habana, 1, 266; and Manuel Moreno Fraginals (1995), Cuba/España España/Cuba: una historia común. Barcelona:, pp. 154 and 162. 18. Ramón de la Sagra (1831), Historia económico-política, estadística de la isla de Cuba. Havana:, p. 88. 19. ‘Reclamación hecha por los representantes de la isla de Cuba contra la ley de aranceles sobre las restricciones que ésta impone al comercio de dicha Isla’ (Madrid, 1821). The consulate of Havana requested the 8 April 1796 the exemption of the diezmo, which was effectively passed by the Real Cédula of the 22 April 1804. 20. Vicente Vázquez Queipo (1845), Informe fiscal sobre fomento de la población blanca en la isla de Cuba. Madrid:, p. 70. 21. Nadia Fernández de Pinedo (2002), Comercio exterior y fiscalidad: Cuba (1794–1860). Bilbao:, Chapter 2. 22. Ramón de la Sagra lived in Havana between 1821 and 1835. During his sojourn, he has been in charge of the Botanic Garden and was titular of the Chair of Botanic in the School of Agriculture since 1824. From 1827 to 1831 he founded in Havana Anales de ciencia, agricultura, comercio y artes. He was the author of Historia física, política y natural de la isla de Cuba (14 vols.). He returned to Spain in 1835 and became a deputy in 1837 and 1854. Jordi Maluquer de Motes (1977), El socialismo en España. Barcelona:, 201–35. 23. Ramón de La Sagra ‘Breve idea de la administración del comercio y de las rentas y gastos de la isla de Cuba’ ([1835] 1981), Hacienda Pública Española, 69, 426. See also J. de la Pezuela (1863), Diccionario geográfico, estadístico, histórico de la Isla de Cuba. Madrid:, p.2 and p. 51. 24. Julio Le Riverend (1978), Breve historia de Cuba. La Habana:, p. 37. 25. About Creole enlightened reformism, consult José A. Piqueras (2005), Sociedad civil y poder en Cuba. Madrid:, pp. 65–72. 26. Named first Consulado de Agricultura y Comercio in 1795. 27. The first economic society was la Sociedad Económica de Santiago de Cuba in 1787 without much relevance, and in 1791 sugar planters with Francisco Arango y Parreño at the helm created the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País. 28. The first public library in Havana. 29. Jacobo de la Pezuela (1863), Diccionario geográfico, estadístico, histórico de la Isla de Cuba. Madrid: p. 3 and 437. 30. Memorias de la Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País. See Izaskun Álvarez Cuartero (2000), Memorias de la ilustracion: las sociedades económicas de amigos del país en Cuba, 1783–1832. Bilbao:. The Economic Society translated several technical books as those of De Corbeaux, Dutrône La Couture and Derosne. 31. The first expedition took place in 1795, headed by Francisco Arango y Parreño and the Count of Casa-Montalvo, who travelled over Portugal, England and British colonies (Jamaica, Barbados) during 11 months. In 1828, another expedition to Jamaica was undertaken under the leadership of by Ramón Arozarena and Pedro. In 1834 Alejandro Oliván travelled to England,
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Jamaica and France. In 1848 J. la Torre went to the United States. ANC, Real Consulado, Junta de Fomento, leg. 94, n. 3,966 and n. 3,962. 32. Gert J. Oostendie (1984), ‘La burguesía cubana y sus caminos de hierro, 1830–1868’. Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 37, 114. 33. Heinrich E. Friedlander (1944), Historia económica de Cuba. La Habana: p. 237 and Affaires étrangères, Paris, Correspondance consulaire, La Havane, 11, fs. 405–23. 34. ‘El consorcio de accionistas, generalmente llamados “los pocos”, fue dominado por las familias AlfonsoAldama, Poey, Cespedes y Drake’ in, Gert J. Oostendie (1984), ‘La burguesía cubana .â•›.â•›.’, 103–4. 35. Angel Bahamonde, G. Martínez and L. E. Otero (1993), Las comunicaciones en la construcción del Estado contemporáneo en España. 1700–1936 Madrid.: . 36. Conchita Burman and Eric Beeman (1998), Un vasco en America, José Francisco Navarro Arzac. Madrid:, pp. 158 and 162. 37. The Thomas Edison Papers. 5/09/1881 Document of Incorporation of Edison Spanish Colonial Company, ref. XX19; William J. Hausman, Peter Hertner and Mira Wilkins (2008), Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance. Cambridge:, pp. 77, 78. 38. The first privilege of invention, granted by Isabel ‘the Catholic’ to her physician Pedro Azlor for a new mill in 1478, in Nicolás García Tapia (2001), ‘Los orígenes de las patentes de invención’ in, F. Ayala Carcedo (ed.) Historia de la tecnología en España. Barcelona:, II, 89–96, 91. On privileges of invention and introduction of new technologies during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries see also Nicolas García Tapia (1990), Patentes de invención españolas en el Siglo de Oro. Madrid. 39. See Nicolás García Tapia, ‘Los orígenes .â•›.â•›.’ 90. 40. See J. Patricio Sáiz (1995), Propiedad industrial y revolución liberal. Historia del sistema español de patentes (1759–1929). Madrid: . 41. Royal Decree of the 16 September 1811 (Gaceta de Madrid, 24 September 1811, Decree of 2 October 1820 (Archivo Histórico Nacional, Estado, Leg. 164), and Royal Decree of 27 March 1826 (Decretos del Rey Nuestro Señor D. Fernando VII y Reales Resoluciones y Reglamentos generales expedidos por las Secretarías del Despacho Universal y Consejos de S.M., T. X.). 42. ANC, Real Consulado, Leg. 204, Exp. 9,007 y 9,008. 43. See Biblioteca Nacional, Sig. H. A. 17,303. 44. See the Parliamentary debates of 3 August 1820 in order to pass the decree on patents of the same year (Diario de Sesiones de Cortes, Congreso, 1820, August, n. 30, 367). See also the Preamble of the Royal Charter of 30 July 1833. 45. The cost of an invention patent for 15 years was more than the annual wage of a qualified worker (see J. Patricio Sáiz, Invención, patentes .â•›.â•›., pp. 133–7. 46. See J. Patricio Sáiz, ‘The Spanish patent system .â•›.â•›.’, Table 1, for a summary. 47. Only in a very few cases it is possible to find in the Archive of the OEPM an invention with four different patent titles for the Peninsula, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. See, for instance, OEPM, Historical Archive, privilegios n. 413, 414, 415 and 416 (G. Williams) or privilegios n. 796, 797, 798 and 799 (F. J. Einar Fabrum) or privilegios n. 993, 994, 995 and 996 (J. Brandeis). Thus, all of them were granted to foreigners for the protection of sugar technologies. 48. See Circular of 31 January 1849 (Colección Legislativa de España, T. XLVI). 49. Law of 30 July 1878 (Colección Legislativa de España, T. CXIX). It extended invention patents to 20 years and maintained introductions for five; doubled the obligatory working period to two years; regulated a new payment system through progressive annual quotas, which reduced monopoly costs; guaranteed priority rights to previous patents abroad and also allowed small additions. See J. Patricio Sáiz, ‘The Spanish patent system .â•›.â•›.’, section II, for further details. 50. Colección Legislativa Española, T. CXXIV. See articles 6 and 8. 51. The Royal Order of 12 January 1897, Gaceta de Madrid 7 February 1897. 52. ANC and the Archive of the Oficina Cubana de la Propiedad Industrial. 53. The patent applications were informed by members of the Junta de Fomento, Real Sociedad Patriótica and other institutions, who asked experts to make searching technical reports, as occurred with several patents of Derosne and Cail between 1841 and 1846 (see ANC, Gobierno Superior Civil, Leg. 1475, Exp. 58, 365 and Junta de Fomento, Leg. 206, Exp. 9,172). In Peninsular Spain there were no previous examinations or there were rather easy ones. 54. See Jordi Nadal (1992), ‘Cataluña, la fábrica de España. La formación de la industria
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moderna en Cataluña’ in, J. Nadal (ed.) Moler, tejer y fundir. Estudios de historia industrial. Barcelona:, pp. 84–154. 55. Alan Dye, Cuban Sugar .â•›.â•›., p. 27. 56. Manuel Moreno (1976), The Sugarmill. The Socieconomic Complex of Sugar in Cuba. New York:, pp. 113, 141 and 142. 57. For the early introduction of steamed-powered machinery, vacuum pans, centrifuges and modern iron grinding mills in the Cuban sugar industry see Manuel Moreno Fraginals, The Sugarmill.â•›.â•›., pp. 81–127 and Nadia Fernández de Pinedo (2003), Comercio Exterior y Fiscalidad: Cuba, 1794–1860. Bilbao:, 233–161; for the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century technological developments see Alan Dye, Cuban Sugar .â•›.â•›. 58. For the idea of ‘elite’ patents and the value of patent rights see Ian Inkster, ‘Patents as indicators of technological change and innovation’ (2003), Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 73, 201–5. 59. Antonio Bachiller (1856), ‘Breve ojeada sobre los progresos de la agricultura y su estado actual’, Memorias de la Sociedad Económica de la Habana. La Habana, 1856); Manuel Moreno, The Sugarmill .â•›.â•›., pp. 111–12. 60. J. A. Leon (1848), The Sugar Question. On The Sugar Cultivation In The West Indies. London:,pp. 19–25; Reinaldo Funes and Dale Tomich, ‘Naturaleza, tecnología .â•›.â•›.’, 108–9. 61. C. Derosne and J. L. Cail (1844), De la elaboración del azúcar y de los nuevos aparatos destinados a mejorarla. Havana:, pp. 15–22. 62. For ‘Derosne and Cail’ see M. Stephen Smith (2005), The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise in France, 1800–1930. Cambridge, MA:, p. 210. 63. ANC, Gobierno Superior Civil, Leg. 1,476, n. 58,365, June 1842. 64. Jonathan Curry Machado, ‘Rich flames.â•›.â•›.’, 39; A. Ramos Matei (1985), ‘The role of Scottish sugar machinery manufacturers in the Puerto Rican plantation system, 1842–1909’, Scottish Industrial History 8, 1, 20–30; Manuel Moreno, The Sugarmill.â•›.â•›., 102, 103, 112 and 113 65. Ian Inkster, Science and Technology in History.â•›.â•›., p. 161. 66. Alan Dye, Cuban Sugar.â•›.â•›., pp. 10–14. 67. There have been examined Julio Vicarrondo’s Business Diaries from 1875 (Register of patent operations, Elzaburu Agency Private Records, Madrid) and the original powers of attorney kept in the patent documentation of the OEPM for the period 1826–1903. 68. Julio Vizcarrondo had worked as representative of American and British Businessmen in the Spanish colonies before 1875. His patent business, created in 1875 as ‘Anglo-Spanish general agency and commission house’ provided all sort of patent services. Julio Vizcarrondo house became a full-time patent agency in the 1880s. In 1884 Vizcarrondo became foreign member of the British Institute of Patent Agents and the French Syndicat des Ingénieurs et Conseils en Matière de Propriété Industrielle. 69. Julio Vicarrondo Business Diaries, Elzaburu Agency Private Records, Madrid. Register of patent operations for the year 1887. 70. OEPM, Historical Archive, privilegio n. 6,915.
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The Engineering Profession in Spain: From the Renaissance to Modern Times M a n u e l S i l va University of Zaragoza
The purpose of this paper is to provide a global overview of the evolution of the engineering profession, from the Renaissance up to the mid-twentieth century. In such a regard, the dichotomy between ‘royal engineers’ (military or otherwise) and the artisan elite essentially defines the main characteristics of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The notion of a family of engineers was prevalent during this period. In the eighteenth century, the ‘royal engineers’ became military in most cases, except for mining engineers (not yet named as that) and a few distinguished artisans designated by special privileges. Training in specialist schools would slowly progress throughout the eighteenth century from the first decades. The nineteenth century saw the development of new technical branches of the profession and their absorption by the non-military engineers. Most of these new branches were specially conceived to accomplish administrative tasks in the day-to-day running of the new bourgeois state. Nevertheless, two branches of the engineering professions would appear as liberal ones, especially devoted to serving new industry or agriculture. However, their evolution was relatively very different, with the non-military one serving essentially to provide civil servants for the administration. In parallel were the architects, regarded as a liberal profession, but who would work under a strong set of privileges, even if they had many conflicts with the civil engineers. The basic professional training schemes in Spain were established by the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century. At the middle of the twentieth, the explosion of new kinds of technologies served to define new branches of engineering, essentially through many specialities within a relatively closed set of well-established degrees. Rooted in administrative privileges, one fundamental problem was always the legal versus the practical competences necessary to undertake the professional activities.
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Between the ‘Royal Engineers’ and Distinguished Artisans: the Renaissance and Something More
In the Renaissance engineers were professionals from a very broad spectrum. At the top, were the ‘engineers of the king’.1 They dealt with military tasks (cartography, construction of citadels, towers, etc.) and civil tasks (dams, canals, bridges, etc.), mainly when built by the Crown. They did not strictly constitute an administrative corporation. They were not necessarily military people, but nevertheless, as a group, they were often assigned to the field of artillery. Eventually, they were hired after a mandatory examination in which several factors played a fundamental role: first, the knowledge of the new drawing techniques and the skill to carry them out, something fundamental to separate the task of design from that of the subsequent execution; second, mastery of the mathematical sciences, where they even included some rudiments of physics, especially Euclidean geometry; third, experience, usually gained in the shadow of another engineer, which usually required a baptism of fire. Among such engineers, we might place Pedro Luis de Escrivá (truly a soldier), Tiburcio Spanocchi or Cristobal de Rojas. Apart from military tasks there were also ‘engineers of the king’ such as Juanelo Turriano, an exceptional watchmaker and automatist, and Pedro Juan de Lastanosa, ‘machinario’, which can be translated as mechanical engineer. Escrivá and Lastanosa were Spanish who had worked for a while in Italy; Spanocchi and Turriano were Italians who had worked in Spain. There were others from the Netherlands, for example. In fact, all of them were working for the Spanish Crown. Distinguished artisans were at the ‘lower’ end of the scale, and they sometimes called themselves ‘engineers’, thereby highlighting their professional knowledge and skills. They usually worked for the Church, the councils or great lords. They came, for example, from the field of masonry, sculpture, woodworking or metalworking (Pierre Vedel, Jaime Fanegas or Guillem de Truxaron, respectively). In summary, among the Spanish Renaissance engineers we can consider individuals with different profiles,2 such as military (where defence and artillery were still not completely separate activities), artists (the difference between artistic and technical activities was then not as clear-cut as it would become some centuries later), theoreticians (usually with a humanistic and mathematical background, though there were some who were more mathematically inclined, others with a strong interest in cosmography, also others with strong inclinations towards ‘natural philosophy’, i.e. natural and physical sciences), and those with more practical backgrounds usually emerging from corporations of artisans. These new techniques and and natural sciences had no proper place in the universities at the time. To remedy the situation, Philip II founded at the Court the Real Academia Matemática (The Royal Academy of Mathematics, 1582).3 He also tried without success to develop a network of similar academies in various cities in the country. In addition, a truly paradigmatic Spanish creation of the Renaissance was the Casa de la Contratación (The House of Trade, 1503). In its scientific and technological dimension, it was the first governmental institution in Europe with functions concerning the formal
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instruction and the development of an ‘art’, the art of sailing in the Atlantic Ocean first, and around the world as the ultimate intention. Otherwise stated, in a clear break with the tradition of training provided by the guilds, this institution examined and issued the relevant professional licences to operate as a helmsman in the ‘Carrera de Indias’ (trade with America). However, the Academy at Madrid limited its activities to teaching, but it never examined and issued certificates, whether purely academic or professional. Standing aside from the universities, and working in order to improve the spread of technical knowledge,4 teaching in both institutions was in the Castilian language, not in Latin. The kind of situation so far described, would not essentially change during most of the seventeenth century, even if this was thought to be a period of decadence. The Enlightenment and Its Legacy
The leap to the Enlightenment holds major changes, with a clear institutionalization of the profession, both in its military dimension and, much later, in its purely civil one. At the beginning of the period, the army and navy were essential building blocks for the introduction of the new techniques and the new science.5 Her Majesty’s engineers (i.e. those of the army) then formed a separate military corps, thus breaking away from the artillery. This was frequently a source of mistrust between both corporations and caused conflicts due to overlapping responsibilities. Among other things, the fact that engineers now formed a military corporation meant that they would no longer subordinate their decisions to the dictates of purely military commanders. On the other hand, new techniques of navigation and shipbuilding, vital for a transatlantic empire, would require a unique effort for and by the navy.6 Essential technologists in the building of the modern state, like their Renaissance predecessors the new engineers specialized primarily in the defence and fortification of territory. But they would also be crucial partners in many development activities, especially in public works and also in the management of manufacturing, an issue in which people from artillery were often very involved. The professional practice of military engineers focused on three main areas: the development of mapping (cartography), military and civil architecture, and major works connected with infrastructure.7 In parallel, artillerymen had an important role in the military factory system: foundries, arsenals and explosives. In sum, the institutionalization of engineering in Spain started in the eighteenth century in the military field and this is crucial to any understanding of the scientific and technical development of the eighteenth century in the Hispanic world. Heir to the Spanish Military Academy of Brussels (founded in 1675 and directed by Sebastián Fernández de Medrano, 1646–1705), the Real y Militar Academia de Matemáticas of Barcelona (Royal and Military Mathematical Academy, 1716), opened its doors in 1720, under the supervision of Jorge Próspero de Verboom, a disciple of Fernández de Medrano). Contemporaneously, the Compañía y Academia de Guardias Marinas of Cádiz (Company and Academy for Midshipman, 1717) was founded. As History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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the military engineers and the artillery within the army were now clearly demarcated, Charles III created the Royal School of Artillery in Segovia (1764). Moreover, in the purely civil framework, Ferdinand VI founded the Real Academia de las Tres Nobles Artes de San Fernando (Royal Academy of Fine Arts, 1752), which institutionalized the teaching of architecture and maintained a rigid ‘classicist dictatorship’, particularly during the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV. The development of the technical world during the eighteenth century had several consequences. Among these, was an acceleration of the differentiationsegmentation of specialties; in other words, the creation of new technical professions, which always gave rise to jurisdictional conflicts of competences, a constant feature in the study of the sociology of the professions, in any discipline or period being considered. For example, military engineers had conflicts with people from the artillery, with the architects of the academy founded by king Ferdinand VI, one that yet represented the Vitruvian concept of the profession, which was still concerned with public works, bridges, and dams. Naval technicians from the navy did not get on particularly well with the Ingenieros de la Marina (Engineers of the Navy, founded in 1770) and also with the Ingenieros Cosmógrafos (Engineer Cosmographers, a small military corps founded in 1796 to work in the Observatory of Madrid) and, when the century was almost at an end, problems appeared with the Inspección de Caminos y Canales (Inspectorate of Roads and Canals, 1799), whose senior technical staff became formally termed engineers from 1803. Meanwhile, the Sociedades Económicas and Juntas de Comercio focused their main attention on promoting agriculture, industry and trade, particularly among the peasantry and artisans, although in some cases (for example, the Sociedad Aragonesa) they ended up offering programmes of an intellectual level that might well had been promoted by the universities, including significant publishing a activity.8 Also during the eighteenth century, institutions devoted to the development of the ‘lifeblood of the empire’ were created on both sides of the Atlantic: the Academia de Minas at Almadén (Academy of Mines, 1777), and in the Americas, the Real Seminario de Minería de la Nueva España (also known as Real Colegio de Minería de México, founded in 1786), whose scientific and technical activity would really begin in 1792.9 Finally, at the turn of the century (1799), the French chemist Luis Proust led the Real Estudio de Mineralogía de Madrid, created from three previous institutions, including the chemistry laboratory of the Real Cuerpo de Artillería at Segovia.10 A fundamental fact was that the new training model essentially provided formal education versus the truly traditional one. Now, education evolved around a group of teachers giving formal lessons in classrooms, and setting formal exams. In other words, engineers were not just learning on the site with professional experts, such as the guilds, which still operated in England. In summary, during the Enlightenment ‘the birth of the technical school as a place separated from the establishments in which vocational training and work were carried out jointly and simultaneously’ took place.11 These technical schools developed into something separate from the universities. It has be said History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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that ‘the impetus given to the new instruction is the greatest glory of his reign [Charles III]’.12 But the Enlightenment legacy abruptly all but disappeared, largely thanks to the Napoleonic invasion and the ‘dramatic’ reign of Ferdinand VII, el Deseado. The discontinuity, lack of persistence and solid institutional roots, the squandering of that potential laboriously articulated, were even greater than might be supposed, largely because relevant engineers and scientists were enlightened or liberal, some even Francophiles, and were therefore all persecuted by the new absolutist regime. Nevertheless, there were indications of the decline of the Enlightenment legacy in Spain even before the presence of French troops in the Iberian Peninsula, possibly linked to financial and internal political problems. Even the Escuela de Caminos was somewhat neglected by its founders, Agustín de Betancourt and José María de Lanz, from 1806 onwards, some two years before Napoleonic troops trod on Spanish territory. The Formation of the Nineteenth-Century Panorama13
Leaving aside the parentheses of the Trienio Liberal (liberal triennium, 1821–3), under the pressures derived from the First Carlist War 1833–4014 and the independence of the Spanish colonies in South and Central America the liberals had to build a new system for the instruction and development of technology and science after the death of Ferdinand VII (1833). The military engineering corps was perhaps the institution that performed the ‘crossing of the desert’ best, during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Even if it diminished somewhat, it survived the ‘extermination’ that the absolutists inflicted on the inheritance of the Enlightenment in its scientific and technological dimensions. Due to the reactionary Plan of Calomarde (1824), the universities did not achieve any modernization until 1845, with the Plan Pidal. Meanwhile, during the Década Ominosa (Ominous Decade, 1823–33), under the leadership of Luís López Ballesteros, Minister of Finance, two civil institutions demand some attention. One is the Real Conservatorio de Artes (Royal Conservatory of Arts, 1824), that started its life under the leadership of Juan López Peñalver, a well-known member of the ‘hydraulic team’, essentially formed in Paris around the École de Ponts et Chausées, and directed by Agustín de Betancourt. The other, the Academia de Minas of Almadén (Mining Academy or school) was protected by the legislation pushed forward by Fausto Elhuyar (1825), an important advantage for the sector. Elhuyar carried out this work after the independence of México, where he directed the Tribunal del Importante Cuerpo de la Minería and the previously mentioned Real Colegio de Minería. The Academy of Almadén became a vocational school, specifically devoted to the practice of mining. Its students had to follow various courses at several institutions in Madrid before they were admitted. These were basically: mathematics, physics, chemistry, mineralogy and technical drawing. Students who enrolled in 1828, included personalities such as Amar Rafael de la Torre, Ramón Pellico y Paniagua, Casiano del Prado and Felipe Bauzá. Felipe Naranjo y Garza was among the 1829 intake. Francisco de Luxán was History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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admitted in 1831 and went on to become a famous high-ranking artillery officer and mining engineer. He was also a minister of development, and gave strong support to the development of technological studies. Additionally, although contemplated in the royal decree given in 1825, the creation of the Corps of Mines was not really enacted until 1833, not long before the death of Ferdinand VII, and just after the death of Elhuyar. At any rate, the Real Conservatorio de Artes (Royal Conservatory of Arts, 1824), the Academia of Almadén and the laboratories of the General Directorate of Mines (Madrid) had no links whatsoever with the universities. During the first decade after Ferdinand VII, 1834–43, encompassing the regency of Maria Cristina and the fall of the regent Espartero, there were far reaching changes in Spain, leading to an ‘anti-feudal bourgeois revolution in the political domain and the change of the dominant relations of production’;15 ideological changes that would require much more energy and time. Nevertheless, very soon, the liberal state under construction would feel the need to strengthen the mining sector decisively and to strengthen the field generally. To do this, the Academia de Minas moved from Almadén to Madrid (1835), while the Escuela de Caminos y Canales reopened its doors in 1834. The first action would prove to be essential in a vision of the state as the administrator of a natural resource of great economic importance. Unfortunately, the state administration did not see its role as a ‘big industrial’ player, but essentially restricted its role to descriptive tasks (the location of resources, etc.) and the administrative management of the extraction of different minerals. The Escuela de Caminos y Canales would prove essential in the necessary process of building communications in a country with a very difficult topography. The main task would be to build the infrastructures that underpinned the territory and allow the construction of a national market, as well as its connection with the outside world, although the effectiveness of the latter was limited because the topographical problems led to the adoption of a railway gauge which was wider than that adopted by other European countries. After various vicissitudes, the Escuela de Selvicultura (School of Forestry, 1847) was created and regulated, opening its doors at the beginning of 1848. It would be the specialist school for the Cuerpo de Ingenieros de Montes (Forestry Corps, 1854), which was refounded by a group of its own graduates. They adapted the dasonomia courses (science of the culture and preservation of the forest, as developed in central Europe), to conditions prevalent in Spain. Forestry Corps devoted part of their energy to applying the new discipline to the conservation and rational exploitation of forest resources, resulting in the maintenance or improvement of certain ecosystems, also dealing with soil erosion. A unique mission of this corps was the relentless struggle for the preservation and management of the natural environment, especially of ecologically fragile spaces, often threatened by ‘arboricide’, the work of speculators and politicians who campaigned to revoke the laws of entailment (mainly those of Mendizábal, 1836, and Madoz, 1855). These sentiments are reflected in the following quotation by Lucas Mallada, a well-known ‘regeneracionista’ – supporter of the political reform movement known as ‘Regeneracionismo’ – and eminent mining engineer: History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Blind the political governments with the greed of adding funds at any cost and by any means, blind the country with the greed of gaining ground for cultivation on virgin land, whether or not it is unfit for agriculture, and instead, readily and highly advise the greedy speculators that merely selling the wood and kindlingwood will amply repay the acquisition of lands – in a few years were uprooted more than four million hectares, most of them remaining indefinitely unusable for forest cultivation, while almost all did remain entirely unusable in perpetuity for any beneficial agricultural cultivation.16
During the Sexenio Democrático (democratic sexennium, 1868–74) the dissolution of the Cuerpo de Ingenieros de Montes was attempted by the national parliament. A few years later, these engineers were stigmatized as ‘nineteenthcentury friars’, their arguments for conservation of the forest patrimony were regarded as ‘mystic’. The sharp opposition of José Echegaray, a civil engineer and minister of development, aborted the dissolution process. However, the large scale felling of trees and extensive breaking up of estates promoted by the liberals led to the disappearance of large tracts of forests, while soil erosion intensified. Halfway through the century, in 1850 an ambitious plan to train technicians for industry was enacted. In particular it dealt with the education of industrial engineers.17 The key point was that it did not configure a new state profession, and it was not intended to be part of the civil service. It represented the ‘new engineers’, the free professionals that would work for private companies or as self-employed experts and consultants. This was not anticipated by the country’s underdeveloped production system. Designed to boost a fledgling industry, its initial development was fraught with difficulties, due largely to a number of serious errors and contradictions which the state administration incurred. Moreover, in certain ‘retrograde’ environments, these new professionals would be rejected by the same industry as ‘symbols of modernity’, proposers of novelties in a world where the reluctance of the simple entrepreneurs of ‘fees and routine’ excelled. Overcoming numerous difficulties, these industrial engineers for industry did show that they were needed, particularly when the so-called second industrial revolution started to manifest itself in Spain around the 1880s. There was demand for those with a knowledge of electricity (the ‘scientific industry’), chemistry, and combustion engines. These were regarded as ‘not predictable techniques’ in José Ortega y Gasset’s terminology in his Meditación de la Técnica (Meditation on Technique, 1933). Since this branch of the profession not rooted in the administration, it developed in a geographically decentralized way: in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Valencia. There was some important rivalry between Madrid and Barcelona, and much might be interpreted as political or geometric centrality versus the industrial or economic reality. Once the Década Moderada (the moderate decade, 1844–54) ended with the battle of Vicálvaro, an active Bienio Progresista (Progressist Biennium, 1854–6) began. It was a bourgeois revolution ‘justified’ by the massive corruption of the ‘moderate’ politicians during the development of railways all over the country. According to the progressists’ point of view, improvement of living conditions had to follow the promotion of the ‘rational’ exploitation
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and efficient use of natural resources, and the enhancement of infrastructures, agriculture, industry and trade. In this short period of two years, three main laws were enacted: one to regulate banks, another for the railways and a major one of distentailment (that of Pascual Madoz). Moreover, technical studies were enhanced in specialist schools with no connections with the universities. Unrelated to the previous process, the industrial schools would be reformed by a new ‘master plan’ devised by Francisco de Luxán (1855). The plan of 1855 was later revoked by the Moyano’s Law of 1857. According to the plan of Luxán, the industrial schools were classified as: • elementary, ‘where the honest and industrious apprentice artisan of workshops, in love with his art, also acquired a safe way to practise the procedures and results’ (granting certificates of competence); • professional, in Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Valencia and Vergara; that awarded the qualification Aspirante a Ingeniero Industrial (industrial engineering candidate); and • central, attached to the Royal Industrial Institute in Madrid, which was the only place to obtain the top level qualification: Ingeniero Industrial (industrial engineer). The latter degree represented the18 end of the profession in which the Science presents all its resources and reveals the varieties and sublime conceptions in order to deal with the exigencies of necessity or luxury by means of the mysterious procedures of Nature and its eternal laws. In this institution of higher education theories and practices would receive their full development and unfolding.
This was the singular approach developed in the field of technical education in Spain. The system began ‘training the working man, and finished by offering the scientific man the arts that raises the techniques to their highest level’. In other words, and course which lasted for only one academic year, was inadequate. Three decades later even the preamble of the decree founding the Escuela de Artes y Oficios (School of Arts and Crafts, 1871) attached to the Real Conservatorio de Artes did not challenge this. In this text it was argued that both, the plan of 1850 and that of 1855 were, born dead [i.e. completely inadequate], for the craftsman due to the disastrous principle that they should be organized at different kinds of levels so that they could be passed from one to another until both the Engineers and their teachers would go up from elementary to higher education.
Definitely, it could be argued the elementary level was too theoretical, and therefore difficult for workers and craftsmen to follow, but on the other hand, this level was really too basic for those who wanted to achieve the top-level engineering degree. Agustín Monreal, the first director of the Industrial School of Seville, and from 1853 professor at the Real Instituto Industrial (Royal Industrial Institute), stated (in 1861) that it would have been much better if that kind of cyclicity, which happened in other countries had not been established in Spain, thus establishing a clear separation of engineering
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education, which had to be a profession with good theoretical and practical knowledge, not simply ‘more enlightened artisans’. In 1855 two additional technical institutions were founded: the Cuerpo de Telégrafos (Telegraph Corps), and the establishment of the teaching of agronomic engineering at the Escuela Central de Agricultura at Aranjuez (Central School of Agriculture), whose official opening was delayed until 1856. The above were two more milestones in the institutionalization of technical professions during the ‘Bienio Progresista’. With the Telegraph Crops a new state corporation was created. As far as the Aranjuez agricultural school was concerned, it was conceived to inject dynamism into the dominant productive sector in the country (i.e. responsible for improving agricultural productivity by disseminating the new agronomy) and also to define the profile of agronomic engineers who would almost exclusively serve the state administration. Years later, in 1874, agronomic engineers would constitute in practice the fourth state engineering corporation, after those of mining, civil and forest engineers. Note once again that all these institutions and technical education reforms had no connection with the universities, which received their own law in 1857, thanks to Claudio Moyano, Minister of Development. This law established connections between the ‘specialist schools’ (now recognized as higher educational institutions) and the university faculties of ‘ciencias exactas, físicas y naturales’ (mathematics, physics and natural sciences), that were being created by the same law. So as to guarantee them some students, a propaedeutic or preparatory instruction function for the engineering schools was defined. Nevertheless, this provoked very mixed reactions, with the Corps and School of Civil Engineers being totally against the very notion. Among the several higher industrial schools that were created in the 1850s, only the Barcelona school survived. The Real Instituto Industrial (Royal Industrial Institute, Madrid, 1850) was closed in 1867 by the sadly remembered minister Manuel de Orovio. Formally, the reason was to save money for the Treasury in difficult times, when there were few students enrolled on courses. In order to remain open, the Barcelona school received two-thirds if its annual funds from the provincial and city councils, while the central state provided the remaining third. During the discussions for the closure of the Real Instituto Industrial, the minister Orovio officially claimed that: ‘I do not think there is need to protect [the industrial schools], because the students do not find jobs due to the lack of demand’. The response of the previous Minister of Development, Francisco Luxán, was to tell him that if for lack of students we would have to remove the training centres then it would be necessary to remove the chairs of natural science, differential and integral calculus, and chemistry of the Central University [Madrid], which in some years had no disciples. In the School of Mines there have been years in which there were very few students, and the same happened to some military schools, so that they should also be closed.
The ideological distance between Orovio (ultra-conservative) and Luxán (progressive), who supported the Real Instituto, and the use of some space
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in the same building where the ministry itself was installed in the former convent of the Holy Trinity (in Atocha Street), might be among the decisive points in favour of closing the centre. It can be pointed out that this was a very singular fact in the truly centralized state that was being constructed; for example, all the remaining engineering specialist schools were in Madrid and its surroundings. On the other hand, in the same discussion, Alejandro Oliván, representative of the Budget Committee, indicated the existence of two general shortcomings in the educational system that affected engineers: First, that each branch, each institution, looks to give the students almost all the instruction, whenever possible from basic reading and writing to the latest studies. Gentlemen: I am in favour of joint studies until the real speciality level, and I feel that Spain did not choose this system. The other error is that in the special schools much sublime mathematics are taught, many notions of physics, in short, a lot of theory; but teaching is not done in such a way that practical men are formed, people aiming to work efficiently when they finish their studies. I have seen men of great talent, of many books in their heads, stumbling amongst the first works that they have had to direct, sometimes committing the capitals invested.
The first consideration, then, was one that founding a truly integrated polytechnic institution was something that was never consistently regarded as practical in Spain, despite various statements and actions (see some comments in our next section). The second one partly raised the difficult question of what kind of mathematics (or physics, chemistry, botany) should be taught, how much is required by engineers, and when, where and by whom should they be taught. Like the River Guadiana, these issues surfaced with some frequency. It might be pointed out with regard to an echo of the latter, that, Thomas Telford (1757–34), a prominent British engineer, and first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), stated that the French polytechniciens ‘knew too much mathematics to be good engineers’.19 If these reflections correspond to the first (and middle) decades of the nineteenth century, the end was dominated by the famous anti-mathematical movement leaded by Alois Riedler (1850–1936) an influential professor of mechanical engineering in Berlin. Following his visit to the Chicago Exhibition in 1893, Riedler requested that training should be much more in touch with the laboratories, be less theoretical, with less emphasis on abstruse mathematics. This question did have a number of echoes in Spain. It was even repeated in 1914 by Vicente Machimbarrena (1865–1949), who became ten years later an influential director of the Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos (Civil Engineering School) at the Institute of Civil Engineers (in 1914). It could be said that by the late 1860s the liberals had already set up the basic scheme of institutions and professions related to engineering in Spain, even if the system was to suffer fluctuations later. Among the later institutional creations in the nineteenth century, the Instituto Geográfico (Geographical Institute, 1870) should be given some consideration. Administrative and financial control passed from the Presidency of the Government to the Ministry of Development. Its constitution was bitterly criticized by civil engineers, despite José de Echegaray being the
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minister. The reason was that the founding decree gave prominence to military engineers, artillery men and the army general staff. The Cuerpo de Ingenieros Geógrafos was to be formally established at the end of the century in 1900. A year earlier, in 1899, under the impetus of the industrial bourgeoisie, but without the support of Barcelona and Madrid, the industrial engineering school of Bilbao opened its doors. In 1901, as part of the technical education reform promoted by Álvaro de Figueroa y Torres, Count of Romanones and Minister of Public Instruction and the Fine Arts, a similar kind of engineering school was opened in Madrid – in a sense it was the heir of the Real Instituto Industrial which closed in 1867. As usual, the process of creating new technical profiles was supported by professionals from other pre-existing disciplines. Civil engineers could be drawn from architects, and other branches of engineering (military engineers, cosmographers, naval engineers, agronomists, and industrial engineers). Some were originally botanists, chemists, physicians and pharmacists. Even those who were qualified in two disciplines were frequently considered. For example, the pharmacists Lorenzo Gomez Pardo y Enseñá (1801–47) were also mining engineers. Miguel Maisterra Prieto (1825–97) and Constantino Sáez Montoya (1827–91), were both pharmacists and industrial engineers. The Nineteenth Century: A Fragmented Landscape
With the clear exception of so-called industrial engineers (which partly included agronomic engineers too), the engineering profession in nineteenthcentury Spain was aimed at civilian or military servants of the state. Focusing our attention on non-military professionals, corporations of functionaries were necessary in order to construct the new bourgeois state. In some sense, those corps reduced significantly the extreme variability and weakness of the political level, providing a technical framework for decision-making and planning and giving continuity to defined policies. The question to consider concerning the role of these administrative corps is what the rational criteria could be for strategies and continuity in the technical tasks of the Ministry of Development, when between 1847 and 1868 there were 40 different ministers. In other words, during the two middle decades of the nineteenth century, a new minister was appointed on average every 6 months! It can also be said that these corps of high level civil servants developed a highly corporative spirit, entrenching themselves against areas of dispute. As in France, in Spain we could speak of ‘Noblesse d’État’, where the state administration would be in partly auto-conditioned to see those engineers as civil servants organized in a very hierarchical way. They were trained in exclusive isolated schools controlled by the corps themselves, and would be more able to carry out administrative tasks than purely technological ones. The result of this view was a series of specialist schools (for different branches of engineering, architecture, and so on), clearly defined and independent of the universities. Throughout the nineteenth century, there were a number of attempts to define an integrated instructional system for this highest technological level. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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One such attempt, during the Trienio Liberal, was the creation of a unifying Escuela Especial Politécnica in 1821 (Specialist Polytechnic School). This was both civilian and military and its aim was to provide some joint and preliminary courses, which would lead to qualifications for the different specialist schools (artillery, and the different engineering disciplines: military, mining, civil, geographical and shipbuilding).20 It is evident that the well-known French École Polytechnique partly inspired this type of establishment, which had no connection with the universities (not even with the Universidad Central, in Madrid). The invasion of Spain by the French troops of the Duke of Angoulême, the so-called Cien Mil Hijos de San Luis, in order to re-establish the absolutist regime of Ferdinand VII put an end to this unique experience which had no opportunity to prove itself. Now in a purely civil framework, after the death of Ferdinand VII (1833) and with the liberals in power once again, the Cuerpo de Ingenieros Civiles (the Corps of (non-military) Civil Engineers was founded (1835), integrating four sections: civil, mining geographical and forestry. In order to rationalize for those expert areas, the Colegio Científico (Scientific College, 1835) was founded immediately to open in Alcalá de Henares in 1836. Unfortunately, the Colegio never opened its doors. The financial and political problems emanating from the First Carlist War (1833–40) and changes in government caused due to the revolution of the Sergeants at La Granja (1836)21 could well account for this. In a similar way, the Escuela Preparatoria para las Especiales de Caminos, Minas y Arquitectura (Preparatory School, 1848) was created 15 years later. Badly conceived from the beginning, from the perspective of civil engineering rather than mining or architecture, no one was satisfied and the school ceased to exist in 1855. One of its weaknesses was that the school did not consider training students in forest engineering (a specialist forestry school was founded in Villaviciosa de Odón, Madrid, 1848), nor in industrial engineering, which had its own system of studies designed in 1850. The last attempt to partially integrate the preparation of engineers and architects was the Escuela General Preparatoria de Ingenieros y Arquitectos (EGPIA, 1886–92), but this only lasted seven years. This was partly because the Barcelona school feared that it would lose its industrial engineering and architectural students because of the exclusivity of the EGPIA at national level.22 In other words, in those times it was really not practical to centralize all this kind of teaching in Madrid. But as the synergy among technical schools was impossible, it was also almost impossible among universities, even during the Bienio Progresista (1854–6). Things would ‘nominally’ change with the extremely important Ley de Instrucción Pública (Public Instruction Law, 1857) of Claudio Moyano. Enacted towards the middle of the new Bienio Moderado (moderate biennium, 1856–8), the law was designed to cover the entire Spanish educational system, from primary schools to the universities and specialist schools. The creation of the faculties of Filosofía y Letras (Philosophy and Letters) and of Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales (Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences) by breaking up the Facultad de Filosofía (Philosophy) was one of the many changes enforced by Moyano’s Law. However, one of the weak points of the law was the attempt to fill the new science faculties with the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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students drawn from the specialist schools of engineering and architecture. What might eventually have been perceived as an interesting opportunity to promote cooperation was suddenly perceived as a non- justified imposition, and several specialist schools (mainly that of Caminos) did not follow the regulation strictly. Nevertheless, the specialist schools for industrial, agronomic and forestry engineers did cooperate with the universities in the early years of their courses but there was no real cooperation in research or advanced courses. Probably, the strongest relationship in this context was established outside Madrid, among the faculty of sciences and the school of industrial engineers of Barcelona, both institutions sharing a common building, while many of the professors of the faculty were industrial engineers. The end of the nineteenth century brought changes in course content and procedures at the schools, which would lead to significant growth in laboratory activities.23 Nevertheless, Spanish doctorates in engineering would not be available for another 50 years with the Ley de Reforma de las Enseñanzas Técnicas (Law for the Reform of Technological Instruction, 1957). This was something which had been established in Germany at the turn of the previous century. In some sense, it can be said that the Spanish administration was aware of the importance of training specialists in their own particular activities, rather than in creating well educated professionals for the different private sectors. The accelerated differentiation and segmentation of technical specialties led to the creation of new professions, which as might be expected brought jurisdictional competence conflicts with them.24 This is a constant in the study of the sociology of the professions, at any time and in any area being considered, particularly when dealing with engineering and architecture. In this sense, the question of legal versus practical competences to perform professional activities was very polemical, from the foundation of the corps and, especially, during the subsequent liberalization of the profession at the end of the nineteenth century. In this respect, the engineering corps (particularly civil and mines) did enjoy strong decision-making power as it became well installed in the administration and rooted on administrative privileges. Epilogue: Evolution in the Twentieth Century
The first decades of the twentieth century saw the creation of new engineering specialities, in particular telecommunication and aeronautic engineering. The first was created inside the Cuerpo de Telégrafos (Telegraph Corps), which was part of the Ministry of Government, while the second had a more intricate history, initially controlled by the Ministries of Development and War, and later Education.24 Courses for the new Ingeniero de Telecomunicación (Telecommunication Engineer, 1920) qualification were provided by the Escuela Superior de Telegrafía, direct heir of the Escuela General de Telegrafía, created in 1913, after the International Congress on Radiotelegraphy held in 1912 in London.26 At the same time, the Escuela Nacional de Aviación (ENA, National Aviation School, 1913–17) was founded, surprisingly by the Ministry of Development. The new title, Ingeniero Aerotécnico (Aero-technical History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Engineer) was, in reality, a kind of one year ‘master’s’ that could be studied by all engineers, whatever their original speciality. The organization of the school was in the hands of some industrial engineers, but it did not work properly, because conditions were very precarious. In its last phase it was transferred to the Ministry of War, where the industrial engineers who had been appointed as teachers were dismissed. A decade later, the Escuela Superior Aerotécnica (ESA, Aero-technical Highest School, 1928) launched in Cuatro Vientos an almost uninterrupted training scheme for aeronautical engineers, with teachers such as as Emilio Herrera (military engineer and director), Esteban Terradas, Pedro Puig Adam, Julio Palacios, Julio Rey Pastor and José Ortiz-Echagüe. After the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, the Academia Militar de Ingenieros Aeronáuticos (Military Academy of Aeronautical Engineers) was founded. It would be transformed a decade later into the Escuela Especial de Ingenieros Aeronáuticos (Special School of Aeronautical Engineering, 1948), from this moment on a civil rather than a military basis. In summary, at the middle of the twentieth century the basic engineering specialities in Spain were military (1718), naval (1770), mining (1777), roads, canals and ports (1799), forestry (1848), industrial (1850), agronomic (1855), geographers (1900), telecommunications (1920), and aeronautics (1928): the earliest foundational dates are given here even if in some cases there were many important vicissitudes. Of course, much can be added to this perhaps oversimplified list, but probably one important thing to say is that a general qualification in computer engineering (informatics), was already established by the 1970s and 1980s. At some points, it has been emphasised that the engineering schools (also architecture) were long independent of the universities. In contrast, we can say that the engineering schools are now integrated with the universities, something that started to happen some 50 years ago, with the already mentioned Ley de Reforma de las Enseñanzas Técnicas (Technical Education Reform Act, 1957). This had enormous impact on the structuring and renewal of all the engineering and architectural studies. It provided technical studies with the unified legislative and administrative framework of the Ministry of Education, freeing the specialist schools from the administration corps, creating engineering doctorates, which were extremely competive and challenging. After many vicissitudes, in the following decade, the specialist schools of engineering and architecture were definitely integrated within the global university framework. Notes
1. A. Cámara Muñoz (2004), ‘La profesión de ingeniero: los ingenieros del rey’, in M. Silva Suárez, (ed.), Técnica e ingeniería en España, vol. I, El renacimiento, Real Academia de Ingeniería. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico y Prensas Universitarias de Zarargoza, pp. 125–64 (2nd edn: El enacimiento. De la técnica imperial y la popular, 2008, pp. 129–68). Because of several references to chapters in different volumes of the above mentioned collection, they are abbreviated to: M. Silva Suárez. (ed.), T and I en España, RAI/IFC/PUZ. 2. One of the possible set of profiles for professionals that may be differentiated in this category (not a taxonomy) is given by N. García Tapia (2002), in ‘Los ingenieros y sus modalidades’, in J. M López Piñero (ed.) Historia de la ciencia y de la técnica en la corona de Castilla (vol. III). Siglos XVI y
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XVII. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, pp. 147–59. More than two decades before, the differentiation provided by J. M. López Piñero (Ciencia y Técnica en la Sociedad Española de los siglos XVI y XVII. Barcelona: Labor Universitaria, 1979) considers (apart from artillerists) military, mechanical, artist and scientific engineers, pointing out that the differences with master builders and architects were almost always quite fuzzy. 3. This was created under the inspiration of the architect and royal engineer Juan de Herrera, responsible for finishing the design and the construction of El Escorial (see, M. I. Vicente Marotoand M. Esteban Piñeiro (2005), Aspectos de la ciencia aplicada en la España del Siglo de Oro. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León. Much more of what can be understood today as mathematics, the programme of study – according to Luis Cervera, ‘in the scientific conception was as great as the Escorial monastery in architecture’ – can be read in Juan de Herrera (1584), Institución de la Academia Real Matemática. Madrid: Guillermo Droy (ed. and facsimile reproduction by J. Simón Díaz y L. Cervera Vera 1995, Instituto de Estudios Madrileños, Madrid,). For a vision with other relevant instructing institutions of those days: M. Esteban Piñeiro (2008), ‘Instituciones para la formación de los técnicos’, in M. Silva Suárez (ed.), El renacimiento. De la técnica imperial y la popular, op. cit., pp. 169–206. 4. According to the royal will, teaching would be done ‘in such a way that so many good things be more easily learnt and communicated’, in J. de Herrera (1584), Institución de la Academia Real Matemática, Madrid. 5. For a global view, see, for example: M. Silva Suárez. (2005), ‘Del agotamiento renacentista a una nueva illusion’, in M. Silva Suárez. (ed.), El siglo de las luces. De la ingeniería a la nueva navegación, vol II of T and I en España, RAI/IFC/PUZ, pp. 7–31. For a discussion more focused on the key institutions, see: M. Silva Suárez, ‘Institucionalización de la ingeniería y profesiones técnicas conexas: misión y formación corporativa’, in the same volume, pp. 165–262. 6. M. Sellés, M. (2005), ‘Navegación e Hidrografía’, and J. Simón Calero (2005), ‘Construcciones, ingeniería y teóricas en la construcción naval’, in M. Silva Suárez, (ed.), T and I en España, vol. II, RAI/IFC/PUZ, respectively: pp. 521–54 and 555–604. 7. H. Capel, J-E Sánchez, and O. Moncada (1988), De Palas a Minerva. La formación científica y la estructura institucional de los ingenieros militares en el siglo XVIII. Barcelona: CSIC/Ediciones del Serbal, Barcelona. 8. J. F. Forniés Casals and M. Moral Roncal, ‘Las reales sociedades económicas de amigos del país: docencia, difusión e innovación técnica’, in M... (ed.), T and I en España, vol. III, De la industria al ámbito agroforestal, RAI/IFC/PUZ, pp. 311–55. 9. Fausto de Elhuyar y Zuvice discovered wolfram (1783), together with his brother Juan José. Former professor of the Seminario de Vergara, Elhuyar arrived in México, were he was appointed director of the Real Seminario de Minería de la Nueva España. He attracted some former students of the Academy of Almadén and some educated at Schemnitz. One of them Andrés del Río, the discoverer of vanadium in 1801 (called Erythronium by him) went to México at the end of 1794. This College of New Spain was the most important institution of American engineering at that time, and was praised by Alexander von Humboldt himself. 10. There is an overview of the foundation of this set of institutions and others of great scientific and technical interest in M. Suárez, M. (2005), ‘Institucionalización de la ingeniería y profesiones técnicas conexas: misión y formación corporativa’, in M. Silva Suárez (ed.), El siglo de las luces: de la ingeniería a la nueva navegación, vol II of T and I en España, RAI/IFC/PUZ, pp. 165–262. 11. A. Escolano Benito A. (1988), Educación y economía en la España ilustrada. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, p. 9. 12. Nadal, J. (1988): ‘Carlos III, un cambio de mentalidad’, in España, 200 años de tecnología, Barcelona, p. 19. 13. The present and following section briefly summarizes a detailed discussion on: M. Silva Suárez, (2007), ‘Sobre la institucionalización profesional y académica de las carreras técnicas civiles’, in Silva Suárez, M. (ed.), El ochocientos. Profesiones e instituciones civiles, in T and I en España, vol. V, RAI/IFC/PUZ, pp. 7–79. In this volume are detailed the creation and development of the main technical and scientific civil institutions in nineteenth-century Spain: L. Mansilla Plaza and R. Sumozas: ‘La ingeniería de minas: de Almadén a Madrid’; F. Sáenz Ridruejo: ‘Ingeniería de caminos y canales, también de puertos y faros’; J. M. Prieto González: ‘La Escuela de Arquitectura de Madrid y el difícil reconocimiento de la capacitación técnica de los arquitectos decimonónicos’; P. J. Ramón and M. Silva Suárez: ‘El Real Conservatorio de Artes (1824–1887), cuerpo facultativo
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y consultivo auxiliar en el ramo de industria’; J. M. Cano Pavón: ‘El Real Instituto Industrial de Madrid y las escuelas periféricas’; G. Lusa Monforte: ‘La Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales de Barcelona’; V. Casals Costa: ‘Saber es hacer. Origen y desarrollo de la ingeniería de montes y la profesión forestal’; J. Cartañà i Pinén: ‘Ingeniería agronómica y modernización agrícola’; E. Ausejo: ‘La enseñanza de las ciencias exactas, físicas y naturales y la emergencia del científico’; and S. Olivé Roig y J. Sánchez Miñana: ‘De las torres ópticas al teléfono: el desarrollo de las telecomunicaciones y el Cuerpo de Telégrafos’. In the previous volume of the same collection, three chapters are basically devoted to military corps: J. I. Muro Morales ‘Ingenieros militares: la formación y la práctica profesional de unos oficiales facultativos’; C. J. Medina Ávila: ‘La actividad científica y técnica del Real Cuerpo de Artillería en la España del XIX’; F. Fernández González: ‘España cara al mar: ingenieros y técnicos para la armada y el comercio marítimo’ (in M. Silva Suárez (ed.) (2007), El Ochocientos, Pensamiento, profesiones y sociedad, in. T and I en España, vol. IV, RAI/IFC/PUZ). 14. This corresponds to the first of the three ‘Carlist’ civil wars during the nineteenth century. It is often recognized as the war between ‘cristinos’ (supporters of Cristina, the queen regent, and widow of Ferdinand VII) and ‘carlistas’ (supporters of Don Carlos, brother of Ferdinand VII). It was in fact a new political confrontation between the liberals (cristinos); and absolutists (carlistas). 15. J. L. Peset, S. Garma, S. and J. S. Pérez Garzón, (1978), Ciencias y enseñanza en la revolución burguesa. Madrid: Siglo XXI, p. 5. 16. L. Mallada, Los males de la patria y la futura renovación española, Madrid, 1890. 17. In Spain ‘industrial engineer’ should be read as ‘engineer for industry’, first considered as mechanical and chemical engineers, and later in 1907 also Electrical engineers. 18. The industrial engineering profession and studies were enacted by a Royal Decree of 1850, by the minister Seijas Lozano. 19. But on the other hand, it was also necessary to fight ‘against the titans of routine’ (see S. Garma, D. Flament and V. Navarro (eds) (1994), Contra los titanes de la rutina. Encuentro de investigadores hispano-franceses sobre la historia y filosofía de las matemáticas. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid/CSIC. 20. Observe that architects were not integrated in this framework. 21. The liberal radicalization of this revolt by sergeants, claimed to originate in Constitution of Cádiz of 1812. Paradoxically, it has as a corollary that the Plan General de Instrucción Pública of 1836 (known as the Plan del Duque de Rivas) never worked, preventing, for almost a decade, liberal reform of the education system, when the Plan Pidal (1845) was enacted (as mentioned, the Década Moderada, the Moderate Decade, was between 1844 and 1854). 22. In fact exclusivity was not already in practice when the EGPIA ceased to function. 23. At the turn of the century a new instruction model developed. It approached what Antoni Roca Rosell (1996) termed ‘engineering of the laboratory’ (‘L’enginyeria de laboratori, un repte del nou-cents’, Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, I, 197–240). 24. Silva Suárez, M. (2007), ‘El Ochocientos: de la involución post-ilustrada y la reconstrucción burguesa’, in M. Silva Suárez (ed.), El ochocientos, pensamiento, profesiones y sociedad, in T and I en España, vol. IV, RAI/IFC/PUZ), pp. 7–104 (particularly: pp. 81–91). The different points of view of non-military engineers, some of who were employed by the state versus others not employed by the state, can be seen in: M. Silva Suárez and G. Lusa Monforte (2007), ‘Cuerpos facultativos del Estado vs. profesión liberal: la singularidad de la ingeniería industrial’, in the same volume, pp. 227–90. 25. For a global perspective: J. M. Román y Arroyo (1993), Tres escuelas y veinte promociones de ingenieros aeronáuticos. Madrid: E.T.S. Ingenieros Aeronáuticos y C.O.I. Aeronáuticos, Madrid, 1993. 26. This last complements the studies on the previous Escuela de Aplicación (1909), which is regarded as the starting point for advanced studies in telegraphy in Spain.
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The Art of Shipbuilding in Spain’s Golden Century I s ab e l V i c e n t e M a r o t o University of Valladolid
The construction of large ships was traditionally in the hands of ships’ carpenters who learnt their craft, generally transmitted from fathers to sons, by working at the side of an expert craftsman and preserving the secrecy of the craft’s techniques. But the discovery of the New World created the need to improve ships for the difficult transatlantic crossing, which stimulated the improvement of naval construction. Spanish techniques, together with those of the Portuguese, came to be the most advanced in Europe.1 From the time of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel, in the late fifteenth century, the Spanish Crown undertook a systematic policy of naval construction. In the late sixteenth century, Philip II resolutely promoted shipbuilding as a strategic instrument of the first order, attempting to sustain an empire that spanned the globe by controlling oceanic routes with the best armed ships possible.2 Seville was the nerve centre for the administration of the Indies, as Spain called its colonies in the Americas, and of all maritime matters in general; at the time of its zenith in the middle of the sixteenth century, the city came to have 140,000 inhabitants, a population exceeded only by Paris and London. But the development of Castile’s navy was sustained, in large part, by the skills and sailing mastery of the people of the northern Cantabrian coast. In the 150 years after the discovery of America, most of the ships arriving in America and the Pacific were Spanish vessels built in the shipyards of three northern provinces – Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya and Cantabria – although the Crown promoted and protected maritime activities in other regions as well. Royal patronage of the shipyards and ports in the Vasco-Cantabrian region and their flourishing commerce, ferrous metal industries and production of ships’ rigging and equipment increased during the reign of Charles I to such an extent that, despite the central role of Seville, the king decreed in 1534 that no large ocean-going ships built on the Andalusian coasts could sail to the Indies. Southern-built vessels such as dispatch boats, galleys, and other minor craft could sail to the Indies, but only as auxiliary vessels. The naos and galleons had to be built on the north coast, though the protests of the other regions meant that this regulation was rarely obeyed and lasted only a short time. There were also excellent shipbuilders in Catalonia, as well as in the shipyards of Spain’s American colonies. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Figure 6.1╇ View of the city of Cadiz, from a wicket in its fortress wall, 1513. Archivo General de Simancas, MPD, 25, 47, Ministerio de Cultura, Spain
It has been said3 that maritime power has followed the course of civilization, or vice versa, moving ever westward from Phoenicia to Carthage and from Greece to Rome, and that all of these peoples declined, as did Byzantium, when other peoples rose who had more powerful fleets and a superior mastery of the techniques of naval construction. Ocean-going Vessels
The improvement of ocean-going vessels was without doubt one of the most influential factors in enabling the great voyages during the Renaissance, related as much to their manoeuvrability as to the strength of their hulls. The Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea constituted two very different maritime areas, above all in their geographical, hydrographical and meteorological characteristics. The peculiarities of oceanic navigation along the Atlantic coasts led mariners in the Iberian Peninsula to prefer sailing vessels. In contrast, seafarers in the Mediterranean Sea traditionally used oar-propelled galleys and galleases. Transoceanic navigation led to the appearance of new types of vessels.4 With the return of Bartholomew Dias to Lisbon in December of 1488, the existence of a maritime passage from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean was guaranteed, but it was also clear that the technical means employed until then were insufficient for that voyage. The two-masted lateen caravel, associated with
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the voyages of discovery from the early 1440s precisely because it was a larger vessel than the ships of earlier decades, reached the limits of its utility as a vessel for oceanic exploration. Until then, its characteristics had been ideal: a light, narrow hulled ship that sailed well, with lateen sails that facilitated sailing with a following wind and that also could make headway against the wind – in other words, an ideal ship for sailing in unknown seas and reconnoitering coastlines. But to go further required other means: larger, more robust ships, with a greater capacity for cargo, in order to carry victuals and supplies that would enable crews to withstand long periods far from any coastline, or to survive inhospitable places without the certainty of finding drinkable water. Some voyages had to be cut short for the lack of provisions in general, and of drinkable water in particular. According to the description of João de Barros, Bartholomew Dias traveled with two lateen caravels and a larger supply ship, which would later be called a nao, which meant a large ‘round’ vessel – that is, with square sails (velas redondas) – in contrast to the caravel with lateen sails and low freeboard (bajo bordo). As the possibilities grew for the transport of bulky merchandise, the lateen caravel was not adequate for transoceanic routes5. Nonetheless, the term caravel could refer to various vessels. For example, for ocean voyages caravels sometimes carried square sails on the mainmast or the foremast and were called carabelas
Figure 6.2╇ Map of fort San Martin in Santander, 1591. Detail. MPD, 38, 53. Archivo General de Simancas, Ministerio de Cultura, Spain
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redondas (round or full-rigged caravels). These were the vessels most common in Andalusia, and their tonnage could rise to 150–160 toneles, in Spanish usage. Carabela redonda is the name that appears in modern historiography, for the same reason that vessels such as the nao or the galleon are called redondos (round): they carried rectangular sails (paños redondos) that rounded with a following wind. Other terms used during the period of early oceanic voyages included carabelas armadas or carabelas de armada (naval or armed caravels), which indicated their military function, just as others might be called carabelas pescaderas (fishing caravels) or carabelas de aviso (dispatch caravels). In these cases, their functions gave rise to their designations, without any reference to their morphological characteristics. The round caravel had raised castles at the prow and poop, in contrast to the lateen caravel, which had no structure added to the prow of the vessel. In that respect, the round caravel was closer in form to contemporary naos and galleons than to the lateen caravel. In general, however, caravels had a longer hull with relation to the beam than did naos, and they had a single deck with a small chamber at the poop. It became imperative to use vessels with high freeboard (alto bordo) to overcome the limitations of the smaller lateen caravels. But the denominations of various vessels was imprecise and shipbuilders used hybrid typologies; in other words, there were no perfectly recognizeable characteristics that were identified with a specific type of ship, which led observers to use different denominations for the same vessel. Moreover, the absence of technical documentation, along with the difficulties inherent in correctly calculating tonnage, made it very difficult to make an exact classification of the different types of vessels used in early transoceanic voyages. We customarily refer to the three caravels that Columbus took on his first transatlantic voyage, but the Santa María was actually a nao and only the Pinta and the Niña were caravels. The classification of various types of ocean-going vessels in the sixteenth century is not easy.6 The term nao (from the Greek naus, meaning ship) might be applied to every class of ship consisting of a hull (Spanish: vaso, casco hueco, or buque), with or without a deck. Later, the word came to refer to a specific type of vessel. In Spanish usage, naos from the Cantabrian coast were the most-used ships during the sixteenth century. They evolved continuously from the beginning of the Age of Discoveries, responding to factors as diverse as the requirements of oceanic navigation, military necessities and the development of commercial exchanges.7 This evolution resulted in the transition from naos with a shallow depth in the hull and a single deck to the much larger vessels with two decks that were built during the last half of the century. The nao could be defined as a large sailing ship, used either for cargo or for warfare, with a carrying capacity between 100 and 600 toneles, three masts and a bowsprit, rectangular sails on the mainmast and foremast, and a lateen sail on the mizzenmast. The importance of a balanced hull and rigging on the masts increased as the ships ventured further into the open ocean. As a result, the nao became a ship designed primarily for the high-seas and was propelled exclusively by sails, with high freeboard, a forecastle at the prow, and high structures at the poop (Spanish: alcázar or tolda), in which good manoeverability was joined with History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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sufficient cargo capacity to transport merchandise efficiently. The raised castles fore and aft served a military purpose and also provided lodging space. The nao was a cargo carrier par excellence, designed to cover long distances on known routes, but it could carry large-bore artillery pieces as well. The term ‘nao’ could also be used to designate large sailing vessels in general. Compared to naos, full-rigged caravels were faster and more manoeverable, which explains why they were preferred for voyages of exploration and discovery. The galeón (galleon) for warfare and mercantile use was a genuinely Iberian ship, at least in its evolution and development from the early days of transatlantic navegation. It was born at the beginning of the sixteenth century as the response of inventive peninsular shipbuilders to the need for better ships, especially for warfare and for the Carrera de Indias – the routes to and from Spanish America. It can be defined as a large full-rigged sailing ship, like the nao, but with some distinctive characteristics that were designed specifically for war at sea. The lines of the hull were sharper and somewhat longer with relation to the beam, and the rails were lower, as were the castles fore and aft, which gave it better sailing qualities. These qualities were enhanced by a four-masted rigging plan, with the two in front – foremast and mainmast – carrying rectangular sails and the two behind – mizzen and counter-mizzen – carrying lateen sails. The addition of the counter-mizzen, near the poop, distinguished the galleon’s rig from that of the nao. The term galleon has been wrongly considered to derive etymologically from galley. Similarities in shape exist between the galley and the galleass, as they are both ships propelled in part by oars; any similarity between the galley and the galleon would be functional, since the galleon was conceived of fundamentally for naval warfare. Toward the middle of the sixteenth century various improvements were made to the galleon, such as those proposed by Don Álvaro de Bazán, the Elder.8 The design of the galleon, with a longer hull compared to the beam than the nao but with a similar cargo capacity, included a larger area under decks. Generally these included the first deck or cubierta principal, and the bridge (de la puente).9 The huge galleons of the late sixteenth century, with more than 1,000 tons of carrying capacity, could accomodate a lower gundeck below the first deck. The working area for sails and rigging, the forecastle and the quarter-deck (alcázar or tolda) were located above the bridge. The metal firebox (fogón) where the sailors cooked their meals, was located beneath the forecastle. This castle was not placed as far forward as it was in naos, which facilitated the working of the sails on the foremast and bowsprit. The main cabin for officers was installed at the far end of the alcázar or tolda. For vessels of 300 tons and above, the cabin had access to an outer balcony or corridor at the stern. A small cabin (camarote) above the stern castle accomodated the ship’s pilot. From the fifteenth century, the use of naval artillery had become common, and the various vessels had to be designed to accomodate it as efficiently as possible. The typical galleon for Spain’s Indies fleet was a heavily armed vessel of 300 tons or more. In common parlance, the word ‘nao’ applied to almost all of the large sailing ships that traversed the Atlantic on mostly mercantile voyages. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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The word galleon was generally understood to mean a class of ship designed especially for war, with finer lines and more armament than ships commonly called naos. The galleon was not a newly designed or completely different vessel from those that preceded it, but instead was the result of the evolution of naos and carracks. It functioned, on the one hand, to provide a naval force to control the sea, and, on the other hand, to defend and protect the fleets that linked the Iberian Peninsula with the Indies.10 The official denomination of galleon appeared in the Royal Ordinances of 1613, which classified ships as pataches of 55 to 95 tons; navíos of 150 to 250 tons; galeoncetes of 316 tons; and galeones that could range from 381 to 1,105 tons, the latter equal to some 1,600 metric tons. The Ordinances of 1618, or ‘Rules for the fabrication of ships made for the King and for private individuals’, described the principal dimensions of 14 classes of vessels, from 9 to 22 codos (cubits) of beam (the Cantabrian cubit of .575 metres). All were referred to in general as navíos (ships), but there were several references to varying sizes and thicknesses of masts and spars. The Ordinances of January 24, 1633, which compiled and updated ordinances from 1587, 1606, 1608, 1613, and 1618, mentioned galleons and navíos of the royal navy, but also mentioned urcas (hulks), caravels and other vessels belonging to private individuals that could be embargoed and rented by the Crown, if necessary. The most common auxiliary vessels were pataches, zabras and galizabras, similar in shape and function to the full-rigged caravel, but smaller. The patache had two decks with small castles fore and aft, and had no more than 100 tons of capacity. References to galizabras at the end of the sixteenth century included a wide range of sizes, though they were normally about 50 tons. In common parlance, the word galleon continued in use for nearly all of the seventeenth century, increasingly identified with ships known as war galleons or naval galleons of the Crown. The term ‘navío’ did not designate a specific typology; in essence it referred to naos or similar vessels, of small or middling tonnage. It is a generic denomination that came into use in the seventeenth century. The tonnage of Iberian ships increased as the sixteenth century advanced. Although the calculation of tonnages was not exact, successive rules regarding gauging the hull (arqueamiento) tried to establish an optimal balance between carrying capacity for cargo and crew. Nonetheless, this did not prevent the increase in ship size overall, because the shipbuilder could simply enlarge the castles to increase the volume of the ship, above all if he was working on contract.11 The tendency toward larger ships was noteworthy and began to be unadvisable. Some argued that naos had to be large, and in Portugal there was a debate about whether the carracks for voyages to India had to be 800 toneles, with three or four decks, with no relation between their number and their tonnage. But other authorities argued that the ships should be lighter and faster, without castles fore or aft. Among the latter was João Baptista Lavanha (1555–1624), called in Spain Lavaña or Labaña, appointed by Philip II as the first professor of the Royal Mathematical Academy in Madrid, created in 1582 on the advice of Juan de Herrera. From 1591, Lavanha was named History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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the Royal Cosmographer of Portugal.12 Another who argued for smaller vessels was Agustín de Ojeda, one of the most important – and surely the most prolific – shipbuilder of his time, serving the Crown for 56 years. After serving in the Great Armada in 1588, he began building ships in Basque shipyards, completing 30 galleons and two galizabras between 1589 and 1598.13 An equally distinguished proponent of ships without fore- or aft-castles was Pedro López de Soto, who served as comptroller of Lisbon under the Captain General and Governor of Portugal, Don Juan de Silva. Between 1589 and 1601, López built five ships on contract for King Philip II (Philip I of Portugal), to serve as coastguards.14 For most of the sixteenth century, the notion prevailed that the bigger the ship the better and stronger it would be, so that ships reached a size of 800 or 1,000 toneles. At the end of the century, however, excessive size was considered an important factor in the loss of a growing number of ships. Huge ships lost their good sailing qualities and were harder to steer, which became even more evident militarily when they faced smaller, more agile English and Dutch vessels. The increasing number of decks increased the weight, and consequently the draft, of a ship, without directly increasing its capacity. The difficulties that large ships faced, either in being unable to enter certain ports or cross certain sandbars could have serious consequences in terms of safety and finances, and polemics reflected both concerns. The Spanish ordinances promulgated by Castilian monarchs to regularize construction methods and make ships more uniform – of which the ordinances of 1613 and 1618 are the most frequently cited – stipulated the maximum dimension of ships on the Indies route, based on the characteristics of Spanish ports in the Americas. Shipbuilding
Naval construction was an art founded on the search for ideal proportions. All of the dimensions of a ship, including the size of the masts, cables and anchors, were set according to a proportional scale that related everything to the maximum breadth or beam (manga) of the ship. Thus, the size of the beam was they key element in the design. Large Spanish ships, as mentioned above, were built mainly on the Cantabrian coast following a traditional formula used all over Europe, known as the rule of ‘as, dos, tres’ in Spanish: each unit of measurement of the beam corresponded with two units of keel (quilla) and three units of length (eslora). Nonetheless, this was not a set rule, as the evolution of ship construction entailed a series of corrections to this norm, aimed to improve the cargo capacity of ships as much as possible. Phases of the moon influenced the rhythm of naval construction. Master carpenters favoured a waning moon to cut wood for ship construction. They were convinced that wood cut during a waxing moon would deteriorate quickly, as the majority of plants expand during that lunar phase. Wood cut during a waning moon did not contain excess moisture; to increase its durability even more, they favoured the waning moons of November and December, far outside the normal growing season. Following a similar logic, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Figure 6.3╇ Instrucción naútica para el buen uso y regimiento de las naos, su traça y gobierno, by Diego García de Palacio (Mexico, 1587). Book IV is the first printed work in Spanish about shipbuilding, including several designs detailing proportions
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they excluded the summer month for cutting wood for shipbuilding, as the summer heat had a tendency to ferment and putrify the wood. Winter logging had further advantages; the absence of leaves made it easier to judge the quality of the tree, and there was more manpower available during the winter hiatus in agriculture. Shipbuilding in Spain followed a centuries-old sequence. The process began on the beach, with the laying of the keel and the construction of a skeletal framework of ribs and planks to form the hull. When the hull was watertight, it was hauled into the water, and the rest of the construction took place with the ship afloat. The largest hulls required the construction of a wooden framework or grada to support the hull as it was planked and to ease it into the water; the framework sloped at an angle that varied with the projected tonnage of the ship – 1:12 for the largest ships and 1:10 for the smallest. The base of the framework had to be strong and solid enough to avoid collapsing under the weight of the hull. If the construction took place on the bank of a river, the builders had to take greater precautions, securing the framework with strong stakes or masonry and submerging the lower part of the framework in the water.15 The location of the grada was neither fixed nor permanent. The notion of astilleros or shipyards in this period refers to an ample zone on a beach or river. Once the framework was built, along with a sort of crib to hold the timbers in place that would form the hull, the first piece laid was the keel, made of a single large timber, straight and thick, because it had to support the whole structure of the ship. The keel and adjacent segments were built from the
Figure 6.4╇ Drawing of a frigate with its dimensions similar to those built in Havana in 1606. Archivo General de Simancas. MPD, 42, 70
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Figure 6.5╇ Map of fort San Martin, in Santander, 1591, detail. Archivo General de Simancas. MPD, 38, 53
hardest wood available. As the size of ships increased, the keel had to be built from various pieces of wood connected with lap joints and clinched copper bolt or spikes (pernos). Experience dictated the necessary thickness, which developed into fixed proportions over time. At the extreme ends of the keel, two other timbers of the same thickness were attached: the roda or stempost at the prow and the codaste or sternpost at the stern, reinforced with timbers called dormidos (sleepers); other timbers reinforced the floor (plan). On top of the dormidos, and joined to them were the great curved pieces called ribs (costillas) that formed the skeleton of the hull and determined its shape and capacity. The ideal wood for the ribs was holm oak, if it had an appropriate natural curvature. The skeleton was then clad inside and out with horizontal planks fitted tightly together. Then the caulkers’ work began, which consisted of sealing all of the ship’s seams with oakum (estopa) and tar (betún) to make the hull watertight. They had to use a good quality of oakum or tow because it could wear away. Moreover, if the caulking was deficient or if the planks warped – especially if they had History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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been used without proper curing – the hull would lose its impermeability. Then the ship would have to be careened and the same work done over again, in addition to cleaning the exterior of the hull and fixing other flaws, and replacing deteriorated wood. Even if ships were built ideally, they had to be careened periodically – every one or two years, or whenever necessary. In short, the keel was laid first, then the stem- and stern-posts, followed by the ribs; the skeleton thus formed was completed with planking and wales (cintas).16 How long the whole process took depended on the weather. On the northern coast of Spain, it rains most of the time during the winter, so that summer, with long hours and sunny days, was the ideal season for shipbuilding. Once the hull was deemed sufficiently complete to float, preparations began for its launch: with the restraining timber removed, the hull was allowed to slide toward the water, helped along with levers, ratchets, and teams of mules, if necessary. When a very large ship was pulled into the water, it was a considerable operation, involving a mass of workers and up to 400 teams of oxen, brought in from everywhere in the vicinity. The launch itself generally took no more than a day, but not every day was appropriate. At times, months passed before an ideal day presented itself, dependent largely on the moon’s influence on the tides. With the ship well-moored in the water, work continued to finish the contruction process. First came the placing and securing of the masts, four of them in the case of the largest ships – mainmast, foremast, mizzen, and counter-mizzen, plus the bowsprit, all with their corresponding spars. The
Figure 6.6╇ Detail of the Bay of Cadiz, where the English ship True Love capitulated, 1615. Archivo General de Simancas. MPD 19,202
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sails were of cotton canvas and the rigging of esparto grass or hemp.17 After the rigging, carpenters built the cabins, decks, superstructures, and other features. Finally, workers mounted the artillery, while the ship was still in port. A great preoccupation of royal officials was the attempt to standardize units of measure used to gauge the ship’s size and carrying capacity. To state that a ship was of a certain number of cubits (cubic codos) provided little information unless the size of the codo was specified. The gauging of ships was calculated empirically, corresponding originally to its carrying capacity in terms of toneles (Spanish: barrels); when toneles would not fit, the hold was filled with pipas, two of which equalled a tonel. These were the smallest units used. Moreover, the values obtained by gauging a ship with traditional methods often responded to the convenience of the shipbuilders, who were more interested in avoiding taxes or in collecting more for their ships than in making an exact calculation.18 Such concerns led to government intervention in Spain, where the question of regional variations in the units of measure and of gauging techniques was particularly problematical.19 Philip II attempted to standardize the dimension of the codo in 1590, based on usage along the Cantabrian coast.20 In 1605 Diego Brochero21 convoked a gathering of experts,22 which included Agustín de Ojeda and ten others, among them Diego de Noja y Castillo, Inspector of the Navy for Santander and its region (known as the Cuatros Villas), and several expert ship carpenters from Vizcaya (Biscay). They also invited experts from Andalusia and Portugal in an attempt to establish an adaptable scale of dimensions and tonnage. The meeting came up with a formula for calculating the capacity of a ship based on its dimensions. Although technical experts and the authors of learned treatises tried to establish formulas to indicate the tonnage of vessels without the need to measure them directly, precise measurements did not exist at the time, because of the inability to define standards and to apply them correctly.23 In the sixteenth century, two barrels could be identical only by sheer chance, considering the manufacturing techniques, tools and raw materials used to make them, and there was no way to overcome the fact that one barrel might measure a half centimetre more than another. Similarly, it would have been impossible to cut pieces of wood for the construction of a ship in a standardized manner. Normative values existed, of course, but we cannot expect to convert them to millimetres. The problem of standardization remained unsolved for a long time. Its solution depended on an ability, inaccessible at the time, to standardize every aspect of ship construction, as well as units of measure and methods of calculation. Therefore, we have to rely on approximate values, close to those calculated at the time, rather than trying to arrive at fractional figures that were impossible to calculate at the time. The appearance of treatises on naval architecture in Europe at the end of the sixteenth century represented an important effort to organize, systematize and disseminate knowledge about the precepts of an art that had traditionally been restricted to shipbuilders themselves as trade secrets, almost exclusively based on empirical criteria. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Figure 6.7╇View of the city of Gijón, 1635. Archivo General de Simancas. MPD, 29, 24
The first Spanish treatises of this sort were almost always true miscellanies of diverse subjects related to navigation, one of them being ship construction. This was the case with the Quatri partitu en cosmographia practica, also known as the Espejo de navegantes (Mariner’s mirror) of Alonso de Chaves; or Juan Escalante de Mendoza’s Itinerario de navegación (Itinerary of navigation). Neither of these works was published; the authors could not printing licences, because at the time the Crown did not consider it desirable to share such knowledge with non-Spanish subjects. Diego García de Palacio’s Instrucción náutica para el buen uso y regimiento de las naos y su traça y gobierno conforme a la altura de México (Nautical instruction for the good use and management of ships, and their design and sailing in Mexican waters) was the first treatise printed in Spanish (Mexico, 1587), and it included important sections on naval architecture, with detailed drawings. Subsequently, such works tended to specialize and to deal with shipbuilding as a specific theme. In the early seventeenth century, Tomé Cano’s Arte para fabricar y aparejar naos (Art of building and rigging ships) focused exclusively on this theme, as did the anonymous Diálogo entre un vizcayno y un montañes (Dialogue between a Biscayan and a Montañés).24 In addition to the various Spanish treatises in manuscript and printed form, the royal Ordenanzas de fábricas de navíos (Ordinances of shipbuilding) in 1607, 1613 and 1618 should also be taken into account as official technical manuals that contributed to the evolution of ship design and construction. Most of Europe’s maritime peoples habitually sailed in well-known waters such as the Mediterranean, the North Sea and the Baltic. Iberian mariners, by contrast, had to confront the perils of the open ocean as soon as they left port. That forced them to develop prototypes of ships with the necessary History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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strength, agility and manoeverability to guarantee the survival of ships and lives in a very hostile environment.25 Numerous authors recognize that Iberian mariners introduced the most advantageous elements of Mediterranean naval technology into the Atlantic, and vice versa.26 Moreover, in the shipyards of the Cantabrian coast the various elements were integrated to produce the ships that carried out the great Renaissance voyages of oceanic discovery: the full-rigged nao and the galleon.27 But it proved impossible to develop a single all-purpose ship. Cristóbal de Barros, appointed by Philip II in 1574 as superintendent of shipbuilding and forest conservation on the Cantabrian coast, served as the king’s most important official in that region until 1592, when he transferred to Seville as General Purveyer for the escort squadron of the Indies fleets. Barros knew maritime requirements better than anyone else, and in the 1580s he recommended developing different types of ships for war, industry and commerce.28 After the defeat of the Great Armada in 1588,29 shipbuilders such as Agustín de Ojeda and Pedro López de Soto advised the king to build lighter, cheaper and more manoeuvrable ships, following Flemish and English models. From the last decade of the sixteenth century, the proportions of Spanish ships were modified by lengthening their hulls to become more frigate-shaped, and reducing their upper works as much as possible. Until the eighteenth century, Spain maintained the traditional system of building vessels without plans, and, in most cases, without scale models;30 nonetheless, this did not prevent the production of strong and seaworthy ships capable of competing successfully with those of other nations. Undoubtedly, Spanish shipbuilders had in mind the preferred proportions of ships and knew how to produce them, positioning timbers shaped by cuenta y razón (lit., mathematics and reason) appropriate in each case. Moreover, during the Age of Discoveries, one could argue that Spain, together with Portugal, had the largest and best fleet of ocean-going ships in Europe, and the largest shipbuilding capacity, systematically supported by the Habsburg monarchy. The ships they produced, and the men who sailed them, together with their technical capabilities and military capacity, made the Iberian powers dominant in Atlantic waters in the sixteenth century. Notes
1. Research for this paper was supported by the project for ‘Mathematics and its Technical Applications in Early Modern Spain (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries). Institutions and the Dissemination of Knowledge’, code HUM2007-63273/HIST, funded by Spain’s Ministry of Education and Science. 2. J. L. Casado Soto (1988), Los barcos españoles del siglo XVI y la Gran Armada de 1588. Madrid: . 3. J. M. Martínez Hidalgo (1992), Las naves del descubrimiento y sus hombres. Barcelona: . 4. M. I. Vicente Maroto (2008, ‘La construcción naval’ in, M. Silva Suárez (ed.), Técnica e ingeniería en España, vol. I. El Renacimiento. Zaragoza:. 5. E. Lopes de Mendoça, E. (1971), Estudos sobre navios portugueses dos séculos XV e XVI. Lisbon: The term ‘caravel’ was recorded for the first time in 1255 and can be found printed as late as 1754 and in manuscript as late as 1766. 6. J. L. Rubio Serrano (1991), Arquitectura de las naos y galeones de la flota de Indias (2 vols). Málaga:. 7. F. Fernández González (1992), Astronomía y navegación en España, siglos XVI al XVIII. Madrid:.
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8. The Bazán family, naval contractors and seamen, devoted themselves to improving ship design from the time that Álvaro de Bazán the Elder began to serve Charles I. R. Cerezo Martínez (1988), Las armadas de Felipe II. Madrid: . 9. Rubio Serrano, op. cit. 10. Fernández González, op. cit. 11. The Spanish Crown built ships in two ways, either directly or under contract (asiento) with an individual shipbuilder. In the latter case, the Crown set the conditions and the fixed price per ton that it would pay. There were numerous instances in which such contracts ruined the shipbuilder, especially when the Crown delayed payment or when the shipbuilder had to pay more for materials than his contract would reimburse. 12. Lavanha’s services to the Habsburg kings of Spain and Portugal are studied in I. Vicente Maroto and M. Esteban Piñero (eds) (1991), Aspectos de la ciencia aplicada en la España del Siglo de Oro. Salamanca: . 13. Agustín de Ojeda and Pedro López de Soto, both expert shipbuilders, built similar ships for the Crown around 1595, Ojeda in Cantabria, directly for the Crown, and López de Soto in Lisbon, under contract. I. Vicente Maroto (2006), ‘Agustín de Ojeda y la construcción de navíos a finales del siglo XVI’, in I. Vicente Maroto, I. and M. Esteban Piñero (eds), La ciencia y el mar. Valladolid, pp. 311–44. 14. I. Vicente Maroto (2006), ‘Don Juan de Silva, conde de Portalegre, Capitán General del Reino de Portugal’, Rumos e escrita da história. Estudos em homenagem a A. A. Marques de Almeida. Lisbon: 2, pp. 541–55. 15. G. Pérez Turrado (1992), Las armadas españolas de Indias. Madrid: . 16. C. Rahn Phillips (1991), Seis galeones para el rey de España. La defensa imperial a principios del siglo XVII. Madrid: . 17. Documents indicate that the best hemp came from the region of La Rioja and the Kingdom of Aragon. 18. Numerous documents attest to the efforts of royal overseers and accountants to verify the accuracy of the gauging (arqueamiento), in order to avoid possible fraud. 19. Casado Soto, op. cit.; C. Rahn Phillips (1987), ‘Spanish ship measurements reconsidered. The Instrucción náutica of Diego García de Palacio’. The Mariner’s Mirror 73, August, 293–6; E. Trueba (1988), ‘Tonelaje mínimo y arqueo de buques en Sevilla (siglo XVI)’. Revista de Historia Naval, 20, 33–59. 20. Casado Soto, op. cit., pp. 58–71, has made an extensive study of marine metrology on the Iberian Atlantic coast in the sixteenth century. He argues that one tonelada the same as one pre-1590 tonel), was equal to eight cubic codos or cubits; with the codo of 0.57468 m, the volume of a tonelada would be 8 × (0.57468)3 = 4.59744 m3. 21. Brochero was a prominent naval officer and a member of the Council of War. He presented his ideas about how to remedy problems in he identified in the Spanish navy in his ‘Discurso sobre la marina’ (Discourse on the navy), Colección Vargas Ponce, t. 11, doc. 7, pp. 124–31, Museo Naval, Madrid. He also worked to improve naval architecture and supported the Ordinances of 1607, 1613 and 1618. 22. Archivo General de Simancas, Guerra Antigua, leg. 640, Brochero’s proposal of March 3, 1605. 23. F. Contente Domingues, ‘El rigor de la medida: unidades de medida linear y de arqueo en la construcción naval ibérica en los inicios del siglo XVII’, in Vicente Maroto and Esteban Piñero (eds), op. cit., pp. 371–81. 24. The word montañés refers to a person from Santander; it was common for Renaissance authors to use the dialogue form, following the example of classical writers, to ease the reader’s comprehension of their argument. I. Vicente Maroto (1998), Diálogo entre un vizcaíno y un montañés sobre la fábrica de navíos. Salamanca: . argues that the treatise was probably written around 1630 by Pedro López de Soto, Royal Comptroller in Lisbon at the end of the sixteenth century and also an experienced shipbuilder. 25. J. L. Casado Soto., ‘Razones y sinrazones para el estado de opinión sobre la construcción naval española en el Renacimiento’, in Vicente Maroto and Esteban Piñero (eds), op. cit., pp. 431–44. Casado Soto, Director of the Maritime Museum of Cantabria in Santander, has published several works challenging standard notions assuming the supremacy of the English Navy over the Spanish in the sixteenth century.
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26. For example, J. Bernard (1968), Navires et gens de mer à Bordeaux (vers 1400-vers 1500). Paris: 1968). 27. J. L. Casado Soto (2002), ‘Construcción naval y navegación’, in L. García Ballester (ed.), Historia de la ciencia y la tecnología en la corona de castilla, vol II. Valladolid: pp. 433–501. 28. D. Goodman (2001), El poderío naval español. Historia de la armada española del siglo XVII . Barcelona: . 29. Casado Soto, op. cit. Despite that defeat, Casado Soto argues for the seaworthiness of Spanish merchant ships in the Great Armada: only four of 25 ships were lost, compared to 11 of the 27 urcas of northern European manufacture and 11 of the 13 Mediterranean carracks. 30. Spanish ships were built without plans until the Gaztañeta Ordinances of 1712. F. Fernández González (1992), Arte de fabricar reales. Edición comentada del manuscrito original de don Antonio de Gaztañeta Yturribalzaga, 2 vols. Barcelona.
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Technology Transfer and Industrial Location. The Case of the Cotton Spinning Industry in Catalonia (1770–1840) A l e x Sá n c h e z University of Barcelona
Introduction
In recent years the study of why economic areas are located where they are, and what they contain, has become one of the basic components for analysing industrialization processes. The importance of territory in economic organization and development has been reassessed on the basis of studies initially carried out in Italy on ‘industrial districts’. Taking Alfred Marshall’s pioneering text as a theoretical reference, this work has shown the advantages to be gained by concentrating a large number of companies in the same area: operating in the same production sector they build up strong relations with each other which promote exchange and coordination. These advantages can be seen especially in the form of external savings (specialization, labour and transaction costs), but also because an ‘industrial atmosphere’ is generated, favouring the circulation of knowledge and technological innovation.1 From an economic viewpoint, one of the areas that has attracted the most interest when studying territory concerns the factors that determine industrial location. In fact, the question of industrial location has been taken up by various scientific disciplines such as new economic geography, the new theory of international trade, regional economics and urban economics; it has generated serious academic debate and has reached historiographic discussion forums, such as the International Economic History Congress held in Helsinki in 2006.2 The arguments in these debates have become more and more complex and people’s positions have evolved, from early assurances that the available resources played a fundamental role, through the consideration that the legacy of manufacturing (understood mainly as ‘accumulated net worth’) is a key element in deciding location, up to more recent ideas that stress the
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importance of the market above everything else. Today, interest in the subject is far from abating. The relationship between industry and territory has only recently begun to attract the attention of historians in Spain. As might be expected, the main focus has been set at regional level so as to determine the reasons for regional inequalities in industrial location.3 In addition, when it comes to establishing the key factors influencing where Spanish industry was set up, the emphasis has been placed on aspects such as access to natural resources, the availability of human capital and market size. As Tirado, Pons and Paluzie have pointed out, regional industrial specialization in Spain ‘was not only related to the relative availability of resources [.â•›.â•›.], but also to the existence of agglomeration economies linked to the size of the market’.4 However, these factors have been taken into account mainly vis-à-vis regional concentrations of industry in Spain and have therefore been analysed basically from an interregional perspective. But we need to ask ourselves whether these factors would also serve to explain the territorial location of industry at an intra-regional level, or whether in this case there are other factors and even other territorial frameworks that also need to be considered in the analysis. These questions led Antonio Parejo to conclude that it is the urban dimension, with the city as the natural habitat for industrial location, rather than the regional dimension, that is best context for understanding the true relationship between industry and territory in industrialization processes.5 But they also suggest that perhaps we should pay greater attention to technology as a factor determining industrial location. The aim of this paper is to look at the role of technological change in industrial locations during the first stage of industrialization. I will try to show that there was a much closer link between technology and territory than is generally believed and also that this relationship was not just one-way.6 Technology is obviously a factor that determines business strategies, but so is territory. The technology a company owner chooses may determine the territorial location of the company depending on the energy or labour requirements deriving from the particular characteristics of a new machine. But territory can also have an effect on what technology is chosen by forcing the company owner to use only those technologies best suited to the geographical, commercial or productive characteristics of a particular area. In the first case, when a change of technology system has territorial repercussions, the availability of resources plays a very important role in business decisions. In the second case, when it is the territory that affects the choice of technology system, business decisions are influenced above all by the characteristics of the market and previously established production specializations. Naturally this paper will not try to look at the subject in its entirety, but will approach it by taking one specific example – the cotton spinning industry in Catalonia during early industrialization. This industry, which was the first in Catalonia to be mechanized and thereby started the industrial modernization process in Spain, provides an ideal case study, for three main reasons. First, because of the diversity of its spatial locations in the eighteenth and first half History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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of the nineteenth century, which range from manufacturing bases scattered across rural areas to the consolidation of the factory system; second, because of the presence of three energy systems – animal, hydraulic and steam – which actively contributed to the establishment and evolution of guidelines for territorial location; and third, because of the importance of technical innovations mainly arriving from abroad via a complex process of technology transfer. The Beginnings of Hand Spinning and its Spread across The Region, 1770–85
Cotton spinning was late to develop in Catalonia. For most of the eighteenth century, the manufacture of printed calico expanded by incorporating the cotton fabric weaving and printing processes within the same production unit, but not the spinning. Pre-spun cotton from Malta was the raw material used. This situation meant that the spread of spinning in Catalonia during the last quarter of the eighteenth century practically coincided with the process of technological change that was transforming the cotton industry in Europe. Hence the technical innovations – new carding and spinning machines – were introduced relatively quickly, within two decades, and helped not only to encourage the development of spinning but also to establish where it would be set up, thereby sketching out the lines of the cotton industry map of nineteenth-century Catalonia. Until the beginning of the 1770s cotton spinning was a marginal activity. Cotton was spun in small quantities as an auxiliary, seasonal activity for the printed calico factories, responding to the specific needs of firms and on fluctuations in the spun cotton market in Barcelona. The process was organized by large companies which had spinning wheels and occasionally carried out spinning in their own factories, but normally they shared out the cotton among individual spinners who worked at home part-time both in the city itself and, especially, in towns close to the capital.7 The situation began to change in the 1770s due in particular to the Real Compañía de Hilados de Algodón de América (the Royal Cotton Thread Company of America). This company, which was set up in 1772 by a group of Barcelona printed calico manufacturers, had the dual objective of putting an end to the Maltese monopoly on providing spun cotton and of promoting the spinning of raw cotton from the American colonies in Catalonia. It was not a typical company but the result of the pooled interests of the monarchy and the big printed calico manufacturers. It was pioneering in that it encouraged cotton spinning in Catalonia and introduced some of the first technical and organizational innovations.8 During its early phase between 1772 and 1775, it laid down the basis for a model of scattered, rural spinning by using the networks established in the 1760s by a number of printed calico manufacturers in areas relatively close to Barcelona, where a traditional woollen industry already existed. But it was after its reconstitution in 1783, which coincided with the start of a period of growth in the manufacture of printed calicos and linens, closely linked to the colonial trade, that the compañía made a substantial contribution to the promotion of spinning in Catalonia.9 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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By 1789 the Compañía de Hilados was assured of a supply of raw material from the American colonies, and it set about organizing a large network of home workers which enabled cotton spinning to be spread out across a large area of Catalonia. To achieve this, it followed a dual guideline for location. First of all it set up in areas where there was already a certain tradition of either wool or cotton spinning, employing small-scale local artisans to manage the home-working networks. This had the advantage of speeding up the process because it made use of pre-existing organization along with technical and commercial know-how, but the compañía also had to deal with a highly-paid, volatile workforce, a consequence of the strong competition for manpower from the traditional wool industry. This was the case in some districts of central Catalonia and other districts nearer the coast which had good trade connections with Barcelona. Second, the compañía targeted agricultural areas in which the textile industry either had no strong roots or was very marginal and which, therefore, it could ‘colonize’ by introducing a completely new business activity. This was the situation in the districts of western and southern Catalonia, close to the cities of Lleida and Tarragona. Spinning here was organized in the form of ‘factories’, which received raw cotton sent from Barcelona and carded it in their own warehouses. It was then distributed to spinners who did piecework at home, and was finally collected and sent back to the capital. Given the lack of experience in carding and spinning work in these districts, this form of organization made it easier to control and also to train the workforce. However, its costs were high – not so much because of manpower, which was generally cheaper than in other areas, but due to expenses arising from training the carders and spinners, maintaining facilities and transporting the raw materials and finished products from Barcelona and back again. What is more, the quality of the thread obtained was inferior.10 Although the Compañía de Hilados did not corner the market in thread production in Catalonia during this period,11 it did make a definite contribution to its spread across the territory.12 In 1784 the compañía claimed that: ‘There is already a huge amount of raw cotton being spun in Catalonia, by both the Sociedad and other private concerns, amounting to 2,000 ‘arrobas’ (approximately 50,000 lbs) per month, in a process which employs over 6,000 women and around 750 men as carders’.13 These figures may be slightly exaggerated, but the important thing is that this manpower was spread widely throughout Catalonia. As can be seen in Table 7.1, in 1784–5 – just as the spinning jenny appeared in Barcelona – the compañía was spinning cotton in 102 towns spread across 18 Catalan districts. However, most of the production was concentrated in just six of these districts, three of them with a long tradition in wool – El Vallès Oriental, Osona and L’Anoia, which accounted for 57.1 per cent of the total cotton spun by the Compañía over these two years. The other three areas, La Segarra, El Solsonès and La Conca de Barberà, had no previous industrial tradition and accounted for 26.6 per cent of the production. This early map of spinning in Catalonia was completed with several towns in which the previous presence of a significant cotton spinning industry had acted as a barrier against the entry of the compañía, as was the case of Berga (in the district of Berguedà) and Olot (in La Garrotxa). History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Table 7.1╇Territorial distribution of cotton spun by the Compañía de Hilados de Algodón de Barcelona 1784–5 Districts
District capitals
╇ 1 Vallès Oriental ╇ 2 Segarra ╇ 3 Osona ╇ 4 Anoia ╇ 5 Solsonès ╇ 6 Conca de Barberà ╇ 7 Camp Tarragona ╇ 8 Ripollès ╇ 9 Vallès Occidental 10 Alt Penedès 11 La Selva 12 Baix Llobregat 13 Segrià 14 Urgell 15 Maresme 16 Bages 17 Noguera 18 Barcelonés
Granollers Cervera Vic Igualada Solsona Montblanc Tarragona Ripoll Sabadell Vilafranca del Penedès Santa Coloma de Farners Sant Feliu de Llobregat Lleida Urgell Mataró Manresa Balaguer Barcelona
Cotton spun (kilos) 36.143,32 16.013,92 12.984,19 10.741,53 6.607,22 5.413,4 3.588 2.206,46 2.021,76 1.788,38 1.669,82 1.666,08 1.067,04 809,95 797,47 720,09 246,83 118,56
% 34,53 15,25 12,4 10,26 6,33 5,18 3,43 2,11 1,93 1,71 1,6 1,59 1,02 0,77 0,76 0,69 0,33 0,11
Sources: Okuno (1999: 70–2) and García Balañà (2004: 72–7).
This early map of spinning in Catalonia underwent a number of changes over the next two decades. The most significant thing was that spinning was concentrated in areas which had a pre-existing industrial fabric and was virtually non-existent in newly ‘colonized’ areas. The location requirements that took precedence were precisely those that the compañía had followed at the beginning, confirming Jaume Torras’s belief that the spread of the cotton industry in Catalonia came about ‘depending on pre-existing rural industries, which had trained the workforce and organized it’.14 In 1804, according to a Board of Trade document listing the towns which had received raw cotton for spinning from Barcelona during the first two months of the year, spinning was carried out in 64 towns in 15 districts.15 There was less geographical spread now, but more important is the fact that almost 90 per cent of production was concentrated in six districts, almost all of which had a consolidated manufacturing tradition. In order of importance, these districts were: L’Anoia, Osona, El Berguedà, El Bages, La Garrotxa and El Vallès Occidental. If we add El Barcelonès, which is not included on the list but which already had an important spinning industry at the time, this will give us the basic map showing the spinning industry in Catalonia during the first third of the nineteenth century. Standing out on the map are those districts of central Catalonia and nearer the coast which contain the Llobregat and Ter river basins, along with the capital.16
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In 1804 the map showed not only where hand spinning was carried out but machine spinning as well, in some cases hand-driven and in other cases powered by animals or water. Technical change had already been affecting the way the new industry was distributed across the territory for a number of years. Mechanical Spinning: Technology Systems and Their Introduction into Catalonia, 1785–1839
The machines that revolutionized the European cotton industry and ushered in the industrialization process arrived in Catalonia between 1785 and 1806. It took 20 years to complete the technology cycle that led from the spinning jenny to the spinning mule.17 France played a fundamental role in this process of technology transfer. Machines that had been invented in England became known in Catalonia through technicians most of whom were French or English and had previously trained or worked in France.18 Naturally the companies played a large part by hiring these technicians, but economic institutions also played an important role during this early stage of technology change, especially the Barcelona Board of Trade.18 Their interest in studying and disseminating technical innovations them led them to develop various means – from industrial espionage to publishing science and technology journals – to make it easier for Catalan industrialists to access the new machines. The first spinning jennies arrived in 1785 and were built in Barcelona by French mechanics who sold them to the Compañía de Hilados. A few years later, in 1792, an improved version with 78 spindles was set up in Cardona by an English technician – who had previously worked in France under Calonne – employed by local manufacturers. This machine soon spread to nearby towns and it may have been used as a model for the bergadana, a machine which eventually had 120 spindles and was widely used in Catalonia during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Certainly it spread rapidly. In 1796 more than 250 of these improved spinning jennies were being used in Catalonia, and ten years later this figure had risen to over 1,500, with the number of spindles totalling around 90,000. The water frame, known as the ‘English machine’, was introduced into Catalonia in 1793 by a machinist from Madrid, Pablo Serrano, who had very probably worked in the Real Fábrica de Algodón de Ávila, a royal factory run by English technicians trained in France, which was the first in Spain to install hydraulically-powered Arkwright machines. The first of these machines to be used in Catalonia was installed in a factory in Olot and soon afterwards in Barcelona. However, they spread very rapidly from 1802 onwards, coinciding with the issue of a Royal Decree prohibiting imports of foreign threads, thereby acknowledging the growing importance of the cotton spinning industry in Catalonia. In 1807 there were some 230 water frames in Catalonia, totalling around 11,000 spindles. The mule was the last of the spinning machines to arrive in Catalonia, being introduced in 1806 via two companies – one set up in Barcelona by French businessmen and the other in Suria – which acquired the new machines in Paris and Toulouse. Before the Peninuslar War these machines had only a nominal presence; in 1807 there History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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were only 22 of them with a total of 2,760 spindles. They spread more rapidly after the war, especially in those areas where a lack of hydraulic resources made them the perfect alternative to the water frame. As we have just seen, all the new developments that signalled the beginning of technological change in the cotton spinning industry were already present in Catalonia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, this promising start to the process of modernizing cotton manufacturing, especially between 1802 and 1807, was hindered by a combination of wars and political conflicts between 1808 and 1839.20 This did not slow down the mechanization process, but it did delay the introduction of the new technology that was needed. Between 1814 and 1832 the number of machines and spindles increased substantially, but under same technological parameters as at the start of the century. It was not until the late 1820s that the new improved versions of spinning machines – the Throstle frame, the Roberts mule, the power loom and, shortly afterwards, the steam-powered loom – started to appear in Catalonia. The years from 1828 to 1833 became a period of renewal for the Catalan cotton industry from a technological point of view.21 The new generation of machines, which were introduced when Britain still prohibited the export of textile machinery, was the main reason – along with the self-acting mule, which arrived in 1844 – for the very rapid industrialization process which came about in the mid-nineteenth century.22 And naturally this made all the old technological systems obsolete. In fact three different technological systems were put in place with the arrival of the classic spinning machines: the spinning jenny, the water frame and the mule. Each of these systems involved more than just the machine itself and its particular technical characteristics – preparatory processes, type of thread and productivity. They also involved the economic conditions (cost and installation), social conditions (organization of labour) and energy (the type of engine to power the machines) that would make using the machines possible and profitable. These three systems were set up in Catalonia at the turn of the century and lasted until the 1840s, but they were not in competition; in fact they complemented each other. Machines were not generally exchanged for more productive ones. The spinning jenny was not replaced by the water frame, nor was the water frame replaced by the mule; they all coexisted over a long period of time. This was not only because of the particular technical characteristics of each machine, but also because of the territory. As Llorenç Ferrer has pointed out, each area chose the technology systems that were best suited to its production structure.23 But it could also be said that each technology system tended to be located where it was in order to fulfil its production potential. In the case of the spinning jenny and its improved versions, including the bergadana, the first thing to take into account is that this was a relatively simple machine, driven by human power, moderately priced – between 25 and 50 Catalan pounds – and producing a generally thick weft yarn which was used for making coarse fabrics called empesas. It was therefore suitable for using at home and there was no reason to alter the way traditional spinning was organized. In fact it strengthened the scattered, rural, labour-intensive History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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character of the hand-spinning industry until then. These machines could therefore spread throughout the territory because they were easily adapted to the putting-out system in use at the time. In practice, however, spinning jenny technology meant significant changes in the way the work was organized. In particular, it concentrated the production in workshops and small factories. According to Albert García Balañà, this allowed company owners with greater resources to maximize income by monopolizing the new technology and centralizing work so as to increase productivity.24 Jenny factories can be found in almost all European countries, but they were only significant in the early stages of the introduction of new technology, before the ‘social spread’ of new machinery and before the emergence of the problems involved in controlling a largely female workforce that was unaccustomed to the labour practices and discipline required by manufacturing work.25 For this reason there was a later trend towards outsourcing and subcontracting work, which gave rise to the formation of small workshops operating along the lines of a family business and possessing just a few machines.26 This was also the situation in Catalonia. The spinning jenny was first used in the centralized workshop which was set up by the Compañía de Hilados in Barcelona in 1787 and which within three years had acquired 21 machines and employed around 70 workers. And this was not the only firm in operation; other companies followed the same organizational model and set up both in Barcelona and in other towns of Catalonia, although most of them were shortlived.27 The machine’s flexibility and low cost along with the problems involved in the control and discipline of the workforce – plus the existence of a large number of artisans with little capital but with know-how in the sector willing to take advantage of new business opportunities – explains how the new jenny technology system came to be characterized by small workshops and cottage industry in Catalonia. Nevertheless, fairly large companies continued to exist until 1808. In 1802, for example, of the 12 businessmen in the Cuerpo de Fabricantes de Tejidos e Hilados of Barcelona who said they had spinning machines, half owned more than 20 units.28 After the war, the manufacturers who used jennies and bergadaneas for spinning opted clearly for an organizational model based on small workshops.29 Because of its versatility and low cost, the spinning jenny spread widely across Catalonia, especially in those towns and districts which had a tradition of hand-spinning. The fact that this type of spinning was so widely scattered makes it very difficult to determine exactly in which areas this type of machine was used. Documentary traces have only been left when they were used in workshops. We therefore know that between 1802 and 1808 the spinning jenny was found in districts such as El Barcelonès, El Baix Camp, La Garrotxa, El Bages, Osona, L’Anoia, El Berguedà and La Conca de Barberà, but that it tended to be concentrated especially in a group of towns and cities with a long textile tradition, such as Barcelona, Reus, Olot, Vic, Berga, Sallent, Cardona, Manresa and probably Igualada. This geographical spread changed very little in the first third of the nineteenth century. In 1841, just as this type of technology was starting to decline, the towns and districts in which the greatest History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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numbers of bergadanes were concentrated were practically the same as at the beginning of the century. The only thing that had changed was the ranking: the list was now headed by Igualada and Berga, with Barcelona and Reus at the bottom.30 As this type of technology needed little investment in capital or energy but was highly labour-intensive, the key to its implementation must be found in the provision of human capital and the size of the market. The determining factor was the availability of skilled labour and of businessmen, both artisans and traders, with the ability and know-how to organize the work and the commercial networks for the product. And these were only to be found in areas in which there had already been a process of industrial specialization, such as the districts of central Catalonia with a tradition in wool and those near big consumer markets such as Barcelona, Reus and Olot. Naturally these factors also had an effect on the implantation of the other two technological systems, but they were not the only ones. In these cases they were accompanied by other factors which proved decisive because they involved the technical characteristics of the machines and their energy requirements. The water frame was a machine designed to be an integral part of a continuous spinning system which also included preparatory machines and which had to be driven by means of hydraulic power. It was therefore a very capital-intensive technology, not only because of the cost of the machinery – the water frame was priced at about 500 Catalan pounds at the start of the century and the cylinder carding engine was worth a similar amount – but also because of the cost of the facilities needed to house it. It would have been difficult to install these machines in people’s homes or small workshops; they needed somewhere bigger with a waterfall of some sort.31 On the other hand the technology was less labour-intensive. As Albert García Balañà has shown, it called for less skilled work and less strength. Workers were not such an important part of this system, and they were therefore easier to replace. They were even paid in a different way, by the day rather than by the piece, meaning that it was primarily a job for women.32 Another distinctive characteristic of the machine was that it produced only warp thread, and this had an effect on where it was set up because it was used in conjunction with other machines that produced the weft thread, especially the jenny. Therefore the first mechanical spinning factories often also had this more simple type of machine, especially if the company had a weaving section.33 As can easily be imagined, energy was a key factor in the decision of where to locate these early mechanical spinners. Their location depended on the availability of river courses and the existence of previous infrastructures, such as woollen, flour or paper mills which could be adapted without excessive cost. They are found in towns built on rivers, like Manresa, Olot, Ripoll, Vic, Sabadell and Martorell, or on sites with streams or irrigation channels that flowed strongly enough to move some of the machines, as was the case of Barcelona.34 Hence the geographical spread of the water frame was much more limited than that of the jenny, due to its energy and investment requirements. In fact the only place in which it took a strong hold was Manresa. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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In 1807 the capital of El Bages accounted for almost half the water frame spindles in Catalonia, and by 1841 this proportion had risen to 78 per cent. Between these dates the total number of continuous machines in Catalonia had increased by only a third (from around 230 to 289), although the number of spindles had more than doubled (from around 11,000 to almost 29,000). This is explained by the greater capacity of the machines by 1841. However, these increases clearly show the relatively modest development of this technology in comparison to the other two during the first half of the nineteenth century. One explanation for this limited development is that since 1815 there had been a possible alternative technology system that was much more productive for the same price.35 Indeed the mule, as we saw earlier, was the last of the spinning machines to appear in Catalonia and it only began to spread after the War of Independence. However, it then began to spread rapidly, although it was basically limited to those areas in which this technology showed comparative advantages. Until the 1830s in fact, the main place it could be found – though not the only one – was Barcelona, where, in 1829, the number of mules was already clearly higher than the number of jennies and bergadanes together – 410 as opposed to 323.36 The main reason why this technology tended to be located primarily around Barcelona concerns the machine’s technical characteristics, the type of thread it produced and the size of the market. The mule was a carriage machine which, although bigger than previous ones – normal ones had 120 spindles and some had 240 – needed less energy than the water frame and could be driven by either horses or water. In addition to this, it was very versatile: it could produce various types of thread, both warp and weft, of different sizes, both thick and thin. Able to manufacture higher quality fabrics than the traditional empesas, it could satisfy wider and more demanding needs. It had no great difficulty in adapting to different ways of work organization as it could be used in small workshops as well as in the larger factories. These characteristics made it ideal for a city like Barcelona where animal power could be used without restrictions, where the size of the market allowed agglomeration economies to be developed and where there was no lack of capital or skilled labour. It therefore underwent huge growth. The 1,770 mule spindles existing in the city in 1807 had risen to almost 50,000 by 1829. However, until the technology renewal of the 1830s, the mule did not alter the organizational parameters that had been established in the city at the turn of the century. These were still based on small companies with few machines and few workers. Of the 50 factories in Barcelona that used mules in 1829, only 16 had more than ten machines, 23 had between five and nine, and the remaining eleven had less than five, giving an average of 8.2 per company. In short, mule technology took root in the capital mainly because of the advantages deriving from the size of the market and the abundance of capital and labour. But its growth was limited due to one important aspect. The way the machines were driven – by horses – meant that it was impossible to create large-scale factories or develop economies of scale and vertical integration processes. This tended to perpetuate the traditional organizational structure inherited from the hand spinning process, while at the same time presenting an History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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almost insurmountable obstacle to advancing along the road of technological innovation just as the new mules and mechanical looms were starting to be introduced. Replacing animal power with steam power would become a vital necessity for the manufacturers of Barcelona in the years to come. Conclusion
The diversity of industrial districts and production organizations in Catalonia enabled cotton spinning to develop by constantly adapting to the changing economic, social and technological conditions of the early industrial revolution. Cotton spinning first spread throughout the territory at the end of the eighteenth century and was the result of the technological change that was then transforming the European cotton industry. Production location at that time was determined not just by the pre-existence of an industrial fabric, but by other factors as well such as power sources and the size of the market. During the early stages of industrialization, the location of spinning was closely related to the technology systems arising from the use of the new spinning machines. In fact, company owners in each territory tended to opt for the technology that was best suited to pre-existing production structures. Hence, while the labourintensive spinning jenny spread widely over territory where there had been a previous tradition of hand spinnig and thus a skilled pool of handspinners, the water frame found its territory adjoining water courses capable of moving machines that required a great deal of power. The spinning mule, on the other hand, became established in places where the size of the market and the demand enabled its production capacity to be used to the full. While the jenny could be found throughout the territory, the water frame was limited to the river areas and the spinning mule was to be found especially in Barcelona, the only city capable of generating agglomeration economies in the first third of the nineteenth century. Notes
1. See Becattini (1979) (2000) and (2002) on the concept of the Marshallian ‘industrial district’. New ways of defining industrial districts as ‘local production systems’, ‘clusters’, ‘innovation systems’ and ‘endogenous industrial development areas’ can be found in Becattini et al. (2003), Cooke (2002), Bellandi (2003) and Lescure (2004). 2. One of the sessions at the Helsinki Congress in 2006 was on ‘The Territorial Dynamics of Industrialization’, and was preceded by two international conferences in Besançon and Neuchatel entitled ‘Les territoires de l´industrie en Europe, 1750–2000’. 3. This interest in the regional aspect of industrialization in Spain has its historiographical basis in the papers by Pollard (1981) (1994) and Hudson (1989), and took on more definite shape in Nadal and Carreras (1990), Germán et al. (2001), Domínguez (2002), Paluzie et al. (2002), Tirado et al. (2003), Rosés (2003) and Tirado et al. (2006). 4. Tirado et al. (2006: 60). 5. Parejo (2006). 6. The bibliography on this specific question is limited. On a theoretical level see Feldman (1994). On a historical level see Maluquer de Motes (2000) on the subject of the ‘milieux innovateurs’, and the more recent issue of Histoire, Economie, Société (2007/2) dedicated to ‘Les logiques spatiales de l’innovation (XIXe–XXe siècles)’. 7. On these early spinning practices see Delgado (1990: 166–8), Thomson (1994: 283 and 285), and García Balañà (2004: 57–9).
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8. On the compañía see Sánchez (1987), Thomson (1994), Okuno (1999) and García Balañà (2004). 9. For the exceptional situation between 1783 and 1796 and its relation to the expansion of spinning see Sánchez (2000a). 10. In fact, in 1787 the compañía decided to wind up its ‘factories’ and give up spinning in these districts. 11. From the mid-1780s spinning became a business opportunity that attracted more and more private businessmen. The compañía itself acknowledged this by referring to the ‘increased number of traders and factories that are being set up in the interior of our province’. BC. Fondo Gónima, L. 12, Llibre de resolucions (1783–1794), session of 8 October 1787. 12. Between 1783 and 1789 the compañía spun almost 170 tonnes of cotton. Okuno (1999: 67–8). 13. BC. Fondo Gónima, Box 44/5, Representation to the King in July 1785. 14. Torras (1994: 31). 15. Solà (2004: 267–8). 16. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Barcelona still played a key role in the sector’s development as regards both the number of companies and its contribution to technological change. It was here that the first spinning machines were unveiled and in 1807 the city had the greatest number of machines in the whole of Catalonia (at least 349 jennies, 43 water frames and 14 mules). 17. On the introduction of the new machines into Catalonia see Sánchez (2000a) and (2000b), Solà (2004) and Thomson (2003a) (2003b) and (2003c). 18. On technology transfer in Europe and the role played by English technicians see Berg and Bruland (1998), Chassagne (1991), Harris (1998) and Jeremy (1991) (1996) (1998) and (2004). 19. Calvo (2010). 20. On the relationship between political conflict and modernization of the cotton industry see Sánchez (2000a). 21. This new phase of technology transfer was initially helped by the political exile of a number of important Catalan businessmen, who made the most of their period abroad – especially in Alsace – to find out first-hand about technological innovations. 22. In the 1830s the machines arrived in Barcelona by sea mainly from the ports of Marseilles (La Ciotat) and Genoa. French and Belgian machines came from France, while British machinery came from Italy. Few ships carrying machinery arrived in Barcelona direct from English ports. On early steam machines and the new spinning machines see Raveux (2005a) and (2005b). 23. Ferrer (2004: 341). 24. García Balañà (2004: 155–61). 25. Berg (1987: 261–2), Berg et al. (1983: 11–13) and Reddy (1984: 51–7). 26. Lazonick (1990: 80 onwards). 27. On these early jenny factories in Catalonia see García Balañà (2004) Chapter 3. 28. Sánchez (1989: 87). 29. In 1829, of the 40 manufacturers who did so with this type of machine in Barcelona, 75 per cent had fewer than 10 machines. Barcelona Manufacturers’ Register 1829, published in Graell (1911: 422–3). 30. 1841 statistics in Ferrer (2004). 31. In Barcelona, where the chances of using hydraulic power were minimal, the water frames were also powered by horses. In Manresa, these machines could be powered by hand using special levers when the river flow had diminished to the point where normal functioning was impossible. Solà (2004: 77). 32. García Balañà (2004: 213–14). 33. This is the case with companies such as Serra, Torruella y Compañía of Barcelona, which in 1799 had 23 ‘English machines’ and 35 ‘ordinary’ ones, and Codina, Dalmau, Martí y Serrano, which had 19 ‘English machines’ and 32 ‘ordinary’ ones in one of their factories in Manresa. 34. In Barcelona the only water that could be used to drive machines was the Rech Comptal, a channel with a limited flow that did not allow for much energy use. Hence Jacinto Ramón, one of the main thread producers in the city who had been the first to install a steam machine in 1805, used this machine to pump water from the Rech in order to drive his ‘English machines’ (Agustí 1983: 105–33).
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35. For the advantages of the mule over the water frame see Tunzelman (1978) and Cohen (1985). According to the latter, in the 1830s in Great Britain there were 12 mule spindles for each continuous one. An identical proportion could be found in Catalonia in 1841. 36. In 1833 in Catalonia there were 36 factories with water-driven spinning machines, of which a large proportion would certainly have had mules. However, we do not know exact numbers or types of machine. What we do know is that some factories were already equipped with these machines in 1820, such as the one Joan Rull had in Santa Eugenia, a town near Girona, where he had one mule with 144 spindles, five with 216 and two with 240, as well as six continuous ones ranging fr
Bibliography Agustí i Cullell, J. (1983), Ciència i tècnica a Catalunya en el segle XVIII o la introducció de la màquina de vapor. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Becattini, G. (1979), ‘Dal settore industriale al distretto industriale. Alcune consideración sull´unità di indagine dell´economia industriale’. Rivista di Economia e Politica Industriale, 1, 7–21. — (2000), Il distretto industriale. Un nuovo modo di interpretare il cambiamento economico. Turin: Rosenberg and Séller. — (2002), ‘Del distrito industrial marshalliano a la “teoría del distrito” contemporánea. Una breve reconstrucción crítica’. Investigaciones Regionales, 9, 1–32. Becattini, G., M. Bellandi, M., Dei Ottati and F. Sforzi (2003), From Industrial District to Local Development. An Itinerary of Research. Cheltenham: E. Elgar. Bellandi, M. (2003), ‘Sistemas productivos locales y bienes públicos específicos’. Economiaz, 53, 51–73. Berg, M. (1987), La era de las manufacturas, 1700-1820. Una nueva historia de la revolución industrial británica. Barcelona: Crítica. Berg, M., P. Hudson and M. Sonenscher (eds) (1983), Manufacture in Town and Country before the Factory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berg, M. and K. E. Bruland. (1998), Technological Revolutions in Europe. Historical Perspectives. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Calvo, A. (2010), ‘Xarxes institucionals per a la transferencia de tecnología. La Junta de Comerç de Barcelona’, in AA.VV, Fàbrica, taller i laboratori. La Junta de Comerç de Barcelona: ciencia i tècnica per a la indústria i el comerç (1769-1851). Barcelona: Cambra de Comerç de Barcelona, pp. 277–89. Chassagne, S. (1991), Le coton et ses patrons. France, 1760-1840. Paris: Editions de l’EHESS. Cohen, I (1985) ‘Worker’s control in the cotton industry: a comparative study of British and American mule spinning’. Labor History, 26 (1), 53–85. Cooke, P. (2002), Knowledge Economies. Clusters, Learning and Cooperative Advantage. London: London: Routledge. Delgado, J. M., (1990), ‘De la filatura manual a la mecànica. Un capítol del desenvolupament de la indústria cotonera a Catalunya (1794–1814)’. Recerques, 23, 161–79. Domínguez, R. (2002), La riqueza de las regiones. Las desigualdades económicas regionales en España, 1700-2000. Madrid: Alianza. Feldman, M. P. (1994), The Geography of Innovation. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Ferrer, L. (2004), ‘Bergadanas, continuas y mules. Tres geografías de la hilatura
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del algodón en Cataluña (1790–1830)’. Revista de Historia Económica, 22 (2), 337–86. García Balañà, A. (2004), La fabricació de la fàbrica. Treball i política a la Catalunya cotonera (1784-1874). Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat. Germán, L., E. LLopis, J. Maluquer de Motes and S. Zapata, S. (eds) (2001), Historia económica regional de España (siglos XIX y XX). Barcelona: Ariel. Graell, G. (1911), Historia del Fomento del Trabajo Nacional. Barcelona. Harris, J. R. (1998), Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century. Aldershot. Hudson, P. (ed.) (1989), Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jeremy, D.J. (Ed.) (1991), Internacional Technology Transfer: Europe, Japan and USA, 1770-1914. Edward Elgar: Aldershot. — (1996), ‘Lancashire and Internacional Difusión of Technology’, in M. B. Rose (ed.), The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History since 1700. Preston: Lancashire County Books, pp. 210–37. — (1998), Artisans, Entrepeneurs amd Machines: Essays on the Early Amglo-American Textile Industries, 1770-1840s. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. — (2004), ‘The international Difusión of cotton Manufacturing technology, 1750–1990s’, in D. A. Farnie and D. J. Jeremy, (eds), The Fibre that Changed the World. The Cotton Industry in International Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 85–127. Lazonick, W. (1991), Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor, Cambridge, MA: Havard University Press. Lescure, M. ‘Le territoire comme organisation et comme institution’, in La mobilisation du territoire. Les districtes industriels en Europe occidentale du XVIIe au XXe siècles, Paris: Comité pour l´Histoire Economique et Financière de la France. Maluquer de Motes, J. (ed.) (2000), Tècnics i tecnología en el desenvolupament de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana. Nadal, J. (1991), ‘La indústria cotonera’, in Història econòmica de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, III, pp. 12–85. Nadal, J. and A. Carreras (eds) (1990), Pautas regionales de la industrialización española. Siglos XIX y XX. Barcelona: Ariel. Okuno, Y. (1999), ‘Entre la llana i el cotó. Una nota sobre l’extensió de la indústria del cotó als pobles de Catalunya en el darrer quart del segle XVIII’. Recerques, 38, 47–76. Paluzie, E., J. Pons and D. Tirado (2002), ‘The geographical concentration of industry across Spanish regions, 1856–1995’, Documents de Treball de la Divisió de Ciències Jurídiques, Econòmiques i Socials, nº E02/86, Universitat de Barcelona. Parejo, A. (2006), ‘De la región a la ciudad. Hacia un nuevo enfoque de la historia industrial española contemporánea’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 30, 53–102. Pollard, S. (1981), Peaceful Conquest. The Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970. Oxford: Oxford University Press. — (1994), ‘Regional and inter-regional economic development in Europe History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’. Debates and Controversies in Economic History. A-sessions. Proccedings Eleventh International Economic History Congress, Milan, pp. 57–94. Raveux, O. (2005a), ‘Los fabricantes de algodón de Barcelona (1833–1844): estrategias empresariales en la modernización de un distrito industrial’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 28, 157–85. — (2005b), ‘Equiper l’industrie catalane au début de la révolution industrielle: l’exemple des machines à vapeur (1833–1850)’. Estudis Històrics i Documents dels Arxius de Protocols, XXIII, 243–78. Reddy, W. (1984), The Rise of Market Culture. The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750-1900, Cambridge/Paris: Cambridge University Press/Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Rosés, J. R. (2003), ‘Why isn´t the whole of Spain industrialized? New economic geography and early industrialization (1797–1910)’. Journal of Economic History, 63, 4, 995–1022. Sánchez, A. (1987), ‘Los inicios del asociacionismo empresarial en España: la Real Compañía de Hilados de Algodón de Barcelona, 1772–1820’. Hacienda Pública Española, 108/109, 253–68. — (1989), ‘Entre el tradicionalismo manufacturero y la modernización industrial. El cuerpo de Fabricantes de Tejidos e Hilados de Algodón de Barcelona, 1799–1819’. Estudis d’Història Econòmica, 1, 71–88. — (1996), ‘La empresa algodonera en Cataluña antes de la aplicación del vapor, 1783–1832’, en F. Comín F. and P. Martín Aceña P. (eds), La empresa en la historia de España, Madrid: Civitas, pp. 155–70. — (2000a), ‘Crisis económica y respuesta empresarial. Los inicios del sistema fabril en la industria algodonera catalana, 1797–1839’. Revista de Historia Económica, 18 (3), 485–523. — (2000b), ‘Les berguedanes i les primeres màquines de filar’, en J. Maluquer de Motes (ed.), Tècnics i tecnologia en el desenvolupament de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, pp. 161–75. Solà, À. (1995), ‘Indústria textil, màquines i fàbriques a Berga’. L’Erol, 47, 12–15. — (2004), Aigua, indústria i fabricants a Manresa (1759-1860). Manresa, Centre d’Estudis del Bages. Thomson, J. (1994), Els orígens de la industrialització a Catalunya. El cotó a Barcelona, 1728-1832. Barcelona: Edicions, 62. — (2003a), ‘Transferencia tecnológica en la industria algodonera catalana: de las indianas a la selfactina’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 24, 13–50. — (2003b), ‘Olot, Barcelona and Ávila and the Introduction of the Arkwright Technology to Catalonia’. Revista de Historia Económica, XXI, 2, 297–334. — (2003c), ‘Transferring the Spinning Jenny to Barcelona: an apprenticeship in the technology of the industrial revolution’. Textile History, 34 (I), 21–46. Tirado, D., J. Pons and E. Paluzie (2003), ‘Industrial agglomeration and industrial location. The case of Spain before World War I’. Journal of Economic Geography, 2, 343–63. — (2006), ‘Los cambios en la localización de la actividad industrial en España, 1850–1936’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 31, 41–63. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Torras, J. (1994), ‘L’economia catalana abans del 1800. Un esquema’, en AA.VV. Història econòmica de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, I, p. 13–38.
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Silk Technology in Spain, 1683–1800. Technological Transfer and Improvements1 À n g e l s S o l À University of Barcelona
In the eighteenth century, Spanish silk manufacturers underwent important changes. While traditional centres, such as Toledo, declined, others expanded, such as Valencia, that became both the main producer of raw silk and fabrics, and Barcelona. Part of the raw silk was exported to France, legally or
illegally, and a large proportion of the fabrics were exported to the American colonies. In spite of the efforts of the Crown, craftsmen and merchants to
improve the quality of the production, they finally failed in establishing an industry capable to compete in the foreign market.2 In this century, Spanish silk manufacturing received the technical innovations being developed abroad. The demand for foreign skills and technology expanded in Spain. Coincidentally, the supply of workers willing to immigrate ascended. Whereas at the beginning of Ferdinand VI’s reign diplomats and their agents were searching for skilled workmen, by the end of the reign of Charles III foreign craftsmen were taking the initiative in contacting diplomats and their agents.3 Nevertheless technical innovations were also developed in Spain, at least in some known cases. The quality of the Spanish silk textiles was poor, mostly due to the poor quality of the thread which in turn prevented a good quality dying. The silk thread was flawed for several reasons: it was badly spun, the raw material was adulterated with grease to weigh more, and it was badly stained. In addition, the threads were difficult to handle by making the warp. Moreover, the spinning wheels had a diameter too wide for producing a good yarn. This article deals with the transfer to Spain of silk technological innovations in the silk reeling and twisting stages and in the ribbon and knitting sectors, mainly in Barcelona and Valencia, from France and Italy. Catalan manufactures benefited from the region’s geographical position by the French border, and from its long Mediterranean coast. In most of the cases considered in this technological process, we know when the new techniques and machines were introduced, but much less about who introduced or improved them, and in which circumstances they did so.
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Attempts to Improve the Mechanization of the Silk Production
Spanish silk industry was renewed by both private and state initiatives in the eighteenth century, in both cases probably aiming at reducing productive costs by employing women when possible, whose wages were lower than men’s.4 The first of these initiatives was the introduction, by traders and artisans, mostly Catalan, before the beginning of the century, of the multiple shuttles loom for making ribbons and the knitting frame, probably imported from France. Second, there were the efforts made by French craftsmen and merchants in Valencia to renovate silk manufacture in the second half of the century. As Vicente M. Santos has pointed out, the interest of foreign technicians and merchants in producing a better silk thread in Valencia is suspicious.5 They personally benefited from their efforts, but were at the same time defending the interests of the French silk industrialists, dependent of the silk threat that they imported from Valencia. It seems that in Barcelona Vaucanson and Piedmont systems of reeling and twisting silk were also adopted in the 1780s or maybe before. The state initiative for the renewal of the Spanish silk industry in the eighteenth century, through state or local institutions, worked to prevent the imports of silk fabrics preferred by consumers, and facilitated the exports to the colonies and Portugal. This was achieved by three means: first, by granting privileges to individuals and commercial companies to set up silk spinning and weaving factories: second, by establishing royal manufacturers which hired foreign technicians and craftsmen, mainly French, in order to renew the drawings, patterns and qualities of the silk fabrics, and also to introduce new machines to make silk thread. The third measure undertaken was to protect private initiatives aimed at introducing new methods to improve the quality of silk fabrics. Hosiery and Ribbons
The framework knitting machine, invented by the British clergyman William Lee in 1589, arrived to Barcelona a century later. Its introduction has a peculiar history that includes the robbery of the rights on this technological innovation. Different individuals were involved in the arrival of the new frames, and in a few years different projects existed to work with them.6 These machines arrived to Barcelona thanks to the initiative of the wealthy Barcelona merchant Narcís Feliu, who asked Marià Julià, a cloth merchant, to take charge of the project. In the spring of 1684, he managed to illegally introduce four knitting frames from France together with some expert artisans. One of them, Pere Pausa, ordered the locksmith Llorenç Dolcet to construct two more of these frames. In 1684 Feliu, Julià and Pausa formed a society to construct the new frames. Meanwhile Joan Baptista Vivers, one of the men who took the first frames out of France, obtained from the Board of Trade of Barcelona the privilege to work with them for ten years. Vivers hired the French framework knitter Joseph Gorin for one year, after which Gorin formed a joint-stock company with a lawyer. This French artisan was accepted into
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the hand knitter’s guild under the condition that he had to teach the guild members to knit with a frame. He also joined forces with a young knitter to set up their own business. In 1688, another of the artisans initially involved in the introduction to Barcelona of the knitting frames opened up a workshop: the locksmith Dolcet formed a company with a knitter. With this intense interest in framework knitting, the future of the new art was ensured, and it developed almost at the same time as that in other countries (even though the machine was invented at the end of the sixteenth century, the manufacture expanded only in Europe from the 1660s).7 The knitting frame arrived to Zaragoza and Valencia thanks to Julià.8 Nevertheless the silk framework kitting industry became successful in the second half of the eighteenth century, when frame knitted cotton stocks were introduced in the part of Catalonia near the French border, when some French artisans moved there to establish their workshops.9 The involvement of foreign experts in the introduction and development of the knitwear in Barcelona is proved by the fact that some of the masters of the late eighteenth century had Italian surnames, as Geppini (from Novara), Cambon (from Genoa), and the Frenchman Vilaret, who arrived in Barcelona in 1775 or before.10 In Barcelona the board of trade promoted silk manufactures by spreading the knowledge of how to construct these frames. In 1769, the board hired the hosier Francesc Simon, who knew how to make and work these frames.11 He had invented a wheel to produce the same length to the yarn in each skein, and this was sufficient to weave a pair of men’s stockings.12 Two other knitting frame masters applied for the position, and one of them, Francesc Bañeras, promised to build a new type of frame.12 The multiple ribbon frame, invented in Danzig in the sixteenth century and used in London in 1616 and in Leiden in 1620,14 arrived to Catalonia at the end of the century, probably from France. The Catalan merchant Francesc Potau introduced them in Madrid in 1693.15 In the early eighteenth century they existed in smaller towns such as Reus, an industrial town near Tarragona and about 125 km from Barcelona. In October 1714, a carpenter from Barcelona, Pau Oliva, signed a contract with a rich cloth merchant of Reus, for the construction of a frame for weaving 18 ribbons at the same time, six of them for a quart i mig (a quarter and a half) wide ribbons and the others for a quart.16 That means that the frame could also make 20 ribbons of a quart wide. Oliva promised to spend no more than five weeks to build it and earned 86 Catalan pounds for it. These frames had arrived before 1750 in Manresa, where silk industry was developing well, and where eight years later there were 111 ribbon frames.17 In 1782, at least 11 Spanish towns had ribbon frames, including which Barcelona and two smaller Catalan towns.18 The extended use of the complicated ribbon and hose frames was accompanied by the spreading of knowledge on how to build them. Mechanical innovation was not unfamiliar to carpenters, locksmiths and other artisans who had contacts with the scientific and mechanical circles. Practical knowledge was in hands of many common people who, from at least the 1780s, were also interested in improving silk reeling and twisting. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Silk Reeling, Doubling and Twisting
We know little about the silk spinning machines that existed in Spain, a technical system introduced by the Moors after their arrival in 711. In 1501, a few years after the Castilian Crown conquered the Muslim kingdom of Granada, the council of this town established that the spinning wheel could not have more than 200 spindles and each master only could have two of them.19 In the second half of the fifteenth century, those in Valencia had between 84 and 108 spindles, but the city’s guild ordinances of the silk twisters, approved in 1732, allowed them to have a maximum of 240 spindles.20 So between the two dates some technical change would have occurred that allowed more than double the number of spindles that these machines could have, which could be due to the addition of draft animals to move them.21 In contrast, those existing in Manresa (Catalonia) in 1789 had only 150 spindles, though most were powered by a man. However, one of these spinning wheels was operated by hydraulic power for a few years.22 In 1748–53 the government attempted to promote the silk industry with various initiatives based upon the participation of foreign technicians and craftsmen knowledgeable of the new techniques. The first one took place in 1748, when the Royal Factory of silk, gold and silver of the Castilian town of Talavera was established after having appointed the French technician Jean Rulière as a director, who was in The Hague ready to go to London after having escaped from a French prison.23 It was the first enterprise in Spain that concentrated silk spinning, weaving and dyeing and silk ribbon making in the same factory. It seems that the spinning machines were of the same kind that Rulière had seen in Basel,24 probably operating on the Piedmont system. These engines were the first of their kind to be introduced in Spain. A large number of foreign masters and officers arrived to Talavera, hired by the government. In a nearby village, a building was constructed in which there were 12 machines for twisting silk, 44 for reeling it and six for doubling it. All were powered by four oxen which allowed 7,072 strands to be reeled, doubled and twisted at the same time.25 The Rulière’s presence in Spain was caused some embarrassment. He was accused a few years later of wasting large amounts of money. Between 1756 and 1767 he was prosecuted twice, arrested the second time and received no salary between 1760 and 1767. This episode shows how the implementation of new projects by foreign experts did not ensure immediate success, and such experiences were costly.26 The second initiative by the government took shape in April 1753, when a number of French artists and a technician arrived in Spain hired by the authorities to work at the factory of silk, gold and silver in Valencia. Among them were René Lamy, Pierre Georget and Jean Salvan, who would make drawings of fabrics to be developed on site and taught their craft to ten young people, as well as Juan Bautista Phelippot, who would eventually become the general inspector of industries in Valencia.27 In 1769–70 there were several initiatives to introduce the Vaucanson method of spinning, patented in France in 1749, and to spread the Piedmont system, which offered additional benefits besides a homogeneous thread,
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not possible with the older spinning machines. While the Piedmont method produced the best twisted thread, the Vaucanson method allowed for an increase in productivity by working simultaneously with two bobbins.28 In 1769 the Frenchman Santiago Reboull installed some Vaucanson machines in Valencia, where other similar initiatives already existed, promoted by state and local institutions, such as the Junta de Comercio, to construct a Piedmont machine. Before his arrival in Spain, Reboull was the lessee, since 1757, of a royal silk manufacturing plant established in Lavaur in southwest France, equipped with the Vaucanson system.29 The project failed, but he and his son
Francisco were granted a privilege by the king of Spain to establish a factory in where silk would be wound, bent and twisted by this method. They joined up with Joseph Lapayese, who when the experiment failed continued alone with the project. Lapayese hired the François Toullot, a Frenchman who had been a pupil of the technician Borceret, and in turn a pupil of Vaucanson.30 Lapayese and Toullot improved Vaucanson’s system after two years of work. They managed to adjust production to the supply capacity of raw material (reducing the number of spindles), to obtain a better use of raw materials (testing the method of stifling cocoons in an oven), and to regulate the degree of twist that would ensure a most perfect staining. They also made it possible for the operator to work better and faster, by installing a wheel drive system with pine nuts instead of belts or chains to make more regular skeins, and by replacing the iron threadguides (guíahilos), which damaged the yarn, for others made of glass.30 The most important innovations, however, were in the double crossing of the fibres and the employment of women in sections of the productive process until then in the hands of men.31 These spinning machines were known as the reformed Vaucanson system (Vaucanson a la española). In addition to the Vinalesa one, another factory for silk spinning was soon open, in this case under the Piedmont method. In December 1770, Fernando Gasparro and Company, with Italian partners, was allowed to establish a spinning factory in Murcia.33 They hired the Turin master Juan Octavio Quadropani to implement the project, and Margarita Rosa to teach the girls how to spin and twist. The lack of capital only allowed them to install two ovens and one spinning machine. In 1772, the company was authorized to set up another spinning factory in Granada, or any other city with the exception of Valencia, where Reboull was already working. When the company went bankrupt in 1774, its new owners, Francisco Muñoz and his associates, failed to take it forward. Eventually the factory passed into the hands of a royal administrator, who installed a new wheel, improved the existing machines and built a new oven to dry out the cocoons. In 1784 was leased to a group of merchants of the city, who failed to make it work properly. The factory was finally taken over in 1786 by the Cinco Gremios Mayores of Madrid, the trade and financial company, with a series of privileges and tax exemptions. Quadropani continued working as a technician for the factory, building four twisting machines which nevertheless never reached the desired standard due to lack of money. A new female master of yarn, also Italian, named Teresa, taught 60 girls and young women to make silk. Between 1788 and 1795 two newly-invented ovens were constructed that allowed the cocoons to be dried History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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quickly and getting more output. In this way fuel and salaries were saved, plus its sturdy construction diminished the risk of fire. In the reeling section there were 48 new boilers, unparalleled in Europe since they permitted all-year spinning, with or without water, in any season. With the same number of working hours the spinners were less pressurized and produced more and the result was a higher quality silk than that produced by the Vaucanson system and by that devised by Antonio Regás. The set was completed by twelve spinning machines called Azarsa, of new format, that allowed obtaining a thin, strong and bulkier silk; furthermore it occupied less space and the waste was less. At this time the factory had four Piedmont-style spinning machine with various parts (spindles, shields, snakes and stars) changed. This ensured that four could be used simultaneously as well the two most productive in bending and producing skeins. The quality of these spinning machines (the perfection of the silk yarn and the ease of handling the equipment) reached the ears of the Pope, who sent an emissary to draw them. He was not allowed to.34 After these early spinning factories, the Piedmont and Vaucanson systems appeared in other Spanish cities, as the 1784 Census of Manufactures shows. There were factories using the Piedmont system in four Catalan towns (Vilafranca del Penedès, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Sant Joan Despi and la Quadra de Palou (Torrelavid, in the province of Barcelona), at the Almshouse in Toledo, in the Royal Factory of Talavera, and in Murcia.35 It is not known how this spinning method was introduced in Catalonia and by whom, but in 1784, Juan Berta, a soldier of the Flanders tercios who had worked with these machines for years in Piedmont, introduced a model.36 We know more about the initiative involving the Barcelona carpenter Benet Ardit, hired by two merchants as a technician.37 With the help of a foreigner named Cornalia, Ardit improved the initial model. One of the goals was to save raw material in two ways: by reducing waste from the twister, and by reducing the number of workers hired, and thus decreasing thefts, and he also simplified the manufacturing process. In early 1786 Ardit hoped to bring the project to fruition.38 The interest in solving silk spinning problems that neither the Piedmont nor Vaucanson systems had tackled previously stimulated the search for solutions by craftsmen and technicians. For the Catalan case, there are several known examples: Antonio Regás,39 the carpenter Isidre Pla, who claimed to be the inventor of the spinning machine of the House of Charity in Barcelona,40 or Mariano Guerrière, probably a French technician, who offered machines for preparing silk and other kinds of threads. In other cases, attempts were made to improve power supply to drive the machines. In February 1778 Jaume Fàbregas, a master silk reeler of Manresa, attempted to use the Sant Ignasi torrent with the help of his cousin Jaume Padró, a carpenter. The aim was to drive a spinning machine by hydraulic power.41 The result was worth a visit by the Intendente Francisco de Zamora in 1789, who wrote that there was ‘a spinning machine with 150 spindles that also makes 150 skeins, moved by water. In Manresa there were over 40 of them, but they operate thanks to the human force’.42 The versatility of some of these technicians was sometimes outstanding, as in the case of the Frenchman, Jean Pierre Cavaillé. He was born in Galhac History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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(about 40 kilometres south of Toulouse) in 1743 and was a high skilled organ builder. Around 1791 he constructed some flax, wool and silk winding and reeling machines in some Catalan towns and villages. In 1814, his son Dominique carried out industrial espionage in France for the Barcelona trade board, and in 1822–9 he travelled again to France to see the jacquard system. In 1831 he left Catalonia for good and started a business in Paris with his brother Aristide, who was the most famous European organ builder of the time.43 Technological innovations needed workers that could handle the new machines, which made it necessary to teach them how to work. Women in charge of this responsibility had to be foreign women with this knowledge. Maria Margherita Bertot, from Piedmont, was one of these reeling and twisting artisans who worked in Barcelona as a teacher, hired by the local Junta de Comercio.44 We also know about of Margarita Rosa and Teresa, who worked as reelers in the silk factory of Murcia. Technological transfer in silk thread production permitted the Spanish silk industry to be in touch with the new and better productive methods, but did not solve all the problems of spinning. The foreign experts familiar with the improved machinery who arrived in Spain to install it, were not always able to assemble the new machines correctly, as happened for example with Reboull. In some cases, Spanish artisans were the ones who solved the puzzle (at least in the cotton industry). The arrival of foreign machines and technicians helped the dissemination of knowledge and the acquisition of skills, and encouraged the technical capabilities of Spanish artisans. According to Ángel Calvo, there was no simple imitation but adaptation,44 and even improvement. Notes
1. This research is part of a project funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, ‘Reconstrucción de la actividad económica en la Cataluña contemporánea (s. XIX–XX)’ (HAR2008-01988/Hist). 2. Calvo, ‘Sulla via italiana’, 65–96. 3. La Force, The development, 70. 4. Sarasúa has demonstrated that this was one of the Crown’s purposes when promoting the modernization of silk reeling and twisting. To force the diffusion of Vaucanson’ mechanized spindles, Enlightened reformists built up an official discurse to expand women’s labour force participation. Sarasúa, ‘Technical innovations’, 25–7, 31–5. See also Sarasúa, ‘Una política de empleo’. 5. Santos, Cara y cruz, 127, 139. 6. I am grateful to Benet Oliva for giving me important new information on the first stages of the framework knitting in Barcelona that expand and clarify what we already knew thanks to the research of Molas, Comerç i estructura, 98, and Kamen, Narcís Feliu, 12–20. 7. Norbury, ‘A note on knitting and knitted fabrics’, 185–6. Derry and Williams, A Short History of Technology, 158. Dubuisson, ‘Bonneterie’, 229–32. 8. Molas, Comerç i estructura social, 98. 9. Puig Reixach, Les primeres, 36. Calvo, ‘Sul la via d’Italia’, footnote 85. A merchant of Puigcerdá, a town close to the French border, was forbidden to open a silk knitting frame manufacture employing French workers because there did not exist a master how had the knowhow of it. Calvo, ‘Sulla via dell’Italia’, footnote 87. 10. Molas, Los gremios barceloneses, 514. 11. Camon, ‘Una escuela de constructores’, 121–4.
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12. Camon, ‘Una escuela de constructores’, 122. 13. Molas, Los gremios barceloneses, 514. 14. Derry and Williams, A Short History of Technology, 158. 15. González Enciso, Historia económica, 257. 16. Arxiu Històric de Protocols de Barcelona, Josep Alvareda 1714, 208. 17. Virós, ‘Llenguatge i tecnologia’, 199–202. The ordinances of the Manresa silk guild, 1771, mentioned the existence of the multiple shuttles ribbon’s loom. 18. They concentrated in Andalucía (Granada, Córdoba, Seville, Jaén and Málaga) but also existed in Palencia, Talavera, Santiago, Barcelona, Reus and Manresa. Miguel, Perspicaz mirada, 68, 283, 289–91, 294. 19. Bejarano, La industria de la seda en Málaga, 47. The author does not indicate which kind of energy was used. 20. Iradiel; Navarro, ‘La seda en Valencia en la edad media’, 196. Díez, ‘La crisis gremial’, 146, nota 20. 21. Díez, ‘La crisis gremial.’, 146, note 20. They were moved by draught animals. 22. Buxareu, Diario de los viajes hechos en Cataluña, 107, 11. 23. Peñalver, La Real Fábrica, 53 24. Peñalver, La Real Fábrica, 53 25. Capella and Matilla, Los cinco gremios, 146–7. Peñalver, La Real Fábrica, 45–220. 26. Capella and Matilla, Los cinco gremios, 145–7. 27. Capella and Matilla, Los cinco gremios, 134–44. 28. Calvo, ‘Sulla via dell’Italia’. 29. Morral; Segura, La seda a Espanya, 34. 30. Santos, Cara y cruz, 189. Lapayese, Tratado del arte de hilar, 37–8, 45–6. 31. Morral; Segura, La seda a Espanya, 34. Lapayese, Tratado del arte, 37–8, 45–6. 32. Sarasúa, ‘Technical innovations’, 30. 33. Capella and Matilla, Los cinco gremios, 164–73. 34. Capella and Matilla, Los cinco gremios, 171. 35. Miguel, Perspicaz mirada, 298–299, 336. 36. Calvo, ‘Transferencia internacional’, 118. 37. Calvo, ‘Transferencia internacional’, 118. 38. Calvo, ‘Transferencia internacional’, 118. 39. Calvo, ‘Transferencia internacional’, 120. Santos, Cara y cruz, 220. 40. Calvo, ‘Transferencia internacional’, 120. 41. Solà, Aigua, indústria i fabricants a Manresa, 38. 42. Buxareu, Diario de los viajes hechos en Cataluña, 101, 111. 43. Calvo, ‘Constructores sin fábrica’, 31. Fontanals, ‘La contribución.â•›.â•›.’, 176–9. 44. Biblioteca de Catalunya, Junta de Comerç. 45. Calvo, ‘Transferencia internacional’, 123.
Bibliography Bejarano, Francisco (1951), La industria de la seda en Málaga en el siglo XVI. Madrid: CSIC. Buxareu, Ramon (1973), ‘Diario de los viajes hechos en Cataluña’ de Francisco de Zamora. Barcelona: Curial. Calvo, Ángel, (2004) ‘Sulla via italiana: speranze e frustración dell’industria della seta catalana durante la transizione al regime liberale’. Ricerche historiche 24, I. Calvo, Ángel (1999), ‘Transferencia internacional de tecnología y condicionamientos nacionales: la industria sedera catalana durante la transición al Régimen liberal’, Quaderns d’Història de l’Enginyeria, III. Calvo, Ángel (1991–1992), ‘Diffusion et transfert technologique: Vaucanson et l’Espagne des Lumières’, L’Archeologie Industrielle en France, 22. Calvo, Àngel (1994), ‘Constructores sin fábrica. Tecnología y sociedad a finales History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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del siglo XVIII’, in Roser Enrich et al., Tècnica i societat en el món contemporani. Sabadell: Museu d’Història. Camon, José (1968), ‘Una escuela de constructores y montadores de telares para medias de seda en el siglo XVIII’. Divulgación histórica, vol. VI, Barcelona. Capella, Miguel and Antonio Matilla (1957), Los cinco gremios mayores de Madrid. Madrid: Imprenta Sáez. Derry; T. K. and Trevor I. Williams (1960), A Short History of Technology. From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900, Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Díez, Fernando (1990), Viles y mecánicos. Trabajo y sociedad en la Valencia pre-industrial. Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim. Díez, Fernando (1992), ‘La crisis gremial y los problemas de la sedería valenciana (finales del siglo XVIII y principios del XIX)’. Revista de Historia Económica, (I), 39–61. Dubuisson, Marguerite, ‘Bonneterie’ (1965), in Maurice Daumas (ed.), Histoire générale des techniques. I. Les premières étapes du machinisme. Paris: PUF. Fontanals, Maria Reis (2000), ‘La contribució de la família Cavaillé al progrés tecnològic’, in J. Maluquer de Motes (ed.), Tècnics i tecnologia en el desenvolupament de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana. Franch, Ricardo (2000), La sedería valenciana y el reformismo borbónico. Valencia: Alfons el Màgnànim, pp. 229–38. Franch, Ricardo, ‘La sedería valenciana en el siglo XVIII’ (1996), in España y Portugal en las rutas de la seda. Diez siglos de producción y comercio entre Oriente y Occidente. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, pp. 201–22. Gonzáez Enciso, Agustín, et al. (1992), Historia económica de la España moderna Madrid: Actas. Iradiel, Paulino and Germán Navarro (1996), ‘La seda en Valencia en la edad media’, España y Portugal en las rutas de la seda. Diez siglos de producción y comercio entre Oriente y Occidente. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona. Kamen, Henry (1983), Narcís Feliu de la Penya: Fènix de Catalunya. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya. Lapayese, Joseph (1784), Tratado del arte de hilar, devanar, doblar y torcer las sedas según el metodo de Mr. Vaucanson con algunas adiciones y correcciones a él. Principio y progresos de de la Fábrica de Vinalesa, en el Reyno de Valencia, establecida bajo la protección de S. M. Valencia. Joseph y Thomas de Orga. Laforce, James C. (1965), The Development of the Spanish Textile Industry, 1750–1800, Berkeley: University of California Press. Molas, Pere (1977), Comerç i estructura social a Catalunya i València als segles XVII i XVIII. Madrid: Confederación Española de Cajas de Ahorros. Morral, Eulàlia; Segura, Antoni (1991), La seda a Espanya. Llegenda, poder i realitat, Barcelona: Lunwerg. Norbury, James, (1957) ‘A note on knitting and knitted fabrics’, in Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and T. I. Williams (eds), A History of Technology, vol. III From Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peñalver, Luis F., (2000) La Real Fábrica de tejidos de seda, oro y plata de Talavera History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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de la Reina. De Rulière a los cinco gremios mayores, 1748–1785. Talavera: Ayuntamiento de Talavera de la Reina. Puig Reixach, Miquel (1988), Les primeres companyies per a la fabricació de gènere de punt a Olot (1774–1789). Olot: Ajuntament d’Olot. Santos, Vicente M. (1981), Cara y cruz de la sedería valenciana (siglos XVIII–XIX). Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim. Sarasúa, Carmen (2004), ‘Una política de empleo antes de la industrialización: paro, estructura de la ocupación y salarios’, in Pablo M. Aceña and Paco Comín (eds), Campomanes y su obra económica, Madrid: Ministerio de Hacienda/Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, pp. 171–91. Sarasúa, Carmen (2008), ‘Technical innovations at the service of cheap labor in pre-industrial Europe. The Enlightened agenda to transform the gender division of labor in silk manufacturing’. History and Technology 24, (I), 23–39. Solà, Àngels (2004), Aigua, indústria i fabricants a Manresa, 1763–1860, Manresa: Centre d’Estudis del Bages. Virós, Lluís ‘Llenguatge i tecnologia dels vetaires manresans (Vocabulari tradicional de la cinteria)’, Miscel·lània d’Estudis Bagencs 10, 1997.
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Textile Technology Entrepreneurs in a Non-Innovative Country: Casablancas and Picañol in Twentieth-century Spain E s t e v e D e u a n d M o n t s e r r at L l o n c h Autonomous University of Barcelona
The study of technology is a key factor in analysing the modern process of development and economic growth. For a long time, the deficit in innovation hindered economic development until the role of technological transfer processes was taken into account.1 All the same, there is not a unique way of accessing new technologies; the multiple modalities by means of which developing countries adopt them usually depend on specific paths and historical periods, as well as on the international situation. A large part of the historical research on the relationship between technology and development focuses on explaining the limitations in the field of innovation in developing countries and on the processes of technological transfer, especially during the first industrial revolution. However, what happens when backward countries develop their own innovations, are able to disseminate them and make the most of them at an international level is something not so well-known. In Spain, a non-innovative latecomer, during the first third of the twentieth century very important technological innovations were developed in the textile industry with widespread repercussions on a world scale. The cases of Ferran Casablancas Planell and the Picañol Camps brothers are good examples of this combining invention, innovation and entrepreneurial success. The aim of this study focuses on understanding how the entrepreneurial capacity of the innovators in adverse contexts is structured, when the need appears to go abroad to achieve international projection. To analyse this phenomenon we count on a large variety of sources. This paper comprises three sections: the analysis of the context in which the inventions and the innovating path of the people playing the main roles in it are developed, the study of both aforementioned cases, and finally, the conclusions resulting from the previous two processes. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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What Are the Reasons for the Spanish Textile Industry being Scarcely Prone to Modernization During the First Third of the Twentieth Century?
Contemporary Spanish development was a belated growth process with little innovation.2 This limited technological development can be accounted for by a great number of factors (economic, social, political and cultural) involving a lack of connection between invention, innovation and the production of capital goods. First, technological backwardness appears in the lack of innovation, which can be seen in the fairly minor role played by the patents registered in Spain compared with other developed countries. Furthermore, over the 1878–2000 period, in Spain, most patents were applied for by foreign residents3 and it did not only happen in anomalous contexts (1914–18, 1936–54).4 Invention was an exceptional and scarcely recognized phenomenon; the well-known sentence coined in Spain: ‘¡Qué inventen ellos!’ (‘Let them invent!’) corresponded to this passive attitude.5 Such an unfavourable situation could be found in the small number of specialized technicians and qualified workers.6 The state invested very little in the training of technical specialists and in the basic levels of education (in 1910, the illiteracy rate in Spain was 50 per cent)7. The lack of public initiative in professional training and higher education was not sufficiently compensated by the private ones, which only took place when it became unavoidable to implement the innovationsof the second industrial revolution. In order to minimize the important deficits present in training, the scarce innovations produced tended to focus on less-complex technological sectors. Over the 1882–1935 period, the technological advantage known regarding domestic patents in Spain was centred on the textile industry, an emblematic sector of the first industrial revolution where, over these years, the low training level was counterbalanced by a satisfactory level of applied knowledge.8 The lack of innovation was compensated for by machinery imports and the buying of foreign patents when the industry of specialized machinery was able to apply them. However, for Spanish economic development, those aspects lacking in innovating processes were more decisive than those regarding invention, which can be linked to the idiosyncrasy of Spanish industrialization. This situation is accounted for by the lack of incentives, scarce opportunities and meagre means to invest. There was little encouragement to innovate; after 1891, there was strong commercial protectionism, which forced textile industrialists not to compete on the international market. Little by little, a strong network of entrepreneurial and political interests to maintain this situation was created, which was further ratified by the later tariff reforms of 1906 and 1921, was created. Entrepreneurs ended up making do with poor internal demand9 that was vetoed by foreign producers in order to obtain limited but safe profits. In terms of added value and employment, the textile sector was the main Spanish industrial sector during the first third of the twentieth century. In
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1913, the Spanish cotton industry occupied tenth position on a world scale (with a productive capacity equivalent to half the Italian one and a quarter of the French one).10 Moreover, it had accumulated considerable technological backwardness, for the speed of the machinery reflected its slowness at an international level.11 By 1900, the textile industry was concentrated in Catalonia (91.0 of the cotton industry, 63.3 per cent of wool manufacturing, 55.3 per cent of silk manufacturing and 43.8 per cent of the linen and hemp industry), and constituted a macro textile district with specialized areas.13 The textile industry relied on plentiful cheap labour, which allowed it to intensify the work factor at the expense of capital investment, which made it difficult to improve productivity and compete on a world scale. The conditions of such a domestic market with a low number of consumers, with low income levels and great oscillations in demand made it compulsory to have a very flexible organizational production structure, based on small and medium-sized companies. There appeared problems related to overproduction or to a lack of productive capacity; in the first case, these imbalances were made up for by outsourcing production and intensifying work; in the second case, by reducing the number of workers. This is the reason why there was no recourse to innovation in high-demand periods. Overproduction happened more frequently, with the subsequent drop in prices and profits and the existence of inefficient companies. During those periods, competitiveness increased in the domestic market; the companies that could survive them were much more interested in asking the government to intervene in order to limit the offer than in improving productive efficiency. They neither wanted to compete in the international market nor in the domestic one. The profit level of the Catalan textile industry was low and unstable,13 which meant that the possibilities of investing in machinery were limited to very specific favourable periods (in the 1880s and 1920s). Unlike what happened in other countries, technological improvement was not a continuous and accumulative strategy, for machinery continued to work beyond its amortization.14 Poor profits determined the demand for short-term credit and made it compulsory for companies to keep a large part of their assets in the form of working capital, which also limited their investment capacity. The weak Spanish financial system did not help either.15 The difficulty of consolidating an industry of capital goods has been a key factor when accounting for Spanish late industrial development,16 as we may see in those sectors with greater demand. As in other peripheral countries, in Spain, industrial textile machinery was imported, which did not foster the full progress of a specific Spanish sector of textile machinery construction.17 Between 1870 and 1919, more than 80 per cent of the machinery purchased by the Catalan textile industry came from abroad, a figure that fell to 60 per cent between 1920 and 1935. The beginning of the process of replacing imports did not entail a technological innovation equivalent to the implements imported. Nevertheless, the textile machinery sector progressively developed in small and medium-sized workshops in the main Catalan textile centres. These companies, taking advantage of the proximity factor, devoted themselves to History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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repairing machinery, constructing accessories and spare parts, and some began to construct machines that were similar to the foreign ones that they repaired. Between 1920–1936, these functions reversed. Despite the break off, the sector was still rather small. They constructed few units, only made to order, with handcrafted methods of the simplest models, whereas the most sophisticated machines were still imported. This productive method provided an important number of technicians who had not trained at specialized schools but acquired their skills through professional experience. The inventiveness of these technicians and repairers allowed them to incorporate some advanced devices into the machines that had been running for a long time since they were used to their limit. These devices fulfilled similar functions to those already incorporated as standard when they were first assembled in new textile machines constructed in leading countries. However, this system led to difficulties in the efficiency of the machinery and more breakdowns. The ability to imitate and adapt was more developed than that of developing new technology. In this context, some exceptional and unusual initiatives appeared that felt rather out of place among the economic and political elites that wanted to keep on enjoying the profits resulting from the status quo. Two exceptions were the cases of Ferran Casablancas and the Picañol brothers, two representative examples, for they drew together 36.5 per cent of all Spanish textile patents requested from abroad between 1878 and 1936. Moreover, almost all of them were applied and retained their validity until their expiry. From the Civil War on, whereas these innovators had already established their multinational companies of industrial machinery construction abroad, in Spain, entrepreneurs had to pay royalties for their new patents. Ferran Casablancas and the Picañol brothers show very noticeable coincidences. They were born in Sabadell, one of the two capitals of the main wool production district that had, like other textile districts, specialized industrial machinery. They were against the conformist mindset of their environment, showing their will to work differently. The technical and mechanical knowledge gathered in this industrial district favoured their inventions,18 but to develop and achieve international scope they were forced to travel abroad. Ferran Casablancas Planell, a Catalan Craftsman
He was born in Sabadell (Barcelona) in 1874 into a family of modest textile entrepreneurs.19 He was only able to finish primary school and at 14 he went to work in the family business where he acquired practical knowledge of the textile industry. He was fascinated by the inventions of the second industrial revolution. Once he had become the director of the company, his activity focused more on the development of technical innovations than on management duties, which involved much criticism from his family and partners. He spent long hours in small factories, together with the technician Francesc Permanyer. The Casablancas’s poor theoretical training was compensated by the collaboration of three other Catalan engineers: Arnau Izard, Esteve Comas and Josep Noguera. The first results of this research bore fruit in the register of History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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several patents in Spain related to further improvements in the mechanisms for drawing fibres in cotton spinning between 1907 and 1912.20 The culmination of this task was the presentation at the Escuela Industrial de Artes y Oficios de Sabadell (Sabadell School of Arts and Crafts), in September 1913, of a ring spinning frame that incorporated those further improvements. This event had an important echo in the national and international media.21 This innovation had a global impact in reducing the manufacturing costs of cotton yarn by about 40 per cent. In addition, the introduction of high drafting in cotton spinning mills and, later on, in the woollen ones entailed the supremacy of ring spinning frames in cotton spinning mills.22 After presenting this innovation and its further new improvements, in 1913 Patentes Casablancas SA was established in Barcelona with a two-fold aim: to set up a mechanical construction workshop in Sabadell to produce the new mechanism and the commercial exploitation of its patents on a Spanish and international scale. The company had a nominal capital of 340,000 pesetas, of which 150,000 were paid out. Two years later, due to financial difficulties that began in 1914, it became Hilaturas Casablancas SA, with a capital of 500,000 pesetas. Among the shareholders there were Catalan entrepreneurs with interests in the textile sector and higher education who trusted this innovation process. This was the case of Francesc Cambó, Josep Bertand, Eusebi Bertrand, Lluís A. Sedó, Frederic Rahola and Josep Maria Boada.23 The first company began to assemble this machine in some Catalan spinning mills that were able to enjoy its positive effects. However, this process was brought to a halt by the outbreak of the First World War. Catalan textile companies received important additional orders. This situation made it compulsory to make all available machines work continuously, without being able to stop them to install the new machinery. International dissemination in Europe was impossible due to the war. In 1919, the innovation of Ferran Casablancas bore its first important fruit. Hilaturas Casablancas SA signed a contract with a large French textile group, the French company Louis et François Motte Frères, whose headquarters were in Tourcoing. Through this agreement, the exploitation of the Casablancas’ patents was granted during its validity (20 years) for France, Belgium and the Netherlands. In exchange, Hilaturas Casablancas SA would receive a large sum of money.24 With this income, the Hilaturas Casablancas SA recovered from its financial difficulties and, far from limiting itself to selling the rights of its patents to other countries, it continued to innovate and developed an internationalization project, establishing companies abroad in order to foster its expansion. The company looked for international projection for it had observed that the domestic market was too small for its dynamic business projects. Along this line, the engineer from Manresa Josep Noguera devoted himself to introducing the company to the British market. After overcoming many difficulties, he finally obtained the support of some British partners and established the company Casablancas High Draft Co. Ltd. in Manchester in 1925. Thanks to it, the Casablancas systems were applied to most British History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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cotton spinning mills in the 1930s. Later on, also with the collaboration of local partners, two other companies were established. In 1929, The Indian Casablancas High Draft Co. Ltd. (Mumbai), directed by Francesc Permanyer, and in 1931 the American Casablancas Corporation (New York), in which Sacco-Lowell Co. Ltd. held a stake. This business corporation comprised several activities: mechanical construction workshops, research centres, cotton spinning mills, exploitation and marketing of patents.25 Between 1919 and 1936, the dissemination of the Casablancas patents took place in 34 countries. Not only did the various company headquarters fulfil marketing functions; in the areas where there was no business structure, the dissemination was carried out by several commercial agents of the corporate group. These agents had intense contacts with many companies, technicians and political representatives and business associations, to which they introduced their companies’ innovations; they also managed the granting of licences and the establishment of mixed enterprises. Among these delegates we should highlight the work of Claudi Portella (Russia and China), Esteve Comas and Francesc Camprodon (Japan), Joan Mora (Greece and Turkey), Salvador Inglada (Brazil), Eudald Franquesa and Martirià Mirabet (Mexico) and Gaspar Amorós (Central Europe). Ferran Casablancas himself directly went through the procedures to introduce the group to the market of the Soviet Union, undergoing great difficulties to establish a relationship with that country. In 1933, coinciding with the expiry of the first sliver drawing patent, new prototypes were presented (a cotton ring spinning frame with high combined draft mechanisms provided with endless belts). This innovation came to be known as the high drafting system and it meant an important improvement of the previous system by replacing its leather components with plastic ones. It was introduced in England in 1934 with great success. In order to control the fruits of its innovations, Casablancas SA was established in Barcelona, with capital of 1,500,000 pesetas. It was a company exclusively controlled by the Casablancas family, which appointed as secretary the renowned Catalan economist Pedro Gual Villalbí. This innovation was the result of the collaboration between Casablancas SA, Casablancas High Draft Co. Ltd. and the company belonging to Richard Hartmann (Chemnitz), patentee of the Casablancas patents in Germany. In the German company, the line-flow production of these mechanisms was tested.26 This new patent allowed the Casablancas corporate group to keep its world leading position in the development of textile technology related to the process of sliver drawing to save production costs, not only in cotton spinning but also of other natural and artificial textile fibres. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Ferran Casablancas moved from Sabadell to Manchester, where he established the headquarters of the group’s companies. His son Ferran, who had studied industrial chemistry, directly collaborated with him, as did the engineer Josep Noguera, while his other son Joan, who had studied marketing at Deusto University, moved to the United States where he took on management tasks at the American company. The Mumbai company continued to be directed by Francesc Permanyer. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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In 1939, Ferran Casablancas Planell came back to Spain and recuperated the old workshops that the company had in Sabadell, which had been collectivized during the Civil War. Shortly afterwards, the workshops were transferred, together with the exploitation of their patents in Spain, to the Barcelona company Hijo de J. Palau Ribas, which kept running the Sabadell workshops.27 Manchester had already become the head office of the corporate group and a new generation was taking on the management of the companies. In 1940, Casablancas’ son, Ferran, took on the general direction of the corporate group. The head offices in Manchester and Mumbai kept their former managers, while his son Joan directed the New York head office and assumed the coordination of the trading agencies. Ferran Casablancas, who was by then 72 years old and had already given up the management of the corporate group, was appointed president of Banco Sabadell, a post he had already held previously. After Ferran Casablancas Planell’s death in 1960, the corporate group, which worked on the development of the patents for sliver drafting for spinning mills, was split. The Manchester company continued to work after selling the Casablancas family’s shares. The president of the company, with the new name of Casablancas Ltd., with its head office in London and workshops in Manchester, continued to be Josep Noguera. The general director was his son John Michael (a Cambridge University graduate in mechanical and electronic engineering) who counted on the valuable collaboration of another engineer, Guy Emm Sydney, until his death in 1977. At the beginning of 1970, the company had a commercial network with representatives in 46 countries, and out of 100 million cotton spindles running in the world, 55 made use of the Casablancas drafting systems,28 and it had more than 1,000 employees. The branches in India and the United States, the latter with new headquarters in Charlotte, ceased production at the end of 1940 and 1960, respectively, and became trading agencies of the British company, also without capital interest of the founding family. The greatest international recognition for Ferran Casablancas Planell, the founder of this family of Catalan entrepreneurs that the British called the ‘Catalan craftsman’, came in 1941 when he was awarded the title of Honorary Member of the Textile Institute of Manchester, the first non-British person to receive it. The Exiled Republican Engineers: the Picañol Camps Brothers
Joan, Josep and Jaume Picañol Camps were born in Sabadell in 1896, 1899 and 1908, respectively. They were the sons of a modest entrepreneur, Salvador Picañol Solà, who had devoted himself to the construction of gears for machinery, mostly looms, since 1914. Despite being a small company, his three sons had the possibility of carrying out technical studies, which was rather unusual among the entrepreneurs of Sabadell in those years. All of them did business studies courses at the engineering school of the neighbouring city of Terrassa, and the youngest graduated from Manchester in higher mechanical engineering and they all began to work in the family business.29 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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These studies had immediate positive results. In 1918, the Salvador Picañol company registered in Spain a first patent to improve non-automatic looms. In 1924, Joan became independent and founded the company Joan Picañol Camps in Barcelona, devoted to the commercial exploitation of its own technology. One year later, it registered a first patent of introduction of an automation mechanism for non-automatic looms, which was followed by other similar ones during the second half of 1920 and the first half of 1930. Simultaneously, his brothers Josep and Jaume continued to work in the father’s company and registered several patents in its name that aimed to improve further mechanical looms. In 1931 they established a commercial office in Barcelona, a branch of Salvador Picañol’s company, to exploit them.30 All these patents aimed to construct an improved automatic shuttlechanging loom.31 An important part of the patents developed between 1928 and 1935 were registered abroad and not in Spain. They realized that the future of their work was not going to be in Spain, where since 1927 committees regulating industrial production were operating, restricting the renewal of machinery. In 1935, the brothers Joan and Jaume registered the patents of their new automatic loom in England.32 In 1932, Joan Picañol moved to the Belgian city of Ypres, where he started to work as a technician for Charles Steverlynck’s company. This linen textile company had an almost full vertical integration structure: it had linen plantations, linen spinning and weaving factories, and it had broadened its participation in a company that constructed specific machinery for this textile subsector, Vansteenkiste Company, which it ended up controlling completely.33 His brothers Josep and Jaume remained in Catalonia, and during the Spanish Civil War the family business collaborated with the assembly of war planes, with components coming from the Soviet Union. Jaume Picañol, who was a pilot, played the role of intermediary between the family business and the workshop where these war planes were assembled. At the same time, he joined the Republican Air Forces as a war pilot; however, his plane was brought down in combat in 1937 and he was evacuated to England.34 Faced with the politically unstable situation in Spain, the eldest Picañol brother began to lay the foundations for the international exploitation of family patents. In 1936, contributing the 1935 patent, Joan Picañol went into partnership with Charles Steverlynck to turn the Vansteenkiste Company into Métiers Automatiques Picanol SA (Weefautomaten Picanol NV), which then started to construct automatic looms. Once his brother Jaume had recovered from his wounds, he moved to Ypres, joining the public limited company with a share participation of his brother. With the very important contribution of the higher technical knowledge of the latter, the company began to construct the prototype of an automatic loom Omnium in a rather modest workshop that only had 60 workers, out of which they came to assemble 120 units in 1940. During its first years, three other Catalan engineers, with whom Jaume Picañol had closely collaborated in Sabadell, worked for the company. Josep Picañol remained in this city in charge of the management of the family business and also registered several patents for Picanol NV and its subsidiary companies. This collaboration History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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involved Josep Picañol’s periodical stages in the Ypres workshops. This was the beginning of one of the largest companies specializing in the construction of looms for the textile industry, which at the beginning of the twenty-first century still occupies a leading position on a world scale.35 Its subsequent expansion was based on three pillars. First, it devoted a high percentage of the profits to research and development in order to become more competitive. Second, it applied an innovative marketing strategy by organizing training courses for technicians and businessmen from all over the world financed by the company. More than anything else, it committed itself to business expansion and establishing subsidiary companies, as well as purchasing other rival companies in order to create a corporate group. The Picañol Group comprised research laboratories, companies that produced half-manufactured goods and mechanical constructions, as well as a large network of commercial agencies with share participation of other companies. We should emphasize that the company was able to keep its production system adjusted to demand, which was a very usual thing among the first craft workshops in the first stage of the large-scale production in Ypres.36 Its development was extremely quick. At the end of 1940, the companies Jean Picañol Camps and Holding Luxembourgeois Metapic SA, managed by Joan and Jaume Picañol, respectively, were established in Bandol (France) and in Luxembourg, respectively. This commitment to innovation allowed the company to keep up its expansion. In 1951, at the ITMA exhibition held in Lille (France), it presented a new automatic shuttle-changing loom, the President model. To develop it, a new factory of 50,000 square meters had to be built some years later, to which the company would eventually add a modern foundry and a workshop for the moving-band production of looms. During the 1960s, its growth increased rapidly. In 1962, its most developed President loom already wove at a speed of 280 courses per minute. The company had about 1,650 employees and its production reached 25 units per day.37 In 1966, its importance led it to be quoted on the Brussels Stock Exchange. By 1970, 160,000 units of this model had been sold all over the world, the company had 2,000 employees and its annual turnover was getting close to 1,500 million Belgian francs. In the 1970s, it surprised eventual clients again with new prototypes of looms at several international textile machinery exhibitions: Paris, Milan and Greenville. There, it presented the models MDT, with an electronic picking shuttles system, the PGW, a thrust of weft in rapier loom, which worked at high speed, and the PAT, an air-jet-loom, respectively. Despite the success achieved, no new generation replaced the Picañol brothers, although the descendants of another founding partner continued managing the company until 2005. Since 1987, the last of them has been the latter’s grandson, Patrick Steverlynck. From the 1980s onwards, the company went on growing by introducing new and more modern looms, by taking over new companies from several countries and by establishing new factories all over the world. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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The innovation process was continuously maintained between the introduction in 1983 of the GTM Rapier loom, to which two years later a microprocessor to manage its functions was added, and that of the models Opti Max and GT Max, two air-jet looms that could weave at a speed of 850 courses per minute. In 1989, its foundry division broadened its activities and became an independent company (Proferro NV) and purchased the company Protronic (later on called PsiControl Mechatronics). In 1994, the company Suzhou Picanol Textile Machinery Works was established in China, the first step in the company’s penetration into that very large potential market. In 1997, GTP (Global Textil Partner) Accessories was established, which between 2000 and 2003 opened several factories in Europe (Belgium, Italy and Turkey), in America (the United States, Mexico and Brazil) and in Asia (China and Indonesia). In 1998 it took control of Günne Maschinenfabrik GMBH. Between 2001 and 2003 it purchased new companies: Steel Heddle Incorporated (the United States), Verbrugge NV and Melotte NV (Belgium), Te Strake Textile BV (the Netherlands), and Etablissemets Burcklé et Compagnie and Bernard Lhenry (France). Later on, it established new GTP workshops in Romania, as well as several trading or manufacturing companies in some Chinese cities (Suzhou, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai). Thus, in 2005 it became the world leader in its speciality: loom construction, the marketing of loom technology, an aftersales service network and sales agencies. Its world leadership was achieved when the company began to be managed by people unrelated to the founding families.38 Conclusions
Technological entrepreneurship in a non-innovating country can be better understood on the basis of exceptionality analysis, for it shows important coincidences. However, both cases were not exact, for we may observe different strategies in the search for initial capital and in the structuring of the marketing system. To raise capital for the first patent exploitation project, Casablancas searched for it in the close business environment to start the exploitation of his patent, but capital was scarce and unforthcoming. This unfortunate experience forced him to revise his strategy and look for an external client (the important French textile group Motte). The Picañol brothers did not try to look for partners in Spain and understood that taking a step abroad was unavoidable (the large Belgian linen corporate group Steverlynck). Furthermore, although both multinational corporations were located close to the most important centres of the world market in order to benefit from scale economies, their internationalization process was different. Hilaturas Casablancas SA and Casablancas SA began by marketing their patents and later on established the business organization and the trading network. Métiers Picañol SA got in touch with eventual buyers in order to introduce itself into the international market and later on founded the business corporation. The history of Ferran Casablancas and the Picañol brothers shows some interesting analogies. In a context where passive and defensive business History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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strategies were predominant (of an institutional and closed economy type, with limits to free competition), Casablancas and the Picañol brothers were swimming against the tide. In these cases, the exploitation of a new technology required active business strategies that defended the opening to new markets (free competition and a favourable institutional and financial environment). They did not fit in in the predominant economic, political, social and cultural context of Spain. They did not go abroad by chance; it was a necessary condition to make the projects of the economic exploitation of their innovations feasible. The Spanish economic growth model ended up consolidating the passive business strategies that were strengthening, and therefore inhibiting, the business initiatives that aimed to compete with other rivals. Another common element that we may find in both instances regards the fact that innovations were developed in the same industrial district, but with different profiles. Casablancas was an entrepreneur trained in the workshop practice who had to strengthen his technical knowledge with specialists from the textile district. The Picañol brothers had already graduated in higher technical studies, to which they added their experience in the family workshops. The great novelty is that they were able to combine the benefits of flexible production techniques, typical of the textile sector, with the systems of quantity production and the establishment of large multinational corporations, something inherent to the second industrial revolution. These two business groups were not satisfied with the exploitation of their initial innovations. The key to their success was making continuous innovation become a basic element to obtain competitive benefits and enlarge their markets. Appendix 1
Evolution in the number of patents and additions registered mostly in Spain and patents registered directly abroad or Spanish patents applied for by other countries by the Casablancas and Picañol companies. Period 1907–1911 1912–1916 1917–1921 1922–1926 1927–1931 1932–1936 Total
Spain 2 18 7 7 10 37 81
Casablancas* Abroad 2 14 5 2 8 25 56
Spain
Picañol** Abroad
1 5 21 14 41
13 41 54
*Viuda de Fernando Casablancas SL, Patentes Casablancas SA, Hilaturas Casablancas SA and Casablancas SA. ** Salvador Picañol Solà and Juan Picañol Camps. Sources: Base de datos de la Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas (oepm) 1901–1936; Base de datos internacional de patentes y marcas (esp@acenet) 1901–1936 (Espacenet,
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international patent database); Fundación Bosch y Cardellach, Archivo Casablancas, ‘Las patentes Casablancas y su proyección internacional, 1901–1936’ (typewritten text). Appendix 2
Evolution of the number of patents registered by the companies of the Casablancas and Picañol corporations with headquarters abroad. Period 1937–1946 1947–1956 1957–1966 1967–1976
Casablancas* 13 36 17 16
Picañol** 24 57 35 30
Period Casablancas Picañol 1977–1986 ╇1 ╇69 1987–1996 193 1997–2008 138 Total 83 546
*Casablancas High Draft Corporation, Co. Ltd. and Casablancas Ltd. (ManchesterLondon), United Kingdom. **Engranajes Picañol SA (Sabadell), Spain. Jean Picanol Camps (Bandol), France. Weefautomaten Picanol NV (Ypres), Belgium.Holding Luxembourgeois Metapic SA (Luxembourg), Luxembourg.GTP (Greenville) the United States.Te Strake Textile BV (Deurne), the Netherlands. Protronic (Ypres), Belgium. Bernard Lhenry (Le Creusot), France. Etablissemets Burcklé et Compagnie (Bourbach-le-Bas), France. Source: Base de datos internacional de patentes y marcas (esp@acenet) 1937–2008 (Espacenet, international patent database).
Notes
1. Regarding key factors in economic development and technological change, see: Mokyr (2005); Bernard and Jones (1996); Rosenberg (1994); Arthur (1989); Solow (1985); Cooper (1972); Gerschenkron (1962); Rostow (1959). Regarding the role of human capital and the level of development of the invention process, see: Reis (2004); Von Tunzelmann (2000). Regarding innovation in developing countries, see: Inkster (2007), Tuma (1987), Bruland (1989). Finally, regarding the production of textile machinery and the development process, see: Farnie (1991). 2. Compared with other more developed European countries, Spain has always been bottom in the number of patents applied per capita throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. See Ortiz-Villajos (2004: 185) and Sáiz (2002). 3. Sáiz (2005: 852–4). 4. The 1936–54 period comprises the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent period of autarky. 5. López and Valdaliso (1997). 6. Engineering schools were established rather late, there were few of them and were in little demand. Lozano (2007). 7. Nuñez (2005: 57). 8. Ortiz-Villajos (1999). 9. Spain occupied the tenth position in Europe with regard to textile consumption per capita in 1925–9. Nadal (1985: 96). 10. Nadal (1991: 62). 11. Saxonhouse and Wright (2000: 30). 12. Nadal (ed.) (2003), table II.4.1.11. 13. Nadal and Maluquer de Motes (1985); Soler (1997). 14. With regard to the machines operating in the Spanish cotton industry in 1952, most were obsolete and had been constructed before the Spanish Civil War. Only 21.9 per cent of the ring spinning frames and 10.2 per cent of the power looms had been rigged after 1941. On the contrary, most machines had been rigged more than 30 years before that (57.2 per cent of the non-automatic looms had been rigged before 1920). Instituto Nacional de Estadística (1954: 21 and 28).
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15. Martín Aceña (1984). 16. Nadal (1975). 17. Deu and Llonch (2008: 21). 18. Becattini et al. (2009). 19. Archivo Histórico de Sabadell (AHS), Matrícula de la Contribución Industrial y de Comercio, 1875–1935. 20. Deu (1995); Deu (2000). 21. España comercial, año (1914) 3, nr 2, 15-2-1914, p. 6–10; Industria e Invenciones, año (1913) 30, 14, 4-10-1913, pp. 137–8; El Eco de la Industria, año (1913) 16, 22, 30-10-1913, p. 350–2; Cataluña Textil, vol. 7, monographic supplement of n 86, November 1913, and vol. 8, nr 88, January 1914, p. 1–3; and Le Moderne Industrie Tessili. Revista Italo-Espagnola-Portoghese dedicata a l’America Latina, año (1914) 2, 31-03-1914. Among foreign publications we should highlight the British ones: Manchester Guardian, The Textil Recorder and Textile Mercury, as well as the financial supplement of The Times; the French L’Industrie Textile and L’Avenir Textile; the Italian Bolletino della Cotoniera; the German Leipziger Monatschrift für Textil Industrie and Bayerische Industrie und Handelszeitug; and the American Textile Word and Wool and Cotton Reporter; all of them published the news of the new invention in their issues of October or November that same year. 22. This debate has had many historiographical ramifications, for the persistence of mulespinning frames in the British textile industry is one of the causes of technological backwardness compared with Britain. Saxonhouse and Wright (1984: 519). 23. Anuario Financiero y de Sociedades Anónimas de España (1924). 24. Fundació Bosch i Cardellach, Archivo Casablancas, ‘Escritura del contrato de cesión de patentes a Louis Motte Van de Berghe’. 25. Farell (1961). 26. Cataluña Textil (1935: 8–9). 27. Cámara Oficial de Comercio e Industria de Sabadell (1942). 28. Fundació Bosch i Cardellach, Archivo Casablancas, 2 letters of Josep Noguera addressed to the textile engineer from Sabadell, Joan Farell Domingo, dated 12-3-1974 and 18-4-1974; ‘Red de agencias comerciales de Casablancas Ltd.’, 1960 and 1970. 29. AHS, ‘Matrícula de la Contribución Industrial y de Comercio, 1915–1935’, ‘Estadística del paro forzoso, 1921, 1924 y 1927’, ‘Padrón de vecinos, 1924’ and ‘Censos electorales, 1924–1936’. 30. Cámara Oficial de Industria de Barcelona (1934) and Instituto Industrial de Tarrasa (1935). 31. Database of the Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas, 1928–1935. 32. Espacenet, international database of patents. 33. This company was called Vansteenkiste Company; it was founded in 1928 and underwent huge difficulties during the Great Depression. 34. Simó (1984: 269–71). 35. Weefautomaten Picañol Naamloze Vennootschap (1979). 36. Rothwell (1976). 37. Destino (1962). 38. Picanol, History (2006).
Bibliography Anuario Financiero y de Sociedades Anónimas de España (1924). Madrid: Sopec. Arthur, W. Brian (1989), ‘Competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical events’. The Economic Journal, 99, 394. 116–31. Becattini, Giacomo and Marco Bellandi and L. De Propis (eds) (2009), A Handbook of Industrial Districts. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Bernard, Andrew B. and Charles I. Jones (1996), ‘Technology and convergence’. The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, 106 (437), 1037–44. Bruland, Kristine (1989), British Technology and European Industrialization: The Norwegian Textile Industry in the Mid-nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Cámara Oficial de Comercio e Industria de Sabadell (1942), Memoria correspondiente a 1939–1941. Sabadell. Cámara Oficial de Industria de Barcelona (1934), Anuario Industrial de Cataluña. Barcelona: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra. Chandler, Alfred D. (1991), ‘La lógica permanente del éxito industrial’. Harvard Deusto Business Review, 45, 117–29. Cooper, Charles (1972), ‘Science, technology and production in the underdeveloped countries: An introduction’. Journal of Development Studies, 9, 1, 1–18. Deu, E. (1995), `Ferran Casablancas Planell. La tecnologia tèxtil innovadora’, in J. M. Camarasa and A. Roca, A. (eds), Ciència i tècnica als Països Catalans. Una aproximació biogràfica. Barcelona: Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca. Deu, E. (2000), ‘Les patents Casablancas: una innovació tèxtil d’abast internacional’, in J. Maluquer de Motes (ed.), Tècnics i tecnologia en el desenvolupament de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona, Enciclopèdia Catalana. Deu, Esteve and Montserrat Llonch (2008), ‘La maquinaria textil en Cataluña: de la total dependencia exterior a la reducción de importaciones, 1870–1959’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 38, 17–49. Farell Domingo, J. (1961), ‘Ferran Casablancas. Notes biogràfiques’. Alba, 302–6. Farnie, D. A. (1991), ‘The textile Machine-making industry and the world market, 1870–1960’, in M. B. Rose (ed.), International Competition and Strategic Response in the Textile Industry since 1870. London, Frank Cass, pp. 150–70. Gerschenkron, Alexander (1962), Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Instituto Industrial de Tarrasa (1935), Anuario de industrias textiles sus derivadas y auxiliares. Barcelona: La Estampa. Instituto Nacional de Estadística (1954), Estadística de la industria textil. Madrid: INE. Inkster, Ian (2007), ‘Technology in world history. Cultures of constraint and innovation, emulation and technology transfers’. Comparative Technology Transfer and Society, 5, 2, 108–27. López, Santiago and Jesús M Valdaliso (eds) (1997), Que inventen ellos?: tecnología, empresa y cambio económico en la España contemporánea. Madrid: Alianza. Lozano, Celia (2007), Ideología, política y realidad económica en la formación profesional industrial española (1857–1936). Lleida: Fundación Ernest Lluch and Editorial Milenio. Maluquer de Motes, Jordi (ed.) (2000), Tècnics i tecnologia en el desenvolupament de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana. Martín Aceña, P. (1984), La política monetaria en España, 1919–1935. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales. Mokyr, Joel (2005), ‘Long-term economic growth and the history of technology’, in Philippe Aghion and Steven N.Durlauf (eds), Handbook of Economic Growth. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 1113–80. Nadal, Jordi (1975), El fracaso de la revolución industrial en España, 1814–1913. Barcelona: Ariel. Nadal, Jordi (1985), ‘Un siglo de industrialización de España, 1833–1930’, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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in Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, (ed.), La Modernización económica de España: 1830–1930. Madrid, Alianza, 1985, pp. 89–101. Nadal, Jordi (1991), ‘El cotó, el rei’, in J. Nadal, J. Maluquer de Motes, C. Sudrià and F. Cabana, F. (eds), Història econòmica de la Catalunya contemporània. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, vol. 3, pp. 13–85. Nadal, Jordi (ed.) (2003), Atlas de la industrialización española. Barcelona: Crítica and Fundación BBVA. Nadal, Jordi and Jordi Maluquer de Motes (1985), Catalunya, la fàbrica d’Espanya: un segle d’industrialització catalana: 1833–1936. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Nuñez, Clara Eugenia (2005), ‘Educación’, in A. Carreras and X. Tafunell (eds), Estadísticas Históricas de España. Bilbao: Fundación BBVA, vol. I, pp. 155–244. Ortiz-Villajos, José M. (2004), ‘Spain’s low technological level: an explanation’, in Jonas Ljungberg and Jan-Pieter Smits, Technology and Human Capital in Historical Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 182–204. Ortiz-Villajos, José M. (1999), Tecnología y desarrollo económico en la historia contemporánea: estudio de las patentes registradas en España entre 1882 y 1935. Madrid: Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas, 1999. ‘Picañol history 1936–2006. 70 years of excellence’. Picañol News, 2006. Reis, Jaime (2004), ‘Human capital and industrialization: the case of a latecomer –Portugal, 1890’, in Jonas Ljungberg and Jan-Pieter Smits, Technology and Human Capital in Historical Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 22–48. Rosenberg, Nathan (1994), Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rostow, W. W. (1959), ‘The stages of economic growth’. Economic History Review, 12, 1, 1–16. Rothwell, Roy (1976), ‘Picañol Weefautomaten: a case study of a successful textile machinery builder’. Textile Institute and Industry, 14, 103–6. Sáiz, José Patricio (2002), ‘Los orígenes de la dependencia tecnológica española: evidencias en el sistema de patentes, 1759–1900’. Economía Industrial, 343, 2002, 83–95. Sáiz, Patricio (2005), ‘Investigación y desarrollo: patentes’, in A. Carreras and X. Tafunell (eds), Estadísticas Históricas de España. Bilbao; Fundación BBV, vol. II, pp. 835–72. Saxonhouse, Gary and Gavin Wright (2000), ‘Technological evolution in cotton spinning, 1878–1933’, in Economic Department Working Paper Series, Stanford Available at: http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/programs(SST_ Seminars/Jeremy.pdf), p. 30. Saxonhouse, Gary and Gavin Wright (1984), ‘New evidence on the stubborn English mule and the cotton industry, 1878–1920’. The Economic History Review, 37, 4, 507–19. Simó Bach, R. (1984), 100 sabadellencs en els nostres carrers. Sabadell: Ausa, pp. 269–71. Soler, Raimon (1997), ‘Réditos algodoneros: las cuentas de la fábrica de History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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“la Rambla” (1840–1913): revisión y ampliación’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 12, 205–32. Solow, Robert M. (1985), ‘Economic history and economics’. The American Economic Review, 75, 2, 328–31. Tuma, E. H. (1987), ‘Technology transfer and economic development: lessons of history’. The Journal of Developing Areas, 21, 403–21. Von Tunzelmann, G. N. (2000), ‘Technological generation, technological use and economic growth’. European Review of Economic History, 4, 121–46 Weefautomaten Picañol Naamloze Vennootschap, 1979, Ieper.
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Foreign Machines and National Workshops: Spanish Papermaking Engineering (1800–1936)* M i qu e l Gu t i é r r e z - P o c h University of Barcelona
Introduction
Technology transfer is one of the most important channels through which less developed countries can increase their productivity and thus raise their levels of development. However, each country has its own institutional framework, and the mechanisms of technology adoption and its effects on economic growth will vary from place to place. The arrival of new technology frequently brings with it a specialized workforce – what Kristine Bruland calls the ‘packages’ of technology1 – and triggers a learning process that can help countries reduce their dependence on foreign suppliers. The mechanisms of technology transfer range widely: industrial espionage, publications in trade journals, emigration of skilled labour, visits abroad, or purchase.2 At different times and in different settings one of these may predominate. However, there is no automatic guarantee that technology transfer will bring the desired results. As important for the success or the failure of the process as the technology itself is the atmosphere prevailing at the time in the receiving country; in this regard, the institutional framework and the skill level of the workforce are vital factors. As Maxine Berg and Kristine Bruland state, ‘Institutions and cultural frameworks set the terms for the diffusion of technologies across regional and national boundaries’.3 The professional qualifications of the workforce depend on the structure and the economic reality of the country receiving the new technology. The presence of strong activity in a particular sector will foster the technological spillovers recorded in the bibliography on industrial districts or the epidemic models present in the history of technology. The study of technology transfer during the Industrial Revolution and the Second Technological Revolution has been a constant theme in the historiography of technology and economic history. Its study takes on special relevance in a country like Spain, where the incorporation of foreign technology was
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essential in order to set the first steps of industrialization in motion, and where the institutional framework was far from being conducive to technological development. Technological dependence began to fall towards the end of the nineteenth century, but it persisted well into the 1930s. For Spain the mechanisms of transfer in certain sectors such as textiles, iron and steel, shoemaking and so on have already been studied in some depth, but until recently practically nothing was known about the development of the paper sector.4 This article is divided into four parts. The first presents a general analysis of paper engineering from an international perspective. The second explores the process of the mechanization of the Spanish paper sector until 1880, a date that marked the beginning of a period of intense change. The third traces the process of technology transfer between 1880 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Finally, there are some concluding remarks. Paper Machine Manufacturers: An International Analysis
The First Steps: The Pioneers in the Production of Papermaking Machinery Papermaking developed fast during the second half of the eighteenth century, in response to the growing awareness among manufacturers of the limitations of traditional processes of handmade production, which could only make one sheet at a time. The result was the invention of a continuous production procedure in 1798, in France, which was later developed further in Britain. In 1804 the first machine of this kind, named the Fourdrinier after the family that financed it, was put to commercial use. From that time onwards an active metal-mechanical sector developed producing this kind of machinery, first in Britain and later elsewhere. Britain was the first reference point for the international market in papermaking machinery. The machines were made by the pioneer workshops of Bryan Donkin and Company in Bermondsey, and Geo. and Wm. Bertram in Edinburgh. With the emigration of British technical staff and the granting of manufacturing licences, new construction centres emerged and by the early 1840s the French workshops were already offering serious competition to the British. There were three main bases in France: Paris (Chapelle, H. Sanford et Varrall5), Mulhouse (Biesler frères and Dixon & Koechlin) and Angoulême and the surroundings (L’Huillier-Jouffray; Alfred Motteau). In Belgium, John Cockerill’s firm initially led the way, but the firm that came to dominate the papermaking machinery sector was Dautrebande et Thiry, created in 1855. In Switzerland, Escher Wyss, which initially manufactured textile machinery, began to produce continuous machines under licence from Donkin. German companies also entered the market, especially Johann Widmann’s firm, although none established themselves abroad. In the United States, production was led by Pusey & Jones and Merrill & Houston. The panorama began to change in the middle of nineteenth century, especially after 1870 when German and Swiss machinery began to predominate, followed slightly later in some markets by US machines. A decisive factor
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in the rapid advance of the German machine industry was the invention of wood-grinding machines to make pulp. Heinrich Voelter of Heidenheim, Württemberg capitalized on earlier prototypes to make a fully operational machine which was displayed at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867 and met with great success: in that year between 80 and 100 grinders were in operation, but by 1875 the figure had risen to 400. To meet the demand, Voelter opened accredited workshops in Munich, Heidenheim, Vienna, Paris, Edinburgh, Trollhoettan (Sweden) and Abo (Finland). As the markets expanded, and with the expiry of Voelter’s patent rights, other centres emerged, and Aristide Bergès in Grenoble and Bell in the Swiss town of Kriens set up workshops. German machines ones also dominated, because of their strength, reliability and low prices.6 The main German workshop was run by J. M. Voith, also in Heidenheim, which produced its first machine in 1881. Voith had previously made auxiliary machinery for pulp making and later for turbines. Other German workshops included Maschinenbauanstalt Golzern, H. Füllner, Gustav Toelle, Karl Krause, which above all made machinery for paper cutting and for the graphic arts, and Bruderhaus. In Switzerland, Escher Wyss & Co. and Theodore Bell remained the most important operators. The US paper machine industry still had its main markets in its own country and in Canada, although in the last decade of the nineteenth century it began to export its machines. Beloit Iron Works, which leased the old Merrill & Houston property, was created in 1885, and produced its first complete machine in 1887. In the Scandinavian countries as well an active paper machine industry developed. In contrast, the workshops in Britain, Belgium and France lost ground between 1880 and 1930. The leading British firms were Bentley and Jackson Ltd., Walmsley’s, Bertram’s Limited (the business name adopted in 1888 by Geo. & Wm. Bertram) and James Bertram & Son Ltd, the first two based in Bury and the last two in Edinburgh. These factories mainly supplied the domestic market, although before the First World War they exported some of their production overseas. Most of the workshops that pioneered the production of the Fourdrinier machine were actually primarily involved in other sectors. For example, the Swiss firm Escher Wyss and Voith’s company concentrated on turbine manufacture, the Mulhouse firms specialized in textile machinery, and some German firms in the graphic arts. The Development of the Spanish Paper Machinery Market
The Introduction of Foreign Machines The modernization of Spanish industry was slow and late in coming. According to Jordi Nadal, ‘nineteenth-century Spain [...] was almost entirely dependent on European technology’.7 The paper sector was no exception. In a parliamentary debate in 1862 it was said that ‘in our country these machines are not made, nor the felts and machine wire associated with them’.8 The institutional framework, added to the political instability, was a considerable obstacle to the diffusion of continuous paper machines in Spain. Its
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privilege of introduction was issued on 5 July 1836 and was applied for at the same time by Mariano de la Paz García and Juan Sans. The idea was ‘to import from England a machine to make paper end’. The issue of the privilege meant that the installation of new machines was prohibited for the next five years. However, the machine was not imported immediately; Sans obtained an extension on 12 April 1838. It is not known how Tomás Jordán, a leading printer and paper wholesaler in Madrid, acquired the privilege, but his machine began production in 1839 and was still the only continuous machine in Spain in April 1841. The expiry of the privilege and the end of the Carlist War in 1840 led to a modest expansion of continuous production –15 machines were in operation by 1845, 20 by 1856 and 50 by 1879 – but, compared with other countries in Europe, the growth was unspectacular. Until 1880, the continuous machine was adopted mainly in three areas of Spain: Madrid and its surroundings, the province of Girona, and Tolosa, in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa. It was the Basque factories that were the most active, followed by the Catalans; both exploited the external revenue arising in their agglomerations which facilitated technological spill-overs. In inland Spain, however, the practical absence of an industrial tradition was a major obstacle to the consolidation of the papermaking industry, and the factories in and around Madrid found it particularly hard to expand. The machines were imported from Britain, Belgium and above all from France, principally from Paris and Angoulême. Chapelle, Sanford et Varrall and Alfred Motteau were the suppliers.9 The use of Belgian machines increased after 1875.10 The presence of British machines was marginal; most of the small number in operation in Spain came from the workshop of Bryan Donkin & Co. Even accessories such as felts and machine wire had to be imported, again mainly from France. In most cases the machines were installed by French experts. In fact many of the French papermakers settled in Spain and set up long-lasting industrial dynasties such as Limousin, Vignau, Larion and Duras in the Basque Country and Grelon in Catalonia. Given the deficiencies of technical training in Spain, the presence of foreign specialists was vital for teaching the Spanish skilled workforce: it was a clear example of learning by doing.11 The contribution of person-embodied skills was fundamental to the successful implementation of the imported technology. The French were also strongly represented among the owners of many of the pioneering firms. In La Esperanza, the factory in Tolosa run by the firm Brunet, Guardamino, Tantonat y Cia, most of the partners were French or had strong personal connections with Bordeaux and Bayonne, and their technological reference points were the factories of Angoulême. The same was true of the Tolosa district’s second largest factory, Echazarreta, Larion and Aristi, which had many shareholders from Bayonne. The hegemony of French machinery was due to the pre-existence of strongly consolidated circuits of technology transfer. In the case of the papermaking industry, even before the advent of the continuous machine, this flow of technology was already recorded at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth,11 up until the 1820s.12 There is evidence of the presence of technology from France (principally from Alsace) and from History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Belgium in the Catalan textile sector,13 and in the steam engines installed in Spain, in the railways and in mines. With the strong presence of French capital in railway and mining companies, it seems reasonable to speak of the emergence of a technological space in Southern Europe, with France as its main guiding force. Though foreigners predominated, some Spanish engineers took part in the design of the factories. José Canalejas Casas, an industrial engineer trained in Liège, participated in the creation of several paper factories in Spain in the late 1850s. Similarly, a number of traditional papermakers (i.e. those who produced paper manually) were involved in the process of mechanization, such as Santiago Grimaud at the Gárgoles factory in Guadalajara, since some of the traditional operations were similar to the ones used in the new mechanized process. Pulp production was only a minor business in Spain and so few grinders were imported. In 1880 there were only two pulp factories: Felip Flores in Sarrià de Ter (Girona) and Vda. Ribed e Hijos in Villava (Navarre). Flores, who had already had an interest in the continuous paper factories in Girona, had seen the Voelter grinder at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867, and on the same trip he visited pulp factories near Grenoble and bought some samples for testing. On his return to Girona he built the machine at the workshop of Porredon, Comas y Cia. On 17 January 1870 Flores registered a patent for a ‘machine and procedures for grinding wood mechanically reducing it to pulp for the production of paper’. The factory opened on 1 April 1870. The factory in Navarre was inaugurated in 1872, and also worked together with one of the pioneering factories in continuous production, in Villava. The factory’s grinder was made in the Voelter workshop in Munich and bore the registration number 72; it was the ‘first to have been sold in Spain’.15 Previously, Ribed had travelled to Germany to see the machinery in action. The Mechanisms of Transference The continuous machine and the rest of the papermaking machinery reached Spain through a variety of formal and informal channels. Above, we mentioned the importance of the arrival of specialist workers who brought technical know-how into the country. Journeys abroad also provided an important impetus to technology transfer. The visits to the national or universal exhibitions were especially productive. For example, José Canalejas, whom we mentioned above, visited the Universal Exhibition of London in 1862 and wrote a number of reports describing what he had seen. Other Spanish observers also visited the fair, and among the exhibits that caught their eye were the machines made by Bryan Donkin and Bertram. But the best example of the impact of the universal exhibitions was Felipe Flores’s visit to Paris in 1867, where he saw the Voelter wood-grinding machine for the first time.16 Few Spanish papermakers actually attended these events, and those who did were manual producers, but most of the reports published by the Spanish visitors carried descriptions of the technical innovations on display. National exhibitions, especially the ones held in France, were also particularly History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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enlightening, and as early as the 1820s they displayed the first breakthroughs in continuous paper production. Manuel G. Barzallana’s articles on the Paris exhibition of 1844 focused especially on the Chapelle machines. In 1845, La Aurora, a factory in Girona, was reported to have ‘contracted a machine identical to the ones seen this summer in the public exhibition of the products of French industry in Paris’.17 In Spain, as well, national exhibitions helped to spread familiarity with the new technology. In the 1841 exhibition only the factories of Candelario (Salamanca), Burgos and Manzanares El Real (Madrid) took part, but at the 1845 exhibition they were joined by Tolosa, Villarluengo (Teruel), Gárgoles de Arriba (Guadalajara) and Villalgordo de Júcar (Albacete). Regional exhibitions, such as the ones held in Barcelona in 1860 and 1871 and in Zaragoza in 1868, played their part in spreading the new technology. There was also a copycat effect, with the opening of the factories La Esperanza in Tolosa and La Gerundense in Girona. In some cases, the designers of one project went on to launch another, and in other cases the pioneers served as examples for other entrepreneurs. One of the founders of the factory of Viuda de Ribed e Hijos in Villava, which opened in 1846, was Juan Conte Grand Champ, who later set up the factory in Tolosa. Similarly, Felipe Flores and Felix Pagès founded La Gerundense in August 1843, and later helped to set up Girona’s second factory – La Aurora, which began operations in March 1845. In fact, these two projects laid the foundations for the development of Spain’s most important papermaking centres. Santiago Gosálvez, who had been a partner in Tomás Jordán’s pioneering factory, had set up another factory in Villalgordo de Júcar in 1841. The specialist press also played an important part in technology transfer, publishing a wealth of articles on continuous paper production. The lack of a Spanish trade journal was offset by the circulation of foreign journals such as the Moniteur de la Papeterie Française and technical manuals like Albert Prouteaux’s Guide pratique de la fabrication du papier et du carton which made their way into the libraries of Spanish papermakers. The general technical press also helped to fill the knowledge gap with original articles and translations of foreign papermaking publications. Examples were El Semanario de la Industria (1846-1848), La Gaceta Industrial (whose director, José Alcover, published articles on the Voelter grinder and the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1867), El Porvenir de la Industria,18 Crónica de la Industria and the Boletín de la Asociación Central de Ingenieros Industriales (published in 1880).19 In the mid-1870s, José Alcover published a booklet entitled El papel y sus aplicaciones in his Gaceta Industrial. Commission agents also did a great deal to help the spread of continuous papermaking machinery. One of the leading French agents was Louis Piette, known as the author of the Manuel du contremaître et du chef d’atelier de papeterie and as the editor of the Journal des Fabricants de Papier. Piette placed an advertisement in the Spanish press in 1860 announcing that he would answer ‘questions regarding the production of paper and the construction of papermaking factories. Sales of papermaking machines at moderate prices’. The network of commission agents set up in Spain had two main centres, Barcelona and Madrid. The Barcelona network was closely linked to the supply of textile History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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machinery. Juan Pedro José Canal, a Frenchman who settled in Barcelona, specialized in wool machinery (he lived for some time in Sabadell, one of Spain’s leading wool centres) and in 1842 was advertising ‘machines made with the most recent accredited system for the production of continuous paper, highly advantageous due to their economy and perfection’.20 In Barcelona there was also a representative of Oller Chatard y Cia, a machinery agent of Catalan origin who had set up in Paris in 1837 after the collapse of the family wool firm. Oller had business contacts in the early 1840s with La España Industrial, an important cotton factory in Barcelona. Among the machinery he advertised we find equipment for the ‘production of continuous paper’. The other centre where the agents assembled was Madrid. Among the intermediaries in operation in the mid-nineteenth century was Estanislao Malingre, an industrial engineer who specialized in ‘English, French and Belgian agricultural machines’ and ‘French flour stones’, and also advertised continuous papermaking machines. Another leading firm was Miguel Cheslet y Hermano, who represented a number of French firms selling hydraulic pumps and steam engines in the Spanish capital and who mediated in the supply of new machinery to the factory of Morata de Tajuña in Madrid towards the end of the 1870s. The engineering firm Merly, Serra y Sivilla had offices in Barcelona and Madrid and distributed French trade publications. One of the paper machinery makers they represented was Debié, a leading producer of hollander beaters. The National Workshops: A Vital Element The arrival of the new machinery in Spain meant that a new technical support system was needed to provide maintenance. The factories themselves and their first foreign specialists supplied the training, even though the factories concentrated for the most part on other kinds of industrial equipment – agricultural machinery, turbines, flour-making machinery and so on – and papermaking engineering was not their main concern. In Tolosa small maintenance workshops like Taffett and Guibert y Cia sprung up and with time became firmly established.22 The early development of the Girona factories appears to have owed a great deal to the Barcelona workshops, such as the one run by Valentín Esparo, a specialist in textile machinery.23 In 1857, the Girona workshop Planas, Junoy, Barne y Cia24 began to produce turbines and also ‘cylinders and calenders for the production of paper, and large calenders for cardboard’.25 In 1871 the workshop advertised its continuous machine, claiming that it was the ‘first firm in Spain to have built it’. The other important Girona workshop was owned by Porredon, Comas y Cia. Other papermaking centres also saw the emergence of workshops, many of which were set up by foreigners, especially the French. The Cardhaillac y Aldea workshop in Valladolid, created in 1842, helped to establish a continuous paper factory in the city, named La Magdalena. One of its founders, Nicolas Cardhaillac, was a member of a family involved in papermaking in Toulouse. This workshop built up a large market at a time when Castilian flour production was beginning to expand.26 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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One of the workshops in Madrid was set up by William Sanford, a British mechanic who was a partner at the factory in Rascafria, which opened in 1842.27 In 1865 he was still advertising as (among many other things) a manufacturer of ‘Machines of all kinds for the production of paper’. Another machinery manufacturer involved in the paper sector in the mid-nineteenth century was Guillermo Duthu, who also owned a small factory that made brown paper. At La Maquinista Aragonesa SA, created in Zaragoza in 1853, one of the partners was Villarroya, Castellano y Cia., a company with an interest in continuous paper production. This firm had links with a group of French engineers (Antonio Averly, Julio Goybet Montgolfier and Agustin Montgolfier),28 who helped to launch a number of continuous paper factories. Some years later, in 1863, Antonio Averly set up his own firm,29 a workshop which was initially involved in the paper sector. In 1875 Averly founded the firm Juan Mercier y Cia, in partnership with another French mechanic, Juan Mercier. The metal firm Fossey y Cia. opened in 1853 when the British engineer Edward Fossey set up in Lasarte, near San Sebastián in the Basque Country, to work in iron and bronze casting and in the construction of machinery. As well as turbines, he made auxiliary machinery for the paper sector.30 La Industriosa de Vigo, owned by Antonio Sanjurjo, specialized in the production of motors for fishing vessels. The firm entered the papermaking sector in La Cristina, where Sanjurjo worked as a technical expert before becoming the owner in the 1870s. Another machinery producer of some importance was the Fundición Primitiva Valenciana based in Valencia, which expanded its activities in the paper sector in the 1870s. Foreign Machines and Technology and Spanish Technical Staff
At the end of the nineteenth century the Spanish papermaking industry had a number of factories with considerable productive capacity. The presence of these factories in a small though growing market like Spain led to problems of overproduction which were overcome by a merger in 1901. The creation of La Papelera Española meant that the country now had a producer with a capacity to rival that of its great European counterparts. Papermaking gathered momentum in the first third of the twentieth century, although the industry continued to lag behind in inland Spain; Basque and Catalan firms continued to dominate, joined by Valencian businesses from 1880 onwards. The continuous paper sector in Spain depended on imported machinery, especially in the case of the large factories. Most of the technical developments made in Spain were in auxiliary machinery such as Hollanders and refining engines. An estimation made in 1943 suggested that around three quarters of machines were from abroad.31 The Basque factories were heavily dependent on imports, the Catalan and Valencian factories slightly less so. The Dominance of German and Swiss Machines As the technical complexity of the papermaking process grew from 1880 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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onwards, practically all the new machinery was imported from abroad, although the custom tariffs classification of papermaking (and other) machines makes it difficult to establish their origins conclusively. In 1909 it was declared that ‘paper mill machinery was imported chiefly from Switzerland, Germany, France and the United Kingdom’.32 The dominance of the French was on the wane, and they now concentrated on auxiliary machinery. In the early twentieth century there is no evidence of any French machinery, although some British machines were still being installed (a Bentley & Jackson in a factory in Aragon and a Bertram Limited in the La Vanguardia factory in Barcelona in 1913). German papermaking engineering had taken over towards the end of the nineteenth century, in response to the new demands of a sector that needed machines with greater capacity. J. M. Voith was one of the leading suppliers: between 1911 and 1935, the firm produced 13 machines for Spain, eight of them for La Papelera Española (in 1911, 1913, 1922, three in 1929, 1930 and 1935). Other German firms with a presence in the Spanish market were C. Joachim & Sohn and H. Füllner. Swiss machines also began to establish themselves, with Escher Wyss making machines for the Torras factory in Catalonia and for the Basque factory in Cadagua. This trend became more marked at the start of the twentieth century; in fact, the Swiss supplied some of the most modern factories such as La Papelera Española in El Prat de Llobregat (Barcelona), which had a machine made by Theodore Bell & Cº. Belgian machines were still found at the beginning of the new century. At this time US technology was beginning to make its mark, especially in refining systems and accessories for the continuous machine. The machinery for the small paper pulp production sector was also German and Swiss in origin. The Mechanisms of Transfer The biggest factories hired their machinery directly after visits to the construction workshops. Nicolas Mª de Urgoiti, director of La Papelera del Cadagua, brought in a series of machines after a trip to Germany and other European countries.33 This direct contact with the suppliers of technology intensified at the start of the twentieth century. Tomás Costa, engineer at the Barcelona factory of the newspaper La Vanguardia, visited paper factories and construction workshops in Germany in 1924 and bought a Voith machine in order to modernize production. Occasionally, these international contacts were made via foreign commission agents. However, the main route of acquisition was through the growing network of representatives. Spain’s industrial development meant that the leading papermaking engineering companies had permanent, active representations in the country due mainly to their other specializations. In particular, electrification pushed the country’s industrial modernization forward.34 Catalan papermakers continued to exploit the structures used to distribute textile machinery. The commission agent Isidore Dietlin (Sucesor de John M. Summer y Cia) represented textile machinery companies at the beginning of the twentieth century, among them Platt Brothers & Co. Ltd, from Oldham. He advertised ‘Unsurpassable machinery for the production of paper’ made History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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by John M. Summer in Manchester, near Britain’s largest centre of papermaking machinery production, in Bury. The German firm J. M. Voith, also a producer of turbines, had a representative in Spain in the early twentieth century. In 1901, the company was represented by its own ‘Engineer for Spain, D. R. Zerbone’. In 1903, Voith appointed Ahlemeyer, a construction and electromechanical firm with offices in Bilbao and Madrid which already represented major electrical material companies. Around 1910 the engineer Ricardo Zaragoza, based in Barcelona, became representative, followed ten years later by the Bilbao firm Sotomayor y Compañia, and then in the mid- to late 1920s by Emilio Ziegler’s office in Madrid. Ziegler had trained as an engineer and was commissioned by Voith to carry out several projects in Spain. The case of the two main Swiss producers of papermaking machinery, Escher Wyss and Bell Maschinenfabrik – both large-scale turbine manufacturers – is quite similar: Escher Wyss was represented in Spain by the industrial engineer F. Vives Pons, who opened his business in 1908 and had offices in Barcelona, Madrid and later in Bilbao. This representation continued into the 1920s. The Swiss firm Bell had a travelling salesman in Spain as early as 1881, and at the beginning of the twentieth century it was represented by the engineer Remigio de Eguren, who specialized in electrical material firms. Eguren’s company was based in Bilbao and in the mid-1930s had branches in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, La Coruña and Cartagena. Other German firms with a permanent presence in Spain were Karl Krause, a producer of paper cutting machines, represented by Sucesor de J. de Neufville in Barcelona, and H. Füllner, manufacturer of continuous machines, represented in the early twentieth century by Richard Gans. In both cases, the Spanish representations were type foundries of German origin, the first in Barcelona and the second in Madrid. Belgian manufacturers also had permanent representations in Spain. Floro Izaguirre was Thiry’s representative in Tolosa in 1912. In 1933, the Agencia Imex was founded in Tolosa, marketing papermaking machinery from Scandinavia. The Tolosa firm shared offices with The Northern Pulp Co. SA, which imported pulp from Scandinavia. Similarly, Svenska Alliance Co. A-B., with offices in Barcelona, combined pulp and paper production with the manufacture of machinery. Visits to universal exhibitions were still important in technology transfer, although they were beginning to be superseded by the channels just described. The Catalan engineer Josep Duran Ventosa made a profitable trip to the Universal Exhibition in Antwerp in 1885; Duran was especially interested in the leading paper producer, De Naeyer & Co. The Universal Exhibition of 1900 was also covered in great depth by the trade publications. The Spanish Workshops: A Subsidiary Role, but An Important One At the end of the nineteenth century the domestic supply of machinery increased notably, especially auxiliary machinery. The production of continuous machines remained negligible, but there were a great many workshops that carried out essential maintenance work, even though, generally History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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speaking, papermaking machines were a sideline for Spanish workshops which concentrated mainly on the production of turbines, steam engines, and agricultural machinery. The largest specialized centre was Tolosa, where papermaking engineering was central to the establishment of a dynamic industrial area. The two most important workshops were Hijos de Telleria (from the mid-nineteenth century onwards) and Félix Yarza (founded in 1884). Yarza’s workshop later became Talleres de Tolosa, SA, a firm set up in 1918 and owned by papermakers: its Board of Directors comprised members of the Tolosa paper oligarchy and even executives from La Papelera Española. In 1915 Taller Gorostidi was created, which also specialized in papermaking machinery. In 1928 Pedro Pasabán, who had worked in the mechanical workshop of La Papelera Española, founded his own workshop in Tolosa that made auxiliary machinery for the paper sector. In fact this firm set up a workshop of its own next to one of its factories and the staff dealt with all the renovation work needed during the company’s early years, in an attempt to make the firm technologically selfdependent. In May 1911 the renovation plan had been completed and the workshop was closed. Another dynamic papermaking area was Alcoy, in the province of Alicante.35 At the start of the twentieth century the workshops of Jorge Serra and Tomás Aznar Hermanos were the most important in the town, and in the 1930s Vulcano Alcoyano-Rodes Hnos and Hijos de Francisco Blanes, SL, were already firmly established. The Alcoy firms mainly used small capacity machines, specializing in paper for rolling cigarettes or wrapping oranges. The workshops also made machinery for wine and oil production and for the textiles industry. In Valencia, Francisco Climent and his workshop La Maquinista Valenciana, created in 1880, worked extensively inside the paper sector. Climent himself was a partner of a papermaking firm. Under Valero Cases, La Primitiva Valenciana carried on Climent’s work, producing Hollanders, presses, and even continuous machines. In Catalonia there were three types of workshops: the ones located in Barcelona, the ones in areas with a tradition of manual paper production making and the ones in the papermaking area of Girona. Among the Barcelona workshops the most important was Lerme, which had been in operation since the mid-nineteenth century and which in the early twentieth century was registered under the name of Marcelino Vilarasau. This workshop, which specialized in hydro-extractors, developed and perfected the Italian patent for the picardo, a machine which eliminated the need for skilled vat workers and was adopted in areas with a tradition of manual paper production. This Barcelona workshop even exported this machine to different Latin American countries. At the same time, the Puig y Negre workshop produced machinery of all kinds and several highly specialized machines for the paper sector. Joan Trabal Casanella, who had trained in the workshops of the main factories in the area of Barcelona, set up his own workshop in 1929. Among the workshops associated with handmade production, there were workshops in Capellades (run by Isidro Soteras, known for his picardos, and by Torrescasana, known for his Hollanders) and La Riba (Tarragona). Among the workshops History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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in Girona, Planas, Flaquer y Cia continued in operation. At the end of the 1880s they still occasionally produced continuous machines, although their involvement in paper production fell off in the early twentieth century as they concentrated on turbines and electrical material. The tradition was continued by Talleres Alberch and Talleres Sarasa. In Aragon, Averly gradually abandoned papermaking machinery, but Talleres Mercier continued, though they specialized in machinery for the sugar sector. The wire cloth used in the continuous machine to make the sheets was bought from France and Germany until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Two of its leading manufacturers were Perot, who set up in Tolosa in 1880, and Francisco Rivière, active in Barcelona from the middle of the nineteenth century. Gradually, these firms began to take over the Spanish market. The felts were imported, mainly from France, although some Spanish firms made them as well.36 The Nationalization of the Skilled Workforce In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Spanish presence among the skilled workforce steadily increased. Only the largest factories employed foreign specialist staff because of the greater complexity of the technology, but here as well Spaniards began to take over these posts of responsibility. At the end of the nineteenth century informal mechanisms of training remained important. In the first stage, modernization encouraged the learning of new skills in the family firms. For example, Pauli Torras Domènech provided technical training in the Torras family firm in Catalonia for 30 years, and Miquel Torras Montserrat was trained by his family and by German specialists who visited the firm to assemble the machines. As the technological aspects of papermaking grew ever more complex, the need for more formal kinds of training became evident. Many of the specialists at the end of the nineteenth century were civil engineers: Victor Pradera, director of the Tolosa factory of Laurak-Bat from 1897, Nicolas Mª de Urgoiti, director of Papelera del Cadagua, and later of La Papelera Española, and Luis Montiel, the owner of La Papelera Madrileña. In 1899 plans for a papermaking school in Tolosa were made. The numbers of highly skilled Spanish specialists increased during the twentieth century, thanks mainly to the opening of new schools of industrial engineers. In the Basque Country the engineer Luis Anitua was director of La Paperera Vizcaína, a firm that led the way in terms of technological innovation at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the most important industrial engineers in the papermaking industry in the years prior to the Civil War was Tomás Costa Coll, who worked in various factories in Catalonia and in 1938 produced a technical manual that bore witness to his familiarity with foreign technical bibliography. Other industrial engineers such as Bernardo Puig Buscó and Josep Duran Ventosa published technical articles on papermaking in publications at the start of the twentieth century. Duran designed the first factory built by the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia in 1913. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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A significant number of students went abroad to study at schools that specialized in paper production, in Lausanne, Darmstadt and Weimar. Interestingly, the ‘Ingenieurschule’ of Altenburg carried out an advertising campaign in the Spanish press, in 1923 and 1924, to recruit students for their courses in paper production. Among the specialists trained abroad were the Basque industrialist José Ramon Calparsoro, who studied at the School of Industrial Engineers in Lausanne and at the School of Papermaking in Weimar, where he graduated in 1933, and the Catalans Francesc Torras Hostench and Llorenç Miquel Serra who graduated from the Grenoble school at the end of the 1920s. Lower down the scale, the opening of Schools of Arts and Crafts from 1886 onwards provided training for semi-skilled workers. The creation in 1907 of the Theoretical and Practical School of the Papermaking Industry and Commerce in Tolosa, promoted by La Papelera Española, was a particularly important moment. The consul general of the United States in Barcelona spoke highly of the school: ‘a significant side light thrown upon the story of the development of the papermaking industry in Spain is the successful operation of the papermaking school’.37 The syllabus of the Tolosa school was based mainly on commercial aspects, whereas the Theoretical and Practical School of Arts and Crafts in Zalla, also promoted by La Papelera Española and created in 1915, concentrated above all on mechanical questions. Trade Publications The lack of a specialist press in the paper sector was mitigated until the end of the nineteenth century by technical publications of a general nature, such as Industria e invenciones. The first publication that centred specifically on the subject of paper production was Mercado del papel, which was published from 1892 until early 1894. La industria paperera appeared intermittently from 1898 until 1907. La Papelera Española published the Boletín de la industria y Comercio del papel from 1907 until 1918. The boletín carried out a very thorough analysis of the evolution of Spanish and foreign firms. At that time too the publications in the fields of forestry, graphic arts and economic analysis often carried articles on the paper sector. The lack of a solid, enduring reference point in the paper section was palliated by the circulation of technical publications from Britain (The Paper Maker), France (La papeterie, Le papier, etc.) and Germany (Papier Zeitung, Wochenblatt für Papierfabrikation). One or two modest technical manuals and publications for non-specialist readerships also appeared in Spanish at this time. The best known was El Papel, edited in 1898 by the civil engineer Luis Marin and distributed by the journal La Industria papelera. Carl Hofmann’s Handbuch der Papierfabrikation, published for the first time in German in 1875, was widely read in its French edition in Spain at the end of the century under the title Traité pratique de la fabrication du papier. Concluding Remarks
The transfer of modern papermaking technology exemplifies the foreign dependence of the Spanish industry, in this case mainly on France (with the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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skilled workforce). However, during the nineteenth and, especially, during the first third of the twentieth century it appeared one network of Spanish workshops which were fundamental for the development of the papermaking industry. The most important workshops were located in the regions with higher papermaking density (the Basque Country, Catalonia, the Valencian Region). Their industrial atmosphere was the ideal environment to succeed. These workshops were quite highly specialized on papermaking, but, frequently, they had other specializations. This is very close to marshallian industrial district dynamics. On the contrary, some of the pioneering papermaking workshops located in inland Spain failed because of the poor performance of their paper factories. Also, the Spanish economic development during the first third of twentieth century made it easier to establish stable mechanisms (commission agents, technical journals, etc.) to develop and to increase the transfer of technology. In a parallel way, it was very important the growing level of the technical education of the workforce to bring and to use the new papermaking technologies. Abbreviations
ACD: Archive of the Spanish Congress. AHPM: Historical Archive of Public Notaries (Madrid). AHCA: Historical Archive of the Anoia. OEPM: Spanish Patent and Trade Mark Office. WPTR: The World’s Paper Trade Review. Notes
* This article is part of the research project ‘Origins and development of the exporting industrial districts, 1765–2008: an analysis from the viewpoint of economic history’, run by Jordi Catalán (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) (HAR-2009-07571). 1. Bruland (1989). 2. Bruland (1998). 3. Berg; Bruland (1998: 1). 4. See Gutiérrez (1999). 5. Sanford was a mechanic who was sent to France by Bryan Donkin. 6. Magee (1997a: 241–2). 7. Nadal (1988: 33). 8. Archivo del Consejo de Diputados: Sección General, Legajo 112, Exp. 3º, Bill for the introduction of foreign paper. 9. The workshops of Chapelle made the machines installed in Manzanares El Real in the reconstruction of 1842, La Magdalena (Valladolid), Candelario (Salamanca) and, possibly the machines installed in Villarluengo (Teruel) and Villanueva del Gallego (Zaragoza). The workshops of Varrall produced the second machine of La Gerundense (Gieorna), and the machines in Rascafria (Madrid), El Catllar (Tarragona) and Villalgordo de Júcar (Albacete). Alfred Motteau made the machines for La Esperanza (Guipuzcoa), La Aurora (Girona), La Cristina (Pontevedra) and La Salvadora (Guipuzcoa). 10. The machine installed in Morata de Tajuña in 1879 was made by H. Dautrebande and F. Thiry (Crónica de la Industria, 31-I-1880, nº 152, p. 18). 11. William Sandford, partner at the Rascafria factory, was obliged to «be present in the factory at least three months per year, not consecutively but in the times most appropriate for the production, to teach and instruct the workers in all the operations without withholding any secrets» (AHPM, Protocol 24.965, fol. 575).
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12. In Alcoy, for example, several Frenchmen set up in the papermaking business (the Laporta and Brutinel families), others in auxiliary industries (boiler-makers Francisco Savasuel and Juan Onanut both from the Auvergne) or mould makers (Pedro Cort, from Languedoc). 13. In 1820 the manual papermakers from Capellades expressed their wish «together with the other districts [to be able] to bring the workers considered necessary, even though they may be foreigners, so that they might teach us to make all kinds of paper» (AHCA, Notariales, Capellades (13), Francesc Pujol i Bordas (Capellades), f. 100). In the early 1820s the arrival of French papermakers is recorded, though not in large numbers. Jean-Constant Tayà came from Annonay, the town of the Montgolfier family, who were important papermakers in France. 14. Benaul (2003), Raveux (2005:172 ),, Deu; Llonch (2008) and Benaul (1995). 15. Ilustración Española y Americana, XVI, nº 31, 16-VI-1872. 16. Flores stated in his application for the privilegio de introducción that the machine was the one ‘known abroad as the Voelter machine, the one displayed in the Wurttemberg hangar of the 1867 Paris Exhibition’ (OEPM, Privilegio 4.689). 17. Clara (1978: 156). 18. Especially interesting were the articles on wood pulp production signed by the industrial engineer Magín Llados. 19. We should mention the series entitled «La industria papelera en España» signed by Ignacio Carbo. 20. Diario de Barcelona, 25-II-1842, pp. 7–9. On Canal, see Benaul (2003: 285 and 289). 21. Benaul (1989: 82). 22. Carrión (2010: 88). 23. In 1854, Valentin Esparo, the owner of an important machinery factory in Barcelona worked with the Paris firm Varrall on the installation of a machine (La Gerundense (1857: 9). 24. See Nadal (1992). 25. Martinez Quintanilla (1865: 308). 26. Moreno (1998: 248–50). 27. AHPM, Protocolo 24.965, fols. 571r.–584v. 28. The Montgolfier family had strong links with the paper sector (Germán (1994: 77). 29. Sancho (2000). 30. Catalán (1991: 131–2). 31. Ministry of Industry and Trade. Directorate-General for Industry (1944). 32. WPTR, 30-VII-1909, LII, nº 5, p. 184. 33. Cabrera (1994: 39). 34. Bretan (1999). 35. In 1908 it was said of the factories in the town that ‘papermaking machinery is made at Alcoy’ (WPTR, 3-IV-1908, vol. XLIX, nº 14, p. 577). 36. In 1908, the Alcoy factories used cloths made locally (WPTR, 3-IV-1908, vol. XLIX, nº 14, p. 577). 37. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce (1915L 144).
Bibliography Benaul, J. M. (1989), ‘Pere Turull i Sallent i la modernització de la indústria tèxtil llanera. 1841–1845’,Arraona, III època, 5, 81–95. Benaul, J. M. (1995), ‘Cambio tecnológico y estructura industrial. Los inicios del sistema de fábrica en la industria pañera catalana, 1815–1835’. Revista de Historia Económica, XIII (2), 199–226. Benaul, J. M. (2003), ‘Transferts technologiques de la France (Normandie, Languedoc et Ardennes) vers l’industrie lanière espagnole (1814–1870)’, in A. Becchia (ed.), La draperie en Normandie du XIIIe siècle au Xxe siècle. Rouen : Publications de l’Université de Rouen, pp. 263–91. Betrán, C. (1999), ‘La transferencia de tecnología en España en el primer tercio del siglo XX: el papel de la industria de bienes de equipo’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 15, 41–82.
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Berg, M. and K Bruland (1998), ‘Culture, institutions and technological transitions’, in M. Berg and K. Bruland (eds), Technological Revolutions in Europe. Historical Perspectivas. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 3–16. Bruland, K. (1989), British Technology and European Industrialization. The Norwegian textile industry in the mid-nineteenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bruland, K. (1998), ‘Skills, learning and the international difusión of technology: a perspectiva on Scandinavia industrialization’, in M. Berg and K. Bruland (eds), Technological Revolutions in Europe. Historical Perspectives. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 161–87. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce (1915), Paper and Stationery Trade of the World. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Cabrera, M. (1994), La industria, la prensa y la política. Nicolás María de Urgoiti (1869–1951), Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Carrión, I. M. (2010), ‘Una aproximación a la intensidad industrial vasca: la industria guipuzcoana en 1860’, Investigaciones de Historia Económica, 16, 73–100. Catalán, J. (1990), ‘Capitales modestos y dinamismo industrial: orígenes del sistema de fábrica en los valles guipuzcoanos, 1841–1918’ in, J. Nadal; A. Carerras (ed.), Pautas regionales de la industrialización española (siglos XIX y XX). Barcelona: Ariel, pp. 125–55. Clara, J. (1978), ‘“La Aurora”, fàbrica de paper continu (1845–1932)’, in R. Albech, Girona al segle XIX. Girona: Edit. Ghotia, pp. 145–61. Deu, E. and Llonch, M. (2008), ‘La maquinaria textil en Cataluña: de la total dependencia exterior a la reducción de importaciones, 1870–1959’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 38, XVII (3), 17–50. Germán, L. (1994), ‘Empresa y familia. Actividades empresariales de la sociedad “Villarroya y Castellano” en Aragón (1840–1910)’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 6, 75–93. Gutiérrez, M. (1999), “L’Espagne est encore dans l’enfance. Máquinas francesas y fracaso español. La mecanización de la industria papelera española (1836–1880)”, in M. Gutiérrez (ed.), Doctor Jordi Nadal. La industrialització i el desenvolupament econòmic d’Espanya, Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 1248–1276. Magee, G. B. (1997), Productivity and performance in the paper industry. Labour, capital, and technology in Britain and America, 1860–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martínez, P. (1865), La Provincia de Gerona. Datos estadísticos. Girona: Imprenta de F. Doria sucesor de J. Grases. Ministerio de Industria y Comercio. Dirección General de Industria (1944), Estadísticas de la industria del papel en 31 de diciembre de 1943. Madrid: Publicaciones de la Sección de Estadística Industrial. Moreno, J. (1994), ‘Empresa, burguesía y crecimiento económico en Castilla la Vieja en el siglo XIX: los Pombo; una historia empresarial’, Anales de estudios económicos y empresariales, 9, 333–56. Moreno, J. (1998), La industria harinera en Castilla L Vieja y León, 1778–1913, Tesis Doctoral (inédita) presentada en el Departamento de Historia e History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Instituciones Económicas y Economía Aplicada, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales: Universidad de Valladolid. Nadal, J. (1988), ‘España durante la 1ª revolución tecnológica’, España 200 años de tecnología. Madrid: Ministerio de Industria y Energía, pp. 29–100. Nadal, J. (1992), ‘Los Planas, constructores de turbinas y material eléctrico (1858–1949)’, Revista de Historia Industrial, 1, 63–93. Raveux, O. (2005), ‘Los fabricantes de algodón de Barcelona (1833–1844). Estrategias empresariales en la modernización de un distrito industrial’. Revista de Historia Industrial. Economía y Empresa, 28, XIV (2), 157–86. Sancho, A. (2000), ‘Especialización flexible y empresa familiar: la Fundición Averly de Zaragoza (1863–1930)’, Revista de Historia Industrial, 17, 61–96.
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Foreign Firms, Local Business Groups and the Making of the Spanish Chemical Industry Nú r i a P u i g Complutense University of Madrid
It is the aim of this article is to show that business history can contribute to the understanding of how technology is transferred from advanced to less developed countries in at least two ways. The first is the identification of the main business actors involved in the process of technological transfer. The second is the analysis of their interplay over a long period of time. The article deals with the long-term evolution of the Spanish chemical industry, presently among the ten largest in the world. Large foreign firms and local business groups are identified as the backbone of this industry between the 1920s and the 1970s, when the second industrialization wave reached Spain. This occurred despite major obstacles derived from the country’s political development and economic backwardness. To examine the interaction between these two major players, the article focuses on the Urquijo group, the first private industrial group and the largest owner of chemical and pharmaceutical companies in twentieth-century Spain. The evolution of the Urquijo group shows that diversified conglomerates with extensive international contacts strongly influence the process of technological transfer in less developed economies. This confirms the observations of well known economic sociologists and organizational theorists. By reconstructing the long-term development of a business group in a specific industry, however, the article provides new empirical evidence and sheds new light on the capabilities of the groups and the opportunities they try to seize. Opportunities
Spain’s industrialization started relatively early, but due to a set of complex reasons, common to other countries of southern Europe, it could not be completed until the second half of the twentieth century. The country’s entrepreneurial capabilities were therefore challenged by the rise of science-based industries, complex business organizations, and professional management that underpins the second industrialization wave (Chandler 1990). Likewise,
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foreign capital and knowledge played a crucial role in this process, so much so that Spain actually became one of the battlefields of the international industry. This is particularly true of the chemical industry, in which path-breaking innovations coexisted with the organization of cartels (Reader 1970, 1975; Haber 1971). The international integration of Spain both as a market and as an industrial site created important business opportunities that were promptly seized by the most technologically capable and experienced international firms as well as by the most qualified and outward-looking Spanish entrepreneurs (Puig 2003). The evolution of the chemical industry shows how events as dramatic and far-reaching as the world wars modelled these opportunities. As a matter of fact, this industry came to mirror one of the deepest transformations of the twentieth century: the relative economic decline of Europe and the consolidation of America’s industrial leadership (Aftalion 2001; Petri 2004). After the Second World War, the German chemical industry, whose accumulated advantages relied upon the industrial synthesis of coal, faced two major setbacks: the expropriation of many of its tangible and intangible assets by the Allies and the rise of a new generation of American firms whose innovations, accelerated by the war effort, in the fields of chemical engineering and the production of antibiotics, synthetic fibres and insecticides at industrial scale led this industry into a new, petrochemical era (Stokes 1988; Lesch 2000; Arora et al. 1998; Galambos et al. 2006). Table 11.1 summarizes the development of the major opportunities which in the Spanish chemical and pharmaceutical industry between 1880s and 2000. Four phases have been identified for the sake of clarity. The shaping forces of the first stage were the diffusion of the modern organic chemical industry, the accumulated advantages of large European, particularly German firms whose scientific-technical and commercial hegemony allowed them to operate easily in the Spanish market, the economic nationalism displayed by Spanish governments which encouraged foreign direct investment especially after 1917, and the relative underdevelopment of the Spanish market that hindered local industrial entrepreneurship while creating new opportunities for manufacturers from Northern Europe. The combined effects of these factors created a favourable environment for the more internationalized European chemical firms as well as for their Spanish technological and financial partners. Likewise, the interest of Spain as an industrial location or a market for the world chemical industry was strongly determined by a network of cartels built in the first decades of the twentieth century by the pioneering or more influential companies of each sector. The opportunities which arose during the first phase are closely related to the war needs, to Spanish-German collaboration during the Second World War, and to the self-sufficiency programme of General Franco. The standing of German firms in the Spanish economy increased considerably, creating new business opportunities for their traditional partners as well as for a rather heterogeneous group of newcomers eager to take part in the emerging chemical industry and the ambitious industrialization programme of Spain’s new rulers (Puig 2004a). Meanwhile, Spain’s need for oil strengthened the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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position of some American companies and their local, old or new, partners in the postwar Spanish economy. The expectations of the main actors of the Spanish chemical industry changed abruptly in 1945. Franco’s government joined the agreements reached at the Bretton Woods Conference concerning German industrial assets abroad. This was the beginning of a long and complex process of expropriation and sale of the Spanish subsidiaries of the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry, a substantial portion of the postwar Spanish chemical industry (2004a). The expropriation worked as a magnet for the
Table 11.1╇ The development of business groups in the Spanish chemical industry Period
Main opportunities
Main actors
1880–1936
Diffusion of the second industrial revolution + technical and commercial capabilities of leading international firms + international cartels + industrial nationalism + immature Spanish market
Large European multinational firms + Basque-Madrilenian financial elite + Catalan family firms
1936–1945
Nazi and Francoist industrial policies + German-Spanish governmental collaboration + oil imports
German multinational firms and their local traditional partners + new local straw men + Lipperheide family + Instituto Nacional de Industria + Basque-Madrilenian financial elite
1945–1973
Allied victory + expropriation of German firms + American aid + antibiotics + petrochemical revolution + world technological market + Spain’s economic liberalization
American multinational Urquijo firms + Instituto Nacional Cros de Industria + European Lipperheide multinational firms and their local traditional partners + engineering firms
1973–2000
Oil shocks + European Common Market + US foreign investment restructuring + Spain’s integration into the European Union
European multinational firms and their local traditional partners + American multinational firms and their traditional partners + engineering firms
Source: Author’s own elaboration.
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Main local groups Urquijo Cros
Urquijo Cros Lipperheide
ERT Cros Repsol Cepsa
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largest or more ambitious Spanish groups, which did not waste time to come to terms with the expropriated firms and their German headquarters and to recruit useful straw men while playing to the tune of the Spanish authorities. Notwithstanding the pressure of the Allies, the Spanish administration turned out to be remarkably slow (most sales took place in 1950) and pragmatic (Spanish bidders were encouraged to cooperate among them and with the former owners). Yet this was not the only source of business opportunities. The commercial success of new products such as penicillin or plastics, alongside the replacement of the old industrial diplomacy of the cartels by an international technological market, broadened the horizon of the Spanish industry. Finally, the country’s fast growth during the 1960s increased the interest of foreign direct investors in the Spanish domestic market. The last stage is difficult to define. As a consequence of the oil crisis, the withdrawal of US foreign investment, and the creation of the European Economic Community, among other factors, the European industry recovered lost ground in the international market, often at the expense of American big firms. In Spain, the effects of the structural crisis of the world chemical industry were linked to those of Europe’s increasing economic integration and the dismantling of the coal-based chemical industry. All this paved the way for those European and American multinational companies interested in taking full control of their Spanish assets even at a high price (Puig 2006). Actors
In order to assess the business opportunities created through the interaction of the world industry and its local partners and competitors, it is necessary to identify the most relevant actors in the history of this industry. This section is based on previous, extensive exercises of business demography (Puig 2003). The main actors of the first stage were large European multinational firms that found a place next to the local industry, often under the shelter of protectionism and the privileges granted by the Spanish government to the strategic industries after 1917. Most chemicals fell under this category. The relationship between foreign companies and local entrepreneurs was based upon three sets of agreements reached within the international cartels (non-interference between foreign firms), between local partners and the Spanish administration (exclusive right to operate in the domestic market), and between foreign investors and their local partners (a division of labour that led the former to focus on technical and commercial tasks and the latter to deal with administrative issues). The largest firms of this period were created according to these premises: Unión Española de Explosivos (UEE) (1896), Sociedad ElectroQuímica de Flix (1897), Carburos Metálicos (1897), Cros (1904), Solvay (1904), Energía e Industrias Aragonesas (EIA) (1918), Instituto de Biología y Sueroterapia (IBYS) (1919), Ciba (1920), Fabricación Nacional de Colorantes y Explosivos (FNCE) (1922), Sociedad Ibérica del Nitrógeno (SIN) (1923), Sociedad Anónima de Fibras Artificiales (SAFA) (1923), Productos Químicos Schering (1924), Sandoz (1924), Química Comercial Farmacéutica Bayer (1925), Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) (1925) and Foret (1927). On the eve History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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of the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), the large European corporations – Nobel, Kuhlmann, Solvay, I. G. Farben, ICI, Algemene Kunstzijde Unie (AKU) and Rhône-Poulenc – were directly or indirectly represented in Spain and their market share in their specific field went from 50 to 100 percent. Exports from their Spanish subsidiaries were irrelevant. As in other peripheral countries during the interwar years, the manufacturing and distribution of products such as explosives, soda, chlorine, rayon, dyes, fertilizers and several pharmaceuticals in Spain were regulated by the specific international cartels. Not a single Spanish firm was directly represented in those cartels. The agreements that ruled the relationship between Cros and UEE, UEE and FNCE, FNCE and Cros, Electro-Química de Flix and Solvay, SAFA and La Seda show how little room was left for the Spanish companies. After the Great War, both Cros and Explosivos, the country’s largest chemical firms, successfully engaged in a process of diversification and vertical integration that led them to venture into the novel fields of phosphate and potash fertilizers. At the same time, Explosivos became one of Cros’s shareholders. Their activity was largely regulated by the French-German potash cartel. When it fell apart, Cros remained in the sphere of Stassfurt but UEE remained in Kuhlmann’s. A different sort of agreement reached by Kuhlmann and the I. G. Farben in Paris in the late 1920s stopped Explosivos from manufacturing dyes and FNCE, I. G. Farben’s main Spanish partner, from producing explosives. A similar solution was reached between FNCE and Cros with the goal of keeping the latter out of the manufacturing of synthetic dyes in exchange for a long-term, highly profitable supply contract of raw materials and intermediate products. This was the beginning of a long and bitter relationship between the two companies that was not settled until 1956 by one of I. G. Farben’s founders and heirs, Bayer. The dealings between the Spanish subsidiary of Solvay and the Electro-Química de Flix mirrored the technical and commercial rivalry between Solvay and I. G. Farben in the soda and chlorine areas that in the Spanish market gave rise to a series of restrictive and conflictive agreements. The Spanish rayon business was mainly based on two firms, SAFA (participated by Rhône-Poulenc) and La Seda de Barcelona (a subsidiary of AKU), whose strategy was designed in Paris. Finally, the fact that nitrogenous fertilizers were not manufactured in Spain despite some important initiatives in this field was due to the international cartel. In the view of the companies represented there, the Spanish market was too small to establish a manufacturing site. The commercialization of nitrogen was mainly channelled through the Spanish representatives of the IG (Unión Química Lluch) and ICI (Azamón). At that time, the most important and lasting Spanish partners of the world chemical industry were the industrial groups created around the Urquijo Bank and various Catalan family and multi-family firms associated with German investors. Urquijo, Rothschild’s associate in nineteenth-century Spain, would grow into the country’s main magnet for foreign capital during the twentieth century. Before the Civil War, it participated in Explosivos, Carburos Metálicos, Energía e Industrias Aragonesas and Sociedad Ibérica del Nitrógeno. The first Catalan firm, Cros, alongside a few families of the local industrial bourgeoisie, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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became partners of the firms that would constitute I. G. Farben in the early twentieth century. Despite a long lasting agreement with the Electro-Química de Flix (Hoechst) to commercialize its production and the already mentioned participation of Explosivos in its capital, Cros remained remarkably hostile to all kinds of mergers. In the early 1930s, a law limiting foreign participation in the capital and management of Spanish companies favoured the proliferation of straw men, many of which would play a relevant, sometimes troublesome role in the postwar period. Not surprisingly, German firms and their local associates became the major actors of the second stage. The Nazi four-year plan, combined with the selfsufficiency dreams of the Spanish dictator, gave rise to a large number of joint ventures technologically assisted by I. G. Farben and other German corporations. Among the new partners, the German-Basque Lipperheide family (supported by Basque financiers and industrialists), the newly created stateowned holding INI (Instituto Nacional de Industria), and an ample network of straw men skilfully woven by Johannes Bernhardt, a middleman of General Franco and Nazi Germany, stand out. Also the Urquijo group used the opportunity of getting access to German technology at low prices. Unlike most of the newcomers, the group was backed by its international contacts, project execution capabilities, and experience. The origins of the Lipperheide group are in the exploitation and export of minerals and metals to Germany, which was in direct competition with Bernhardt during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. As for INI, its focus on the most important industries of the future (chemical fibres, nitrogenous fertilizers, and antibiotics) plus its reckless attitude towards the existing companies resulted in a dramatic change in Spain’s entrepreneurial landscape. As a matter of fact, between the 1940s and 1970s, the Spanish chemical industry would be dominated by a new breed of firms such as Sniace (1939), Unquinesa (1939), Fefasa (1940), Sefanitro (1941), Hidro-Nitro (1941), Nitratos de Castilla (1940) and Proquisa (1944), would be coal-based, and would be controlled by the above mentioned three groups. The priorities of the self-sufficiency programme kept on determining the third period. Interestingly, however, the Spanish government decided to leave the manufacture of penicillin and other antibiotics in private hands, passing a law that granted fiscal and administrative privileges and the exclusive right to sell in the domestic market to two ad-hoc created companies: Compañía Española de Penicilina y Antibióticos (CEPA) and Antibióticos SA (Puig 2004b, 2010). CEPA was one of the components of the Urquijo chemicalpharmaceutical complex depicted in Table 11.2. This was based on a large scale manufacturing plant of organic intermediate products located in Northern Spain (Proquisa) and the commercial infrastructure provided by Schering and Bayer in Madrid and Barcelona. Both subsidiaries went into the hands of the Consorcio Químico Español, a corporation created in 1950 by the Urquijo group alongside other Spanish banks and the largest chemical companies (Explosivos, Cros and Aragonesas among them) and managed by the former director general of Industry Antonio Robert. The Consorcio represented some 75 per cent of the Spanish chemical industry. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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The petrochemical revolution reached Spain with a delay of ten years and was conditioned by the interests of the state-owned firm Calvo Sotelo, INI’s pet project (Puig 2006) and when it did, it was under the influence of foreign firms and consultants. Calvo Sotelo took the lead, establishing jointventures with Montecatini, ICI, Phillips Petroleum and Archo Chemical in the 1960s that gave the state-owned firm (the forerunner of Repsol, Spain’s largest chemical group nowadays) a great incentive. The other major local petrochemical project came from the Compañía Española de Petróleos (Cepsa), which established a joint-venture with Continental Oil in 1967. Dow, which showed an early interest in the Spanish market, became an associate of Lipperheide through Unquinesa. Indisputably, the diffusion of the petrochemical industry was favoured by the already mentioned replacement of the prewar cartel structure by an international technological market. Foreign engineering firms did not only play a crucial role, but also paved the way for a brand new activity in Spain in which the Urquijo people, as we will see, also excelled. The large coal-based industrial projects built by the Urquijo group and Lipperheide did not survive Spain’s progressive European integration in the 1970s and 1980s. The massive landing of the world chemical industry materialized in a number of mergers and acquisitions, some of them ruinous (Puig 2006). This was the case of Explosivos Rio Tinto, founded in 1970 on the basis of Spain’s oldest chemical firm and the British mining company. Its attempts to build an internationally competitive and diversified chemical group helped the Urquijo group to get rid of many of its own firms but failed spectacularly a few years later. Cros’ growth strategy was also ambitious and controversial. In the end, the Catalan firm got hold of its old rival and partner to create, with public financial support, Ercros and Erkimia. Interestingly, Cros’ postwar development was also closely related to the expropriation of the German assets. The firm not only participated in the Consorcio, but also fought hard to get Hoechst’s support to build a leading agrochemical group out of the Electro-Química de Flix. The relationship between Cros and its German associate, however, was troublesome. Hoechst established its own commercial subsidiary, Activión, in the 1940s and created Industrias Químicas Asociadas (IQA) in association with Explosivos and the Anglo-Dutch firm Shell in the late 1950s. Conflicts of interests, misunderstandings, and a completely different idea about Spain’s chemical future underpinned the relationship until its end in 1970, when Hoechst sold its share in Flix to focus on the construction of a petrochemical complex from scratch with IQA. In an increasingly competitive climate, many Spanish companies, particularly family laboratories, chose to modernize and go international (Puig 2010). In the early twenty-first century, they are major actors of the Spanish chemical industry alongside the historical multinational firms afore mentioned and a few Spanish survivors (Repsol, Cepsa, Fertiberia, Ercros, Aragonesas and La Seda).
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The Urquijo Group
Business groups have been on the research agenda of social scientists since the 1970s. Development economists, economic sociologists, organizational theorists and business historians have since contributed to the unveiling of the foundations and functionalities of this particular business organization (Leff 1978; Granovetter 1995; Amsden and Hikino 1994). Business groups can be defined as sets of firms engaged in a wide variety of industries and services and held together by common ownership or control ties, often linked to a family and/or a bank. Even though concentrated ownership raises many problems and criticism in the industrializing countries where business groups abound, most scholars see it as a creative response to an environment rife with political and financial risks and short of capital and talent. The literature also points out that the specific, mainly project execution capabilities of business groups allow them to seize the opportunities created in relatively backward, protected and intervened economies (Guillén 2000). This adds considerably to the evolutionary theory of economic change (Nelson and Winter 1982; Abramovitz 1986). Understandably, the central role of diversified conglomerates in today’s emerging markets is increasing scholars’ theoretical and empirical interest in business groups and raising profound questions about the evolution of companies and business models (Morck and Yeung 2004; Khanna and Yafeh 2007). In this section we focus on the chemical firms created, participated in or acquired by the Urquijo Bank during the middle decades of the past century. The Urquijo group did not only become the largest private diversified conglomerate in postwar Spain, but also the most important single actor in the Spanish chemical and pharmaceutical industry, as we have stated in the previous section. Its analysis will shed light on the interrelation between the foreign firms that were proprietary of the technology introduced in Spain during this crucial period and their local partners and rivals. It is important to note that most of the group’s activities, even its structure, were far more responsive to the opportunities that had arisen in its specific national and international context than in its existing financial, technical and managerial capabilities (Puig and Torres 2008). There is little doubt that these capabilities developed considerably, as did the technological dependence of the individual firms from their foreign partners. Therefore, the process suggests that where outward-looking business groups are relevant actors, the learning process inherent to the transfer of technology focuses on project execution and short-term objectives at the expense of the long-term perspective required by scientific research and development. This is true, at least, of a country of the European periphery during the second industrial revolution. In the early 1960s, the Urquijo group comprised about 60 chemical and pharmaceutical firms and controlled directly or indirectly 16 of the 50 largest Spanish chemical companies. The most relevant were UEE, Aragonesas, SIN, Carburos Metálicos, Productos Químicos Ibéricos, Derivados del Cok, Proquisa, Perlofil, CEPA, Schering, Unión Española del Ácido Acético y FAES. As already mentioned, the Urquijo group, originally a modest family-owned
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bank, grew into an industrial bank with excellent international contacts due to its early association with the Rothschilds. It is reasonable to assume that this family’s active participation in Spain’s nineteenth-century public finances, the mining railway businesses contributed to disseminate its business know-how among the entrepreneurial elite. This know-how was closely linked to worldwide monopolies and commercial networks. The Rothschilds entered the Spanish chemical industry through two major mining companies, the Sociedad Minera y Metalúrgica Peñarroya (founded in 1881) and Rio Tinto (taken over in 1889). The overall decline of this family’s industrial businesses in the early twentieth century, alongside the rise of Spanish economic nationalism and the Urquijo group’s genuine interest in promoting Spain’s economic development, paved the way for the group. In 1930 it comprised over 60 firms in traditional (mining, steel, railways) as well as modern ones (chemicals, electricity, utilities, telecommunications, motor) in addition to banking. Whereas the cooperative culture of the Rothschilds proved useful to the Urquijo group to navigate in the cartelized structure of interwar industry, the international experience acquired by their side turned out to be crucial in the context of the aftermath of the Second World War. By then, the Spanish bank was already familiar with the mining and heavy industry businesses, and was building up a first-rate technical department under the leadership of its new CEO, Juan Lladó, and was backed by the Banco Hispano-Americano, one of the country’s largest commercial banks. In addition to the problems inherent in Spain’s economic backwardness and those facing the world after the Second World War, the group had to face two major challenges: General Franco’s selfsufficiency policy from 1939 to 1959 and the concurrent ruthless behaviour of the state-owned industrial holding INI (San Román 1999). It is very telling of the group’s pragmatic attitude in the new Spanish context that in the late 1940s it hired the engineer Antonio Robert to assist in the expropriation process of the German chemical companies. A former director general of industry, author of a pro-autarky book, and ubiquitous industrial expert, Robert recommended temporary association with the main body of the Spanish chemical industry to strengthen their application. The result of this association was two new firms, Proquisa and the Consorcio Químico Español, which at a spot price got the core of the German pharmaceutical business in Spain: Bayer and Schering. FNCE, however, went back into the hands of its founders, as did EQ de Flix, Cloratita, and other joint ventures of Cros and the I. G. Bayer became the basis of an ambitious coalbased chemical concern in La Felguera, in Northern Spain, aimed to produce nitric, salicilic, and acetilsalicilic acids, and methanol. The plant was built with the technical cooperation of Montecatini and Kuhlmann and the financial support of Q. C. F. Bayer, a healthy business working closely with Leverkusen, and a captive customer of La Felguera production. As for Schering, it became the basis for another ambitious pharma-chemical enterprise, the Compañía Española de Penicilina y Antibióticos (CEPA), directed by Antonio Gallego a world-class scientist returned from the Rockefeller Foundation. He had been summoned by his brother José Luis, the scientific director of Bayer in Spain from 1936 to 1943 and from 1950 onwards. Before they got hold of History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Table 11.2╇ The Urquijo Pharma-Chemical Complex, 1944–1970 Acquiring firms
Acquired firms
Proquisa (1944–1970)
Química Comercial Farmacéutica (QCF) (1950–1960) Instituto Behring de Terapéutica Experimental (1950–1960)
Agreements with former German matrix firms Commercial representation, technical assistance, and manufacturing and commercial licence agreements between Bayer AG and QCF (1950–1960)
Main firms and plants Proquisa (La Felguera) (1944–1970) Química de Langreo (1966–1970)
25% QCF sold to Bayer AG in 1960
Consorcio Químico Español (1944–1950) (absorbed by Proquisa in 1950)
(completed up to 100% in 1981) Commercial Productos representation, Químicos Schering (PQS) technical (1950–1970) assistance, and manufacQuímica turing and commercial Española licence agree(1950) ments between Construcciones Schering Industriales AG and PQ Schering (1950–1967) (1950–1953) (1953–1965) Tarsia (1965–1970) (1950–1967)
Research and development institutions
Instituto de Farmacología Española (1950–1970) Compañía Española de Penicilina y Antibióticos (CEPA) (1949-1970) Industrias Químicas Norte– Americanas (1954-1970)
CEPA’s R+D unit (Natural Products Screening Program) under Merck’s direction (1954–1978)
Investigaciones Científicas (1961–¿) Darsis 50% PQS sold (1961–1967) to Schering Ibadisa AG in 1970 (completed up (1963–1970) to 100% in 1980)
Source: Minutes of Productos Químicos Schering SA (Shering España Madrid and Scheringianum Berlin), Proquisa (Fondo Banco Urquijo Madrid) and Química Comercial Farmacéutica (Bayer Archiv Leverkusen) and author’s own elaboration.
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Productos Químicos Schering, the new Spanish owners made sure they could manufacture under Berlin licensing. As in the case of Bayer, the excellent sales network of the German firm was used to commercialize the first antibiotics manufactured by CEPA under Merck licence, and the rising profits of Schering itself kept CEPA going during its difficult start. Moreover, Bayer and Schering financed one of the few private scientific institutions of the time, the Instituto Español de Farmacología (IFE), located at the University of Madrid, where Gallego was professor of physiology. Thus, originally, IFE was an instrument for the transfer of technology, inspired and applauded by the new Spanish scientific authorities, as well as the only institution that trained industrially minded scientists. In the long run, however, it became more and more attached to the true academic interests of its director (Santesmases 1999). Furthermore, Gallego persuaded CEPA´s technological partner, Merck, to establish in 1954 in Madrid a branch of the newly launched screening programme, aimed at identifying natural active principles that were then synthetized in the United States. Later on, CEPA´s Screening Program became Merck´s own subsidiary´s research department, as CEPA´s new ownership refused to carry on supporting its scientific staff. Intelligent as it was, the Urquijo pharma-chemical complex could not satisfy the expectations of its creators. Falling international prices of raw materials and intermediates, prospects of liberalization, the inexorable advent of petrochemicals, and the close expiry of licence contracts with Germany combined to bring down the whole building in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Like most of the international chemical arrangements in Spain, in the end, it was a good business for both parties. Also, it was without a doubt extremely useful to create some entrepreneurial capabilities, and to establish further international contacts, in the liberal elite to which the Urquijo team belonged. Though the scientific capabilities, the technological effort, required by the modern chemical industry were still absent. It is in the diversified nature of business groups, however, to make up for unfulfilled expectations or failed projects. While the prospects of the ambitious coal-based pharma-chemical darkened, the Urquijo group signed agreements with many of the largest oil companies of the world to build refineries and petrochemical complexes in Spain. As a result of the group’s cooperation with large Spanish chemical firms through Proquisa and the Consorcio, the Urquijo group had widened its industrial scope and international networks considerably. In addition, the group established successful partnerships with Gulf Oil (to build a petrochemical complex in southern Spain), Shell and Hoechst (to build a new petrochemical site in Catalonia), Du Pont (in cooperation with Aragonesas) and AKU (to manufacture synthetic fibres in Perlofil). The new ventures had two major effects. First, they made the group more attractive and expensive when the Urquijo group decided to sell many of its chemical assets to its long-term associate Explosivos (Explosivos Rio Tinto after its merger in 1970) in the early 1970s. The less competitive and more troubled assets were liquidated with the assistance of the Spanish government, which came to the rescue of Explosivos a decade later. Second, the technical department of the group was able to adjust to the shift from coal to oil. Moreover, it promoted the creation of a new generation of engineering firms in association with foreign History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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multinationals, independent of the existing chemical firms yet supported by the Urquijo Bank, and it aimed to provide its specialized services to the group’s new ventures. Técnicas Reunidas, a leading engineering firm specialized in the construction of oil refineries, is the best example. Bibliography Abramovitz, M. (1986), ‘Catching up, forging ahead, and falling behind’. Journal of Economic History. XLVI, 2, 385–406. Aftalion, F. (2001), A History of the International Chemical Industry. From the ‘Early Days’ to 2000. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation. Amsden, A. and Hikino, T. (1994), ‘Project execution capability, organizational know-how and conglomerate corporate growth in late industrialization’. Industrial and Corporate Change, 3, 111–47. Arora, A., Landau, R. and Rosenberg, N. (eds) (1998), Chemicals and long-term Economic Growth: Insights from the Chemical Industry. New York: John WileyChemical Heritage Foundation. Chandler, A. D. (1990), Scale and Scope. The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. Cambridge and London: Belknap-Harvard. Galambos, L., Zamagni, V. and Hikino, T. (eds) (2006), The Global Chemical Industry since the Petrochemical Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Granovetter, M. (1995), ‘Coase revisited: business groups in the modern economy’. Industrial and Corporate Change, 4,1, 93–130. Guillén, M. F. (2000), ‘Business groups in emerging economies: a resourcebased view’. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 3, 362–80. Haber, L. F. (1971), The Chemical Industry 1900–1939. International Growth and Technological Change. Oxford: Clarendon. Khanna, T. and Yafeh, Y. (2007), ‘Business Groups in Emerging Markets: Paragons or Parasites?’. Journal of Economic Literature, XLV, June, 331–72. Leff, N. (1978), ‘Industrial organization and entrepreneurship in developing countries: the economic groups’. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 26, 4, 661–75. Lesch, J. E. (ed.) (2000), The German Chemical Industry in the Twentieth Century, Dordrecht-London: Kluwer. Morck, R. and Yeung, B. (2004), ‘Family control and the rent-seeking society’. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Summer, 391–409. Nelson, R. R. and Winter, S. (1982), An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press. PETRI, R. (ed.) (2004), Technologietransfer aus der deutschen Chemieindustrie. Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt. Puig, N. (2003), Constructores de la industria química española: Bayer, Cepsa, Puig, Repsol, Schering y La Seda. Madrid: Lid Editorial Empresarial. Puig, N. (2004a), ‘Networks of innovation or networks of opportunity? The making of the Spanish antibiotics industry’, Ambix, 2004, 167–85. Puig, N. (2004b), ‘Auslandsinvestitionen ohne Technologietransfer? Die deutsche Chemieindustrie in Spanien (1897–1965)’, in R. Petri (ed.), Technologietransfer aus der deutschen Chemieindustrie. Berlin, 2004, pp. 291–322. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Puig, N. (2006), ‘The global accommodation of a latecomer: The Spanish chemical industry since the petrochemical revolution’, in L. Galambos et al. (eds) The Global Chemical Industry Since the Petrochemical Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 368–400. Puig, N. (2010), ‘Networks of opportunity and the Spanish pharmaceutical industry’, in P. Fernández and M. Rose (eds), Innovation and Networks in Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 164–83. Puig, N. and Torres, E. (2008), Banco Urquijo. Un banco con historia. Madrid: Turner. READER, W. J. (1970, 1975), Imperial Chemical Industries: A History, 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press. San Román, E. (1999), Ejército e Industria. El nacimiento del INI. Barcelona: Crítica. Santesmases, M. J. (1999), Antibióticos en la autarquía: banca privada, industria farmacéutica, investigación científica y cultura liberal en España, 1940–1960. Madrid: Fundación Empresa Pública, Programa de Historia Económica, WP 9906. Stokes, R. G. (1988), Divide and Prosper: The Heirs of I. G. Farben under Allied Authority, 1945–1951. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
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Electricity in Spain, Its Introduction and Industrial Development J o a n Ca r l e s A l ay o M a n ub e n s Polytechnic University of Catalonia
The Beginnings of the Electrical Age
Every day new progress is observed in this arduous matter: it is fortunate that it is no longer limited to the terms of curious physics, but is already spreading on a solid basis to uses in public health, and many diseases that have resisted the most advanced medical treatment have yielded to the electrification of bodies.
This was what doctor Benito Navarro y Abel de Beas (1729–80) had to say about electrical phenomena in his book, Physica eléctrica o compendio donde se explican los maravillosos phenomenos de la virtud eléctrica, published in Seville in 1752. At that time electricity was only within the reach of few, most of whom were doctors, due to its use in medicine. This work was the first known book to be written by a Spaniard. It dealt with electricity and constituted the transmission of knowledge that the author had probably gathered from other doctors and scientists during the first half of the eighteenth century. Up to that time the following works had appeared: Observations sur l’électricité by Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700–70), published in Paris in 1747; Experiences sur l’Électricité avec quelques conjectures sur la cause de ses effets, by Jean Jallabert (1712–68), published in Paris in 1749, and Dell’elettricitá medica by the Italian Giovanni-Francesco Pivati (1689–64), published in Lucca in 1747. There were many theories on electricity circulating at the time, and although the discipline was not very well known, Navarro y Abel de Beas’s work bears evidence to the knowledge the author had acquired in order to develop his theses. In the years to come, electrical science would be one of the working disciplines at the Academies of Medicine and the Academies of Sciences. In Barcelona, the existence of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts had a notable influence on the knowledge of electricity in Spain. Constituted in 1764 under the name of Conferencia Físico-Matemática Experimental, in 1770 it changed its name to the one it still has today. In 1773 two departments were created: Electricity and Magnetism and other attractions, which show that electrical science was within reach of the members of the Academy. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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The Department of Electricity had as its head Antoni Juglà i Font, who in the inaugural session gave a talk on the work Cartas sobre la electricidad by Jean-Antoine Nollet. As the Archives of the Institution show, from the late eighteenth century on, electrical phenomena were studied and disseminated at the Department. The first report that refers to electricity is dated 1785 and was presented by Juglà, who spoke about Memoria sobre la utilidad de los conductores eléctricos (The use of electrical conductors). Of particular note were the experiments performed on the use of electricity as a means of conveyance, which came to be known as electrical telegraphy. The first person in Spain to address this topic was Francesc Salvá i Campillo (1751–1828), subsequent to the appearance of Volta’s battery, a clear indication of the rapid transmission of the scientific knowledge that was taking place in Europe at that time. The use of applied technology was evident in Salvà’s experiments, in which the wires employed for conveying electrical current were made of copper and insulated with paper impregnated with bituminous matter. The concepts regarding electricity continued to grow during the first half of the nineteenth century, and in Spain the properties of the electric battery for its use in the laboratory also continued to spread. For example, one of the studies promoted by the Real Junta de Comercio de Barcelona, the Office of Chemistry, employed in 1833, among other instruments, Volta’s battery consisting of 24 elements ‘capable of turning both iron wire and platinum wire red’. Electric batteries and Rhumkorff’s inducer were both employed in military applications, as can be seen from the work carried out by the military officer Gregorio Verdú, Memoria sobre los medios de emplear electricidad en hornillos de mina, published in 1846 in Madrid. Even more noteworthy was to be the use of electricity in communications, since electrical telegraphy was becoming a technology within the reach of anyone and treatises published on the use of telegraphy proliferated enormously throughout Europe, some books being translated into Spanish. As regards communications technology, it is important to point out a book by the mining engineer Manuel Fernandez de Castro, who wrote on signalling systems for railway traffic: La electricidad y los caminos de hierro, published in 1857 in Madrid. Communication is without doubt a topic of great importance, but in this article we devote our attention mainly to the uses of industrial electricity as employed in electric lighting, which in the second half of the nineteenth century was one of its most important applications, and gave rise to an enormous quantity of experiments. While one of the first trials with electric lighting by means of a voltaic arc regulator took place in Paris in 1844, it was not until later that this type of experiment was performed in Spain: • May 1851, at the University of Santiago de Compostela • November 1851, at the University of Barcelona. These experiments combined knowledge of the electrical battery and that of the voltaic arc regulator, and led to a whole series of public exhibitions devoted to comparing the features of electric lighting with the gas lighting system,
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which at that time was also being introduced, not merely as a demonstration in exhibitions but as a permanent public utility. The Development of Electric Lighting
Maritime navigation has been always an important activity, with routes monitored by means of long-range lighthouses, indispensable for shipping at any time. The application of electricity in some lighthouses on both sides of the English Channel brought considerable improvements to them, but economical, reliable equipment that could function without interruptions was required. This meant that between 1858 and 1873 Holmes’s electromagnetic machine was gradually replaced by the Siemens dynamoelectric machine. The use of these electrical machines in lighthouses led to improved energy efficiency and functional reliability while at the same time contributing to the range of uses of electricity in general. The first dynamoelectric machine to be introduced in Spain was the Gramme’s machine. On his visit to the International Exhibition of Vienna of 1873, the director of the Industrial Engineers School of Barcelona noticed the beneficial features of Gramme machines, and while they were not the only machines on exhibition, the influence of French industrial culture in both Catalonia and Spain proved decisive for their use. The first machine to arrive was for the electrical lighting system at the Office of Physics of the Industrial Engineers School of Barcelona, and was imported by Francisco Dalmau e Hijo a Barcelona company, which was the regular supplier of scientific material to the school. The machine that was used in Barcelona had two horizontal electromagnets and a system of excitation in series. It was equipped with a double-winding rotor with a power of 155 Carcel at 1,200 rpm. The introduction of this machine meant that electrical lighting was well received by industry in Barcelona, and the first industrial installation of an electrical lighting system was carried out in a factory belonging to the company Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima in late 1875. The factory was equipped with its own steam engine, which was also used for driving the direct current Gramme machines that provided power for the lighting system with one arc lamp per machine. Despite the existence of other machines, the Gramme machine was for many years the only one that was in use in Spain. In 1875, trials were carried out with this machine in ships of the Spanish navy, with arc lamps fitted with Fresnel lenses similar to those used in lighthouses: From on board, the smallest objects could be seen perfectly illuminated by the electrical light at a distance of more than 2.500 metres .â•›.â•›. From land ... some of our friends, who had gathered in the Rovira square in the town of Gracia, could for the few moments when the light was pointing in their direction, easily read the letters on the sign of the newspaper Diario de Barcelona. One may deduce that a ship provided with such an electrical projector would be able to see the obstacles surrounding it to a distance greater than one mile and a half.â•›.â•›. And for a steam ship, this magnificent result means that it would incur an expense of less than 1.50 pesetas per hour, including the amortization and interests of the capital spent on the acquisition of one of these devices.
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As a result of trials such as these, lighting by means of electricity won everyone’s trust, although the excessive investment costs in the facilities of generation and distribution, as well as the costs of the raw materials required for their operation, combined to prevent their expansion. It is known that T. A. Edison helped to overcome this obstacle with his idea of working with the same with gas, and this together with his research work to develop an incandescent lamp with a performance superior to those in existence at that time, made it possible in 1881 for the first power plants to be set up for the supply of electricity; one in the Pearl Street neighbourhood of New York, and another at Holborn Viaduct in London. In the same year, I881, Barcelona was also provided with an electrical supply system. This was the concern of the Sociedad Española de Electricidad, the first utility company in Spain, and constituted that year in Barcelona. It used Gramme machines in its power plant located near the Rambla of Santa Monica in Barcelona, close to the company’s factory. This was the first factory in Spain to use electrical engines rather than transmission systems driven by a central steam engine. The company also began construction, under patent, of the L5 type Gramme machine in its Barcelona factory. This was a new machine series equipped to feed five voltaic arcs simultaneously instead of only one. The model constructed in Barcelona was different from the French model for the flat shape of the electromagnets and for the rotor formed by platens instead of thread. Made entirely in Barcelona, it was to become one of the most frequently used machines at that time. In reference to these machines, the professor of industrial physics at the engineers’ school said ‘.â•›.â•›. the ones coming out of the workshop are just as good as the French machines .â•›.â•›.’. Electrical technology began entering into Spain through this company connected to the Maison Gramme and to another company associated with Brush Electric. Electricity made its appearance in Madrid with the installation of a power plant in the area of Alcalá Street, constructed by the Sociedad Española de Electricidad with Gramme and Máxim machines, and a further smaller plant in the Retiro Park, constructed by the Compañía General de Electricidad, Fuerza y Luz Eléctrica using Brush machines. Electric lighting was also installed in Barcelona along a section of Colón Street, a development that would not have been notable but for a project for a new wiring system. Six conductors were located in a small underground gallery covered with paving stones, in the vaulting of which had some small insulators that served as a support for the bare wires. It was the first underground wiring system to be carried out in the city, but failed to work well because of the dampness that interfered with the joints of the channelling. It was nevertheless an example of the latest advances of electrical technology, in this case underground channels without insulated cables, which were cheaper than underground channels with insulated cables that were frequently used in telegraphy and signage but very little in electricity supply. The six conductors were connected to three series of five voltaic arcs placed alternately along the street. In 1883, Friedrich von Hefner-Alteneck of the Siemens and Halske company in Berlin became interested in this lighting system, and independently History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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of the channel system, compared it to the one that had been constructed in the Leipitzger Strasse and the Postdamer Platz in Berlin in 1882. The energetic beginnings of the Spanish electrification process is also evident in the appearance of a journal devoted to electricity. While publications specializing in industry and technology devoted sections to new developments in electricity, the magazine La Electricidad was the first of its kind in Spain to be devoted to the subject, and the twelfth publication of this type to appear, as can be seen in the table below. Table 12.1╇ Journals on electricity Journals on electricity
First issued
Publication
The Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review
1872
London
L’Électricité
1876
Paris
The Electrician
1878
London
La Lumiére Éléctrique
1879
Paris
Electrichestvo
1880
St Petersburg
Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift
1880
Berlin
Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians 1881
London
L’ Electricien
1881
Paris
Journal du Gaz et de l’ Électricité
1881
Paris
The Electrical World and Engineer
1882
New York
Electrical Review
1882
Chicago
La Electricidad
1882
Barcelona
Source: author Direct Current Versus Alternating Current
Five years after the installation in Barcelona of the first Spanish electric power station, plants of this kind had been built in five more Spanish cities to supply electricity to the population: Table 12.2╇ Utilities in Spain in 1886 City Barcelona Madrid Valencia San Sebastián Málaga Girona
Company Sociedad Española de Electricidad Sociedad Matritense de Electricidad Sociedad Valenciana de Electricidad Hammond & Co. Two private plants supplying the neighbourhoods Planas, Flaquer y Compañia
Source: author
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Year 1881 1882 1882 1882 1884 1886
Type CC CC CC CC CC CA
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The most noteworthy was the generating plant in Girona, built by the Planas, Flaquer y Compañía company under a patent from Ganz and Co. in Budapest. It was remarkable because it was housed in a town flour mill, which was extended with a new 45 CV Planas turbine connected to two 22 kW Ganz alternators. Girona was thus the first city in Spain with an electrical network of alternating current for the public lighting system. The network operated at 1,300 V and was transformed to low voltage at 110 V to feed the different sets of lamps installed in the streets. The adoption of this technology constituted a bold step, and the construction of the network was overseen by a technician from the Ganz Company. Nevertheless, the knowledge and experience acquired by Spanish technical personnel were sufficient to enable them to continue with the installation of power plants and electrical networks throughout the whole of Spain on a commercial basis. The electrical technology of alternating current was adopted by other European companies and constituted a departure from the schemes in operation up to that time; little by little alternating current became almost indispensable for improving the performance of electricity supply systems. Direct current survived in those larger supply systems where it was already implanted and in which accumulators were used to modulate production according to the daily cycles of the demand, a characteristic that was considered to be very important in the early decades of the use of electricity. After the first steps towards the electrification of Spain had been taken, the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona, held in 1888, arrived at an opportune moment to stimulate it even further. Seven years earlier the International Exhibition of Electricity had been held in Paris, and started an authentic
Table 12.3╇ Electricity in the buildings of the Universal Exhibition Universal Exhibition of Barcelona, 1888 Electrical System Used Ganz & Co 108 Zipernowsky arcs Palacio de la Industria Cie Continentale Edison Galería del Trabajo Cie Continentale Edison 72 Pieper arcs Palacio de material 700 Edison lamps de ferrocarriles y Cie Continentale Edison construcción Palacio de las Colonias Cie Continentale Edison Galería de Máquinas Ganz & Cie 20 Zipernowsky arcs Sección Marítima Ganz & Cie 160 Khotisky lamps Palacio de Bellas Artes Palacio de Ciencias 82 Gramme arcs Sociedad Española de Electricidad 105 Swan lamps Umbráculo Parque Fuente Mágica Anglo-Española de Electricidad 15 Brush arcs. Building
Source: Author
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revolution in electrification, but the 1888 exhibition on Spanish soil aroused even greater interest in electrical lighting. Some of the streets surrounding the exhibition site were lit by electricity, while within the enclosure itself electric lighting could be seen in all its splendor. The table below shows which of the exhibition spaces were lit and the systems used, some of which were known previously. During this period, foreign financial groups involved in the new electrical industry were making their appearance on the Spanish scene and began developing the electrification of different Spanish towns and villages by means of different business measures to obtain contracts and acquire materials. It was in this way that electrical technology was introduced into Spain. In addition to those companies already mentioned: Sociedad Española de Electricidad and General Compañía General de Electricidad, Fuerza y Luz Eléctrica, in 1882 the Compañía Anglo-Española de Electricidad was also founded in Barcelona, with links to Brush machines. In 1890 the Siemens and Halske was also set up in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the company with the greatest presence during the early decades of Spanish electrification was the German Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesselschaf (AEG), which together with Deutsche Bank founded the Compañía General Madrileña de ElectriÂ�cidad in 1889, going to found the Compañía Barcelonesa de Electricidad and the Compañía Sevillana de Electricidad in 1894. In 1890, the Compañía General Madrileña de ElectriÂ�cidad put its own power plant into service. This was the first electrical installation to be constructed by AEG in Spain and outside of Germany. It was designed to feed 20.000 lamps and had four 300 CV steam engines of vertical type, each connected to a 238 kW AEG dynamo. The supply network operated at 110 V with the three conductor system. In the same year another company, The Electricity Supply & Co., of Spain, backed by the English company The Electric Construction Corporation, Ltd, a manufacturer of electrical material, built an electric power station with six steam engines connected to Elwell-Parker alternators with 2,000 V of exit voltage, each designed to feed 4,000 lamps. It supplied an alternating current of 2,000 V and transforming with Lowrie Hall transformers connected to the 100 V low voltage network. The reason behind these two schemes in the Spanish capital was the high cost of supplying gas for the lighting system in comparison with other towns, which was also the reason why the Sociedad Matritense de Electricidad was established in the city in 1882. Gas was expensive in Madrid, and electricity proved to be far more economical for both public and domestic lighting systems. The nascent European industry of electrical equipment was keen to expand and find markets for its manufactured products, and was making efforts to develop electrical supply systems. It first turned its attention to the big cities, which with their large populations could provide many potential users, and then to towns and villages large enough to ensure a similar market. These companies made contacts through agents in Spain; Spanish technical personnel or even foreign associates were the initiators of these activities to promote and channel requirements for electrical installations. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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It was in this way that companies arose devoted to the task of developing electricity supply systems in the Spanish cities. Little by little, French technology gave way to the two other technologies that rose to dominance, primarily German and a little later, English technology. Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesselschaf (AEG) was the company with the greatest presence in Spain, to which it gave preferential attention and where it put into service a thermal power plant in Madrid in 1894, as well as a further 15 steam-driven thermal power plants in Santander, Huesca, Badajoz, Toledo, Jerez, Zaragoza, Córdoba and other unspecified places. The supply always operated with direct current, triple conductor or twin-conductor according to the characteristics of the system. It also created hydraulic facilities in Aranjuez, Cabra and Plasencia. A little later AEG entered the market for electricity in Seville and Barcelona, in spite of the fact that since 1891 alternating current had been accepted as more suitable for long distance conveyance resulting from transmitting electricity between Lauffen and Frankfurt am Main. Even so, there is no doubt that for many years power plants continued to operate with direct current, mainly in the large cities. As mentioned above, one of the chief advantages of direct current was the use of storage batteries, which could at certain times deal with peak demand, as well as enabling the steam engines to be shut down at night while still providing supply during these hours of reduced consumption. Built by the Compañía Barcelonesa de Electricidad, the AEG power plant in Barcelona came into operation in March 1897 and for many years was the largest in Spain. It was equipped with five 1,000 CV steam engines working with five boilers and connected to five 750 kW direct current AEG dynamos, a total of 3,750 kW. The supply system was a direct current triple-conductor at 220–110 V. This was not the only electric power station in Barcelona; the other was constructed by a group consisting of the combined city gas works and Central Catalana de Electricidad. It was equipped with four 600 CV steam engines of and four 530 kW direct current dynamos. A fifth steam engine was of 400 CV and was connected to two smaller dynamos. The supply system was a direct current triple-conductor at 300–150 V. Both power plants were built with German technology, this second one by Schuckert and Co. of Nuremberg, which was the first to be set up in Spain by this company before merging with Siemens and Halske. While direct current continued apace in the big cities with thermal power plants, other towns were developing electricity supplies with the alternating current system. This system was used for the conveyance of electricity in areas with hydraulic power plants located at considerable distances from towns and using high voltage because performance was better. As previously mentioned that in 1886 Girona was the first city in Spain, and one of the first in Europe to have all its streets lit by electricity using alternating current, a system imported from Hungary and consolidated by the intense building activity and development undertaken by the Spanish company located in Girona, Planas, Flaquer y Cia., which acquired the Ganz patent. Almost from the beginnings of electricity supply, in Madrid an alternating History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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current system was in competition with another by direct current. The alternating network in Madrid supplied 2,000 V by means of underground cables. Zaragoza also had its own electric lighting system by means of alternating current. The Aragonese Electricity Company constructed a hydraulic power plant and a 2,500 V two-phase alternating current line between this plant and a power plant located in the city. This plant was equipped with a steam engine for supply stock, and there were also two engines connected to two dynamos transforming the 2,500 V of alternating current to 110V direct current. This was a mixed system that combined the advantages of both; on the one hand a more efficient conveyance of electricity with the power plant located 5 km from the city, and on the other the advantages of direct current mentioned previously. Apart from a plant in Zaragoza, there were few mixed systems initially operating in Spain, except for those built in Jaca, Gijón, Talavera de la Reina and Valencia. Alternating current made its appearance in Barcelona in 1906, employing a voltage of 6,000 V, the usual voltage for existing networks in Germany. This was due to the fact that the direct current network became saturated, and the problem was solved in two ways: by installing a three-phase network of high voltage alternating current, and by feeding the direct current network by the so-called Subplants, which consisted of a alternating voltage generator of 6,000 V connected to a direct current engine 110–150 V, and feeding the network by this means. Water Power Takes Over
In the early period of the introduction of electricity into Spain, and up until the early twentieth century, most of the big cities generated electric power by means of coal-filled thermal power plants, while those using water power also had a thermal system that came into operation during water shortages or when the line of transmission or the hydraulic plant itself happened to break down. One of the most advanced hydroelectric power plants at that time in Spain was built in the town of Flix. The turbines were constructed by Voith & Co. and were connected to direct current generators made by Schuckert & Co. With an installed power of 1,750 CV, the electricity produced was entirely devoted to the electrolysis of products derived from Chlorine for the company, Electroquímica de Flix which employed the manufacturing procedures employed by Chemische Fabrik’s Elektron in Frankfurt. Initially no supply of electricity was generated, but the plant was similar to an electric power plant and led to new technologies that were subsequently to be employed in other hydroelectric works. It is known that by 1901 there were a total of 859 power plants, 257 of which were driven by steam, 427 by hydraulic means, 63 by gas-powered engines and the rest by a combination of the three forces. While this was quite a large number, 75 per cent of such plants had a power of 100 kW or less, that is, they were small facilities. Although on the whole the electricity was generated by hydraulic means, these power plants were very small and only two were of any significance for the power they produced. The hydraulic plant belonging History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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to Hidraulica Santillana, located in Colmenar Viejo, had four Francis turbines with a total power of 1,750 CV and was used to supply Madrid. The other the hydraulic plant at Oroz-Betelú, belonging to Electra Irati, constructed in 1901 with two 450 CV Francis turbines to supply electricity to a paper mill in Pamplona as well as for the public and private electric lighting system of the city. Two years later, in 1903 another electric power plant was installed in Catalonia. Equipped with two turbines by Escher Wyss ET Cie, this company made its emergence in Spain, slowly overtaking the dominant position held until then by Planas, Flaquer y Cia in the manufacture of turbines, while the French technology that the Planas Company had introduced and improved gave way to Swiss and German turbine technology. Thus, in the early twentieth century a rapid expansion of electrification took place as a result of these new trends, the production of thermal electricity being replaced by hydraulic electricity, leaving Escher Wyss ET Cie and Voith & Co. in a highly advantageous position. This change was due to the creation of several companies all devoted to the operation of hydroelectric concessions extended to: Sociedad General Gallega de Electricidad (1900), Teledinámica del Gállego (1900), Hidroeléctrica Ibérica (1901), Sociedad Española, Hidráulica del Freser (1901), Hidroeléctrica del Chorro (1903), Mengemor (1904), Hidráulica de Santillana (1905), Electra del Viesgo (1906), Hidroeléctrica Española (1907), and later, in 1911, Energía Eléctrica de Cataluña, Barcelona Traction. Light and Power, and Sociedad General de Fuerzas Hidroeléctricas. All these companies became energetically involved in the construction of hydraulic power plants, and to mention them all is beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that the technology involved in electrical energy underwent great progress in both hydraulic facilities and electrical facilities. As regards the former, the Freser power plants, Upper Freser (1902) and Lower Freser (1908), were the first to employ this advanced hydraulic technology, in this case a dam at the great height of 351 metres. It was for this reason that the project consisted of two separate plants. Two horizontal axis Pelton generators, each with a power of 1,150 CV, were installed in 1902, which made them the most powerful in Spain at that time. In 1908, a 1,500 CV. horizontal axis Pelton turbine was installed in the other plant.The line of conveyance was constructed for a voltage of 20,000 V. This was not the first line with this voltage in Spain, since the power line constructed from Irati to Pamplona a year earlier also carried this voltage. These two facilities were designed by the same company, Ahlemeyer, which was associated with the German companies Siemens and Halske and Schukert and Co. In the first decade of the twentieth century the electrification of Spain continued its course, with all the provincial capitals supplied with electricity, the last ones being Palma and Albacete in 1903. Electrical facilities were becoming larger and the use of water power more prominent in the constructions undertaken by those companies mentioned above. Though much remained to be done, the road ahead was clear, and in some cases many of the early installations were becoming obsolete as they gave way to the renewal of the electrical History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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structure in Spain. Twenty years had not passed in vain; electrical technology was different and the needs of the population as well. Electricity as a source of energy was replacing coal, and the market in electricity that was opening up was attractive for all the companies involved. The Other Side of the Electrical Business
Spanish industry devoted to the production and distribution of electrical equipment has been very limited compared with foreign industry. Spain’s technological dependence on this industry has been almost absolute. The same cannot be said for the production of electrical material for industry or households, which emerged as electrification advanced, and consequently the increase in demand for electric lighting equipment and auxiliary products. As regards the electricity production and supply, the onset of knowledge acquisition and electrical equipment was due to representations, or delegations, of the companies such as Siemens &Halske, Schuckert, Voith, Escher Wyss, etc. These companies employed agents, often engineers or qualified technical personnel from those countries themselves, who obtained orders for new facilities, such as power plants or electrical systems, which also included networks of distribution and conveyance. A case in point might be that already mentioned of the company Planas y Flaquer in Girona, which without any experience prior to its first undertaking in the city of Girona itself, was assisted by the parent company Ganz of Budapest. This was also the case of the plants in Irati and Freser, which were promoted by the company Ahlemeyer of Bilbao with the backing of Schuckert. Another system took shape from 1889, when AEG began setting up companies in Spain to generate and supply electricity with projects designed in Berlin for the electrical systems of Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and many other cities in which AEG would introduce its technology directly and without intermediaries. These new companies under the aegis of AEG were obliged to acquire all their material from the principal shareholder. Few undertakings of a similar type were carried out until 1910, when the Compagnie Generate d’Électricité set up the Energía Eléctrica de Cataluña with the aim of incorporating other markets into its increasingly prominent activity in the electricity sector. In addition to these procedures, production of electrical material in Spain also emerged, mainly under patents from European or American companies. The first one was the Sociedad Española de Electricidad with its factory of Barcelona, which from its beginnings wanted but was unable to undertake the electrification of the country; not for lack of technology, which it had, but rather because of the economic situation during the period in which it entered to the market. It is also worth mentioning another company that undertook this type of activity in Barcelona, and that was the Compañía Anglo-Española de Electricidad, which in 1882 set up its own workshops for the assembly of electrical instrumentation. It was mainly in involved in the placement of electrical material for public and private lighting systems. Though these companies encountered similar problems in the introduction of History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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electrical lighting systems, this was not the case for the Sociedad Española, but AEG’s arrival on the scene put a brake on to this company’s expansion in the distribution and supply business, limiting it to material for domestic and industrial consumption sector. It was rather La Electricidad, a company based in the industrial town of Sabadell, which step by step carved out a place for itself in the market for capital goods, as did the company Planas, Flaquer y Cia in Girona. Both made the most of the market for industrial electrification and the electrification of medium size towns to progress, either with foreign patents or with their own development projects. A few years later, towards the end of the nineteenth century, another company came into operation, and this was La Industria Eléctrica, which adopted patents from the Swiss company Thury. They focused their activity on alternating current rather than direct current, though the Tibidabo funicular above Barcelona was powered by direct current. It only remains to mention the European companies that also established their operations in Spain in their own factories, the most typical probably being Pirelli with the manufacture of electrical cables and wires, established in 1903 in Vilanova y la Geltrú, or the Spanish Society of the Accumulator Tudor, established in 1897 in Zaragoza for the manufacture of lead accumulators. There was also the French company Compagnie francaise pour l’exploitation des procédes Thompson-Houston, established in Paris by the American parent company in 1893, which was closely related with Spain, though the presence of this company tended to remain in the background. Note
1. Benito Navarro y Abel de Beas (1752), Physica eléctrica o compendio donde se explican los maravillosos phenomenos de la virtud eléctrica, Sevilla. 2. Jaume Agustí (1983), Ciència i tècnica a Catalunya en el segle XVIII. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, p. 35. 3. Pere A. Fàbregas (1993), Josep Roura y Estada (1787–1860), p.123. 4. El Porvenir de la Industria (1876), p. 139. 5. Francisco de Paula Rojas (1881), La luz eléctrica y sus aplicaciones al alumbrado público y particular, á la márina, á la guerra, á las fábricas y talleres. Barcelona: Espasa Hnos, p.46 6. El Porvenir de la Industria (1883), p.142. 7. Joan Carles Alayo (2007), L’electricitat a Catalunya. Lleida: Pagés Editors, p. 71. 8. A. Heuberger (1943), in AEG, 50 años de actuación en España. Madrid: AEG, p. 16. 9. José M. García (1986), Primeros pasos de la luz eléctrica en Madrid y otros acontecimientos. Madrid: Ediciones Fondo natural, p. 71. 10. A. Heuberger (1943), in: AEG, 50 años de actuación en España. Madrid: AEG, p. 17 and p. 25. 11. Joan Carles Alayo (2007), L’electricitat a Catalunya. Lleida: Pagés Editors, p. 893. 12. E. Agacino (1900), Cartilla de electricidad práctica. Cádiz: Tipografia Gaditana, p. 269. 13. Joan Carles Alayo (2007), L’electricitat a Catalunya. Lleida: Pagés Editors, p. 237.
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Secrecy or Discretion: The Transfer of Nuclear Technology to Spain during the Franco Period F r a n c e s c X . B a r c a - Sa l o m Polytechnic University of Catalonia
Introduction
Transfer of technology occurs when a person or an entity transmits knowledge, a product or a service to another. This consists of a flow to transfer useful technology for a given purpose. When transfer of technology occurs between the public sector and the private sector within one country, it is known as transfer of national technology. In the USA, for example, it is not unusual for technology to be transmitted from state laboratories to private companies. When transfer of technology takes place from a developed country to a developing one, e.g. between the centre and the periphery,1 it is termed international transfer.2 In order to gain a greater understanding of technology transfer, it is convenient to determine the actors, i.e. suppliers and receivers, the object of the transfer and the manner in which the transfer is carried out, the way in which knowledge is transmitted, the forms of transmission with respect to the access of information, to the movement of scientists from one country to another, or to the reception of experts from abroad, etc. It is also useful to ascertain whether equipment was acquired and also to establish how these transactions were carried out. In the case of nuclear technology the knowledge developed during and after the Second World War for military purposes was transferred for peaceful applications. The USA had considerable experience in this type of transfer. The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) initially and the National Science Foundation subsequently used military technology developed during the war such as radar, computers and nuclear energy to forge links between military and civilian uses.3 The transfer of nuclear technology also took place between different countries mainly for peaceful applications. The suppliers were usually leaders in the development of this technology and the receivers were countries that were interested in acquiring nuclear applications.
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However, because of the Cold War, technology transfer was restricted only to countries that shared the same political ideology. As regards nuclear technology, it is necessary to specify the object to be analysed, such as the construction of research and power reactors or the setting up of laboratories for isotopes and their application in different fields or the diffusion of knowledge through the creation of university chairs. This paper seeks to identify the actors, the aims, and the methods used in the transfer of nuclear technology to Spain between the Second World War and the 1960s, focusing on research reactors. From Military Secrecy to Peaceful Applications
During the Second World War, nuclear activities were restricted to the military sector and were shrouded in secrecy. American commitment to this type of research was due to a letter from Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt in 1939 in which he expressed his fears that Hitler could make use of recent discoveries of nuclear fission to manufacture nuclear weapons. The belief that the Germans were working in this field galvanized the Americans into initiating the Manhattan Project, the object of which was to manufacture the atom bomb. The early works of this project consisted in the use of several physical procedures such as centrifugal effect, thermal diffusion, gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic separation to achieve a more efficient chain reaction by enriching uranium in the isotope 235U. Given the uncertainty of these processes, another method using plutonium (discovered by Glen Seaborg in 1940) was implemented. This element underwent fission more rapidly than uranium with the result that these reactors were specifically built to produce plutonium for use in nuclear weapons instead of uranium. The Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbour at the end of 1941 provided the impetus for the nuclear programme. General Groves, who directed the Manhattan Project, constructed a plant of electromagnetic separation (Y-12) and another of gaseous diffusion (K-25) at Oak Ridge (Tennessee), the uranium 235U of which was not produced until the end of 1944. Some reactors of natural uranium refrigerated by water at Hanford (Washington) to produce plutonium were also built. At the same time a research centre to design nuclear weapons was constructed in an isolated location at Los Alamos. The enriched uranium produced at Oak Ridge and the plutonium obtained at Hanford were sent immediately to Los Alamos. In strict secrecy, following a test in the desert of Alamogordo, the nuclear bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.4 At the end of WW II, President Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act, which set up the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) with the aim of coordinating a nuclear programme for both military and peaceful uses. However, the American civil programme did not start until 1949. A national technology transfer was then vertically implemented between the AEC and private companies.5 Subsequently, six types of experimental reactors were funded by the AEC in collaboration with different companies. Of these reactors only the Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR) generated electricity in 1951.6 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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This process of transfer constituted a prerequisite for initiating international transfers. The advances made in the military sector once placed in the hands of civilian companies helped to reduce secrecy and facilitate the diffusion of knowledge to other countries. In 1953, President Eisenhower presented the Atoms for Peace Program. The concept was simple: the United States agreed to assist the nuclear programmes in a number of countries in exchange for the right to inspect nuclear facilities to make sure that the nuclear material was not used to construct weapons. This was an important project of technology transfer for exclusively non-military uses. Secrecy had not prevented the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries and the USA felt obliged to put a stop to this race and deflect it towards peaceful uses.7 One of the most important achievements of the Atoms for Peace Program was the celebration of an international conference in Geneva 1955. This conference was a considerable success given that it was attended by 1.400 delegates from 73 countries. During this conference the world learnt that the USSR had built a reactor that produced electricity (Obninsk). Following this conference, a new policy on nuclear matters was adopted, which paved the way for bilateral agreements between different countries with the aim of facilitating technology transfer.8 Suppliers of Nuclear Technology
Although the USA pioneered nuclear research for military uses, other countries soon joined the nuclear club after WW II. In order to better understand the nuclear panorama, we propose the following classification. The period under study spans the years between 1955, First Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva, and 1962. For many countries, the former date constitutes the initiation of nuclear activities, whereas the latter date marks the start of industrial applications.9 The countries may be divided into four groups depending on their proximity to the centre: 1 The first group is constituted by the centre and includes the pioneering countries, i. e the countries that had power reactors between 1955 and 1958. 2 The second group, the group next to the centre, is formed by countries that in 1958 –62 were equipped with power reactors. 3 The third group is made up of countries that, despite having a commission of atomic energy, one or more centres of research and training, and some research reactors, did not dispose of a power reactor or the possibility of power applications of nuclear energy. 4 The fourth group consists of countries that in this period (1955–62) had not built any experimental reactors. This group includes the countries that were uninterested in nuclear energy for different reasons and were furthest from the centre. In accordance with this classification, the nuclear map between 1955 and 1962 may be interpreted as a central core made up of four countries: the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom and France surrounded by three groups on the periphery like the layers of an onion. The layer closest to the centre is the second group formed by the countries that had helped the Americans to develop the atom bomb such as Canada and Belgium. This group also includes European countries such as Sweden, which despite being less eager to develop nuclear energy, did not want to remain behind, and the countries that lost the War, Italy, Germany and Japan, which were subject to the conditions imposed by the victors. The third group is constituted by countries that despite having initiated nuclear activities in the 1950s had only attained the phase of research. These countries were only equipped with some experimental nuclear reactors. This group consisted of about 20 countries divided into capitalist and communist countries. The capitalist countries were Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, India, Denmark, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Congo, Venezuela, Argentina, Austria, Greece, Israel and Portugal. The nations under Soviet influence included Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, the United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria) and Bulgaria.
Table 13.1╇ Classification of countries in accordance with their nuclear development between 1955 and 1962 First group USSR United States United Kingdom France
Second group RF Germany Canada Belgium Italy Puerto Rico Sweden Japan
Third group Norway The Netherlands Switzerland India Czechoslovakia Denmark Spain Brazil Australia Romania Poland Hungary Belgian Congo Yugoslavia Argentina Venezuela Israel Austria Greece United Arab Republic Bulgaria Portugal
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Fourth group Austria China (Taiwan) Turkey Korea Thailand Finland Philippines Vietnam South Africa Iran Pakistan
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After 1955 these countries, whether capitalist or communist, embarked on a period of training and by the end of the 1960s they had acquired power reactors. As a result of bilateral agreements between countries, technology transfer took place leading to the construction of research reactors and to the availability of trained personnel. Thus, the countries of the third group were able to benefit from the Atoms for Peace Program purchasing or building some research reactors and training scientists in the most prestigious laboratories of the pioneering countries e.g. the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, the research centre at Saclay in France or the research centre at Harwell in the United Kingdom. Finally the fourth group is formed by countries that began research when the countries of the third group had already initiated the industrial stage. This group includes countries such as Finland, which was endowed with hydroelectric power and had little interest in nuclear energy, and developing countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Iran and Pakistan. There were also some countries in South East Asia, such as Korea, Thailand and Taiwan, which manifested an interest in this new source of energy to kick start a period of economic expansion. The above classification shows that the transfer of technology proceeded from the countries of the first group to the others. The United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom and France became suppliers of technology to the other groups, especially the countries of the third group. The United Kingdom, which had already in 1941 commenced research on nuclear weapons, felt obliged shift its research line towards peaceful applications because of the growing energy demand in the postwar period. Accordingly, the research centre at Harwell was set up in 1950, and the Atomic Research Establishment (AERE) focused its attention on the construction of a power reactor to produce electricity and plutonium, which could also be used for nuclear weapons. Although this reactor, known as PIPPA (Pile of Producing Power and Plutonium), was not constructed, its design formed the basis of a new reactor that was identical but bigger (at Calder Hall) in order to produce electricity. It goes without saying that this reactor marks an important milestone in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.12 The last country of the first group was France, which has a long tradition in nuclear research and had been one of pioneers in this field but had fallen behind. In 1945, General de Gaulle set up the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA), which encouraged the return of French scientists that were working in the nuclear field in Canada.13 This led to a transfer of technology that entailed the construction of a research reactor in France similar to the one that existed in Canada. This reactor known as ZOE, (zero energy, oxide of uranium, heavy water) started to operate in 1948. In 1952 the French Government approved the first quinquennial plan to develop atomic energy. This plan involved the creation of a new research centre at Saclay, the construction of a new research reactor, the P2 (EL-2), and two accelerators and one cyclotron.14 The United States, the UK and France played an active part in the transfer of nuclear technology to the countries of the third group known as receivers, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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which were situated at a different level of nuclear development. Some of them, such as the Netherlands and Norway, occupied the first place of this classification, and others such as Venezuela and Greece were situated at the bottom of the group. Nevertheless, these countries share some common characteristics: first, they all benefited from the technology transfer facilitated by the Atoms for Peace Program after the First Geneva Conference; second, they all signed agreements with one supplier with the result that they obtained a research reactor; third they were able to train scientists and technicians at research centres of the supplier country. The case of Spain is a good example of such a receiver. This will be analysed below. Transfer of Nuclear Technology to Spain
The first nuclear activities in Spain concern mining when the Geological and Mining Institute created a commission to investigate the uranium deposits in the Sierra de Albarrana, in Hornachuelos (Cordoba). Mining was also the subject of the anecdote that gave rise to the project of nuclear research in Spain. In April 1948, Professor Francesco Scandone, of the University of Florence, after delivering a lecture at the Daza de Valdés Optical Institute of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), expressed his interest in the uranium deposits in Spain. Subsequently, Armando Durán, a professor at the University of Madrid, put him in contact with General Vigón, and this led to a collaboration between the two countries. A secret agreement between Italy and Spain was reached whereby Italy agreed to send geologists to Spain in exchange for training young Spanish scientists in Italy. This collaboration between Italy and Spain constitutes an early example of technology transfer between countries of the second and third groups.15 In September 1948, Franco issued a secret decree whereby the Board of Atomic Research (JIA) was constituted. This Board consisted of José María Otero Navascués, Manuel Lora Tamayo, Armando Durán Miranda and José Ramon Sobredo Rioboo. To provide legitimacy and finance, whilst maintaining secrecy, the Board took on the outside appearance of a company Estudios y Patent de Aleaciones Especiales (Studies and Patents for Special Alloys-EPALE). This company was directed by Esteve Terradas.16 The aim of the JIA was threefold: first, uranium mining and its transformation, second, the training of scientists abroad, and third, carrying out experiments to obtain a thermonuclear pile. All the three aims would depend on foreign collaboration. Nevertheless, given Franco’s support to the Axis powers during the Second World War, Spain was economically isolated and was barred from the United Nations and other international organizations. As a result, the first years of the JIA were difficult and international relations were very restricted. Notwithstanding, EPALE contracted some science graduates such as Ramon Ortiz Fornaguera, Carlos Sánchez del Río and María Aranzazu Vigón and sent them to study in Milan and Rome.17 As a chief executive of the company, José María Otero Navascués established contacts with some foreign centres. In 1949, he travelled to Switzerland to visit Professor Paul Scherrer, of the Polytechnic of Zurich, and then he History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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went to Germany to talk to Werner Heisenberg and the scientist Karl Wirtz at the Institute Max Planck in Göttingen. He also contacted Samuel K. Allison, of the University of Chicago, and the Professors Giuseppe Bolla and Edoardo Amaldi, of the Polytechnic in Milan, and visited the Free University of Brussels, and the Le Bouchet uranium factory, where he met Bertrand Goldsmidt, before finally visiting the department of metallurgy at Harwell. Some of these scientists travelled to Madrid to deliver lectures or to train Spanish scientists.18 In the period between the creation of the JIA and the constitution of the JEN (Board of Nuclear Energy) technology transfer was reduced to training, e.g. sending young scientists abroad or inviting foreign teachers to deliver lectures. It should be borne in mind that in this period contacts could only be established with Italy and Germany. This collaboration was not a coincidence given that these two countries were among the losers in the Second World War. The journeys of Otero Navascués to Switzerland, Belgium, France and England were attempts to open up new contacts in order to break out of political isolation. The training activities of EPALE were accompanied by the initiation of uranium mining at Hornachuelos in the Sierra de Albarrana to treat this mineral in the laboratory of the department of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Madrid, where a small pilot plant was built to obtain uranyl nitrate.19 As regards the research to construct a reactor, two lines of investigation were followed: the study of fuel elements and that of different types of moderators. To this end, a team under the direction of José Terraza Martorell was formed.20 This first period (1948–51) of the development of nuclear energy was characterized by strict secrecy and by the stark realization that Spain lacked trained personnel. In May 1950 on the death of Esteban Terradas, General Vigón became the director of EPALE. Subsequently, secrecy gradually gave way to discretion. In October 1951, a decree set up the Spanish agency of atomic energy with the name of Board of Nuclear Energy (Junta de Energía Nuclear, JEN).21 The JEN came into being with some very ambitious aims. It sought to undertake activities in four areas related to nuclear energy: first, uranium mining in the broad sense; second, training of personnel and the provision of advice to the government; third, research in nuclear energy; fourth, radioactive safety and the production and distribution of isotopes. However, the original aims were reoriented because of the political, social and economic changes of the decade (1951–9). Thus, the agreement with the USA and the Concordat with the Vatican were the first steps towards ending the isolation of Spain in the postwar period. As a result of the Cold War, the American need for strategic bases proved greater than its political reluctance to be associated with the Franco regime. In the following five years (1951–5) the JEN was engaged in big projects, such as the building of a large centre for nuclear studies in Madrid, and a plant for uranium treatment at Andújar. The German scientist, Karl Wirtz, was contacted for scientific advice and travelled to Madrid to supervise these History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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projects.22 German influence was very important and contributed to the training of Spanish scientists and technicians, transferring not only technology but also methodology. Meanwhile, the relations with the USA had improved with the result that a delegation of the JEN took part in the International Congress of Nuclear Engineering, organized by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (USA) in 1954.23 In August 1955, Geneva hosted the First Atoms for Peace Conference in which a large Spanish delegation participated. This delegation was formed by members of the JEN, the administration, representatives of business and some academics. Juan Antonio Suanzes, the former Minister of Industry, who was the president of the National Institute of Industria (INI), Alejandro Suárez, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Industry and José M. de Areilza, Spanish ambassador in Washington also formed part of this delegation. Some observers such as Joaquín Ortega Costa and Miquel Masriera also attended the meeting. The importance of this conference with respect to the transmission of knowledge is reflected in the subsequent reports in which this meeting was considered to have opened the door to nuclear science and technology, a door that had remained closed for the last 15 years. Joaquín Ortega Costa also pointed out that this scientific event had served to compile information and also to bring together different nuclear scientists.24 The Atoms for Peace Program and the First Geneva Conference ushered in a new period in the JEN during which transfer of knowledge was promoted and access to information was facilitated. The collaboration with the USA was close because of the agreement of cooperation between Spain and the USA with respect to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The agreement obliged the USA to provide enriched uranium for the construction of a research reactor in exchange for the right to inspect the nuclear facilities in Spain.25 As a result of this agreement, the Americans maintained control over nuclear development in Spain. In 1956 a swimming pool reactor was obtained from General Electric. This reactor, known as JEN-1, was heterogeneous and was moderated and refrigerated by water and with a graphite reflector. The reactor contained fuel elements of enriched uranium (20 per cent) and the swimming pool had two wells that enabled it to function at low power (100 kW) but also at high power (3 MW). General Electric supplied all the strictly nuclear elements such as the core, the elements of control, the experimental tanks and several parts of the refrigeration system.26 The JEN, for its part, took care of the conventional containment building and the installations of the reactor, which were constructed by Spanish companies. In parallel to the construction of the reactor, the JEN implemented the project of General Vigón to construct the centre of nuclear research at Moncloa in Madrid. These activities monopolized the attention of the JEN in the years 1956–8. The reactor JEN-1 and the Centre of Nuclear Studies at Moncloa were inaugurated by General Franco on 27 November 1958. The uranium FACTORY at Andújar was opened in the following year. Thus a crucial stage in the development of nuclear energy was accomplished in Spain. All these advances in nuclear energy were made possible thanks to the transfer of History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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technology mainly from the USA i.e. the reactor and the training of young Spanish scientists at American and European universities. From Reception of Knowledge to Technological Development
One of the first steps in technology transfer was the reception of knowledge. This process, which became more fluid after the First Geneva Conference, had important implications for the training of engineers. The schools of Industrial Engineering in Spain set up special chairs for nuclear subjects. Given the inflexibility of the syllabus, which did not permit the introduction of new subjects, these chairs were set up voluntarily outside the established studies. This was a considerable effort on the part of the engineering schools to keep abreast of technological changes.27 Three chairs were created to provide training for students by the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona. These chairs were named after prestigious engineers such as Esteban Terradas, Paulino Castells and Fernando Tallada, the last chair being devoted to nuclear engineering.28 Returning to the First Geneva Conference, J. M. Torróntegui, director of the School of Bilbao, and Joaquín Ortega of the School of Barcelona, announced the imminent implementation of some courses on nuclear engineering. The Fernando Tallada chair of nuclear engineering was created with the support of the Official Chamber of Industry of Barcelona in October 1955. This chair organized courses that were given by two local professors: Joaquín Ortega, who taught the theory of reactors and Ramón Simón, who provided an introduction to nuclear engineering.29 Another lecturer, Antonio Cumella, was incorporated in the following year. Subsequently, new and more advanced concepts were introduced to improve knowledge through collaboration with foreign specialists. First in 1957, three cycles of conferences were organized by the scientists of the JEN, a team of French professors directed by Thomas Reis, and by Leon Jacques from France.30 The notable French influence on the training of engineers constituted a thaw in the political relations between the two countries, and strongly suggests that the direction of technology transfer, after the First Geneva Conference, shifted from the countries of the second group (Italy and Germany) to the ones of the first group (the USA and France) i.e. in a vertical sense. The special course of nuclear technology delivered by the teachers headed by Thomas Reis, director of the Société pour les Applications Techniques dans le domaine de l’Énergie Nucleaire (SATNUC), was subsequently consolidated31 and was even featured in the journal Nuclear Power as an example of training: Professor Th. Reis, director of the French nuclear organization SATNUC of Paris has been conducting a course of lectures at the Spanish Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales in Barcelona. The course spread over February and March included reviews of the various types of reactors, health safeguards, radiation protection and neutron detection techniques.32
The Fernando Tallada chair also sponsored some publications related to its courses that facilitated the diffusion of knowledge. In this sense Miquel
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Masriera’s Spanish translation of Nuclear Energy: An Introduction to the Concepts, Systems, and Applications of Nuclear Processes by Raymond L. Murray became available. This book was one of the first books about nuclear engineering to be published in Spain. It was specially addressed to training engineers and as the introduction put it: ‘the best of its kind’. 33 The chair also published some of the lectures delivered by foreign teachers such as Neal F. Lainsing and Daniel Blanc in journals like Dyna and Acero y Energía.34 In addition, two volumes of lectures delivered by Thomas Reis and his team between 1956 and 1958 entitled Reactores Nucleares were also issued.35 The most distinctive feature of this process of transfer of knowledge in Barcelona is that it was accomplished, unlike the JEN (with assistance from Italy or Germany) but with help from France, which collaborated closely with both teachers and engineers. At that time it was considered that nuclear energy would be able to resolve energy needs and would became an important source of energy in the future. The role of the Chamber of Industry of Barcelona was instrumental in giving economic support to all these activities e.g. founding chairs, providing grants and funding the construction of a new research reactor.36 These studies, which were created by the Fernando Tallada chair on the periphery of the established education, became consolidated with the creation of the speciality of Energy Techniques in 1958, which made it possible to teach the subjects of this speciality: nuclear physics, nuclear materials, nuclear technology and radioactive protection from 1961. At the time of the creation of the Fernando Tallada chair in 1955, it was proposed to equip the School of Industrial Engineering with a laboratory to undertake research on nuclear engineering using a research reactor. But it was not until the end of 1958 that a definite decision was taken. The initial attempts to import a reactor from abroad were abandoned with the result that the school was obliged to accept the offer of the JEN to build the research reactor in Spain. The reactor that was chosen was an Argonaut, which was similar to those that were manufactured at the Argonne National Laboratory in the USA.37 The researchers of the JEN began to reap the fruits of the technology transfer of the earlier years and were equipped to undertake the construction of the prototype of a reactor. The aim of the JEN was to build a model devoted to electricity production using its own technology. However, the construction of the research reactor for Barcelona encountered a number of difficulties. The first difficulty faced by José Javier Clua (the engineer sent from Barcelona to Madrid to collaborate in the construction of the reactor) was the importation of graphite and its mechanization. The School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona communicated its interest in commencing the import of graphite and agreed to supply the funding. As a result, it was decided to initiate the construction of the reactor and to import the parts that could not be manufactured in Spain. Thereafter, some tests were made at the Centre of Nuclear Research of the JEN in Madrid in order to decide whether to buy the graphite from abroad and mechanize it in Spain or import it already mechanized.38 The operation of graphite mechanization consisted in cutting graphite bars History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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and shaping them so that they could be adapted in the specific locations inside the reactor. It was essential for the blocks of graphite to be suitably adjusted so as to avoid loss of coolant. It was also necessary to bore holes in some blocks to install the bars of control, the samples for irradiation and the systems of detection.39 The mechanization was a work of great accuracy and its execution needed some specific machines that the JEN did not have. Moreover, they had to ensure that the graphite did not become contaminated by impurities; otherwise it would not be able to react to the flow of neutrons. It should be borne in mind that graphite was used as a moderator and a reflector because of its nuclear properties and its low cross section of capture of neutrons, which is increased in the presence of impurities. Lithium, boron and rare earth elements of all chemical elements are the most detrimental to graphite because they increase more than the others the probability of capture. Finally, it was decided to carry out the mechanization in Spain after obtaining the graphite from the Siemens-Plania company in Germany. This decision was influenced by some visits of Mr Drude, director of the nuclear department of this Siemans-Plania, to Madrid. Mr Drude invited some members of the JEN to visit an Argonaut reactor belonging to this company at Garching. Given that, Siemens was only interested in the sale of graphite and not in its mechanization, three members of the JEN (Álvarez del Buergo, Clua and Simón Arias) visited the company and were shown how the mechanization functioned.40 The graphite reached the JEN in February. In July 1960, in a note to Damian Aragonés, the director of the School of Engineering, Clua described the implementation of the process of mechanization. He said that the works had proceeded as expected, that the inner reflector, the wedges and the parallel pipes had been completed and that they were constructing the external reflector.41 When the reactor was practically finished and was still in the laboratory in the JEN in Madrid, awaiting transfer to Barcelona in 1961, Miquel Masriera, journalist and physicist, wrote an article which was published in the La Vanguardia newspaper. In this article he described the extreme measures of security that the workers had to take to avoid the contamination of graphite with boron, as well as the care they had to take with preparation of the tools employed to mechanize this material. Measures very similar to those taken in an operating theatre were taken to avoid graphite contamination. Toothpaste containing sodium perborate was replaced by other products that did not contain this substance. Moreover, the soap used to wash the clothes of the workers had to be replaced and a soap without boron had to be used. Another complication was the cleaning and greasing of the machines twice before and twice after use in order to avoid the contamination of some lubricants.42 Accordingly, the JEN developed its own technology using the experience obtained from other countries. This is very much in evidence with respect to the provision of the nuclear fuel for this reactor. Although Spain had some uranium deposits, it lacked the facilities for enrichment i.e. increasing the quantity of the isotope of uranium235 in uranium238 up to appropriate percentages. It was thus necessary History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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to import this enriched uranium from the USA. Nevertheless, enriched uranium could be obtained as uranium oxide (U3O8), the form in which it was in the fuel elements of the reactor or as uranium hexafluoride (UF6), the form in which it was obtained from the enriched plant. If it was imported in the latter form it would be necessary to dispose of a transformer plant to turn uranium hexafluoride into uranium oxide.43 The negotiations with the USA on the importation of fuel that began at the end of 1959 were not concluded until August 1960. The process was slow and meanwhile the JEN was conducting tests on the conversion of uranium hexafluoride into uranium oxide. After some teething difficulties, the results obtained were deemed satisfactory. In October 1959, the JEN carried out studies comparing the cost of transforming hexafluoride into oxide and purchasing oxide from the USA. It was concluded that the second option was more cost effective. As Clua affirmed, the JEN had decided to transform hexafluoride into oxide regardless of the economic factor provided that the technical difficulties were overcome. This decision was political and not economic given that the JEN wished to take advantage of the construction of this reactor in order to make the most of its experience in the subsequent construction of prototypes. 44 After this decision the JEN negotiated with the USAEC (United States Atomic Energy Commission) to obtain the fuel. It was the first time that USA had exported uranium in this phase of transformation to another country. For this reason, the USA insisted on having full knowledge of the transformation process to be followed and demanded some guarantees for the use of the uranium. These concerns were reasonable given that the uranium was finally rented and not sold since it could be used for other purposes. Finally permission was obtained from the USA and the uranium hexafluoride arrived in monel cylinders 5 inches in diameter. The fuel was subjected to a process consisting of three steps in the laboratory of the JEN at Moncloa. The first step constituted hydrolysis, yielding fluoride of uranyl. The second step involved the precipitation of this solution with ammonia to obtain ammonium diuranate. The third step consisted in calcination of the uranate after filtering and drying to obtain uranium oxide. The transformer plant built for this purpose consisted of three glove boxes. Weighing and hydrolysis were carried out in the first glove box. A quantity of hexafluoride (1.5 kg) was transferred from one cylinder to another that was suspended from the pan of the weighing scales. After weighing, it was transferred to another cylinder through a flexible copper pipe, where the hydrolysis occurred with the introduction of demineralized water. Precipitation and filtration took place in the second glove box. Precipitation was carried out by stirring and heating at 60ºC the solution of fluoride of uranyl with nitrogen previously introduced into the precipitator. Drying in a stove for four hours, calcination in an electric oven at 800ºC for six hours and encapsulation of the uranium oxide in capsules of polyvinyl were carried out in the third glove box.45 Before transforming uranium hexafluoride into oxide, the facility was tested using unenriched hexafluoride produced by the JEN from uranium History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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tetrafloride. Despite some difficulties that had also affected the preliminary works, the process was accomplished satisfactorily.46 The uranium after importation and transformation was converted into elements of fuel in the JEN laboratories. The manufacture of the fuel elements was an additional exercise in the preparation for the production of elements for a possible nuclear prototype in the future. The fuel element of the Argonaut was made up of 17 plates 580 ×70 × 1.8 mm joined by a pin. Each plate was covered with aluminium and with a core in the centre to locate uranium oxide in a dispersion of aluminium.47 The manufacture of these elements, which was carried out in Spain in July and August 1961, concluded a long process of research and development initiated in May 1959. This process involved research into plate production to determine the location of the fuel in the laboratory followed by a subsequent stage of development. There were three ways to manufacture plates: by casting and rolling, by framing and by extrusion. Research was initially devoted to these three procedures. The last process was carried out in Barcelona on the premises of the Metales y Platerias Ribera Company, which provided the machinery. Extrusion, which was employed in similar reactors in the USA, was replaced in this reactor by framing. Framing consisted in situating the uranium core in a previously prepared frame which was coated with aluminium and subsequently laminated to obtain the desired plates.48 Clua expressed to Aragonés his satisfaction with the results achieved, comparing the plates favourably with those that he had seen in Germany some months before.49 If the mechanization of the graphite had been an important challenge for the JEN given that it was the first time that they had carried it out, the transformation of uranium marked an important milestone because the USA had never before exported uranium in this stage of transformation. Finally, the manufacture of the fuel elements represented an innovation because of the implementation of a process different from the one commonly used in similar reactors. All this shows how the reception of technology was assimilated even to the point of incorporating innovations. By July 1961, the construction of the different parts of the reactor had been completed before the initiation of criticality tests. According to the press, the reactor known as Argos had been built wholly in Spain except for the importation of the graphite and the uranium. The partisan press in Spain affirmed that the cost of the construction was 50 per cent less than if it had been imported from abroad and that it was constructed in a record time (eight months for the project, a year for the building and four months for the assembly). In the following year, having funded the reactor, the School of Industrial Engineers and the Official Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona received a bill from the JEN to pay for the transformation of uranium. This bill covered not only the conversion of uranium hexafluoride into uranium oxide but also the manufacture of fuel elements.50 In a letter to José Maria de Orbaneja, the director of the school at that time, Clua maintained that it benefited the JEN to construct the reactor in Spain rather than import a cheaper one History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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from abroad. For this reason, Clua considered that the JEN should fund the conversion because it was the JEN that had gained most from the experience for subsequent developments.51 It goes without saying that the construction of the reactor was a political decision and not an economic one. This experience, albeit not cost effective, served to introduce and adapt technologies transferred from abroad and pave the way for the construction of commercial reactors. Based on the experience gained, the JEN sought in the early 1960s to launch the project of a natural uranium reactor, moderated by heavy water, and cooled by organic liquid. This was the DON project or the construction of a Spanish prototype reactor. At that time there was no power reactor of these characteristics in the world and the JEN sought help from American companies and from German researchers. However, radical changes in the nuclear policy of the government in Spain led to the abandonment of the project in 1963, and it was decided to import reactors in accordance with the wishes of the electricity companies. Although the decision to build nuclear power reactors was taken by the JEN and the electricity companies in an agreement known as the Pacto de Olaveaga, the construction did not begin until 1964. The first nuclear power reactor was inaugurated in 1968 and ten more were constructed in the following 20 years. Thereafter, despite concerns about safety, climate change and radioactive waste, the yield has been very limited even in the boom years of nuclear development because of the high investment required.52 Conclusion
The transfer of nuclear technology after the Second World War began as an internal process in the USA between the military and private companies and was conducted in strict secrecy. After the Atoms for Peace Program, this national technology transfer became international transfer. This paper classifies the countries into four groups depending on the degree of their nuclear development. In this process of nuclear technology transfer, some countries are suppliers and others receivers. The suppliers belonged to the countries of the first group whereas the receivers were the countries of the second and third groups. The countries that benefited most in the period under study belonged to the third group. Nevertheless, the Spanish case is a good example of how political isolation produced a shift in transferring technology i.e. the suppliers countries were not the most advanced (USA, UK or France) but the countries of the second group (Italy and Germany) that had lost the war. As soon as the political situation improved, secrecy gave way to discretion and the process of transfer was spearheaded by the most advanced countries. This paper focuses on the transfer of knowledge and also on the transfer of materials, i.e. the construction of a research reactor in Spain. One important incentive of technology transfer was the experience gained in order to construct a prototype using Spanish technology. The means employed to transfer technology consisted initially in sending young scientists to study nuclear engineering abroad first to Italy and then History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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to Germany. Simultaneously, contacts were made with research centres and universities where the technology was more advanced. This was instrumental in reducing the effects of the political and economic isolation of Spain. Teachers from abroad were also invited to give lectures and to provide assessment of research. After the agreement reached between Spain and USA as a result of the Cold War, further contacts were made and Spanish scientists were able to attend congresses and be trained at centres of nuclear research and universities in the USA. This new situation facilitated access to knowledge and the subsequent installation of a research reactor imported from America. The transfer of knowledge was difficult before the First Geneva Conference but became easier after this event. The training of engineers is one example of how it was possible to get round the rigid structure of the syllabus. To this end, one special chair was created to deliver specific courses on nuclear engineering outside the main syllabus. These courses benefited from the incorporation of teachers from abroad, especially from France. This chair also promoted the publication of books and papers in technical magazines. Finally these studies were consolidated and a new speciality (Energy technology) was incorporated into the syllabus of the industrial engineering schools in Spain. The construction of a research reactor that was not imported from abroad but made with Spanish technology based on a foreign model shows that the reception of knowledge had begun to bear fruit, generating technological innovations. The experience gained would provide the bases for a nuclear prototype known as DON (deuterium, organic, natural). The reactor Argos, and its twin reactor Arbi represented important technical innovations. They were the first reactors built almost entirely in Spain. The construction of these reactors represented three accomplishments: graphite mechanization, transformation of uranium hexafluoride into uranium oxide, and manufacture of fuel elements. During the early 1960s, the JEN was engaged in the project of a Spanish reactor with the aim of building a prototype DON. The JEN followed the German example of relying on its own technology. However, changes in the government led to a shift in the orientation of nuclear politics in Spain with the result that it became possible to obtain reactors from abroad. Subsequently, nuclear power reactors were constructed in Spain with French and American technologies. Notes
1. The terms of duality centre and periphery were established by the Argentinean economist Raúl Prebisch (1901–86) in the late 1940s. Prebisch divided the world into the economic ‘centre’, consisting of industrialized nations such as the US, and the ‘periphery’, consisting of primary producers. 2. J. Antonio Dávila (2004), ‘Transferencia de tecnología: Licencia y cesión de patentes y know how’, http://www.ventanalegal.com/revista_ventanalegal/transferencia_tecnologia.htm. 3. Arnold Reisman; Aldona Cytraus, ‘Institutionalized Technology Transfer in USA: A Historic Review’, (August 27, 2004). Available at Social Science Research Network: http://papers. ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=585364. 4. Henry de Wolf Smyth (1946), La energía atómica al servicio de la guerra. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, pp. 73–167. Lawrence Badash (1995), Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons. From Fission to
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the Limited Test Ban Treaty. 1939–1963, New Jersey: Humanities Press, pp. 11–48. Richard Hewlett and Oscar Jr Anderson (1962), The New World 1939–1946. A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Berkeley: University of California Press, vol. 1, 16–25, 63–101, 110–30, 220–50. 5. Robert Colborn (1948), ‘What happened on atomic energy in’ 47?’. Electrical World, 10, 97–104. 6. Richard G. Hewlett (1964), ‘Pioneering on nuclear frontiers’. Technology & Culture, V, 4, 512–22. Clark A. Miller 1938, 1959, ‘The Origins of Scientific Internationalism in Postwar U.S. Foreign Policy. Osiris, 2006, 21, http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/khb3/Osiris/papers/ Miller.pdf. 7. Ralph M. Parsons (1995), ‘History of technology policy-commercial nuclear power’, Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 121, 2, 85–98. Richard G. Hewlett (1989), Atoms for Peace and War 1953–1961. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 209–71. Cecilia Martínez and John Byrne (1996), ‘Science, society and state: the nuclear project and the transformation of the American political economy’, in John Byrne and Steven M Hoffman, Governing the Atom. The Politics of Risk. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, pp. 67–102. John Krige (2006), ‘Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism and Scientific Intelligence’ Osiris, 2006, 21, http:// www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/khb3/Osiris/papers/Krige.pdf. 8. Actas de la Conferencia Internacional sobre la Utilización de la Energía Atómica con Fines Pacíficos. (Ginebra, 1956). 9. Francesc X. Barca-Salom (2002), Els inicis de l’enginyeria nuclear a Barcelona. La Càtedra Ferran Tallada (1955–1962). Barcelona:, http://www.tdx.cat/TDX-0725102-122237. 10. Table self made using the information of the Directory of Nuclear Reactors. I and IV, (Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency, 1959, 1962). 11. The information between Argentina had been obtained from: Emanuel Adler (1987), The Power of Ideology. The Quest for Technology Autonomy in Argentina and Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press. 12. Kenneth Jay (1956), Calder Hall. The Story of Britain’s First Atomic Power Station. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1956. Manuel de la Sierra (1958), Actividades nucleares en el mundo. Madrid: Servicio de Estudios del Banco Urquijo, p. 101. 13. Maurice Vaïsse (1994), France et l’atome. Études d’histoire nucléaire, (Brussels: Bruyllant, pp. 13–40. Spencer R. Weart (1980), La grande aventure des atomistes français. Les savants au pouvoir. Paris : Fayard. Michel Pinault (1997), ‘Naissance d’un dessein: Fréderic Joliot et le nucléaire français (août 1944–septembre 1945)’, Revue d’Histoire des Sciences et leurs Applications, 50, 3–47. 14. Marguerite Cordier (1954), ‘Le centre atomique de Saclay’, Bulletin de l’Institut Français en Espagne, 1954, 76, 124–31. M. Baissas, (1962) ‘Actividad del Comisariado Francés de la Energía Atómica (CEA)’, Metalurgia y Electricidad, 303, 155. 15. Ana Romero de Pablos, José Manuel Sánchez Ron (2001), La energía nuclear en España. De la JEN al CIEMAT. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas. p. 15. Armando Durán, (1998) ‘Los orígenes de la Junta de Energía Nuclear’. Nuclear España. Revista de la Sociedad Nuclear Española, June, 20. Carlos Sánchez del Rio (1983), ‘José Maria Otero y la energía nuclear’, in Homenaje al Excmo. Sr. D. José M.ª Otero de Navascués. Sesión necrológica celebrada el día 20 de abril de 1983. Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, 25–9. Albert Presas Puig (2000), ‘La correspondencia entre José M. Otero Navascués y Karl Wirtz, un episodio de las relaciones internacionales de la Junta de Energía Nuclear’. Arbor, CLXVII, 659–60, 527–601. 16. Antoni Roca Rosell, José Manuel Sánchez-Ron (1990), Esteban Terradas (1883–1950), Madrid, Barcelona: Instituto Nacional de Técnicas Aeroespaciales y Ediciones del Serbal, 302. 17. Durán, op. cit. (14), 21. Romero de Pablos, Sánchez Ron, op. cit. (14), 30–40. 18. ‘Noticiario’ (1958). Energía Nuclear, 8, 128–31. José María Otero Navascués, ‘Hacia una industria nuclear’ (1957). Energía Nuclear, 3, 14–38. Leonardo Villena Pardo (1984), ‘José Maria Otero Navascués (1907–1983)’. Óptica Pura y Aplicada, 17, 1, 8. 19. Luis Gutiérrez Jodra, Adolfo Pérez Luiña (1957), ‘El Centro Nacional de Energía Nuclear de la Moncloa’. Energía Nuclear, 2, 4–18. Rafael Caro et al. (eds) (1995), Historia nuclear de España. Madrid: Sociedad Nuclear Española, p. 111. 20. Jovino Pedregal (1957), ‘El Centro Nacional de Energía Nuclear de la Moncloa’. Energía Nuclear, 1, 7. 21. Javier Ordóñez, José M. Sánchez-Ron (1996), ‘Nuclear Energy in Spain. From Hiroshima
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to the sixties’, in Paul Forman and José M Sánchez-Ron (eds), National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 185–213. Romero de Pablos, Sánchez Ron, op. cit. (14), 51. 22. Presas Puig, op. cit. (14), 527–601. 23. Otero Navascués travelled to Ann Arbor with María Aránzazu Vigón, Carlos Sánchez del Río, Ramon Ortiz Fornaguera, Luis Gutiérrez Jodra, Ricardo Fernández Cellini, José Terraza Martorell, José Luis Otero de la Gandara and Demetrio Santana. One of the papers presented in this meeting was developed in Adolfo Perez Luiña, Luis Gutiérrez Jodra (1960), El sistema nitrato de uranilo-éter dietílico-agua. Extracción de nitrato de uranilo con agua a partir de disoluciones etereas en columnas de pulverización y de relleno. Madrid: JEN. Romero de Pablos, Sánchez Ron, op. cit. (14), 54 24. Joaquín Ortega Costa,‘Síntesis crítica de la Conferencia Internacional de Ginebra sobre las Aplicaciones Pacíficas de la Energía Nuclear’, (1955) Acero y Energía, 71, 39–43. 25. Ordóñez, Sánchez-Ron, op. cit. (20), 196. Parsons, op. cit. (6), R.M. 85–98. ‘Entrevistas. CIEMAT 50 años de historia’ (1958). Nuclear España. Revista de la Sociedad Nuclear Española, June, 11. 26. Óscar Jiménez Reynaldo (1958), ‘El reactor’, Energía Nuclear, 8, 21–31. Santiago Noreña de la Cámara (1958), ‘Edificios para el reactor experimental de piscina de 3MW de la Junta de Energía Nuclear’. Energía Nuclear, 8, 5–20. 27. Inauguración del curso académico 1957–1958. Barcelona: School of Industrial Engineering, 1957, p. 4. Álvaro Rodrigo (1956), ‘Usos pacíficos de la energía nuclear’. Metalurgia y Electricidad, 220, 154–6. Ortega, op. cit. (23), 43. 28. Minutes of session of the Camber of Commerce of 1955, 29 November. Llibre d’actes de la Cambra Oficial d’Indústria de Barcelona. Barcelona: Archive of Camber of Commerce, Industry and Navigation. ‘Antecedents of Fernando Tallada chair’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 29. Programa para el curso 1955–56. Cátedra Fernando Tallada, Barcelona: School of Industrial Engineering, October, 1955. 30. Ciclo de conferencias de información nuclear, por profesores de la JEN. Cátedra Fernando Tallada. Barcelona: School of Industrial Engineering, January, 1957. Ciclo de conferencias sobre técnicas de los reactores y la economía de su aplicación industrial. Cátedra Fernando Tallada. Barcelona: School of Industrial Engineering, January 1957. Ciclo de conferencias sobre isótopos. Cátedra Fernando Tallada. Barcelona: School of Industrial Engineering, March, 1957. 31. Programa para el curso 1957–58. Cátedra Fernando Tallada. Barcelona: School of Industrial Engineering, January 1958. Programa para el curso 1958–59. Cátedra Fernando Tallada. Barcelona: Schools of Industrial Engineering, Novembre 1958. Programa para el curso 1959–60. Cátedra Fernando Tallada. Barcelona: Schools of Industrial Engineering, October 1959. 32. Nuclear Power, abril 1959: 122. 33. Raymond L. Murray (1957), Introducción a la ingeniería nuclear. Barcelona: Ed. Palestra. 34. Neal F. Lansing, ‘Corazas de reactores nucleares’ (1959). Dyna, 5, April, 260–6. Daniel Blanc (1959), ‘Tratamiento de combustibles irradiados en los reactores’. Acero y Energía, 91, 54–8. Daniel Blanc (1959), ‘Procedimientos de separación de los isótopos estables’. Acero y Energía, 92, 54–60. 35. Thomas Reis, Reactores nucleares. Aspectos económicos de las aplicaciones industriales de la energía atómica (1959), Madrid: Patronato de Publicaciones de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales. 36. Francesc X. Barca Salom (2005), ‘Nuclear power for Catalonia: the role of the Official Chamber of Industry of Barcelona, 1953–1962’. Minerva, 43 (2), 163–81. 37. Memoria correspondiente al período académico 1957–58. Cátedra Fernando Tallada de Ingeniería Nuclear. Barcelona, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, 7. Minute 2 from technical commission of nuclear energy of the Official Chamber of Industry, 15 December 1958. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 38. ‘Clua a Aragonés. Madrid, 30 de juliol de 1959’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. ‘Nota del Sr. Clua a D. Damián Aragonés, sobre el Laboratorio de Energía Nuclear. Madrid, 9 de setembre de 1959’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. ‘Nota del Sr. Clua para el Sr. Aragonés. Madrid, 30 de setembre de 1959’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 39. Carlos Fernandez Palomero, Luís Álvarez del Buergo (1962), ‘Descripción mecánica y eléctrica y operaciones de los reactores Argos y Arbi’, Energía Nuclear, 21, 4–51.
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40. ‘Nota. Asunto: Viaje a Alemania’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 41. ‘Nota. Asunto: Grafito Argonaut’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. ‘Nota del Sr. Clua al Sr. Aragonés. Informe sobre el estado actual del reactor Argonaut. Barcelona, 7 de juliol de 1960’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 42. Miquel Masriera, ‘La primera pila atómica barcelonesa. El reactor de la Escuela de Ingenieros Industriales’. La Vanguardia Española, 19 July 1961, 9. 43. ‘Clua a Aragonés. Madrid, 7 d’octubre de 1959’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 44. ‘Clua a Aragonés. Madrid, 13 de juny de 1960’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. ‘Informe sobre el estado actual del reactor Argonaut’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. ‘Clua a Aragonés. Barcelona, 2 d’agost de 1960’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 45. J. L. del Val Cid, J. M. Regife Vega and J. M. Clemente Casado (1962),‘Descripción y funcionamiento de una instalación de obtención de U3 O8, a partir de hexafluoruro de uranio enriquecido al 20 por 100 en U-235’. Energía Nuclear, 21, 71–8. 46. J. M. Guillen Galban and N. Darnaude Rojas-Marcos (1961), ‘Obtención de hexafluoruro de uranio a partir de tetrafluoruro utilizando flúor como agente de fluoración’. Energía Nuclear, 19, 4–11. 47. M. López Rodríguez (1962), ‘Etapa de investigación y desarrollo en la fabricación de los elementos de combustible para los reactores Argos I y II’. Energía Nuclear, 21, 87–94. 48. H. Bergua, A. Fornes, G. Gerbolés, J. Redondo and A. de las Rivas (1962), ‘Fabricación de los elementos combustibles del reactor Argos I y II’. Energía Nuclear, 21, 95–104. Jacobo Díaz Díaz, José Maroto Muñoz (1962), ‘Instalaciones para la fabricación de elementos combustibles de los reactores Argos I y II’, Energía Nuclear, 21, 105–12. 49. ‘Carga de combustible. Madrid, 23 de febrer de 1960’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 50. ‘Diego Gálvez (managing director of the JEN) to School of Industrial Engineering. Madrid, 26 de novembre de 1962’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 51. ‘Clua a Orbaneja. Nota de 10 de desembre de 1963’. Barcelona: Archive School of Industrial Engineering. 52. The first power reactos was José Cabrera, and the others ten were: Sta Maria de Garoña, Vandellos 1 and 2, Almaraz 1 and 2, Ascó 1 and 2, Cofrentes, and Trillo 1 and 2. L. Sánchez Vázquez (2009), ‘Los discursos de legitimación de la industria nuclear española’, Revista paz y conflictos, 2, 99–116.
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Telecommunications in Spain: High Technologies for the Periphery, 1877–1952 Á n g e l Ca l v o University of Barcelona
Introduction
The international bibliography has devoted considerable attention to the two main channels of international technology transfer – the multinationals and the market – and also to the role of the state in these processes.1 Scholars have also established the development of national systems of innovation, a concept deeply rooted in Schumpeter’s later work, and its nuanced variant of national styles, as an area of research in its own right2. However, certain gaps remain in our knowledge of the processes that allowed technological innovation to spread either within or between firms, an important issue if we consider the constant process of innovation as a key explanatory variable of economic development.3 Among Spanish specialists the interest in the processes of technology transfer has been at best uneven.4 The efforts to understand the spread of the second industrial revolution (SIR), for example, have centred mainly on the generation and transport of electricity, to the detriment of telecommunications equipment.5 This paper tries to correct this imbalance and examines the tortuous process of the arrival in Spain of telephone technology – that is, equipment for telephone exchanges, transmission, and users’ sets.6 From the theoretical point of view, the article settles itself at the confluence of the institutional approach (Anderson-Skog) and the national innovation system (NIS) approach, the concept of externalities from Marshall (1925) in its variants of spillover, interdependence or indirect effects, as well as by-products of industrial progress7. From the NIS approach it adopts a dynamic changing view within an interdisciplinary analysis presupposing the interplay between national actors such as organizations and entrepreneurs and country-specific institutional framework. It pleads moreover for a micro-based study as a response to a greater learning about innovation systems especially at the national level, in fact, a national innovation system, political and other social institutions affecting learning, research and exploratory activities, such as a nation’s universities and research bodies, financial system, economic policies, and internal organization of firms.8 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Four main features make the Spanish case attractive for scholars of the transfer of the telephone in the key period studied here. Whereas in the rest of Europe the Post Office, Telegraph and Telephone (PTT) model was widespread in the post and telecommunications sector, with only 15.8 per cent of the existing telephone system being exploited by private companies, Spain’s telephone service was a monopoly funded mainly by private capital. And whereas the European PTT model brought the three sections together in a single organization, the characteristic of Spain was horizontal disintegration. The third distinctive feature of Spain’s system was a certain amount of vertical integration between the service and the manufacturing industry; CTNE participated in the capital of Standard Eléctrica and the two signed exclusive supply contracts to enhance economy and efficiency. Finally, the telephonic equipment sector benefited from a protection policy given to national industry by state.9 This article concentrates on the period between 1877 and 1945, covering the initial transfer of the telephone to Spain and the establishment of a central channel of transfer through the multinationals via the creation of Standard Eléctrica, an associate of International Standard Electric, and its development until the nationalization of the operator Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España (CTNE: Spain’s national telephone company). The article thus examines some relevant episodes in the development of the SIR, exploring both the most important issues of the day, such as the role of the multinationals in technology transfer, and more recent debates on the creation of infrastructures for the acquisition of technology.10 In the first part we explore the transfer of telecommunications equipment to Spain in the context of a world market dominated by multinationals. In the second section we revise the mechanisms of transfer by concentrating on the activities of Standard Eléctrica. In the following sections we discuss the factors that most influenced the development of the Spanish telephone during the recession of the 1930s and the years of autarky after Franco’s ascent to power, and emphasize the effects of the nationalization of CTNE. The study closes with an analysis of the factors of technology transfer: patents, the market, and specialist knowledge. The research draws above all on primary sources predominantly from the business world together with documentation from the Historical Archive of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office which is essential to an evaluation of Spain’s capacity for innovation and of the mechanisms of technology transfer. Weak National Base: An Obstacle for the International Technology Transfer?
Once the experimental stage of his invention was complete, Alexander Graham Bell began its commercialization in an atmosphere of little enthusiasm. Control over the key technology gave the Bell Telephone Company (BTC) a monopoly on the industry’s expansion practically all over the world until the inventor’s two essential patents expired in 1893–4.11 Instead of participating directly, BTC sought to avoid extra financial outlay by authorizing firms in different geographical areas to exploit its methods and products. Thus, the International Bell Telephone Co. (IBT) and the Continental Bell Telephone History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Co. (CBT) were formed in 1880 to exploit Bell’s patents in the South American and continental Europe markets. Fulfilling this objective occasionally involved acquiring patent rights held by other subsidiaries of the group, as occurred in Spain, where the nineteenth century left to a legacy of slow development of telephony and dependence in the technological field on foreign firms.12 The telephone had been introduced in Spain by technicians via France and Latin America. Its spread throughout the country was slow and limited as a result of a restrictive, contradictory and irresolute policy, lagging behind advanced economies. In 1913, the teledensity of the country (0.12 telephones per 100 inhabitants) was far from that of Northern (4.9) and central European nations. As in the rest of Europe, IBT set up together with other foreign firms a network of branches in Spanish cities to supply telephone sets and material.13 The institutional actors held a strong hand in technology transfer. Having control over the technological options as a regulator, the state ceded some of its rights to private actors by deciding to award telephone networks to private firms by auction. The state limited the effect of provisions which had sought to standardize the specifications of equipment. This meant that the specifications documents were no longer an effective instrument of control and the initial advantage acquired by the firms with the first installations increased.14 An additional problem was the decentralization and transfer of regulatory capacity to the non-state public entities created at the start of the twentieth century in several Spanish regions. In Catalonia, for example, the Mancomunitat formed by the four provinces of the region had the power to decide on the type of material and equipment at the new installations, but the existing technology and the availability of spare parts or technical assistance heavily influenced the choices made.15 In fact, domestic technology and industry had very little room for manoeuvre. The inventions of some Spanish scientists were limited to the area of secondary equipment and the dream of becoming self-sufficient remained unfulfilled. But the mortal blow to the domestic telephone equipment industry was dealt by the crisis in the Sociedad Española de Electricidad, which had tried to bring together the construction of electrical and telephonic material.16 Nor did the decision taken by some Spanish companies, Telecomunicación y Electricidad SA (TESA) between them, to strengthen their links with the country’s operators meet with great success. From the early twentieth century onwards, foreign technology sought to establish itself in the Spanish market via associations with small Spanish firms,17 which began to build networks of agencies and delegations in the main Spanish cities. However, none of them could overcome the problems of their small size or the uncertainty caused by the slow growth of the network and the fragmentation of the market. On the eve of the First World War, the world’s four electrical giants – General Electric, Westinghouse, Siemens and AEG – dominated the production of telegraph and telephone equipment. Telephone technology received a considerable boost during the war, but in the post-war period the task of reconstructing the devastated infrastructures was the priority in many countries. Automation remained also a relevant challenge for the whole of the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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nations since the telephone was predominantly manual.18 Firms from neutral countries in many sectors took advantage of the weakening of the German position caused by the hostilities. An important milestone was the signature in 1924 of the TELOD (Telephone Long Distance) agreement to exchange licences and to limit the markets.19 Shortly before these arrangements, ATT’s manufacturing arm Western Electric, leader in the US, broke into the Spanish telecommunications equipment market by using the standard formula, that is, the creation of a Spanish firm, Teléfonos Bell SA, with Spanish partners, fulfilling the old dream of bringing the electrical and telephone equipment industries together, now under US control. In turn, Ericsson, the Swedish manufacturing company with strong basis in the international market from the nineteenth century and already present in Spain,20 reinforced its position in the country opening a sales agency. Nonetheless, the firm’s pretensions suffered a blow when it applied for the rights to expand, and modernize the telephone in Spain, a subject to which we shall turn to now. So the international market played a key role in the transfer of telephone technology to Spain. Moderate protectionism and above all the lack of a strong industry of the kind found in other countries – for example Sweden, Great Britain, Germany and Japan which, with the same or lower levels of protection, were able to join the group of exporters – made Spain one of the main importers of telecommunications equipment. The capacity to assimilate technology and the expertise acquired had not managed to overcome the limitations of the legal framework, the problems of the market size and the inelastic demand and, above all, the iron grip that the multinationals held over patents.21 On balance, this first stage was characterized by the weakness and the limited vision of the domestic industry, the irruption of the multinationals in the sector, taking up positions in the Spanish market, and the training of human capital, which would be partially exploited later on by Standard Eléctrica, the key firm in the development of the industry of telecommunications material and equipment for many years to come. Channels of Technological Transfer to Spain: The Multinationals
At the beginning of the 1920s, Spain, a non-core country with a narrow and highly fragmented market, was chosen by ITT, then an aggressive small firm with some implementation in the Caribbean, as a testing ground for its forays into the world market. The North American company obtained a grant from the government of Primo de Rivera to reform, expand and modernize the telephonic network through a new instrument – the Compañía Teléfonica Nacional de España (the Spanish National Telephone Company, CTNE), created in 1924 with this specific aim in mind.22 ITT and CTNE signed a contract covering technical advice, engineering, inspection, planning and the ‘communication of scientific advances in telephones’ – an ambiguous expression which might be taken to refer to providing access to patents. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Another contract, this time signed by the state and CTNE, sealed the future not only of the telephone service but also of technology transfer, since the concession also represented a monopoly on the supply of telephone material and equipment, a formula tested with remarkable success in the Bell system. From its new European base, ITT started its operations in the world market, especially after it acquired the international equipment manufacturing division of AT&T, International Western Electric, renamed as International Standard Electric (ISE). The strategies for vertical integration and for the creation of combined subsidiaries during the 1920s gave rise to a conglomerate of 15firms producing telephone material and equipment in several European countries.23 Naturally the initial nucleus was formed by the factories of International Western Electric in Europe, especially Standard Telephones and Cables in London and the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Co. in Belgium.24 ITT’s acquisition of three German manufacturing firms and its cooperation with General Electric (GE) led to the creation of Standard Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (Berlin), a holding which became the property of ITT when GE sold its stake.25 Since AT&T retained complete control over Western Electric’s powerful R&D department, the nucleus of Bell Laboratories, and, therefore, retained the capacity to generate knowledge and innovation. This meant that ISE had to create its own research and development infrastructure, first around the laboratories of the Le Matériel Téléphonique (LMT), then with the founding of the Federal Telecommunications Laboratories of Nutley, New Jersey, and finally with the creation of the Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in Harlow in 1945 and the Standard Electric Lorenz Central Laboratories in Stuttgart in 1956.26 ITT-ISE both increased its capacity for planning research programmes and provided a new channel for the exchange of information and a vehicle for coordinating the work carried out at ITT’s various local laboratories. Some of the new equipment technology was developed in Europe, as it occurred with the rotary electromechanical switching and the Pentaconta or cross-bar system.27 When CTNE took on the reform and expansion of the telephone system it lacked a technological basis of its own and so it had to accept the hard conditions of the international market. The Spanish associate of International Standard Electric was Standard Eléctrica SA (SESA), founded in Madrid in 1926 by means of the same formula ITT had used with CTNE two years before. Once more, then, US and domestic capital joined forces to set up a firm with a Spanish name and business address in a sector linked to the second industrial revolution (SIR). Vertical integration allowed ITT to join the monopoly in the operation and in the production of equipment. On the other hand, ITT took advantage of the nationalistic policy tackled by the governments of Alfonso’s XIII reign, with regard to laws protecting the national industry in 1907 and 1917. Just as the presence of pre-existing firms allowed ITT to launch CTNE as an operator, SESA’s industrial foundations were laid with the acquisition of the above mentioned Teléfonos Bell SA28 and of some old industrial premises in Madrid. Due to localization factors, production was divided into two plants: History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Maliaño (Santander), in the northern coast of Spain, to produce cables for the Latin American market and Madrid to manufacture equipment.29 From 1930, the increase in capacity of the Madrid factory and the creation of the technical department made it possible to take on the production of a new type of automatic exchange and subscriber’s sets. This was a major step on the way to responding effectively to the demands of the Spanish market and of some foreign markets as well. The new rotary 7-A1 automatic exchanges stood out for their safety and their flexibility and were suitable for use even in towns with a very small number of subscribers. More sophisticated equipment was imported from abroad, for example the interurban exchange set up in Madrid in 1929, which was constructed in Antwerp.30 SESA occupied a key position among the associate firms of International Standard Electric: its shares of the group’s total sales, profits and productive capacity ranged between 5 and 17 per cent. In terms of sales volume it came fifth after London, Antwerp, Paris and Berlin, and tied with the Parisian Compagnie des Téléphones Thomson Houston.31 Strictly speaking, Spain did not follow the standard European PTT modelownership of the networks and regulators of the telephone equipment,32although in terms of the development of the industry it appears to have followed a path similar to that of other countries. In fact, for institutional and political reasons there does not seem to have been much room for divergence; the impulse given to the international organizations in the post-war period and the technological changes that favoured long-distance telephone systems argued in favour of standardizing practices in Europe. The creation of the Comité Consultatif International des Communications Téléphoniques à Grande Distance was a significant milestone. One of its missions was precisely to establish a common system, called the Master Standard Reference System, which used ATT’s North American system to bring about the standardization of equipment desired.33 Together with the industrial backup, the new firm incorporated a group of leading Spanish experts in telephone science, who possessed the know-how to set the industrial activity in motion. But what really consolidated SESA’s position was its affiliation to the conglomerate of International Standard Electric (ISE), inside ITT. A contract with ISE authorized SESA to use the group’s patents all over the world34 and provided for experts from the subsidiaries in London and Belgium to aid the Spanish staff. By 1929 all members of the technical staff were Spanish and a technical department could be set up. The R&D Centre or Research Laboratory was created in 1956 as a member of ITT’s worldwide network, and became the channel through which the new technological developments were introduced into Spanish telecommunications35. Now, the diverse elements of the system or national style of innovation – state, firm, national capabilities of knowledge and manufacturing – were in place. This industrial basis expanded over the years to meet the volume and diversity of demand.
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International Shocks and National Constraints
With the Wall Street Crash of 1929, world industry entered a phase of collapse and restructuring, which the telecommunications sector was unable to avoid. Probably this critical situation was precisely the reason to stimulate the creation of new international organizations looking for agreements on standards, which could induce new facilities and systems and create new market opportunities. In this respect, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), formed at the Madrid Plenipotentiary Conference in 1932, initiated an arduous task directed to modernize, standardize and modernizing the systems.36 Processes of concentration and the strategic alliances between rival companies affected ITT’s conglomerate, which acquired the concession for the Romanian telephone service in 1930 and joined forces with Ericsson to break into foreign markets as operator and manufacturer.37 Not surprisingly in those years of hardship, equipment circulated downwards from the firms that possessed a higher level of scientific and technical knowledge which had research centres or laboratories and more qualified staff towards the less advanced firms. For example, a state-of-the-art radio-relay system incorporating equipment developed in Paris by the ITT engineers M. Deloraine and A. H. Reeves (the inventor of the pulse code modulation in 1938) was installed on the Barcelona-Mallorca line, and was the first station of its kind in the world.38 The Spanish telephone material and equipment industry did not escape the fall-out from the 1929 crash. One of the main difficulties facing Spanish industry was the chronic shortage of raw materials and components, a situation that would be prolonged after the end of the Civil War by the hostilities in the rest of Europe.39 In such adverse conditions firms were obliged to make optimum use of their installations; they sometimes had to turn down new orders for telephones and were forced to import material and equipment. Before the war, the Republican government took two steps: first it produced a list of priorities, and second it acted as an intermediary with foreign companies, but it could not prevent the difficulties in the transfer of funds. For example, Staub, Standard’s representative in Lisbon, travelled to Spain to negotiate the acquisition of radio material and equipment.40 Probably as a result of the multinational ITT-ISE’s overall strategy, a two-way system of cooperation was established between the operator CTNE and the manufacturer SESA. Numerous spare parts necessary for the telephone service were imported, sometimes via Standard Eléctrica. For this to be possible, CTNE had to ask the government to grant import permits, make currency available, and distribute the consignments on their arrival; other companies in the sector also acted as intermediaries.41 The Spanish Civil War caused loss of human capital as well as infrastructures and devastated the universities. With the defeat of the Second Republic in 1939, a dictatorial regime was imposed by Franco within an autarkic policy characterized by depression, shortages, and international isolation before it was replaced by the plans of stabilization of 1959.42 With some nuances, the Francoist industrial policy can be placed in an obscene continuity with the
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frustrated projects the Second Republic had conceived one year before the fascist uprising, in turn, a continuation of the nationalistic policy tackled by the government from the beginning of the twentieth century and inspired by the military engineers and the intellectual stream of regenerationism. This dictatorial policy under Franco acted in two ways: by means of regulation and under a direct intervention. The Industrial Regulation and Defence Law gave the government the right to create industrial activity and barriers to foreign investment, together with the obligation of supplying the public sector with domestic goods. Direct intervention was possible through the National Institute of Industry (INI) as an agent to create industries in the strategic sectors.43 The marked nationalism of the Franco regime led to the nationalization of the Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España (CTNE) in 1945. CTNE acquired a package of shares in Standard Eléctrica, an operation set out in the contract between the government and ITT. In accordance with the contract with the state, CTNE undertook to install the most up-to-date equipment and to incorporate innovations. The expansion of automatic exchanges was based on the system already in use in Spain until there were technological advances that justified an alternative. Since specific ranges of equipment were imported, above all radio, two important points should not be ignored. First, inter-firm circulation played a major role in technology transfer. Second, operators benefited not only from the dispatches of equipment, but also from the transfer of knowledge, with the possible advantages that this represented for Standard. Evidence of this is the presence in Spain of an engineer from ST&C, a specialist in highfrequency voice transmission, who joined CTNE’s engineering department in an advisory capacity as the firm began to apply high frequency in interurban circuits.44 The Channels of Technological Transfer: Patents, Market, and Specialist Knowledge
Was it the Spanish case, very different in many aspects, a particular path in the transfer of telephone technology in the central period here studied? Automatic rotary switching devices were used widely on the world market, as the available data show. Clearly, they were adopted in Spain as a unique technology in 1948. But nations with a market structure based on PTT, like France and others in Europe, behaved similarly. The exception was Great Britain, where the domestic firms benefited from favourable treatment which almost excluded the rotary45. The main reason for the SESA’s growth was its position as exclusive supplier of material and equipment to CTNE.46 Though on a smaller scale, the role played by state demand (the army, the the naval ministry and the railways) was important nonetheless. The associate firms themselves made up a substantial proportion of SESA’s clients. Emerging sectors inside the public services such as the radio needed new channels of transfer, which gave rise to the creation of a new ITT associate, the Compañía Radio Aérea Marítima Española.47 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Already a customer, the state now took on an important role as the regulator of material and equipment production. First, it kept foreign competition at bay by obliging the concessionaires of public services to acquire their material in the domestic market and declaring the telephone material industry to be in need of protection if it was to satisfy domestic demand.48 Second, the state resisted pressure from certain firms to grant privileges that would give them an advantage over the competitors. In 1926, for example, the year of the foundation of Standard Eléctrica, a request from Ericsson for a guarantee of state orders via government contracts was turned down. Nonetheless, the government occasionally adjudicated materials to companies without submitting them to auction and competition, justifying this practice by saying that the equipment in question was covered by exclusive patents of the firms involved.49 The stated objective of creating a national manufacture of telephone material and equipment would not be achieved in the short term. In the first five years of its existence, CTNE had acquired a wide range of materials in Spain. In all, company policy had meant that a large proportion of raw materials and semi-finished products were obtained in the domestic market, though the dependence on the foreign market was greater for finished products. In 1936 two-thirds of the semi-finished products and nearly 50 per cent of subscribers’ sets came from the domestic market. The company gradually disengaged itself from the foreign market between 1936 and 1950, by which time the nationalization of the production of telephones was almost total.50 Patents represented a privileged channel of technology transfer in the sector. In the 25 years between 1926 and 1950, the multinationals in the telecommunications registered 1,773 patents in Spain, either directly or via their associates. A low number, 74, corresponded to the European multinationals Siemens and Ericsson. At the head of this activity was ISE, which had access to research capacity through its laboratories in the US and Europe as we said above, made up 95.8 per cent of the total, 95.43 per cent via Standard Eléctrica. In other words, SESA systematically exerted its right to free use of ISE’s inventions, guaranteed by its association with the multinational.51 In the ISE group, then, a strong current of exchange of knowledge was established via the granting of patents. The end of the Second World War, when the policy of autarky was at its height, saw a huge rise in the number of patents registered by Standard Eléctrica – as many as 91.55 per cent of all those registered in the 1926–51 period.52 One of the most outstanding patents acquired was the first rotary-dial telephone (1923) and its later developments, among several mechanisms.53 Finally, another channel of technology transfer, mentioned above, was the transmission of knowledge from the subsidiaries of the ISE group to Spain via a policy of training promising students from Spanish universities at the laboratories and factories in London, Paris and Antwerp.54 This initial nucleus of specialists, along with Spanish experts from other firms, provided a platform for the creation of a technical department which, with time, would become a research centre.55 In this way, the cycle of invention, innovation, imitation, innovation was closed. History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Conclusion
These pages have traced a relatively little known chapter of the transfer to Spain of the technology of the SIR. Rather than dealing separately with the institutions and the channels of transfer studied by the international bibliography, we consider the two factors jointly. Our analysis emphasizes the simultaneous involvement and the interplay between different actors –people, firms and the state policy-, with the national capabilities and in the international technology transfer. Other relevant agents, as the international and regional institutions, have been identified, and different paces have been found. At the beginning, progress was less noticeable because of the slow growth of the Spanish telephone sector, but even at that time technology transfer was instrumental in the training of human capital – experts and technicians who would later help to set up research centres based in Spain. This was one of the objectives that the ITT conglomerate sought through its strategy of worldwide expansion. Undoubtedly, the rhythm of the transfer intensified with the award of the concession for the expansion and modernization of the Spanish telephone network to CTNE and the creation of Standard Eléctrica, SA, both firms subsidiaries of ITT. From this moment on, the Spanish system of innovation in the telephone equipment industry followed its own path, only partly different from those of the countries which, in accordance with the PTT model, had public monopolies. In Spain, through vertical integration, an industry was created under the aegis of the multinational ITT. The market structure turned out to be similar to the one existing in France, characterized by a quasi monopoly of supply of equipment until the early 1960s, but different from that of Great Britain, a country which took little time in breaking away from its habitual suppliers. Acknowledgments
This research, within the activities of the Centre de Recerca A. de Capmany, relied on funding of the project ECO2008-00398/ECON. Some aspects were presented to the ICOHTEC Symposium (2007), II Conference of History of Technique, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, ETSEIB (2007) and IX Meeting of the SCHCT (2006), and submitted to IX ESHS and WOCMES Congresses (2010). I am grateful to Narcís Serra, a former vicepresident of the Spanish government, for access to the different files, as well as to executives and staff of Alcatel-Lucent in Spain (José Femenía, M. J. Unzurrunzaga, J. Benavides, Ana Paula Taibo, Mari C. Vigil) and Telefónica (A. Alonso, R. Sánchez de Lerín, Javier Nadal, and to Consuelo Barbé and M. Victoria Cerezo together with her team). Notes
1. W. Keller, (2004), ‘International technology diffusion’, Journal of Economic Litterature, 42, 752–82; J. H. Dunningand J. A. Cantwell,(1991), ‘The changing role of MNEs’. In F. Arcangeli, P. A. David and G. Dosi (eds), The Diffusion of Innovation. Oxford; H. Pack. and S. Kamal, (1997), ‘Inflows of foreign technology and indigenous technology development’. Review of Development Economics, 1, 81–98; A. Glass and K. Saggi (2002), ‘Multinational firms and technology transfer’,
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Scandinavian Journal of Economics 104, 4, 495–513; Carr, Jr., ‘Technology adoption and diffusion’. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/; Mayanja, Is FDI? An analysis of the interconnection between technology, market and regulation in J. Hills, J. (2007) ‘Regulation, innovation and market structure in international telecommunications: the case of the 1956 TAT1 submarine cable’, Business History, 49, 6: 868–85; on the interaction between state regulation and technological change; A. Antonelli, (1995), The Economics of Localized Technological Change and Industrial Dynamics. Berlin. Opposite to the majority current, recent works grant an important role to the smaller, more entrepreneurial enterprises in technological discovery. (N. Lamoreaux, K. Sokoloff. and D. Sutthiphisal (2009b), ‘The reorganization of inventive activity in the United States during the early twentieth century’, NBER Working Papers, 15440, or innovation (Chesbrough, H. (2006), Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, New York: Oxford University Press). 2. Among an immense literature on the NIS, see: R. Nelson (1993), National Innovation Systems. A Comparative Analysis, New York/Oxford; R. Nelson. and G. Dosi. (2009), Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics as Evolutionary Processes (on-line). Freeman, ‘Technology and “The National”’; B. Å Lundvall (ed.) (1992), National Innovation Systems: Towards a Theory of Innovation and Interactive Learning, London; P. Patel and K. Pavitt (1994), ‘The nature and economic importance of National innovation systems’. STI Review 14. For the national styles, the key work is T. Hughes (1983), Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society. 1880–1930, Baltimore. 3. L. Galambos (1997), ‘Global perspectives on Modern Business’. Business History Review 1, 71 (2), 287–90. 4. J. Molero (2000), ‘Multinational and national firms in the process of technology internationalization: Spain as an intermediate case’, in F. Chesnais et al. (eds) European Integration and Global Innovation Strategies. London. 5. There is one exception: C. Betrán. (1999), ‘La transferencia de tecnología en España en el primer tercio del siglo XX: el papel de la industria de bienes de equipo’. Revista de Historia Industrial, 15, 41–80. 6. The complexity of the processes was stressed among others by D. J. Jeremy (ed.) (1991), International Technical Transfer: Europe Japan and the USA, 1700–1914. Aldershot. 7. Lee, Johnson and Joyce (2004, 207); Mishan, 1970, 18. The importance of the national and regional power structure as well as of the informal institutions has been emphasized by Lena Anderson-Skog, ‘Political Economy.â•›.â•›.’, 264, and that of social networks by Carl Jeding, Co-ordination (2001). 8. Hanusch and Pyka (2007), p. 864; Roos (2005), on-line; Fagerberg, Mowery and Nelson (2005), pp. 220–1. 9. Angel Calvo, ‘Regulación.â•› .â•› .’ 291–320. Ahead of the American model of private ordering through vertical and horizontal integration plus state regulation, and of the Nordic model (Scandinavian and German) of public networks supplied by private firms Spain had its own model of semi-public networks supplied by private firms: Kenneth Lipartito, ‘Failure.â•›.â•›.’, 154 ff. The common feature of the PTT model was a legal monopoly though the forms could change across countries: Millward (2005); Magnusson and Ottosson (eds.) (2001); Lena Andersson-Skog and Krantz (eds) (1999); ITT (1952); ATT (1914, 12); on the vertical integration: Hardy et al. (2002, 7); Foreman-Peck and Muller (1988, 138); Hills (1984, 114 and 124–5). 10. Sterling et al., Shaping; Rama, ’Foreign’; Cassiman and Veugelers, ‘Foreign subsidiaries’; Flowers, ‘Organizational’, 317–46; Keller, ‘International’, 317–46; Blomström and Kokko, ‘Multinational’, 247–77. 11. AT&T (1910): 15–21; Casson (1920); Rosston and Teece (1995). In 1882, Western Electric became the captive manufacturer of BTC, which created AT&T in 1885 as a subsidiary: Stephen B. Adams, Orville R. Butler, Manufacturing .â•›.â•›. 47. 12. Stehman (1967), pp. 9–10; Foreman-Peck (1991), p. 134; Rippy (1946), p. 116. IBTC registered patent 33,154 for improvements in telephones in Spain; the patent came into force in 1884: OEPM. For the technology of the devices, see Bennett (1895), p. 330. 13. AT&T, Annual report 1909, pp. 15–21; Stehman, The Financial, 9–10; Foreman-Peck, ‘International Technology’, 134. IBTC registered in Spain patent 33,154 for improvements in telephone apparatuses, which came into force in 1884: OEPM (Patent Office), Madrid. The records show that equipment was dispatched from the Antwerp Telephone and Electrical Works Co. to the Sociedad de Teléfonos de Madrid: AHPB, Notary Plana y Escubós, 1895, fol. 1.108.
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Telephone equipment consists essentially of terminal, transmission and switching: Ronald A. Cass and John R. Haring, International.â•›.â•›., 83 ff. 14. Although the material and insulators of the interurban lines were regulated, firms could decide on important issues, such as the thickness of the cables. The regulations stipulated that the best sets should be installed, but did not opt for a single particular model. The telegraph office reserved the right to expand the range of the equipment and to accept other trademarks with equal or better performance at the same price: MG, 4 January and 21 March 1891. 15. For example, the first automatic exchange: as Ericsson technology had been used in its installation, the Swedish firm was the only choice when it was decided to expand the system. 16. At a Barcelona exhibition, the SEE displayed telephones bearing many different trademarks. Pioneers in the introduction of the telephone in Spain, such as E. Rotondo Nicolau, were also inventors: Patent 4363, OEPM, Madrid. The key reference for Spanish patents is P. Saiz, Invención.â•›.â•›. y Propiedad industrial.â•›.â•›.; and the key international reference is Inkster, ‘Inertia’, 343–8; ‘Politicising’, 45–87 and ‘Patents as indicators’, 179–208. 17. It was the case of Société de Téléphonie Privée de Bruxelles through Sociedad Anónima de Telefonía (1903); the Swedish L. M. Ericsson and the Danish Hellenseng Enke and V. Ludvigsen through Sobrinos de R. Prado, and the French Compagnie Générale d’Électricité (CGE) through Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas (SICE, 1921), manufacturer of telephones with Thomson Houston patents and integrated SICE into Geathom in 1931 – an agreement between CGE, Thomson Houston and General Electric: Southard, p. 211; Castro, ‘The history’. SICE, which had the government as a customer, obtained certain advantages from the official protection. 18. D. Landes, The Unbound, 450–2; Kingsbury, The Telephone; Aldcroft, The European, 43. Among the innovations were the carrier waves and the frequency-division multiplexing: Thomson, ‘Electricity’, 357; Atherton (1984), 108–11; Griset (1992), 242; Lipartito, ‘Component Innovation’, 352–7. The time which had elapsed between the installation of the first automatic exchange in USA and the installation of automatic exchanges in 18 advanced countries was 25.22 years. In Spain, it was 31 years. 19. For the German case: M. Wilkins, ‘Multinational Enterprise’, 45–80; Hertner, ‘German Multinational’, 129; Koch, ‘Electric’, 44 20. Ericsson had manufacturing plants in Russia (1897), Great Britain (1903), France (1908) and Austria slightly later. It also secured concessions in Moscow, Warsaw and Mexico in the early years of the twentieth century through its agreements with Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag: United States Census Office (1902), 178; Foreman-Peck, ‘International Technology’, 148; Lundström, ‘Swedish Multinational’. In Germany, the early state protection stimulated the production of telephone equipment and material emerged as a subspecialization inside the booming electricity industry (Siemens) or as a strict specialization (Mix and Genest in Berlin, together with Felten and Guilleaume in Mulheim): Koch, ‘Electric .â•›.â•›.’, 44. 21. Kroess and Bakker (1992), pp. 135–53. For a defence of expertise as a means to innovation, see Nilsson (1995), pp. 33 ff. 22. Alvaro, ‘Redes empresariales’; Calvo, ‘Telefónica’, 67–96 and ‘State’, 454–73. 23. Vertical integration and dependency of the telephone companies on a national manufacturer: Frieden (2001), pp. 54–5. 24. The Budapest, Madrid, Milan and Oslo factories all bore the name Standard Electric Co. Other factories in operation were Le Matériel Téléphonique and the Compagnie des Téléphones Thomson Houston (Paris), United Telephone and Telegraph Works Ltd. and Österreichische Telephon-Fabrik A. G. (Vienna), Schuchhardt (Berlin) and Standard Telephones and Cables (Sydney): European I. S. E. Associated Companies, Terradas Archives, unpublished. In 1922, International Western Electric had bought 10 per cent of the capital of Lignes Télégraphiques et Téléphoniques. 25. Sobel, I.T.T. The management, 72; Young, ‘Power’. More in Calvo (2008), pp. 454–73. 26. ITT, Annual Report(s); ibid., Description.â•›.â•›.; Sobel (1982); Burns (1974), p. 7; Southard (1931), p. 43; Lipartito (2009), pp. 132–59. See also Lamoreaux (2007), pp. 213–43 and Lamoreaux and Sokoloff (2009), pp. 43–78. 27. Tranter and Grandry, ‘Laboratoire’, 435–40; Electrical Communications 40, 1 (1965); ibid. 9 and 47, 1 (1972): 4–11. The cross-bar system, invented in 1953 by F. P. Gohorel, a French engineer at the Compagnie Française Houston Thomson, increased the speed of the selection and the quality in the transmission: F. Gohorel, ‘Pentaconta dial’, 224; 75–106; 12.
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28. SESA, Board of Directors Proceedings (BDP), 21 January 1926, Alcatel-Spain (Madrid) Archives (ASMA). 29. Condict, ‘The new factory’, 33–5. 30. Electrical Communication, IX, 4, 1931, p. 236. 31. The factory in Portugal would be opened soon afterwards. 32. Robert Millward, Private.â•›.â•›., 180. In our view, the regulation of the equipment by the PTT was one of the reasons for the relative autonomy of the ITT national manufacturers indicated by C. Chapuis and Joel (2005, 226). 33. G. Deakin, ‘The Rotary.â•›.â•›.’, 95–108; G. Valensi, ‘Les cinq premières .â•›.â•›.’. 34. BDP, 21 January and 3 May 1926, ASMA. In 1928, the associated companies of ITT owned 1,395 pending patents applications, 5,560 patents and were licensed under more than 3,500 patents and patents applications owned by others and spread over 69 nations: ITT, Annual report 1928. 35. Standard Eléctrica, SA, The First Spanish, 3; Electrical Communications 47, 1, 1972, pp. 4–11. 36. Steven Shepard, Telecom crash.â•›.â•›. 7. The international organizations favoured also the interchange and understanding between firms and Governments: Kenneth H. F. Dyson and Peter Humphreys, The Political Economy.â•›.â•›. pp. 37 ff. 37. New York Times, 21 June 1931, p. 37. ITT followed in Romania exactly the formula already used in Spain with CTNE: Tucker (1940), pp. 71–7. Ericsson, under the I. Kreuger scandal, suffered major losses. 38. ITT (1932), p. 19. The Barcelona-Mallorca line, considered as a remarkable radio-relay route and the first 170 km over-the-horizon link (Huurdeman, 2005, p. 347) had perhaps a suitable and good semi-experimental and semi-commercial character for a new and untried technology before it was taken out on the big international market. Radio relay systems operated at frequencies superior to 30 Mc/s: M. D. Fagen et al. (1984), p. 207. 39. Martín Aceña and Martínez (2006). 40. BDP, 26 August 1936 and 1 December 1937. 41. BDP, 1 December 1937 and 20 January 1938. 42. J. Catalán, La política .â•›.â•›. (1995) and ‘Spain, 1939–96’.â•›.â•›. 324–42; García Delgado (1995); Harrison, The Spanish Economy ...; Lieberman refers to an ‘aggressive nationalism, acute protectionism and arbitrary interventionism’: Sima Lieberman, Growth .â•›.â•›., 17–61. For the general context: Paul Preston (1976). 43. Pedro Fraile, ‘Spain’, 240–1. The 1939 law had as an aim a big and prosperous Spanish national economy liberated of the foreign dependence, which revalues the first national matters. The R&D policy of the regime was erected with the creation of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, the Junta de Energía Nuclear y the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeronáutica: Santiago López and Luis Sanz, ‘Política tecnológica .â•›.â•›.’, 44. BDP, 11 October 1945. 45. Jonathan Zeitlin and Gary Herrigel, Americanization.â•›.â•›. 169. 46. ITT (1944), 12; Calvo, ‘Telefónica’, 67–96. 47. SESA produced radio equipment for around five hundred fishing and trading vessels: BDP, 30 March 1950, pp. 6–7. 48. Before 1924, foreign competition was allowed in the manufacture of certain products used by the state – among them, cables. 49. MG, 12 July 1926, p. 269. For example Cia. Española Ericsson SA and Siemens: MG, 3-3-1928, 63, pp. 1427–8 and 19-4-1954, 109, p. 2548. 50. Yearly Report of 1929, unpublished document, Terradas Archives; SESA, General board meeting, 30 March 1950, unpublished document, Terradas Archives. 51. The most important centre was the already cited Paris laboratory, a modest counterweight of the ATT’s Bell Laboratories in USA: Electrical Communications, 4, 1944, p. 282; Robert J. Chapuis and Amos E. Joel, 100 Years .â•›.â•›. 294. 52. OEPM, Madrid, Data base of P. Saiz’s research team. 53. Although Rotary is attributed to Deakin, in the first stages it was registered in Spain in the name of the French engineer Antoine Barnay, which also developed patents and some improvements: SESA, BDP, 1 July 1930; OEPM, Madrid. 54. Electrical Communications, 4, 1944, p. 282. 55. The centre was led by G. E. R. Penny, previously of Standard Telephones and Cables
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in Sydney. The firm Max Jakobson built the Maliaño factory in 1926, under the supervision of Suckan. SESA had 16 engineers and six students training in London and Antwerp, as well as three others on temporary placements inside the firm: SESA, BDP, 28 September 1926 and Standard 1926–1975, Alcatel-Lucent Spain Archives, Madrid (ASMA).
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The International Adventures in Wireless Telegraphy of Franco-Austrian Engineer Victor Popp and their Epilogue in Spain J e s ú s Sá n c h e z M i ñ a n a Telecommunications School, UPC, Madrid
Introduction
Victor Antoine Popp (Vienna, 1846) went to the French capital in 1879 to demonstrate in the Austro-Hungarian section of the Universal Exhibition a system of synchronizing clocks by compressed air, the patents of which he shared with the inventor, Carl Albert Mayrhofer, and another partner. After a demonstration, the Paris city council granted Popp’s Compagnie Générale des Horloges Pneumatiques in 1881 the right to distribute time by this procedure to both public and private clocks, and in 1886 it licensed Popp, who had become a French national, to distribute compressed air as an all-purpose source of motive power. In 1889 he also obtained the municipal concession to supply electricity to one of the sectors into which the city had been divided for this purpose, which he did by using compressed-air driven local dynamos and battery storage. For several years Popp was in charge of this scheme as director of the Compagnie Parisienne de l’Air Comprimé, successor to the Compagnie Générale. In 1892, however, the German banks, which had provided most of the large sums necessary to cope with the rapidly increasing need for equipment, took control of the company and Popp resigned his post. He then worked in compressed-air traction, and in association with his son-in-law James Conti produced new designs for trams that received very good technical reviews, but which apparently were not so successful operationally. For some time towards the end of the century he seems to have been involved in the growing motor industry with his sons Richard (small automobiles) and Henri (motorcycles), thereafter turning his attention to wireless telegraphy. This paper deals with Popp’s undertakings in this radically different field during the first decade of the 20th century, a subject that, like the rest of his
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career, has apparently received little attention, despite the fact that he was, unsuccessfully, to be sure, the first to envisage the formation of a French company that would challenge the dominant position of British and German firms. Griset’s account, though necessarily succinct, is the most complete this author has found.1 Other works, like those about Édouard Branly and Eugène Ducretet by Montagné� and Monod-Broca,3 respectively, treat the matter in passing but afford very interesting data. The author himself has recorded his first findings about Popp in a short book on early radio communications in Spain4. Pilsoudski’s System
In June to July 1901 Popp was involved for the first time in activities related to wireless telegraphy. He was sponsoring communication tests ‘by teluric waves’ that were being performed at Le Vésinet, near Paris, by one Eugène Pilsoudski, allegedly a colonel of the Russian corps of engineers, who had recently patented his system in France,5 and who reasoned that waves propagating beneath the earth’s surface should be able to travel enormous distances, since they were not affected by the obstacles above ground. Commercial equipment provided by Éugene Ducretet was used. The transmitting and receiving antennas were horizontal wire dipoles held some two metres above ground, their ends being earthed, one of them directly and the other through a condenser. Despite the fact that the distance involved, approximately 500 metres between two villas, was too short to justify any extrapolation, the experiments met with great success in the media, probably due to Popp’s drawing power. On 1 July he managed to gather at Vésinet a group of correspondents of the national and foreign press and some notables, among them the inspector general of the French postal and telegraph administration, Villot or Willot, who had apparently encouraged the tests. During the toasts at the banquet, Pilsoudski declared ‘it was proved that hertzian waves, the efficient soul of wireless telegraphy, pass through the earth – where their propagation is (theoretically, at least) unlimited – as well as above it’.6 All the Paris newspapers which have been consulted shared this optimism, with the exception of Journal des Débats, where Henri de Parville in his weekly scientific supplement7 was more cautious. He reminded his readers, as did also the writer of La Nature, that a scheme similar to Pilsoudski’s had been proposed by Slaby and Arco in 1898 and used recently by German troops in China. He was afraid that the experiment had proved nothing, and that ‘an ordinary wireless telegraph might have been unconsciously set up’.8 In its report, L’Éclairage Électrique also expressed some reservations as well as the desire that Popp would honour the promise he had made after the banquet to carry out tests between Paris and Brussels.9 Two distinguished electricians were less benevolent: Émile Guarini wrote that he had replicated the experiment without reaching further than 20 metres, despite using a very sensitive coherer and a very powerful transmitter,10 and according to Édouard Hospitalier in his journal, what had been seen at Vésinet proved nothing either.11 On the other hand, Domenico Mazzoto described the ‘Popp-Pilsoudski’ system in his 1905 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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book without commenting on its performance, and simply stated that the inventors had proposed its use to detect minerals, the conductivity of which when present would avoid communication between transmitter and receiver.12 The Société Française des Télégraphes et Télephones sans Fil
The repercussion in the daily press must have eventually convinced Popp that there was a feeling favourable to wireless telegraphy among the public that could help develop business opportunities based on the new technology. On 17 July 1901 he and another promoter named Lucien Rochet filed with a notary the statutes of a société civile (non-trading company), called Société Française des Télégraphes et Télephones sans Fil. They shared equally its 200,000 ‘parts d’intêret et de propriété’, without nominal value. Popp contributed his ‘studies, researches and works’, and Rochet his ‘care and efforts’ in order to create the company. With one Fernand Pigeonneau they formed the board (conseil de direction).13 Popp wrote that in taking this step he was inspired by what Edison had done at the beginnings of the electrical industry. He thought that the basis of Edison’s success, his personal value not withstanding, was to have at his disposal sufficient capital sums that allowed him to form an entourage of intelligent collaborators, to study and test all the new inventions that appeared, to get the most out of them, to make them suitable for industrial purposes, and eventually to exploit them through the creation of large-size companies.
These words are taken from a long advertisement of the société that appeared in the 11 August 1901, issue of the Journal des Mines, a magazine for investors published by the Caisse des Mines, which had taken 40,000 shares in the company and was offering them at 30 francs each, anticipating large appreciations. The text contains interesting news, such as that tests were continuing at Vésinet while others were being performed with Pilsoudski’s system from Saint-Germain, in Paris, on the river Seine. These tests had just confirmed that ‘hertzian waves do not propagate through the mass of water but rather along its surface, either from one bank to the other or following the course of the river’. Another piece of information to point out is that the société had obtained the cooperation of Édouard Branly, described as ‘the key person14 in wireless telegraphy’ for his invention of the coherer. He was allegedly working ‘in the creation of a new and more sensitive and robust radioconductor’, the exclusive rights of which would be held by the société, thereby assuring ‘its predominance over Marconi’s or any other company’. The first documented activity of the société is a demonstration of apparently conventional wireless telegraphy that took place on 18 and 19 September between a station on board the transatlantic liner Gascogne and another on shore, at the terrace of the casino of Malo-les Bains, near Dunkirk. Le Figaro had chartered the ship to offer their subscribers a chance to watch from a sea location in front of this town the naval parade organized on the occasion of Tsar Nicholas II’s visit to France. Travellers would have the added incentive of seeing wireless telegraphy in operation and being used to send and receive messages. It seems likely that this possibility was not originally planned, given
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that Le Figaro had published information about it only six days after its first announcement of the maritime excursion, and also that the initiative was due to Popp himself, who must have seen a good opportunity to make the invention known to the passengers, among whom were rich and influential persons.15 Judging from the chronicles published by Le Figaro, the demonstration was in a way a family affair, since Popp was in charge of the station at Malo while his son Richard operated the one on board, with the help of his wife and young daughters. The newspaper, which made no mention of the equipment employed, published some of the many messages transmitted by the ship’s station, one of them a long report by its special envoy in what may have been one of the first uses of radio for journalistic purposes.16 The Journal des Mines of 22 September published two further commercial articles. The first one relates the Dunkirk experience and adds to it the success of wireless telegraphy during recent manoeuvres of the French army at Reims,17 concluding that ‘the general utilization of wireless telegraphy and telephony is becoming increasingly widespread’ and the société will therefore begin to make a profit, in spite of which its parts can still be purchased at 31.25 francs. The second article continues to encourage investors, assuring them that Pilsoudski’s system is superior to all other known systems because it does not require very high antennas. Short-distance tests like those at Vésinet would be discontinued by the société, which would instead try to establish a MarseilleAlgiers link and, if successful, would immediately try to telegraph from France to America. The writer continues unstoppably his pie-in-the-sky dreams with a long list of ‘French lines’ that would replace existing submarine cables around the world and relieve the country from large payments to firms, mostly British, that were exploiting them. The société would break the monopoly of the two Marconi companies and would be able to provide the army and navy with exclusively French equipment... Its deeds would be doubly good because it would both serve valiantly the interests of the fatherland and produce large profits Help from Branly and Richard Popp
The September advertisement in Journal des Mines is the last reference found to the association between Popp and Pilsoudski; according to a military source, Pilsoudski was going to carry out tests of the underground system in Moscow and Saint Petersburg from 28 October to 2 November, with the attendance of English and French engineers.18 Popp quickly turned to Édouard Branly, a savant who until then seems not to have shown any inclination to exploit his discoveries commercially. Two advertisements of the société late in 1901, describe him as chairman of its ‘technical and scientific committee’. One of these advertisements has been found in an annual publication.19 The other, inviting the subscription of 80,000 parts at 30 francs each, closing 5 December, is known because of the angry comments that it raised from Hospitalier in his magazine. Hospitalier wrote that there was ‘nothing, absolutely nothing’ in Popp and Pilsoudski’s system to justify such an appeal to the savings of members of the public, and nothing had been proved in the Vésinet History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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experiments, despite the ‘ecstasy’ of the daily press, which – he insinuated – could have been bought. Besides, he said he was sorry to see Branly’s name associated with an enterprise that presented ‘all the characteristics of an immense mystification’, and was glad that Ducretet was not in the same case.20 In his reply, Branly, without explicitly denying the position that the advertisements attributed to him, pointed out that he did not play a financial or managerial role in the company and had accepted only ‘a strictly scientific and consulting collaboration’.21 Be that as it may, on 8 February 1902 the société patented his new coherer,22 the so-called trépied (tripod), an arrangement of two metal discs, to one of which were fixed three metal rods forming a little tripod, the points of these rods being rounded and slightly oxidized and resting on the other disk, made of polished steel. This device was allegedly more sensitive and stable and also facilitated easier decohesion (return to the non-conductive state) than its metal-file predecessor. Two days later it was presented by its inventor to the Académie des Sciences23 and received a certain amount of attention in the press, especially in Le Figaro, which published a long article by Gautier24. A second patent of 9 May covered a complete receiver incorporating the tripod25, which was also reported to the Académie on 26 May.26 Finally the société filed a supplement (certificat d’addition) to the tripod patent on 30 July. Besides Branly’s collaboration, Popp also secured the help of his son Richard. Among the known fruits of his dedication to wireless telegraphy were a popularizing little book which appeared in 1902, probably in the summer,27 and three patents that he filed under his own name on 13 October of that year, concerning a ‘radio recorder’, a ‘system to isolate the high-voltage wire used as an antenna’ and a ‘storm recorder’.28 It is known that in May or June 1902 Popp carried out some tests to compare the performances of the tripod and the ordinary coherer at Villefranchesur-Mer, in the presence of a US Navy officer. He used a Ducretet station, first on land and then on board the USS Nashville, to correspond with a Rochefort station on board the steam yacht Lysistrata. The results were not satisfactory due to the difficulty of operating with the new device on an unstable platform29. However, the tripod seems to have been successful in other initiatives undertaken by the société on land in the same year. This is the case of the four stations set up in different parts of the central district of Paris, which were intended to demonstrate a projected subscriber news-service. One was at the company’s Place de la Madeleine headquarters, another near the Stock Exchange, and the other two at newspaper offices. To complement the fixed network, another station had been installed in an automobile to cover on the spot special events, such as the races. A New York technical magazine gave some details of all this equipment, with a photograph of the 30-metre high mast mounted on a roof beside the church of La Madeleine.30 The Coastal Station at La Hague
In the above-mentioned article about the tripod, Gautier tells us that the société had submitted two projects to the government that were under consideration: one was intended ‘to create, by means of stations set up in all the light houses History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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and semaphores of the littoral a continuous zone of communication and safety around the coasts’; the other proposed ‘to link telegraphically Southern Tunisia with Lake Chad, and continue from here to all the African continent via Ghadamès, Ghât, the Tuareg country and the Sahara’.31 On 12 May 1902 the company asked the Ministry of Commerce and the undersecretary of posts and telegraphs for permission to establish two test stations on the shores of the English Channel, and on 30 June it was authorized to do so at La Hève and Barfleur, locations that the société, after listening to the opinion of the navy, requested to be changed by Gris-Nez and La Hague. On 9 October, a newspaper published a drawing of the station at this cape, with a large funnelshaped antenna, reporting that it was near completion and identical to the one at Cape Gris-Nez, also under construction. It further reported that the station would be connected to the telegraph network and – strangely enough for a test facility – that the cost of telegrams for the public would be 60 centimes per word.32 On 6 November, the minister, the undersecretary and an officer of the naval general staff, paid a visit to the office of the company in Paris, 21 Place de la Madeleine, and, according to the press, heartily congratulated Popp and Branly for the explanations received and the demonstrations they performed with their apparatus.33 On 25 November, without the formal acceptance by the government of the requested change of sites, the station at La Hague was inaugurated. Some days later, at a motor show held at the Grand Palais in Paris, the société showed its vehicle equipped with a wireless telegraphy station and took the opportunity to establish, with two other small, 5-kilometre-range stations, a demonstration link between the outermost points of the exhibition area. The public could also see the apparatus installed at La Hague and some of those intended for Gris-Nez, as well as a storm warning device and an anti-hail gun34. About the same time, Popp considered in an interview the merits of the La Hague station, though admitting that it did not have permission to transmit and could only listen. He also unfolded the ambitious programme of his company, calling the attention of the government to the risks of making wireless telegraphy a state monopoly. ‘In these conditions – he said – it is unlikely that we be refused a concession of the type that is usually granted to the companies of submarine cables’.35 Considering all the facts, including a press communiqué by the undersecretary of posts and telegraphs in which he reaffirmed the state monopoly on telegraphic relations,36 it is possible that Popp did not expect what happened a few days later. On 18 December the authorities seized the La Hague station and sealed it off, alleging that it had been used to exchange messages with the German transatlantic liner Deutschland, thus violating the French law that forbade the establishment of any long-range communication without the authorization of the government, either ‘with the help of telegraphic machines or by any other means’.37 This must have fed the initial rumours, aired in the newspapers, that the case was one of espionage,38 but its real nature became clear when they published the letters that Popp immediately wrote them in defence of his company. He mentioned the 12 May petition, the subsequent authorization and the request for a change of location after the contacts with History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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the navy, adding that after these steps he had felt confident about proceeding with the work at La Hague. He stated, moreover, that the administration had been kept constantly informed and that it had urged him to finish the installation – the visiting ministers had also done so in November39 – because they were interested ‘to know as soon as possible what to expect about the range of the system’. The société had not pretended ‘to usurp the state monopoly’ but to carry out experiments from which ‘the first to benefit’ would be ‘science, industry and the government itself ’.40 In Court
Despite a petition from the company, according to one source41, to resume operations at the station for experimental purposes, the telegraph administration maintained its accusations that led to the trial beginning at Cherbourg on 4 May 1903. Popp and several of his engineers were charged with establishing a clandestine station at La Hague and using it to transmit signals without permission. Branly, Gautier, Pigeonneau and Santelli testified for the defendants. The judges found Popp and one of the engineers, named Loeske,42 guilty and fined them the symbolic sums of 50 and 16 francs,43 respectively, given that, according to the sentence, their good faith could not exempt them entirely of responsibility, although it should be considered an extenuating circumstance, taking into account ‘the false hopes they could have built up about the real situation in which they had been placed’.44 In the same month Popp had to appear again in court, this time in Paris, to face, together with the other two members of the board of his company, charges of covering up the issuing and negotiation of shares, for having treated illegally, as such, the parts of their société civile as if it were a société anonyme (of limited liability). In a decision recalling that of Cherbourg, the judges found the defendants guilty of infringing the company laws of 1893, but admitting the difficulties in its interpretation, they accepted the justification of good faith and fined each of the defendants 25 francs.45 The general assembly held on 6 April 1903 had already decided that the société should become anonyme, and the exchange of two of the old parts per one of the new shares of one-hundred francs.46 The authorized capital was set at 3 million and the headquarters continued at the Place de la Madeleine.47 A Long Advertisement
A document that provides information about the above changes in the company, and gives a good idea of its orientation after the La Hague fiasco, is an entire four-page advertising supplement entitled ‘La télégraphie française sans fil’ that Le Gaulois included with its 19 August issue. Profusely illustrated, it begins with a long reference to the attitude of the French authorities towards the société, which had changed from welcoming to hostile, in contrast to the treatment received in Britain by Marconi. He was ‘Branly’s imitator’, against whose monopoly, starting to spread across the whole world, it was necessary to react, if the government did not itself decide ‘to abandon its system of History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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obstruction and caprices to mask its impotence’. France would thus reassume her proper role and the société would be then the first to cooperate, reaping for itself and its shareholders ‘the benefits of a great participation in the work of establishing the maritime telegraphy’.48 The text turns to the present to deal with the application of wireless telegraphy to agriculture, one of the activities that could be carried out ‘without the need of the official state seal, since it does not usurp its rights or claims’. In fact the company had already tested relevant equipment several times and created its first subsidiary, the Société Girondine Agricole pour la Défense des Cultures (procédés Branly-Popp),49 a prototype of those which were to follow in other regions, not only to protect the vineyards. In the field of communications, the company had found business opportunities outside France, in countries like Greece, Spain, Norway and Holland, where ‘a narrow-sighted and confusing bureaucracy’ did not hamper its development. The company was therefore in a condition to assure its shareholders ‘in a very short time, a widely remunerating dividend and ever growing revenues’. This confidence in the future had been expressed in the last general assembly of 26 June, where 477 holders of 22,112 shares out of the 30,000 that made up the capital had unanimously approved the balance and the various motions presented. The supplement ends with an extract of the auditor’s report as of 31 December 1902, and some data on the operations abroad up to 31 July 1903, as well as a tear-out form to order shares at 105 francs each. The New Course
It is convenient to go through the activities declared by the company in the advertisement of Le Gaulois, and to check them, whenever possible, against the scarce information obtained from other sources. The application of wireless telegraphy to agriculture in which the société had been working was the early detection of storms, in this respect the reader will remember some of Richard Popp’s patents; they were followed by a joint one from his father and Branly.50 The idea was to protect the crops from hail, either preventing its formation by bombing the clouds with appropriate guns or mitigating or neutralizing its effects by producing clouds of smoke over the fields. Distant lightning activated the coherer, closing the circuit of an electric cell that included a telephone receiver or a relay to make a bell ring. ‘Accessory devices easy to handle’ allowed the operator to know whether the storm was approaching or receding so that the alarm could be given. To generate the smoke, an induction coil was used to produce the sparks necessary to ignite the combustible materials previously set on the ground. In the case of frost, the coil could be activated automatically by means of a device that detected any rapid fall in temperature. These apparatus, exhibited the previous year in the automobile fair, as stated, were also shown at the more recent Concours Agricole, where the president of the Republic and the minister of agriculture greeted them with satisfaction.51 According again to the supplement of Le Gaulois, five warning stations were being set up in the Gironde after the lectures and demonstrations at Bordeaux, Pomerol, Branne and other points, which History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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followed a presentation in Paris, at the congress of the Société des Agriculteurs de France.52 Gautier included in his annual review a reference to this application, accompanied by a photograph with the caption ‘Storm warning apparatus (Branly-Popp system)’. He wrote that there were stations performing ‘marvellously’ at ‘Pomerol, Saint-Estèphe, Branne and other places’.53 Regarding the work in Greece, the supplement reproduces a despatch from Athens of 7 July 1903 that was published by some newspapers.54 It tells about the arrival of engineers from the société, adding that four wireless telegraphy stations were being installed: one in Faliro,55 another one on a warship and two portable units for the service of the army. In a list of stations of the company as of 31 December, Gautier includes only those on board the warship Achelous and ‘on the coast of Castella, near Faliro’.56 Ducretet’s representative in Athens wrote him in 1903 that engineer Loeske was there to make demonstrations for the Greek government, which had contributed a small warship with electricity on board.57 In the case of Spain, the supplement reports on an agreement reached with Telegrafía y Telefonía sin Hilos SA, by virtue of which this company had made Popp a member of its board of directors and paid 250,000 pesetas to the société for the Branly-Popp patents and procedures.58 Furthermore, the société would supply the equipment required by the Spanish company, beginning with that needed to change to the French system in stations at Tarifa, Ceuta, Valencia and the Balearic Islands.59 It would also set up stations on the Atlantic coast and naval ships, as well as two for the king’s service, communicating the Miramar palace, at San Sebastián, with the royal yacht Giralda. Gautier only includes these two in his above-mentioned list, but according to local sources no station was ever installed at Miramar, and there was just one mounted on the Giralda that remained on board as a present from the Spanish company to the king, after a demonstration made to him on 8 October. On this occasion, the yacht, carrying Alfonso XIII, Popp and other executives of Telegrafía y Telefonía sin Hilos, sailed 25 miles off the coast at San Sebastián and communicated with a small station on shore, mounted on an automobile.60 According to Le Gaulois, Norway had just ordered two stations in order to carry out experiments, and Holland had given permission to set up one at the maritime arsenal in Amsterdam and another at Kampen, on the Zuiderzee, with a view to establishing wireless telegraphy in her colonies. Gautier locates the Norwegian stations in the Lofoten Islands and writes that tests carried out with the Dutch ones ‘very recently’ had shown that it was possible to use the tripod coherer to send radiograms to a distance of 100 kilometres (80 over sea plus 20 over land) at a speed of 15 words per minute, using only 25 watts of power.61 The Failure
In 1904 a newspaper mentioned in a report on the Russo-Japanese war that the société had offered the Russian government portable military stations with 50-kilometre range, as well as the establishment of fixed ones in Manchuria to ensure the regularity of telegraphic communications rendered difficult by the rebels’ sabotaging of the lines.62 History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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No news items have been found about further developments of this or the other operations advertised by Le Gaulois. Spain did not order coastal stations until 1908, and her navy and army purchased its first wireless telegraphy equipment from the German Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie in 1904 and continued using its brand, Telefunken, exclusively for several years. In the case of Greece, quoting again the testimony of Ducretet’s representative, the tests carried out were unconvincing, since communication was not possible at a distance of 8 km. If any business initiative prospered at all it cannot have been sufficient to keep the company running, lacking as it did the demand of the government in its own country. The société was declared bankrupt on 30 July 1904.63 Branly had finished working for it in August of the previous year.64 Was There really a Branly-Popp System?
At this point it seems proper to ask oneself about the technology of this shortlived company. Besides the transactions of the Académie des Sciences that record Branly’s communications on the tripod coherer and the receiver in which it was incorporated, the first reference to the system of the société found in a specialized publication appears in the above-mentioned article by Guarini on wireless telegraphy in France. After writing that the company, with the motto ‘France d’abord’, had extended its search for capital to Belgium, posting advertisements everywhere promising ‘miracles, dividends of 15 per cent or even more, and communications to thousands of kilometres over land’, the radio pioneer states that it all boiled down to the use of the tripod, ‘according to several journals, a receiver many times more sensitive (40, it is said) than the coherer, made up of metal files’. This opinion is confirmed by contemporary authors, like Maver or Collins, who described the system in some detail in their books:65 leaving aside the coherer, the transmitter and receiver are very elementary and their lack of tuning elements is particularly striking. Maver indicates, however, that the Gris-Nez and La Hague stations had ‘a syntonizing system devised by M. Branly and capable of receiving different wave-lengths’, the details of which ‘are not yet available’. This is more or less the same as what Hale writes in his paper,66 although he managed to publish a photograph with the caption ‘Syntonizing apparatus, Cap de la Hague’. Popp himself in the afore-mentioned interview by Gautier, a short time before the confiscation of the station, concluded an enumeration of its parts with ‘the famous tuning apparatus about which so much has been said and enough will never be said, because they are marvels’. Thus, it could be that there was actually more than what is found in the literature. Hospitalier writes ironically in March 1902 that, if his personal news was accurate, ‘the Slaby-Arco system (manufactured by the German Allgemeine Electrizitäts Gesellschaft (AEG.)) is the one that a large French civil société – Pilsoudski, Popp, Slaby-Arco – with the motto ‘France d’abord’, would like to introduce in France’.67 The Spanish navy officers Ramón Estrada and Eugenio Agacino, who were present at the Giralda demonstration a year and a half later, could only describe in the first edition of their book68 the antenna employed, because they did not see the rest of the equipment, as Popp History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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had asked them to promise that they would not disclose the ‘scientific secrets’ on which the system was based. In the second edition, after having seen the station at their leisure, they wrote that, apart from the use of the tripod and some other detail, it was analogous to the Slaby-Arco system. Ducretet’s source in Greece told him that the stations being tested there had been bought from AEG. New Companies
‘Paix à ses cendres’ was the epitaph that Hospitalier dedicated to the société when reporting on its failure.69 But new companies rose from its ashes. The first was the Compagnie Orientale des Radiogrammes et d’Applications Électriques, founded on 5 May 1905, a société anonyme with a capital of 100,000 francs and headquarters at 21 Place de la Madeleine.70 It must have carried on the business that its predecessor had probably started in 1904 in Romania,71 where two stations of the Branly-Popp system are documented as being in operation since the summer of 1905, serving shipping on the Black Sea, one in Constanza and the other on board the Romania.72 In 1909 four other ships carried Popp’s wireless telegraphy there 73. On 6 February 1906 Popp established another société anonyme at Place de la Madeleine, the Compagnie Générale des Radiogrammes et d’Applications Électriques, with start-up capital of 425,000 francs. Its statutes allowed it to operate in France and abroad ‘excepting European and Asiatic Turkey, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Egypt’, countries that were perhaps the territory of the Compagnie Orientale.74 In the first months of 1907, it was known that a French company, probably the Compagnie Générale, had bought land on the coast in some cities of Morocco and was beginning to build wireless telegraphy stations there.75 A year before, however, it had been agreed at the Algeciras conference that the execution of public works by nationals of the signatory countries should be done under contract from the Moroccan government, the makhzem, awarded as a result of a public procedure that guaranteed free competition.76 Henri Popp, at the head of the initiative, was able to argue that he was not breaking the rules, because the Algeciras text referred to ‘roads, railways, ports, telegraphs and others’ and did not mention the wireless telegraphs explicitly, but France soon met with the protests of some of the European signatories, especially Germany. To solve the conflict, an international company under Henri Popp’s direction was planned, with a capital shared equally by France, Britain, Germany and Spain, Once established, it would make its petition to the makhzem. The provisional statutes were signed on 8 April, but apparently the partners lost interest in the matter and Popp felt free to found the Société Marocaine des Télégraphes on 21 September in Tangier, with start-up capital of 600,000 francs, largely of French origin. It appears that work at the stations went ahead before waiting for a formal commission. The initial plans were to establish them in four cities on the Atlantic coast, Tangier, Casablanca, Mogador (now Essaouira) and Safi, but the equipment intended for Safi replaced that destroyed in the Casablanca History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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events, while the equipment assigned to Mogador ended up in Rabat. Therefore the Tangier, Rabat and Casablanca stations were the first to come into operation. The makhzen, which from the start had made known its intention of retaining the monopoly of wireless telegraphy, purchased them from the Société Marocaine, assigning their operation to the company and hiring Henri Popp as engineer. The Sultan ratified everything on 26 April 1908.77 Popp, soon afterwards appointed director of the Morocco telegraphs, on 15 June, could still see a new station at work in Mogador by the end of the year, and the opening of all of the stations to international service before his premature death in May 1910.78 The Compagnie Française de Télégraphie sans Fil et d’Applications Ûlectriques
At an extraordinary general assembly of the Compagnie Générale des Radiogrammes, held on 17 March 1908, it was decided to change the company name to Compagnie Française de Télégraphie sans Fil et d’Applications Électriques, and that its capital could amount to 2,500,000 francs.79 On that date or thereabouts, an emission of shares was also agreed that was received with some reservations.80 This time Le Figaro was in charge of encouraging potential investors. In February of the following year it published an article in fulsome praise of Popp, his sons and the Compagnie Française,81 and in May a more tempered one about the company. This ended with an appeal to those who, disappointed with hypothetical business opportunities abroad, wanted to place their money in a company that offered ‘serious guarantees’. In so doing they would also fulfil ‘a sort of patriotic duty’ by maintaining France’s superiority in an industry ‘of French origin and world importance’.82 The article was followed by a report on the favourable evolution of the traffic at the Moroccan stations, and still in the same issue, a fully illustrated supplement completed the offensive. It was entitled ‘La télégraphie sans fil’, and explained the operation and applications of this technique, with references to what the Compagnie Française and its subsidiaries planned and had already done. One of the photographs even harked back to the days of the société, showing Popp handling the Giralda station in 1903, in the presence, so it appeared, of King Alfonso XIII. The Spanish Coastal Stations
Besides an activity in mobile military equipment, of which Le Figaro supplement showed pictures but did not indicate any buyer, the ongoing businesses of the company referred to in the newspaper were those already mentioned in Romania and Morocco, plus a new one in Spain.83 Its subsidiary here, the Compañía Concesionaria del Servicio Público Español de Telegrafía sin Hilos, had agreed with the state, after being the only bidder in an auction held on 8 April 1908, to build 24 coastal stations not later than September 1909, and to operate them for almost 22 years. Two stations were of the so-called first class, History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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with a range of 1,600 km, located at Cádiz and the Island of Tenerife; the rest of them, belonging to either the second class (400 km) or the third (200 km), were scattered along the coasts of the Peninsula and the Balearic and Canary Island archipelagos. The Compañía Concesionaria, chaired by Popp, concentrated its efforts on the stations at Cádiz and the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, this being subsidized by the city council of its capital, Las Palmas, in order that it might rise to the first class instead of the assigned third. All three, together with those at Vigo and Barcelona, for which the company unilaterally planned also the longest range, were intended to compete with the submarine cables from Spain to the Canary Islands (hopefully linked wirelessly to Brazil in the future), England (already linked to North America) and the Mediterranean. But the stations never worked, or, at least, they did not work well enough to be accepted by the Spanish government, which, after agreeing to three extensions of the delivery term, on 24 August 1911 authorized the transfer of the contract to a new company formed by Compañía Concesionaria and Marconi’s Wireless. It must be said, in passing, that only nine coastal stations were finally built, plus one, not initially planned, at Aranjuez, near Madrid. Joseph Bethenod, who in 1910 was to become one of the founders of Société Française Radioélectrique, designed the first stations at Cádiz, Tenerife and Gran Canaria. Nothing is known about their structure or whether any parts of them were re-used by the engineers of Marconi. All that can be said at this point is that the huge wire antenna they finally suspended from the four tall metallic towers raised by the Concesionaria was different from that seen in a sketch included in Le Figaro supplement. The End The last news about the Compagnie Française, from early 1910, deals with some mobile equipment that the company had recently completed and was putting at the disposal of the authorities as a result of floods in France.84 In March of the following year the failure of the company became known.85 Popp still found some time for other endeavours, such as electric ovens,86 before his death in Paris on 16 October 191287. The study of his life, as far as this author has been able to ascertain, almost certainly reveals that he had no formal scientific or engineering training, and despite his many patents, leaves the impression that he was less an engineer than an entrepreneur, a rather unscrupulous one indeed, but endowed with a strong will and a remarkable capacity of persuasion. Paul Brénot, director of the Compagnie Générale de Télégraphie sans Fil, should have mentioned Popp’s pioneer work, no matter how imperfect, when in a lecture given in 1926, he praised the assistance extended by the English and German governments to the early wireless industry in their countries, and explained about the way things had taken place in France: ‘The growing industry experienced in France not just a policy of abstention but a policy of harassment’.88.
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Notes
1. Pascal Griset (1996), Entreprise, technologie et souveraineté: les télécommunications transatlantiques de la France (XIXe–XXe siècles. Paris. 2. Jean-Claude Montagné (1998), ‘Eugène Ducretet / Pionnier français de la radio’, self-published. 3. Philippe Monod-Broca (1990), Branly / 1844–1940 / Au temps des ondes et des limailles. Paris. 4. esús Sánchez Miñana (1996), La introducción de las radiocomunicaciones en España (1896–1914). Madrid. 5. Patents 305,052, 3 November 1900, ‘Système électrique de transmissions télégraphiques ou téléphoniques sans fils’, and 312,237 (with Schaeffer), 28 June 1901, ‘Système de télégraphie sans fil par terre et par eau, avec électrodes condensateurs à résistance et électrodes à resistance réglables’. 6. Le Figaro, 2 July 1901. This paper attributed to Villot ‘a large part of the initiative’, which is consistent with his having presented a communication on Pilsoudski’s system in the international congress of electricity held in 1900. Le Petit Journal of 4 July also reported on the public demonstration. Le Matin had already written on 19 June about the tests. As samples of their repercussion in the foreign press, see The Times (London), 5 July, and La Vanguardia (Barcelona), 19 July. Émile Gautier turned to the matter in Le Figaro of 8 July and, with almost the same text, in ‘La télégraphie sans fil par voie terrestre’, L’année scientifique et industrielle, year 45 (1901), 52–5, adding photographs of the transmitter and receiver. The person standing by the former could be Pilsoudski. 7. ‘Revue des sciences’, Journal des Débats, 11 July 1901. 8. T. Obalski (1901), ‘La télégraphie sans fil par le sol’, La Nature, 15 July, 106–7. The following 27 July, in an unsigned note entitled ‘La télégraphie sans fil par les couches terrestres’, 142, the magazine gave notice of new tests performed nine days earlier and declares itself still unconvinced about the propagation taking really place through the ground. 9. Supplement to the magazine of 13 July 1901, xxiii and xxv. 10. ‘Wireless telegraphy in France’, The Electrical Review, 28 November 1902, 19 December 1902 and 16 January 1903, 920–2, 1050–1 and 91–3. Guarini remarks that in his trials he ‘had taken precautions to avoid the direct action of the transmitter on the receiver’. He gives some more details in Revue de l’électricité et de l’éclairage en général, 1903, 46–7. 11. ‘La télégraphie sans fil par l’emploi des couches terrestres’, L’Industrie Électrique, 10 July 1901, 289–90. 12. Telegrafia e telefonia senza fili (Milan, 1905). The author has consulted the English version, Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony (New York and London, 1906), 294–5. 13. ‘Les tribunaux / Popp et Boulaine en correctionnelle’, La Presse, 19 May 1903. The Paris notary’s name was Maxime Aubron. 14. ‘La cheville ouvrière’ in the French original. 15. Some, among them Rothschild, are listed in the second of the two articles of Journal des Mines mentioned later in this paper. 16. Le Figaro announced the trip for the first time on 30 August 1901 and the collaboration of wireless telegraphy on 5 September. Particularly interesting are the announcements and reports published on 14, 17, 18 and 19 September. 17. Captain Ferrié was in charge of the trials. See Le Temps and Le Matin of 16 and 17 September 1901, respectively. 18. Revue du Cercle Militaire, 2 November 1901, 490, which quotes from Ruskii Invalid, a paper of the Russian Ministry of War. Le Matin, 19 June 1901 ended its report of the Vésinet tests by saying that the government of Russia had also asked Pilsoudski to experiment there in the interests of the postal and telegraphic services. 19. L’année éléctrique, year XII (1901), (París, 1902), 406. The prologue of the book is dated 31 December 1901. According to the advertisement, the members of the board besides Popp (chairman) and the lawyer Pigeonneau (administrateur-délégué) were ‘Tronçon du Coudray, officer of the Légion d’Honneur, honorary inspecteur des finances’, and ‘commander Santelli, capitaine de frégate, knight of the Légion d’Honneur, former commander of La Touraine, inspector of the Compagnie Transatlantique’. 20. ‘Société française des télégraphes et téléphones sans fil’, L’Industrie Électrique, 10 December 1901, 537–8. 21. ‘Correspondance’, L’Industrie Électrique, 25 December 1901, 555. Ducretet had warned
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Branly that his name was being used for commercial purposes, and Branly replied in writing on 7 December that he was going ‘to put a stop to this repeated abuse’. See Montagné, op. cit. (2), 68. On the other hand, Branly was not the only one to react to the article of 17 December. A letter from Pigeonneau, writing for the company, and Hospitalier’s reply can be seen in the magazine of the following 25 January. These texts show a relationship between Popp and the électricien that can hardly be described as cordial. 22. Patent 318,528, ‘Système de récepteur d’ondes électriques (procédés Branly)’. 23. ‘Radioconducteurs à contact unique. Note de M. Édouard Branly’, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences, vol. 134, 347–9. 24. ‘Une révolution dans la télégraphie sans fil / Le nouveau radioconducteur Branly’, 20 February 1902. In this article – of which The Electrician of 28 Febuary, 730–1, published an abstract – Gautier wrote, in accordance with the company literature, that Branly chaired its technical committee. The invention was also reviewed by Henri de Parville in Journal des Débats, 27 February. La Presse mentioned it on 24 April. 25. Patent 321,017, ‘Dispositif récepto-enrégistreur d’ondes électriques, procédés Branly’. 26. ‘Récepteur de télégraphie sans fil. Note de M. Édouard Branly’, Comptes rendus ..., op. cit (23), 1197–9. 27. La Télégraphie sans fil expliquée au public (Paris, 1902), Éditions de la Revue Dorée, 33 pages, illustrated. The prologue was signed by Jacques Duchange in July. 28. Patents 325,264, 325,265 and 325,266, respectively ‘Appareil radio-enregistreur pour télégraphie sans fil, système Richard Popp’, ‘Système d’isolation du fil de haute tension servant d’antenne, système Richard Popp’ and ‘Appareil enregistreur d’orage, système Richard Popp’, the last two with one De Marande de Mouchy. 29. L. S. Howeth (1963), History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, pp. 37–49. Following the advice of commander Francis Morgan Barber, who had been commissioned in 1901 to report on the state of wireless telegraphy in Europe, the US navy decided to purchase two stations of each of the systems Slaby-Arco, Braun-Siemens und Halske, Ducretet-Popoff and Rochefort, as well as to send personnel to be instructed in their operation. On 9 May 1902 lieutenant J. M. Hudgins, in charge of this mission, arrived in Paris with two assistants. On an undetermined date, before 7 June when all three went to Berlin, Hudgins watched Popp’s tests. 30. Henry Hale, ‘Branly-Popp Aerial Telegraphy System’, Electrical World and Engineer, 16 May 1903, 823–5. This paper was clearly published long after it was written. Griset, op. cit. (1), 196–7, mentions a widely circulated société brochure describing this ‘news of the day’ enterprise. 31. Gautier writes that the second project was signed by ‘colonel Monteil and engineer Popp’ (the father or one of his sons?). 32. L’Écho de Paris, 9 October 1902. 33. Le Figaro of 7 November, and Le Matin and Journal des Débats of 8 November report in similar terms. 34. Le Figaro, 12 December 1902. 35. Le Figaro, 6 December 1902. It should be pointed out that an offer of the société to establish the Madagascar-Réunion-Maurice Island link by wireless telegraphy instead of the projected cable had just been rejected (Journal des Débats, 16 November 1902). 36. L’Industrie Électrique, 25 November 1902, 505. The communiqué came after the creation of an interministerial commission ‘to examine the general conditions for establishment and exploitation of wireless telegraphy stations’ (see Journal des Débats, 12 November 1902). 37. Law of 27 December 1851. 38. Le Gaulois and L’Écho de Paris, 19 December; Le Matin and Le Petit Parisien, 19 and 20 December, Le Petit Journal, Journal des Débats and Le Temps, 20 December. 39. Popp’s assertion comes from his letter to Le Petit Parisien (see next note), in which he gives the date of the authorities’ request as 8 November, probably a misprint for 6 November since no evidence has been found of a later visit. 40. Le Gaulois of 2 December, and Journal des Débats and Le Matin of 22 December, published the same letter without any comments. In Le Figaro of the 20 December, Gautier added to it simply: ‘Il est décidément bien difficile de faire en France quelque chose d’utile, de neuf et de grand. Doux pays!’ La Presse chose instead to reproduce an article from La Patrie, which described the letter as tendentious. (On the other hand, this text provides an interesting piece of information when it asks rhetorically whether or not it is true that the exchange of messages between La Hague and
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the Deutschland had been known by the authorities after being intercepted by the warship Bouvines). Popp sent a different, specific letter to Le Petit Parisien (published on 21 December), refuting some of its statements. He reminded them that he was not a foreigner, having obtained French nationality in 1881, and expressed his hope that his enterprises of time distribution, compressed air and electricity would have definitely established his ‘title and quality of French’. 41. The Electrician, 6 February 1903, 630. The magazine quotes from the company’s application to establish a long-distance station in the island of Saint-Pierre, near Newfoundland, ‘which would permit communication with the station established at Cape de La Hague, for permission to re-open which we have already applied to you’. 42. It was he who communicated with the Deutschland on 25 November 1902. 43. ‘Pour le principe!’, wrote the reporter of Le Figaro of 12 May. See also the 9 May issue and La Presse of 18 April and 8 and 12 May. 44. ‘L’illusion qu’ils ont pu éprouver sur la véritable situation qui leur à été faite’. See the items of the sentence in La France Judiciare, 1903, 264. 45. See La Presse, 1 and 19 May, and Le Matin, 26 May. 46. See an advertisement for the sale of 103 parts that appears in La Presse, 17 April 1903. 47. The statutes were filed with a notary named Boudier, at Chalons-sur-Marne. L’Industrie Électrique, 10 June 1903, 263–4, published what appears to be a comprehensive summary of them. 48. The supplement is illustrated with eleven photographs (one of them Popp’s) and a drawing of Branly’s portrait. Besides the stations built or planned by England and Germany, it also includes a map showing those that ‘the Sociéte Française had offered the state to build, in order to ensure its direct communication with the ships at sea and the colonies, with a view to prevent the treasury from spending probably more than a hundred million francs in laying submarine cables to free itself from the English monopoly’. Many of these stations are marked on the map in Europe, Africa, Asia and America. Also striking are two links for ‘transatlantic correspondence’, one between Dakar and Pernambuco, and another from Ouessant, in Brittany, to the French islands of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, south of Newfoundland. 49. The statutes were filed 27 May 1903 with a notary named Loste, at Bordeaux. 50. Patent 332,066, 14 May 1903, ‘Système avertisseur automatique d’orages’. 51. La Presse, 12 March 1903, reporting about the opening of the exhibition, wrote that its main attraction (‘le clou’) was ‘the indicator apparatus of hail storms, working on wireless telegraphy’. On the 15 March it informed of the president’s attendance, who had paid a detailed visit to the wireless telegraphy station, where he was welcomed by Popp and Branly. According to a chronicle of C. Dauzats in Le Figaro of 15 March, on his arrival the president had gone first to see the société exhibits, and besides the means to protect the crops, Popp had shown him plans and photographs of the La Hague station, pointing out that, when operative, France, like England, would be able to communicate with America. 52. Le Gaulois supplement mentions a lecture by Branly at this meeting on 18 March 1903. It has not been found reported in the press. 53. L’année scientifique et industrielle, 1903, 75–6. 54. Le Gaulois, 7 July 1903. 55. The paper shows a photograph of the antenna. It is of the fan type, with its wires collected at one end entering a shanty. 56. Gautier, op. cit, (53), 74–5. 57. Montagné, op. cit. (2), 67. 58. On 30 July 1903 this amount had already been paid. 59. Telegrafía y Telefonía sin Hilos, the first Spanish company in the field of radio, was established in 1902 through the efforts of Major Julio Cervera Baviera, of the army Corps of Engineers. Working on wireless telegraphy since 1899, he produced his own designs and used them in 1901 to establish a permanent link across the Strait of Gibraltar between Tarifa and Ceuta. The following year he tried to do the same between the Mediterranean Cape of La Nao and the island of Ibiza, an attempt that he abandoned for reasons still unknown. Those four stations were the ones intended to be rebuilt by the société. See Sánchez Miñana, op. cit. (4), 9–26. 60. Sánchez Miñana, op. cit. (4), 55–6. 61. Op. cit. (53), 73–4. Gautier includes two curious photographs of the Amsterdam station. One of them shows a room with the apparatus and the other the antenna hanging from one of the masts of a navy training ship tied up at the quay.
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62. Journal des Débats, 29 February 1904. 63. Archives Commerciales de la France, 3 August 1904, 1068. 64. Branly himself says so in a letter dated 1 March 1904 from which Monod-Broca, op. cit. (3), 240, quotes a paragraph. He adds that he finished working for the company because he did not find in it any means to make his experiments (‘n’y trouvant aucun moyen de réaliser mes expériences’). 65. See William Maver, Jr. (1904), Maver’s Wireless Telegraphy: Theory and Practice. New York, pp. 98–101, and Frederick A. Collins (1905), Wireless Telegraphy: its History, Theory and Practice. New York, pp. 180–2 and 203–4. 66. Op. cit. (30). 67. ‘La télégraphie sans fil’, L’Industrie Électrique, 25 March 1902, 122. 68. La telegrafía sin hilos (Madrid, 1904, 1st edition, and Cádiz, 1905, 2nd and 3rd editions). 69. L’Industrie Électrique, 1904, 347. 70. Archives Commerciales de la France, 7 June 1905, 698. 71. ‘Telegrafía sin hilos entre Constanza y Constantinopla’, La Energía Eléctrica, 25 August 1904, 304. 72. [US] Navy Department, Bureau of Equipment, List of Wireless-Telegraph Stations of the World (1906). 73. ‘Servicio radiotelegráfico internacional’, Electrón, July 1909, cover page. 74. L’Industrie Électrique, 1906, 144. Henri Popp seated in the board. The Bulletin de la Société Internationale des Électriciens, 1908, 106, includes in a list of members of this organization an electrical engineer named Joachim-Hans Morwitz as ‘laboratory chief ’ of the compagnie, with the address 150, boulevard Pereire, Paris. 75. The first news in the Spanish press has been found in La Vanguardia, 28 February 1907. For a more complete treatment of this subject see Raymond-Marin Lemesle (1996), Des rékkas à Radio Maroc: 100 ans des postes et télécommunications marocaines, 1855–1955, pp. 45–53. 76. The complete text of the Algeciras agreement can be read in El Imparcial (Madrid), 8 April 1906. 77. Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. Documents diplomatiques / 1908 / Affaires du Maroc / IV / 1907–1908 [...] Paris / Imprimérie Nationale / MDCCCCVIII’, 284, 294, 299–300. See an item with details of the service offered based on the three stations, in Bulletin du Comité de l’Afrique Française, July 1908, 263. 78. He died at Salies-de-Béarn, trying perhaps to recover from some illness at the spa. See Journal des Débats, 14 and 17 May 1910 and Le Figaro, 17 May. According to this paper of 18 June 1909, he had been honoured by King Alfonso XIII for services rendered to the Spanish navy. 79. La Lumière Électrique, 11 April 1908, 67. 80. According to La Lumière Électrique, 25 July 1908, 125, some financial papers had recalled, with regard to the operation, the scant success of the société. 81. Le Figaro, 14 February 1909, signed by A. de Gobart. 82. Le Figaro, 21 May 1909, signed by G. Duchemin. 83. For details see Sánchez Miñana, op.cit. (4). 84. Le Figaro, 28 January 1910. U.S, patent 995,254, ‘Telescopic mast for wireless telegraphy, signals and similar uses’, filed 23 March 1910 by Alban François Juillac, of Paris, assignor to Popp, is probably related to this equipment. 85. Le Figaro, 2 March 1911. The paper points out that the capital of the company was 1,670,000 francs. It had therefore remained far from the amount of 2,500,000 approved three years before. 86. See US patent 1,003,789, ‘Continuously operating high-temperature resistance-furnace’, filed 16 January 1911 by Victor Popp and Adolphe Minet of Paris (Minet assignor to Popp). 87. Le Figaro, 17 and 19 October 1912. 88. ‘Une politique de brimades’ in the French original. See Paul Brénot, ‘L’industrie de la radioélectricité; son importance, son évolution, ses besoins, son avenir’, Bulletin de la Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale, July–September, 1926, 595–613.
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Franco’s Dams as Evidence of Technological Regression Sa n t i a g o Lóp e z University of Salamanca
Introduction1
This paper is related to that of Aiyar et al. (2008), which aimed to explain cases of technological regress in preindustrial societies. Our aim, on the other hand, is to contrast the model for industrial societies. In order to do so, it is necessary to specify the concept and the conditions of technological regress (Section 2). The conditions are that a society must have undergone technological development in the first industrial revolution and experienced a significant loss of human capital and a general institutional blockade resulting in a closed economy (autarky). The institutional blockade must constitute the exact opposite of what Hall and Jones call social infrastructure, which they understand to be the government institutions and policies enabling individuals to accumulate knowledge and knowhow, and businesses to appropriate the results of their production and capital (Hall and Jones1999). All repressive dictatorships which damage their own social infrastructure have all, at one time or another, undergone technological regress. However, if we are strict in the application of our analysis, the only countries fulfilling the conditions referred to above are Franco’s Spain between 1939 and 1951, Pol Pot’s Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 (de Walque 2006), and Hoxha’s Albania between 1978 and 1985.2 This paper examines the case of Spain. In Section 3, we discuss the institutional blockade in property rights; in Section 4 we describe the macroeconomics of the technological regress; Section 5 examines the breaking of the institutional deadlock, and, finally, Section 6 presents a case study of hydroelectric dams, which leads us to discover that all dams built before 1956 took longer to build, were not so high and their spillways were smaller than those designed in the 1930s. The final section presents our conclusions. The Model
The notion of technological progress is related to the notions of cultural progress, development and industrial revolution. It is a positive vision involving increases in productivity and in the technological knowledge sustaining this
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productivity over time (Figure 16.1). The works of authors like Landes (1998) and Mokyr (2002) are good examples. The theoretical models are based on societies where the stock of knowledge can stagnate but never decrease: there is always innovation or adaptation (Nelson and Phelps 1966; Olsson 2000 and Romer 1990). However, analyses have assumed Schumpeter’s bottleneck concept (Figure 16.1) and Rosenberg’s technological imbalance concept.3 This means that there are shocks which break the dynamics of productivity increases (Figure 16.1).David (1985), Arthur (1994) and Huges (1983) have examined these ideas and introduced the notions of path independence, lock-in and reverse salients. Edgerton (2006) has gone even further with his notions of shock of the old (Figure 16.1) and creole technology (reuse of what is discarded in societies far from economic centres). In both cases (stagnation and shock of the old) it is a question of relative backwardness. Some economies progress before others. This is Cardwell’s law (Cardwell 1972), which states that every society will be technologically creative for only short periods. Sooner or later, a variety of legal and institutional channels slows down or stops technological creativity,4 but does technological regress take place (Figure 16.1)?
Figure 16.1╇ Technological shocks
Three factors produce shocks: a lack of productive factors (natural resources, machinery, and human capital), institutional obstacles (ideological and cultural barriers, imbalances in the distribution of power, and an absence of legal framework) and a lack of adaptation of technologies to existing factors. However, regress goes beyond this and can only be explained by a natural or ecological disaster which destroys the economy, a particularly damaging war, or a fatal epidemic. These are typical causes in preindustrial economies, but not in industrial economies (Aiyar et al. 2008). Regress in industrial societies is due to a general institutional blockade together with a significant temporary lack of human capital. This is the only way a decrease in productivity and production can be explained. Figure 16.1, a is the optimum position, and b, c and d the positions resulting from different types of shocks. Let us consider these aspects for the case of Spain.
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The Institutional Blockade: 1932–6
In 1931 the Second Republic was proclaimed in Spain. Towards the end of the same year, the constitution was passed and this new constitution introduced three changes to property rights. First of all, any property which was not being exploited could be expropriated on payment of compensation. Second, specific reference was made to the possibility of nationalising public services. And third, religious orders which were answerable to the Pope were dissolved. The Blockade of Land Property Rights: How it Affected an Aristocratic Landowning Family, the Fernán Nuñez The Agrarian Reform of the Second Republic has been one of the main subjects in Spanish historiography since the publication of Malefakis’s work in 1970. A summary of the studies carries out by Malefakis (1970) can be found in Robledo (2008). The reform began with the Law of 1932. Land in latifundia areas was occupied temporarily and labour laws were modified to prevent landowner monopsony. This law was not sufficient to enable a redistributive reform to be carried out. The right-wing parties refused to pass modifications and, eventually, when the right came to power in 1933, the law was rendered unenforceable. The main change was that workers could now negotiate their salaries and these were increased. The larger farms could not avoid the increases unless they took on tenant farmers instead of hired hands. This was difficult because the trade unions made sure that hired hands were taken on to reduce the number of unemployed. This resulted in an institutional blockade (Figure 16.2).
Figure 16.2╇ Yokes or tractors
A study of one of the great Spanish landowners of the time will serve to explain the balancing game depicted in Figure 16.2.5 The aristocratic landowners, Fernán Nuñez were sixth in the list of aristocrats who were expropriated. They had a significant number of agrarian properties in several
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provinces. Most of their income was linked to the evolution of land rents and the sale of agrarian products (Robledo and Gallo 2009). Hired labour and owners did not reach an agreement which was positive for both. The great landowner could have maintained the economic profit providing he exploited the land by employing herders with their own tools and mules, and hired hands (especially threshers). He had to accept the increasing salary costs. On the other hand, the hired hands had to accept a certain degree of mechanization (Figure 16.2, upper-left box). Alternation of political parties in power did not favour consolidation of a culture of pact and cooperation. The increase in salary costs took place in a depressive economic context and the landowner realized that, if he cooperated, he would lose political and economic control of local society (no social rent, Figure 16.2). In this situation, it was very tempting to begin to use machinery, not only to improve the profit and loss account, but also as a disciplinary weapon (a reserve army of labour). At the same time, the hired hands opted for joining trade unions and believed that there would soon be a powerful agrarian reform (positions of agrarian workers and landowners in bottom-left and upper-right boxes respectively, Figure 16.2). Both agents understood that the actions taken by one (trade unions – yolks) and the other (mechanization – tractors – social rent) were signs which forced both to choose conflict rather than cooperation (lower-left box, Figure 16.2). Finally, the landowner decided to buy tractors. When the left returned to power in 1936, the agrarian reform began. The hired hands or day labourers gradually usurped land on behalf of the state. The landowners responded by political means, radicalising the agrarian parties to guarantee their social rent (broken line box, Figure 16.2). Blockade of Energy Transport Rights: the Electricity Cartel The high voltage network was one of the public services to be targeted for nationalisation. At the time, the electric companies were owners of the networks and this enabled them to have regional monopolies. However, when the huge hydroelectric power station at Ricobayo came into operation, the companies were forced to form an oligopoly to share surplus production or the government would have to manage the network (Figure 16.3). In order to protect themselves from state intervention, in 1934 the electric companies formed a cartel. In the industrialised countries, governments had control of their national networks (Bartolomé 2007: 111–13). Since 1933, the United States had led the way with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA constituted the nationalisation of electricity production and the management of resources throughout a wide area of the United States. In Spain, the 1933 law governing electricity gave the Ministry of Industry and Commerce the power to manage the electricity supply, and the Ministry of Public Works the power to manage the distribution system. The electricity cartel had regulated market development since 1934 (Pueyo 2007: 83). The government’s answer to this was to plan the creation of an independent legal body called the National Electricity Network (referred to as REN after its full name in Spanish – Red Eléctrica Nacional). The REN gave the state the power to intervene in the coordination of private networks. The Chief Inspector of Industry defended History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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the state’s right to control the high voltage network and a mixed committee, ruled and controlled by the government, was set up. This system was based on the American system set out in the Federal Power Act passed in the United States in 1935. The Federal Power Committee had kept 20 per cent of the power lines under state ownership and favoured the link between the companies (Pechman 1994).
Figure 16.3╇ State owner power gird versus Electric cartel
If the electricity cartel accepted the REN, then control of the network would pass to the government and the companies would retain ownership of most of the networks. This was the balance of cooperation (upper-right box, Figure 16.3). The cartel did not want to lose control of the network or part of the ownership and opted for conflict (lower-right box, Figure 16.3). This resulted in a low investment rate with regard to the electricity network and this, in turn, had a negative effect on technological progress, for example, the electrification of the railway. The cartel decided to exploit the existing power stations until the state no longer guaranteed them the ownership and absolute private management of their networks. The state’s answer to this was to maintain tariffs at 1935 values (broken line box, Figure 16.3). Blockade in Property Rights on Science and Education: The Effects of Expropriation on the Society of Jesus. Article 38 of the Constitution of 1931 stated that education should be secular and general, but it did allow the dissemination of religious doctrines and did not specifically prohibit religious orders engaging in education. However, Article 26 led to the dissolution of the Society of Jesus. Both processes were started at the same time. The plans for increasing a general secular education were rejected by conservative local councils who defended the positions of religious schools. At the same time, the state began the expropriation of the Society of Jesus, which lost its universities and research centres (Puig and López 1994 and Verdoy 1995). History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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The government was divided when it came to deciding on the dissolution. Towards the end of 1932, the conservative members of parliament blocked the education reform; the social pact created around science at the beginning of the twentieth century was broken (Figure 16.4). According to Glick (1986), who has carried out studies of the situation of Spanish science at that time and since the beginning of the twentieth century, a point of institutional equilibrium had been reached, a real social pact, to keep science out of all political disputes. The maxim was that scientists and the institutions where they worked would be judged on their quality. This had enabled general progress in science. The dissolution of the Society of Jesus broke the science pact and led to an institutional blockade to reaching agreement in the generalisation of a state secular education (lower-right box, Figure 16.4).
Figure 16.4╇ Social contract od science versus Religious education
Macroeconomic Evidence
A multiple institutional blockade can be overthrown in court. It can also be solved by parliamentary legislation. This is what happened in February 1936 when the left came into government and reinforced the laws lifting the blockade in favour of secular education, a distributive agrarian reform, and state control of the electricity supply network. However, before these laws came into effect, there was a military uprising in Spain. This led to a civil war with a strong component of political repression. Between 1936 and 1940, 429,909 people died in the war and as a result of the repression (Alcaide 2008). The number of Republicans who died because of the repression is estimated to be 114,266, if we include the period up to 1951,6 and the victims of revolt are estimated to be 34,843. Slaughter was carried out in the rearguard. To the number of dead we have to add the number of people forced into exile (142,098) and the number of political prisoners at least 130,000 in 1939.
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Together war, repression and exile resulted in a loss of human capital in 1940 of around 697,000. If we exclude those killed in combat, political repression accounted for 424,000, 90 per cent of whom were Republicans. This meant that the population of 1940 underwent a drop of almost 2.77 per cent, and the labour force decreased by around 10 per cent. Rosés (2008) has studied the macroeconomic consequences of the Spanish Civil War and reached the conclusion that, compared to other civil wars that have taken place, both before and after, the Spanish war was one of the most destructive and the country took a considerable time to recover from it. Until 1951, Spain did not recover 1935 income levels and until 1956 logical Spanish growth trends were not achieved. Four years of war and repression, therefore, represented a 16-year difference for the economy. During the war, GDP decreased at an annual rate of 6.5 per cent, three times higher than the average decrease in contemporary civil wars. After the war, the growth rate, until it returned to pre-war levels, was one-third lower than the average contemporary civil war rate. If we take the TPF (Total Factor Productivity) as an approximation to technological development, we find that it was stagnant between 1940 and 1950 at 1935 levels. Capital goods, on the other hand, had recovered in 1946, but industrial machinery did not return to 1935 levels until 1950. The answer to this regress is to be found in the damage caused to human capital. With regard to the amount of work, the number of hours worked in 1935 was not reached again until 1944 and that figure remained stagnant until 1951. To add to the repression, women were forbidden to work. The quality of the work factor suffered more than the quantity. From 1939 to 1940 there was a 10 per cent drop in the quality of labour, which did not recover until 1957. It was difficult to recover previous levels because the repression was concentrated in the more qualified layers of society. In general, 1936 labour quality levels, measured in terms of education, did not recover until 1956. The three years of war had caused the loss of years of schooling, but their effect is minimal compared to that of the repression. The loss of human capital in four years (2.77 per cent of the total population and 10 per cent of the labour force) took 16 years to recover. For every year of war and repression, four years of education were lost. The Slow Breaking of the Blockade
The two groups which suffered greater repression were state schoolteachers and agrarian trade unionists. The repression exercised until 1940 meant that there was no social group that defended non-secular general education or agrarian reform. For this situation to continue, the government had to maintain high levels of public spending in the police and the army and apply cutbacks in education. Rosés (2008) calculated that if state military spending had returned to pre-war levels, GDP would have picked up in 1947, four years earlier. This was the economic cost of social peace. The army and the police served to guarantee that the breaking of the institutional blockade would not cause problems. The Spanish Primary Education Law of 1945 granted the Catholic Church History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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an almost total monopoly and restricted access to education, which would explain, in part, the difficult recovery process of human capital. This law remained in force until the mid-1950s and a general primary education system was not introduced again until 1964. In the years following, there was a return to the system approved 30 years earlier by the Second Republic. In 1970, the General Law of Education was passed and a certain degree of stability was achieved (Ruíz de Azua 2000). The problem of agrarian reform was also solved in the medium term. The standard of living in the country deteriorated initially due to a reduction in cultivated land and in yield (Barciela 1997). At the same time there was a drift from the towns to the country, estimated initially at over a million (Nicolau 1989 and Reher: 2003). The reason for this was the drop in real salaries, a differential of 56.4 per cent between 1939 and 1953, Reher and Ballesteros (1993). The return process did not last for very long, however (Leal et al. 1986 and Ortega and Silvestre 2006). By 1950 all opposition had died out. There was nobody left to defend reform, and farming was no longer such an important activity within the economy. The agrarian reform problem, therefore, all but disappeared. After 1951, the government introduced liberating measures in agriculture, withdrawing fixed price policies and, between 1952 and 1953, passing the Law of Concentration of Smallholdings, the Transformation and Colonisation Project, and the Law of Declaration governing farmland which could be put to better use. These laws were all introduced in place of an agrarian reform which was no longer necessary. Table 16.1╇ Electricity consumption restrictions 1944–57 (percentage over estimated total demand) Year 1944
% 8.6
1945
23.3
1946
8.9
1947
7.1
1948
11.0
1949
24.8
1950
14.7
1951
6.5
1952
1.5
1953
5.3
1954
6.7
1957
2.2
Source: Sudrià (1990: 172).
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The government did not consider the electricity companies, the cartel as a whole, and the banks which provided their financial backing as enemies. The only company which underwent government intervention was Barcelona Traction, because the majority shareholders were foreigners. Besides, if there was sufficient energy, the government could carry out its autarkic industrial policy based on state companies. This would require building dams to obtain hydroelectric energy on the one hand, and, on the other, thermal power stations to burn low quality coal. The reality, however, was that there were official restrictions, shortages and blackouts until the mid-1950s (Table 16.1). The energy sector has to be ahead of the economy: if economic growth is forecast, investment in production and transport capacity of energy must take place months or even years earlier. If there is no reserve capacity in production and transport, then installations will be overexploited. Overexploitation leads to efficiency losses and cost increases: breakdowns, defective repairs, maintenance cost increases and losses in transport. The only solution to this in the short and medium term is to impose restrictions. The reserve capacity of 1935 dropped completely between 1939 and 1943 and was not recovered until 1951 (MIC 1951). Neither the government nor the companies made any plans to maintain the reserve once the Civil War ended. Until 1943 only repairs were carried out, the sole exception to this being the plan to expand the power stations of Hidroeléctrica Española in 1940 and the Villalcampo dam belonging to the Saltos del Duero company in 1943 (Gómez Mendoza 2006: 423). An estimate of the reserve capacity is the annual variation rate in productive capacity (Table 16.2). Table 16.2╇ Increase in electricity production capacity in Spain (annual variation rates) Hydroelectricity Thermal power stations 1929–35 7.0 3.8 1935–40 1.9 –1.4 1940–6 1.8 2.3 1946–54 6.9 9.2
Total 6.2 1.1 1.9 7.4
Source: Bartolomé (1999) and Pueyo (2007: 117).
Capacity increase rates from 1935 to the end of the 1940s were far from demand which continued to increase at the rate it had done up to 1935 (Pueyo 2007: 139). This led to an overexploitation of power stations and networks, which, in consequence, deteriorated. As a result, the losses in transport rose to almost 27 per cent (Rivas 1951: 182). The lack of installed capacity meant that the level of overexploitation in the 1940s was such that maintenance and repairs could not be carried out. This resulted in power cuts due to failure being added to the official power restrictions.3 Building skills also deteriorated and what could have been built in three years, now took five. It is often said that this can explained by the government’s fixing prices below exploitation and renovation costs. But the reasoning from the point of view of institutional balance of the state and the electricity cartel is a
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blockade situation. The state would freeze tariffs (those of 1936 based on economic indicators for 1935), provided the cartel did not increase investment. On the other hand, the cartel would not increase investment as long as the government continued to affirm that it was not going to take control of the network. The cartel became stronger in the 1934 agreement (Díaz Morlán 2006). This situation continued until the end of 1944. Even the state, in an internal document, admitted that freezing tariffs stopped private investment, but it also pointed out that the interconnection network was not coordinated and that any attempt at state intervention in this regard would clash with the independence the companies wanted to achieve in their regional monopolies. They proposed an intervention based on building interconnecting power lines, homogenizing and increasing voltage, and even creating a central distribution office.8 If the state took control of the network, the electric companies would lose their regional monopoly and the cartel would collapse. They decided, therefore, not to invest and the state froze tariffs and threatened to nationalise the electricity sector (Figure 16.3). The state planned to make the public company holding INI (Instituto Nacional de Industria, Spain’s National Institute of Industry) a regulating agent for the sector in aspects regarding joint interconnection and exploitation of the system. They also planned to expropriate power stations under construction and connections which were not being used, and to create a production company based on burning national coal. The government even drew up reports on greater or lesser nationalisation of the electricity sector (Sudrià 2007: 41). At the beginning of 1944, the cartel met state representatives to try to break the deadlock (Gómez Mendoza 2007: 443). The agreement reached was that the cartel would set up a trust, in which all the companies would hold shares, to take over integration of the network, and, in exchange, tariffs would be increased. The state agreed to the idea, but asked for some time to study it in more detail. What they were doing was playing for time and getting ready to form part of the trust as a producer. Three months later, whilst the cartel was preparing to set up the trust, the INI made public their plans to create thermoelectric power stations. The cartel did not react in any way so the state went ahead. On 19 July 1944 a parliamentary bill was approved proposing land division in electricity areas and anticipating compulsory interconnection to deal with restrictions. It took the cartel only two weeks to set up the trust it called UNESA (Unidad Eléctrica SA). The cartel companies did not have time to increase production near areas of consumption, so UNESA worked for six months to improve interconnection as it was the only short-term solution (UNESA 2005: 57). On 2 December 1944, the state passed a law appointing UNESA as network coordinator. At the same time, UNESA accepted the future participation of public companies in the new trust. The state and UNESA also agreed to begin negotiations on tariffs, provided the companies started their investment programme. There was no agreement on tariffs until 1951 and it did not come into effect until 1953. Why did the electricity companies take so long to increase productive capacity when the institutional deadlock had already been broken? There are two ways to explain what happened. The first is to accept that there was technological regress due to a lack of human capital (point d, Figure History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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16.1), which we will discuss in the last section of this paper. The other is not to accept it. If we do not accept that there was technological regress, the explanation is that the institutional blockade resulted in the companies not making any investment during the six years from 1939 to 1944. As it took from three to five years for the power stations to go from the planning stage to the building stage, there were no results until 1948 or 49 (point c., figure 1. Tables 16.1 and 16.2 show that restrictions began to show a drop in 1951 and that the installed capacity had grown towards the end of the 1940s, particularly thermoelectric capacity which was under the control of public companies. However, the construction rate was slower compared to other countries, although one reason for this could be Spain’s difficulty in importing construction goods and especially capital goods (turbines and power stations). There were several reasons for this: a) the state tried to prevent foreign investment resulting in controlling stakes in Spanish companies; b) the state had the monopoly on currencies which it used to buy equipment for public companies rather than private companies; c) fuel power stations were easier to build but were rejected due to their high variable cost which was due to the American blockade on the oil supply in force since 1944; d) the Second World War had just come to an end and equipment was in short supply on the international market; e) the cartel was made up of companies with diverse interests. Was it a question of technological stagnation that could be resolved with institutional stability (point c, Figure 16.1) or was there technological regress which could only be solved with a new accumulation of human capital which had been lost? The case of the Villaryegua will give us the answer. Villaryegua
In this section we are going to modify Figure 1 using the figure employed by Aiyar et al., (2008: 136, Figure 1). If we accept that for every year of war, four years of human capital education was lost, then it was not until 1951 that human capital quantity and quality recovered to enable Spain to produce similar quantities in similar qualities to what was produced in 1935. However, this was not the case. We can find an explanation in Figure 5: in 1940 a 2.77 per cent drop in population causes regression to point d, which is the technological situation of 1935. The broken line represents the hypothetical course of technology in Spain and the solid line represents the new course caused by the shock. The shock of 2.77 per cent on human capital resulted in a deterioration in technological knowledge and knowhow of 1.83 per cent, placing the real effect at point e.9 1.83 per cent is therefore an indicator of the resistance capacity of technological knowledge and knowhow in the face of the shock it receives from the loss of human capital. On the one hand it increases because technology had advanced in the rest of the world after 1940: Spain only imported a small amount of technology, but this, together with human capital’s ability to adapt, reduced the negative effects of human capital loss. On the other hand, after 1936 business costs increased due to the rise in the scale of installations. That is, technologies were more efficient, but on a larger scale. It was hard for companies to assimilate.10 In 1940 the technology of the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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Spanish economy stood at point e, which was the technology Spain would have had in 1937 (point e’ on the broken line). A recovery process started at e, reaching f in 1951. That year, had it not been for the loss of human capital, Spain should have been able to build dams to American 1936 standards without any problem (point f ’). However, convergence still had not taken place at f (the difference between f and f ’). In 1951, Spain was still not capable of building what it would have been able to build without any problem if there had not been war and repression.
Figure 16.5╇ Technological regress
Dams can be compared in many ways. Their spillage capacity summarises a large part of their features and qualities. For many years the spillage record was held by the New Corton dam (1906) in the United States, which had a spillway capable of spilling 3,000 cubic metres per second, a record which was not broken until 1936 when the 5,700 cubic metres per second mark was passed in one of the spillways of the Hoover dam which had a capacity of 11,300 cubic metres per second (Schnitter 1994). In this regard, between 1934 and 1939, the Saltos del Duero company managed to go over the 5,000 cubic metres per second mark. This was part of a project involving technicians and experts from Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Spain. It combined the technologies of countries like Switzerland, based on earth and rockfill dams for temporarily holding large continuous flows of water, and those of the United States, based on large reservoirs. In Ricobayo it was decided to build a large dam without an overflow but with a large side spillway. This was a risky, modern decision, but very profitable from the point of view of production. However, it was a mistake to build a structure capable of spilling without increasing investment in the construction of the spillway. That is why, although it started operating in 1935, it underwent modifications for years until it was able to cope with the History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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5,000 cubic metres per second flows of the River Esla. In any case, Ricobayo was an indication that Spain was in an excellent state of technological health as far as building dams went. Once these technological capacities had been achieved, the company aimed to go ahead with its plan to build the Villaryegua dam. This dam was over 80 metres high and could spill water at a rate of 8000 cubic metres per second (Muriel 2002: 245). However, between 1940 and 1941 they abandoned the idea. It was considered that it was impossible to carry out construction (they were at point e). Instead they decided to build two dams, each only 50 metres high: the first was Villalcampo on which building started in 1942 and finished in 1949) and the second was Castro, on which building work was started in 1949, when the work on Villalcampo ended, and finished in 1952. That is, it took ten years to complete a much less ambitious project. It was as if they knew that they had been at level f ’ and dropped to level d only to start again at e and not be able to build Villaryegua. In 1940 the company was afraid that it would not find Spanish engineers and labourers capable of building Vallaryegua and that it would not be able to employ foreign labour. The shortage was such that when they had to plan the amount of machinery they needed for Villalcampo, they salvaged material that had been discarded eight years earlier, when construction work on Ricobayo ended, and which had not been sold because it was obsolete (Chapa 2002: 144 and Martínez 1962: 795).. In addition, the price of cement had increased and was rationed by the state (Rodríguez 1993: 86). The only advantage was the constant drop in the relative cost of labour, so all the progress that had been made in mechanizing works was lost. The Saltos del Duero company did not get back on track until halfway through the 1950s when it built the Saucelle dam between 1952 and 1956. Saucelle was 83 metres high and had a spill capacity of 13,300 cubic metres per second. It was constructed with modern machinery and the productivity rates per worker and per machine were similar to those in the rest of the world. Now the company had reached point g. The gap between the solid line and the broken line was closing, but would not do so completely until the Aldeadávila dam, which was 133.5 metres high and had a spill capacity of 12,500 cubic metres per second, was built in 1962. This construction put the company at point h, the same level as its European competitors. Conclusion
Between 1931 and 1935, the Saltos del Duero electric company had the skill and knowhow to build the 90-metre-high Ricobayo dam and yet, seven years later, it was only able to build the 50-metre-high Villalcampo dam. This was not due to better foundations or a better project, it was simply due to the fact that the company had lost its technological capacity. This situation was not exclusive to the Saltos del Duero company: documentation shows that Hidroeléctrica Española or Saltos del Sil suffered the same problem. We can also find similar situations in the Spanish car industry, railway-bridge construction industry, or the telephone company. The usual explanation is that these situations arose because Spain was suffering the consequences of History of Technolog y, Volume Thirty, 2010
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the Civil War (1936–39), autarky (in force until 1953) and an international blockade (1944–1951). However, only the destruction of human capital can explain general regression, whilst institutional factors (autarky and the blockade) explain stagnation. Notes
1. This paper forms part of research project HUM2007-62276 financed by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. 2. See Edgerton (2006: Chapter 5). 3. See Schumpeter (1939) and Rosenberg (1976). 4. Furthermore Mokyr (1994: 572) shows, ‘that increasing the number of economies interacting with each other improves the chances the system has to beat Cardwell’s Law.’ 5. This section and the following one were inspired by Bourguignon and Verdier (2005), where we find landlords with no direct interest in increasing the supply of skilled workers. 6. Audiencia Nacional – Juzgado Central de Instrucción Nº 005, (16 October 2008), ‘Diligencias previas procedimiento abreviado 399 /2006V. Auto’. 7. Notas sobre producción de energía eléctrica en España y fabricación de material eléctrico, 27-2-1942, Archivo Histórico del INE, caja 3602, doc 3. 8. Nota sobre legislación referente a la ordenación eléctrica nacional. 89-3-1943. Archivo Histórico del INI, caja 3602, doc. 51. 9. We have adopted this relation first of all because of the relation established in Spain between labour force loss and education (every year of war and repression is equivalent to four years’ education). The second reason is the relationship Baker (2008) establishes in preindustrial societies between population loss and technological knowledge loss which is 5 per cent knowledge for every 10 per cent of the population. 10. At that time, the hydroelectric power station model which dominated building technique and the productivity per worker per machine was represented by the Hoover dam which had been built in 1936, Schnitter (1994, Table 38).
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