TECHNOLOGY.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, technological development in Europe was extremely diverse. Britain, the first industrial nation, had experienced some decline, while Germany, latecomer of the industrial revolution, had caught up rapidly and had overtaken Britain in some new, research-based industries. Research institutions enabled German industry to move ahead as new technological innovations were implemented. Although research universities in the United States were modeled on the German university system and U.S. chemical companies looked to Germany for inspiration in research and development, many industrialists in Germany and other European countries were fascinated by U.S. industry. The American system of manufacture, mechanization, automatic machine tools, and an infectious feeling of technological optimism had a great impact in Europe. But World War I, the war of the engineers, made the destructive potential of technology visible to everyone. Although the new weapons such as tanks, submarines, and aircraft had to a large extent been developed in Europe, European engineers could also build on inventions made in the United States.

After World War I many European engineers flocked to the United States, visiting steel plants and machine and automobile factories and praising American technical and industrial efficiency, mass production, and management. Although these reports were eagerly absorbed at home, some Europeans expressed reservations against the American system. The old elites found it hard to accept that a new system based on industrial technology and mass culture was to prevail. Already in the late nineteenth century the "shock of modernity" had hit the traditional elites in Europe, and during the 1920s the concept of "Americanism" divided the different strata of European society. Hailed by industrialists, but also by many trade unionists as a means to improve living standards, it was denounced by the old cultural elites who contrasted European "culture" with American "civilization," associating the latter with only material values. In European industry the 1920s were a period of rationalization and of attempts to increase industrial productivity. Taylorist time-and-motion studies were adopted and Fordist mass-production methods became an attractive model. But the United States and Western Europe differed, for example in the automobile industry: incomes in Europe were comparatively low and, together with high operating costs, prevented the emergence of a mass market for automobiles. As a consequence European car producers adapted American mass production only piecemeal. But conditions in Europe also had advantages, allowing more flexibility and a higher level of innovation. The decades after World War I were characterized by large technological systems that originated in the late nineteenth century, for example in electricity supply. These systems were set up on a local, later regional, and sometimes even national basis. The larger the system the more efficiently it could function, making use of different sources of energy, especially hard coal, lignite, hydropower, and later, oil and gas. The German engineer Oskar Oliven presented a plan to the World Power Conference in Berlin 1930 to set up a European electricity supply system, but this failed, partly because of German reservations and a striving toward autarky.

Although technological innovations such as radar, jet engines, and rockets had mainly been implemented in Europe in the context of military research and development, there was usually an American element to this technology; in digital computer technology and in the military and civil use of nuclear energy the center of activity was in the United States. In terms of institutional framework and educational system, it makes sense to speak of national systems of technical innovation, but most of the significant technological inventions were distinctly transnational and to an extent even transoceanic. In the two decades after World War II the Americanization of Western Europe grew rapidly. As Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber pointed out in 1967, Europe had to do something to stop the brain drain of scientific and technological talent from Europe to the United States, put an end to "Eurosclerosis," and increase European competitiveness, particularly in high-technology areas. A few years later discussions about the limits of growth set in and were especially strong in Western Europe. In the wake of the oil crisis of 1973–1974 a debate already under way was intensified on energy conservation, air pollution, and other environmental issues. This became stronger after the nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979 and the catastrophic incident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. Particularly in Western Europe, reservations grew against "big technology"—large technological systems that might get out of control—whereas on the individual level the daily use of technology such as the telephone, television, and computer seemed to be completely "natural" and was generally seen in a positive light. Japan's rise as a leading industrial power enhanced the view of many politicians in Europe that an explicit national technology policy can be effective and that in order to compete with great powers such as the United States and Japan it would be necessary to intensify technological cooperation within Europe. Unlike Japan and the United States, however, Europe was and is very diverse in its institutional settings, which may be advantageous in some respects but has often proved to be a drawback. From the 1980s onward Japan embarked on direct investment overseas. In the automobile industry it employed lean, just-in-time, robot-based, flexible mass production methods, which became a model for producers in Europe and elsewhere. European technology policy had important effects on the structural development of the automobile industry in Europe, being directly responsible for Belgium's emergence as a major automobile producer. In the 1990s the European Union's automobile industry enjoyed the chances of a single European market but also had to meet challenges such as Japanese competition, including transplants (such as Japanese car factories in Berlin) and overcapacities. The link with central and Eastern European countries and with many other countries overseas has for some time pointed toward a global, not only European, market.

DIVERGENCE IN TECHNOLOGY: SOME EXAMPLES

Looking at European countries more closely, the introduction of standards, especially in the armament industry, gave a push to war-production efforts in Germany during World War I. As in some other Western European countries during the 1920s, the rationalization movement in German industry was strong. During the Third Reich the Four-Year Plan was implemented in 1936 to make the German economy independent with respect to strategic raw materials. A strong emphasis on armament and the introduction of new weapons was a feature of the National Socialist regime. After World War II the Allies interdicted research in Germany in military technology but also in some areas of civilian technology—sometimes difficult to distinguish from each other—such as aeronautics, rocket propulsion, radar, and nuclear technology. The result of this setback was the relatively poor performance of the German aircraft, electronics, and telecommunications industries in later decades. Like other Western industrial countries, Germany experienced increasing competition from countries in the Far East, especially Japan. Japan soon acquired a lead in fields such as electronics, data processing, communications, and materials science and even challenged Germany in its traditionally strong fields of mechanical engineering and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. One of the future tasks for German policy will have to be a reform of higher education, one of the weak components in its innovation system.

Although in the early twentieth century France was quite successful in innovations such as automobiles and aeronautics, its position in "science push" research carried out in industrial research and development laboratories was comparatively weak. After World War II, in an attempt to keep up with industrial nations such as the United States and Great Britain, France embarked on a policy of large investments in research and development and the foundation of new institutions in science and technology. As a result French industry built a successful commercial aircraft, the Caravelle, and, in cooperation with Britain, the Concorde, a supersonic airplane that, although unsuccessful commercially, was nevertheless a technological achievement. By the mid-1970s France had become a modern industrial state with significant high-technology capabilities. However, the French system of innovation has several problematic peculiarities. Although, compared to the United States or Japan, France is a small country, in its mission-oriented innovation system "big is beautiful." In France emphasis is on large technological systems, especially in military and space technology, electric power, and rail transport, technologies normally developed for public, not private, markets.

Britain's growth in high technology in the 1960s and 1970s was to a large extent due to increased defense expenditure but also to U.S. and Japanese investments in electronics and other fields. Britain managed to keep a leading position in such areas as chemicals, especially petrochemicals, and pharmaceuticals, food processing, and energy, whereas in engineering, except in areas such as aircraft engines, its position was much weaker. With an emphasis on the service sector rather than on manufacturing, Britain has a distinctly modern industrial structure. There is, however, a problematic emphasis on product innovation at the expense of process innovation. Although British science has shown remarkable strength in several fields, technological innovation, particularly in the civil sector, is comparatively weak. Besides, British firms have severely underinvested in vocational training and in research and development, and the comparatively low status of engineers in contemporary Britain points to a loss of technological culture.

In the early twentieth century, Central and Eastern Europe was behind some Western European countries technologically, but science and technology did play a role there too. In Russia, polytechnical institutes had a good reputation, and scientists and engineers such as Vladimir K. Zworykin in electronics and Igor Sikorsky in aircraft and helicopter development testify to their high standard. After the October Revolution of 1917 many first-rate engineers left the country for the United States and elsewhere. In accordance with Lenin's slogan "communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country," the Bolshevik regime in 1920 embarked on the electrification of Soviet Russia. During the 1920s European and U.S. engineers and businessmen were instrumental in advancing Soviet industrial development, constructing the huge hydroelectric plant Dneprostroi and the gigantic Magnitogorsk iron- and steelworks, modeled after the U.S. steelworks in Gary, Indiana. Henry Ford transferred tractor and automobile technology to the Soviet Union, and Taylorist management principles were adopted there. During the period of the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) the USSR slowly tried to set up automobile, machine-tool, aircraft, and mechanical industries of its own, an effort hampered by the fact that many supposedly counterrevolutionary engineers had to leave the country or even were killed in the purges of the 1930s. Shortly before and during World War II the Soviet government set up research institutes for science and technology that later enabled the Soviet Union—with foreign, mainly German—assistance, to become a leader in space technology and also to play a significant role in nuclear-energy research and in other high-technology areas.

Like Russia, other Central and Eastern European countries had long-standing scientific and technological relations with the West. Countries such as Poland and Romania had for a long time felt close to French culture, while Czechoslovakia and Hungary had old industrial and technological contacts with Germany. Although industrial technology had generally spread from west to east, the indigenous technological capabilities in Central and Eastern European countries were significant. From the mid-1930s onward several Central and Eastern European countries experienced a growing dependency on technological cooperation with Germany; Czechoslovakia became an armament manufacturing center for the Third Reich. After World War II, the technological system of the Soviet Union and some members of the Eastern bloc was characterized by large investments in the military and military technology at the expense of investment in the civil sector. This made for international prestige but in the context of the Cold War and arms race created technological, political, economic, and social imbalances that resulted in the dissolution of the communist system in the late 1980s. Political and economic reforms have been under way since; some have brought the desired results, but there is still a long way to go on the road toward transformation.

TECHNOLOGY AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

From the beginning the European Union, together with economic and political integration, aimed at intensive cooperation in technology. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), founded in 1951–1952, worked toward an integration of the European steel industry and also prompted and coordinated research in metallurgy. The European Atomic Energy Commission (Euratom), founded in 1958, undertook strengthening the scientific and technological base of nuclear research and development within Europe. In the early 1960s France tried to convince its European partners that Europe was not to stand aside while the United States was about to establish a monopoly in satellites and launchers. In 1971, after the creation of ESRO (European Space Research Organisation) and ELDO (European Launcher Development Organisation), the European Space Agency (ESA) was founded; its most important ventures were the construction of the Ariane launcher and of Spacelab, a laboratory for research onboard NASA's space shuttle. Airbus Industrie, a European aircraft producer, was founded in 1970 with the French firm Aérospatiale and the German Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) as founding members. The Spanish Construcciones Aeronáuticas S.A. (CASA) joined the consortium in 1971 and British Aerospace in 1979. Its main aim was to be able to compete with the large U.S. aircraft producers. Although there have been national rivalries among countries involved, Airbus can be called a success story. In 1998 it sold more aircraft than its main competitor, Boeing.

Another attempt at coordinating technological research and development in order to strengthen the technological base and enhance competitiveness are the European Union's Framework Programs. The first program (1984–1987) was rather general while the second program (1987–1991) was more focused with Esprit, a program devoted to electronics, especially to information and communications technology. COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research), an intergovernmental European framework for international cooperation between nationally funded research activities established in 1971, was directed toward member states of the European Union and beyond. Rather than funding research and development activities themselves, it brought together research teams from different countries working on specific topics. France was again the driving force behind the launch of another research program, Eureka, established in 1985 with eighteen European countries participating. Eureka aimed at setting up or strengthening research and development cooperation among European industrial enterprises in order to increase productivity and competitiveness of industry in Europe. Emphasis was on environmental technology and recycling, biotechnology, robotics, and computer technology, but also on new high-performance materials, transport, communication, energy, and laser technology. So far undertakings such as this have yielded some impressive results, although there have also been complaints about cumbersome bureaucratic procedures and limited flexibility of participating companies. European technological programs have been more successful in a context of public action organized around a large project rather than in promoting networking and decentralized technological integration. In 1969 British, Federal German, and Italian aircraft companies established the Panavia consortium to produce the multirole combat aircraft (MRCA), which in 1976 was called the PA 200 Tornado. This fighter bomber was capable of high performance but was also very costly. Europe has some experience in other collaborative defense programs such as the Eurofighter combat aircraft and the Airbus Military Company A400M, a European airlifter. In 1996 France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy founded the Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR) to improve the efficiency of collaborative programs. Compared to a nation such as the United States, the European defense industry is less efficient because of the duplication of costly research and development programs and small production runs for national markets, which prevent opportunities for economies of scale, learning, and scope.

See alsoAviation; Computer Revolution; Nuclear Weapons; Science.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Hans -Joachim Braun