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Seminars

The Roots of Efficiency in John Smeaton’s Wheels

by

Jennifer K. Alexander
Assistant Professor
Program in History of Science and Technology
and Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Wednesday, January 26, 2005
3:30-5:00 p.m.
Room 3-180 EE/CSci
Coffee and cookies will be available at 3:15 p.m. in Room 3-176 EE/CSci before and after the seminar

Abstract: Efficiency was an integral component of the industrial age, and has become a central value in the world’s advanced industrial cultures, an apparently self-evident value associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits. As we know it, efficiency is a nineteenth-century invention, created by engineers to measure the performance of machines.
This presentation traces the transformation of efficiency from an obscure technical concept into a popular modern slogan. It looks particularly at the roots of efficiency in the work of British mechanic John Smeaton. Smeaton was one of the first people to call himself an engineer, and his work on the efficiency of waterwheels was crucial in establishing him as a professional engineer. Smeaton set the terms we still use for thinking about efficiency, which now has a variety of meanings and uses but still speak of the same concern for productivity, economy, and control, and for their measurement.

Bio: Jennifer Alexander is assistant professor in the Program in History of Science and Technology and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. She received her doctorate from the University of Washington in 1996, and has held fellowships at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, and at the Max Planck Society Commission for the History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society during the Third Reich, in Berlin. She is completing a book manuscript, “Efficiency and Mastery,” on the history of the concept of efficiency, and is at work on another book manuscript, “Sport and Work,” on the international biomechanics movement of the twentieth century.

Informal Faculty Luncheon: Wednesday, January 26, 2005, 12:00 noon. Meet in 1100 ME and walk to lunch with other faculty. Prof. Jennifer Alexander will be able to attend.