THE WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE^285
traordinary cluster of innovations that made the Second Industrial Rev
olution so important—the use of liquid and gaseous fuels in internal
combustion engines, the distribution of energy and power via electric
current, the systematic transformation of matter, improved communi
cations (telephone and radio), the invention of machines driven by the
new sources of power (motor vehicles and domestic appliances). It was
also and above all the role of formally transmitted knowledge.
The marriage of science and technique had been preceded by a
number of couplings. One can take the courtship back to the Middle
Ages, to the use of astronomical knowledge to transform navigation
(the calculation of latitudes), the use of mathematics in ballistics, the
application of the pendulum to the construction of a far more accurate
timekeeper. And back to the steam engine, that classic triumph of sci
entific empiricism. But not until the late nineteenth century does sci
ence get ahead and precede technique. Now would-be inventors and
problem solvers found it profitable to survey the literature before un
dertaking their projects; or for that matter, before conceiving their ob
jective—what to do and how to do it.
So it was that the leader/innovator was caught and overtaken. And
so it was that all the old advantages—resources, wealth, power—were
devalued, and the mind established over matter. Henceforth the future
lay open to all those with the character, the hands, and the brains.
The Secrets of Industrial Cuisine
Steel, we have seen, was always the metal of choice in the making of
"white arms" (swords and daggers), knives and razors, edge tools,
and files (crucial to the manufacture of precision parts). In the
beginning, steel was an accidental by-product of smelting in furnaces
that were not hot enough to produce a homogeneous mass and
yielded some steel along with soft and hard iron. Later on, with the
invention of the tall blast furnace operating at higher temperatures,
one had to go through multiple processes to get from pig iron to
steel. One way was to reheat the metal and burn off enough of the
carbon to get down to 1.2-1.5 percent. The results were not even (it
was not easy to stop at the right moment) and gave a variety of steels
that were then used for different purposes. The best went for guns
and fine cutiery; the poorer, for plowshares and sickles.