History of Technology Volume 30 European Technologies in Spanish History [Hardcover]

This book focuses on the development of four key issues in the development of modern Spain; knowledge, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications, and public works. If technology transfer from advanced nations to less developed systems always worked, then the whole world would now be rich. That this is not the case is so obvious, we might well expect that the history of the processes, successes and failures of technology transfer across nations would be a very well-established field of enquiry. In fact, the theme is still a developing one, and the present Special Issue centres on the case of Spain as exemplary in many respects. The collected essays focus upon the four major themes of knowledge, manufacturing, energy, and telecommunications and public works. Essays range in time from the 18th century to the present time, from studies of espionage and early links between craftsmen and savants, to the institutions of technology (from training systems, to private enterprise activity, or patents), to case-studies of silk manufacture, shipbuilding, mining, paper-making, and pharmaceuticals. Each essay offers a broad variety of material to bring to bear on a major problem of world development, past, present, and future.Overview - An approach to the historiography of technology in Spain Antoni Roca-Rosell \ Knowledge \ 1. The beginnings of industrial espionage in Spain (1748-1760) Juan Helguera (University of Valladolid) \ 2. Augustin Betancourt and mining technologies: from Almaden to Saint-Petersbourg (1783-1824) Irina Gouzevitch & M. Gouzevitch \ 3. Beginnings of Mechanical Engineering in Spain: the contribution of Francesc Santponc i Roca (Barcelona, 1756-1821) \ 4. Patents, Sugar Technology and Sub-Imperial Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Cuba Nadia Fernandez de Pineo (Autonomous University of Madrid), David Pretel (University of Cambridge), J. Patricio Saiz (Autonomous University of Madrid) \ 5. The Engineering Profession in Spain: Modern and Contemporary Ages Mal³&