Preliminary syllabus for "The Structure of Engineering Revolutions:"
Week 1: Introduction and Background
Session I: (full class) Introduction of participants, course overview, description of group projects, students select project groups.
Session II: (group meeting) Team building exercise
Week 2: Why study historical technologies?
Session I: Intro. lecture., class development of framing questions.
Session II: Team building exercise. Design negotiation game, developed by Larry Bucciarelli.
Week 3: Social and Historical Contexts of new Technologies
Session I: Book discussion, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance by Donald MacKenzie.
Session II: Outlook for R&D at the close of World War II, demographics of MIT, higher ed. during 1945-1950, GI Bill, international political situation. Assignment: Book reviews and presentations on secondary material covering social and historical context (e.g. Baxter, Scientists Against Time, Redmond and Smith, Project Whirlwind, World War II and the American Dream)
Week4: Research Proposals and Funding
Session I: Invited guests; current or former DARPA Program Managers on how they read research proposals. Industrial R&D manager on how projects are evaluated for funding.
Session II: Close reading of proposals for project Whirlwind to Navy, Air Force. What were they proposing to build? Why? What were they really going to build? Why?
Week 5: Interviews, Memoirs and Personal Experience
Session I: Invited Guests: Jay Forrester, personal reminiscences of Project Whirlwind, or other historical actors.
Session II: Group/individual interviews with Forrester and other Whirlwind participants.
Week 6: Lab Notebooks and Experimental Data
Session I: Invited Guests: Charlie Mazel on Edgerton’s lab notebooks. Comparison of styles: Harold Black, Norbert Wiener, Charles Stark Draper.
Session II: Close reading of Jay Forrester’s notebooks in the development of magnetic core memory. Examination of evaluation data for (unsuccessful) electrostatic storage tubes. What data is being collected? Through what apparatus? Who were the collaborators and what did they contribute? What technical alternatives were evaluated and rejected? How long did the "discovery" actually take, from initial idea to proof of concept? What were the conceptual breakthroughs?
Week 7: Drawings and Technical Artifacts
Session I: Visit to MIT museum collections. Examination/demonstration of Edgerton stroboscopes, Bush differential analyzer, etc.
Session II: Examination of Whirlwind components in Computer Museum in Boston. Assignment: (choose 1) (I) Carefully analyze the physical construction of a Whirlwind circuit board. Who built it? Was it the same person who designed it? What techniques were used in the construction? What tools were used? What skills were required? Where might the person have acquired those skills? What information about the component is not contained in the drawing? How was it tested? (II) Take a sub-circuit from the Whirlwind drawings and try to build an exact replica. Are the parts still available today? Measure its performance. (III) Design a computer circuit that would fit into Whirlwind, using only parts and components available at the time. How would you test it?
Week 8: Engineering Cultures
Session I: Invited guest: Larry Bucciarelli, author of Designing Engineers. Session II: Discussion of MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory and Digital Computer Laboratory. What was the full range of people who worked there (e.g. engineers, managers, administrators, secretaries, janitors)? What was the physical space of the laboratory? What were the backgrounds and prior technical experiences of the engineers? How was the laboratory organized? How can you describe the unique "culture" of the lab? How did this culture affect the lab’s technical products? Assignment: Visit a modern university or industrial laboratory, and describe its "culture" along several different dimensions: institutional affiliation, funding source, personnel, intellectual mission, physical space, etc. How do each of these factors contribute to the laboratory’s "products"? What are the laboratory’s "products?" (i.e. designs, data, papers, graduate students, commercial products, etc.) How do the organization’s members define its culture?
Week 9: Commercialization and Production
Session I: Invited guests: Lita Nelson, Director, MIT Technology Licensing Office, and industrial research director affiliated with MIT Industrial Liaison Program.
Session II: Group interview of Ken Olson, founder of DEC, originally responsible for technical interface between Project Whirlwind and IBM. Issues involved in turning a research project into a commercial product. Compatibility (or lack of) between MIT and IBM. Role of military sponsor, SAGE project, in commercializing MIT research. Technology transfer into IBM; what, exactly, was transferred? Intellectual property issues.