Samuel Florman - The Aftermath

“Oh, I believe you, Ichiro-san,” Gordon Chan said. “And I believe that you will build an efficient, productive empire and come back to this subcommittee sooner rather than later for greater allocations of resources, human and material. I can’t say I disagree with you in the least; but I’m sure you won’t be offended if I keep a close eye on you and yours.”

Nagasaka bowed deeply to Chan. He did not reply directly to the barb that had been thrown his way. Instead, he addressed the committee as a whole. “One final point,” he said, waiting until he knew he had everyone’s full attention.

“We have the latest technical information at our fingertips. We have brilliant engineers, talented technicians, and willing workers. We even have craftspeople who have worked as blacksmiths in museums and as hobbyists—and thank goodness that we do. But what we do not have, most emphatically, is anyone who lived in the eighteenth century, making iron, charcoal, coke, or anything else.

“Young Wilson Hardy here has studied a bit about those times, and he will tell you that craftsmanship—the talent that resides in the experienced artisan’s mind and hands—counted for much. The particular smell of the smoke; the look and color of the glowing metal; the feel of the furnace, that sort of thing. So, whatever took those folks one hour to do is liable to take us five—or ten—or who knows how many. It is better that we have a few extra people on hand to help cope with the unexpected. Let the supplementary personnel be an expression of our humility.”

Ichiro Nagasaka’s eloquence and perseverance carried the day. The Joint Planning Subcommittee concluded unanimously that he should keep his thousand-person workforce.

“Don’t make us regret this,” Alf Richards said, as he raised the gavel to adjourn the meeting. But Nagasaka had already spun on his heels and was out of earshot, on his way to mobilize and motivate his army of workers.

The night turned cool and a giant golden moon was visible in the clear sky, clearer than it had been for many days. Wil Hardy, Jr., tried to convey to Sarah his excitement about the day’s events, especially the launching of the machine-tool enterprise.

“This is where it really began,” he said, gripping her elbows for emphasis. “Don’t you see? This is where human beings took the definitive leap beyond their own nature, beyond craftsmanship, into the realm of the precisely formed machine. And the thing that made it all possible was the simple screw. The screw enabled clumsy human beings to measure with an accuracy that was intuitively inconceivable. Just think of the difference between a simple ruler and a finely calibrated micrometer! Also, the screw enabled the machinist to convert rotary motion into rectilinear motion, and so to regulate moving parts with precision. The cutting tool on a lathe, for example, could be controlled by the geometrically configured parts of a machine instead of by the hand of the operator. Through the screw, the inventors of machine tools applied the perfection of ideal shapes to the forming of physical objects. I’m not saying it wasn’t a big deal to tame fire, to invent the wheel, to discover the pulley—all that earlier stuff. But this was such a defining moment, a thrilling moment for those who lived it. And we are being given the opportunity to live through it again.”

“Wouldn’t you rather that we had been spared this particular opportunity?” Sarah asked, with only a hint of sad irony.

“Of course. But just think of those pioneering days when a handful of toolmakers were creating the machine age. A new civilization was in the making, and they were at the heart of the drama. You know, Arnold Toynbee once said that if he’d been given his choice of societies in which to live, as a citizen and family man, he would have chosen the Dutch Republic at the height of its glory in the seventeenth century. As a historian, on the other hand, he would have elected to travel with Alexander the Great.”

Sarah indulged Wil in his enthusiasm. “I suppose you’re going to share with me your choice?” Her eyes met his, unblinking.

“Yeah. As a historian of technology, I am living right now in the equivalent of such a momentous epoch. I know that’s being terribly self-centered, but it’s how I feel. It helps me forget about all those people who are not here to feel anything. That’s the silver lining in this terrible, terrible cloud. We’re creating a new world, my darling.”

“Will it be a new world of soot and noise and disfigured landscapes?” Sarah asked wistfully. “I worry about that.”

“No. That’s partly my point.” Wil held her arm as they stood there in the surreally bright moonlight. “We have a fresh opportunity and the benefit of so much hindsight. We can create a machine age without the ugly side effects of the Industrial Revolution. I know we can! It will be a world your poets will appreciate.” He became more and more animated.

“Is there room in your world for poets, Wil?”

“There’s room for you—and you’re a poet.”

“‘Ah , my fierce-throated beauty,’” Sarah said.

“Your what?”

“‘Fierce-throated beauty! Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, thy madly whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding…’”

He looked at her, bewildered.

“That’s Walt Whitman writing about a locomotive,” Sarah said, smiling. “He was an optimistic yea-sayer who lived at a hopeful time in American history. He saw the possibilities of beauty in machines and the possibilities of a beautiful life in an age of machines. I guess if he were with us today, he would say, ‘Give them another chance. They’ll do better.’”

“I know we will, Sarah.”

Wilson Hardy, Jr., lay awake that night thinking about lathes, milling machines, and drill presses. There, on the coast of what used to be called the Dark Continent, not far from the places where wild beasts still roamed, he envisioned gleaming cylinders machined to accuracies verging on perfection. Amazing. The universe confronts us with chaos and destruction, he mused, but we puny humans, using geometry and ingenuity, demonstrate our defiance.

When he finally fell asleep, however, he dreamed of a pirate queen steering a red-sailed ship across raging seas. In this wild and frightening scene, thoughts of technology provided small comfort.

The first day of February dawned dark and rainy. The farmers said that the moisture was welcome, but I found my mood as dreary as the gray skies. With Ichiro’s presentation, the preliminary work of the Joint Planning Subcommittee was now complete. The elation that had accompanied this achievement led to the inevitable morning-after letdown. The creative strategizing was behind us. One could predict that, from this point on, the subcommittee’s work would consist mainly of modifying the decisions that had been reached, constantly reallocating resources, and responding to endless complaints and second-guessing.

As if to underscore my sense of foreboding, Donald Ruffin barged into the subcommittee’s afternoon session, accompanied by members of the Electric Light Brigade, and resumed his assertion of grievances. “We’ve been thinking things over,” Ruffin said. “It just won’t do to lump electricity and electronics into the category of research and development. We can’t sit around designing and designing and designing.” He began to sputter in anger and frustration. “We need some material to work with, dammit—and you know exactly what it is that we need. Copper. C-o-p-p-e-r!”