Bench Grass
Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
Popular Posts
- Gathering the Bones, 18: Hew Down the Bridge!
- Postblogging Technology, October, I: Forest for the Trees
- The Bishop's Sea, III: The Real Presence
- Postblogging Technology, November, 1943: Caesar's New Clothes
- Postblogging Technology, November 1950, II: Platypus Time
- Postblogging Technology, December 1950, II: Christmas Corps
- Postblogging Technology, March 1944, I: Pulling In the Horns
- I Would Run Away to the Air: The British Economy, Montgolfier to 727, Part 1
- A Techno-Pastoral Appendix to Postblogging Technology, October 1950: The Chestnut Plague
- Gathering the Bones, XXIII: Wyandotte Days
Friday, July 19, 2024
A Technological Appendx to Postblogging Technology, March 1954: Noise About the Type 2001
Saturday, July 13, 2024
A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, March 1954, II: Revisiting the Nuclear Submarine Question
The story here is that the United Kingdom is a rich, first world country and a Great Power. It fought the Second World War in alliance with the United States, now a superpower. At the time the metropolitan British Isles had 34% the population of the continental United States, compared with 20% today. It is fashionable to compare and contrast the technological achievements of the two states across a wide range of warmaking capabilities in WWII, and after, and to attempt to draw larger conclusions. It is particularly interesting to ask whether the steady decline in creditable comparisons over this period (or longer ones going back into the Nineteenth Century) is consequence or, perhaps to some extent, cause of the increasing disparity in national power (and, of increasing relevance, population). One such comparison is between the first nuclear submarine launched by the United States, Nautilus, commissioned on 30 September 1954, and the first British nuclear submarine, Dreadnought, commissioned 17 April 1963.
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Sea power is submarine power now |
What I didn't have was a contemporary view in the form of a leading article in The Engineer explaining what a mid-century British technocrat would deem important research questions needing to be worked out before the nuclear submarine could take the sea as the lynchpin of modern strategic power. So in this short week, I am going to take another dive.
Monday, July 8, 2024
Postblogging Technology, March 1954, II: "We Didn't Know What the Hell We Were Doing"
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Sunday, June 30, 2024
The Early Iron Age Revival of the State, XXXII: Safety Pins
Sunday, June 23, 2024
Postblogging Technoloy, March, 1954, I: Towards an Electronic Office
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Postblogging Technology, February 1954, II: E ola mau ka 'ōlelo Hawai'i!
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Monday, June 3, 2024
Postblogging Technology, February 1954, I: Howard and Me
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie