The Paleotechnic was roughly the age of the steam engine, while the Neotechnic was in part the contemporary onslaught of new technologies in the time in the thirties when Mumford wrote his volume. Additionally, the Neotechnic phase was a condition of the future: at the time of authorship, Mumford did not believe that the modern era had fully assumed the guise of the neo-technological era.

In order to illustrate the intermediate stage within which he was writing, he introduced, analogizing from natural processes originating some time before the Paleolithic Age (such as rock formation), Spengler’s figure of the pseudomorph. The pseudomorph was the transitional cultural form. Like metamorphic rock, the pseudomorph acquired the new elements or materials of the future culture or future rock while being structurally similar to the previous generation.

Aside from the fact that technological innovation , when focused on the material objects themselves, results in structural invention and futurological structure, with each phase of the development of technology, scientists and inventors, socially, scientifically and technologically construct pseudomorphic systems of culture with each project of advancement. Technology has produced several machines that took nearly equal amounts of scientific, empirical, or experimental rigor or discipline, while not really successfully accomplishing their specified tasks, at least not efficiently. The imagination, (pejoratively) the degradation of thought, took over, and faced to construct the machine with missing pieces, the technologist improvised and the technology had to wait.

In the meantime for historians of technology, the technologies that lead to turning points in western technics, are extremely interesting, for they point to, not only the turning points but the way out of valorizing the forward movement of progress. A necessary reevaluation of progress in literature, and other humanities, (when science and technology do move forward), the evaluation in technology, has lead to understanding of scientific principles and technological ideas, through much science fiction. Based upon science fact, the history of science fiction, which is undoubtedly a history of theoretical technological inventions, can be placed within a synthetic time-line homologous to the time-line of technological production. Imagination (non pejoratively), the creative reconciliation and synthesis of the seemingly unrelated, produces qualitative machines which do qualitative things.

Additionally, they speak of particular qualities of the culture of the people who produced them (or the machines that produced them). And this leads us back to the syncretic, the pseudomorph, which was also a theory of culture. In the next few moments, I would like to look at pseudomorphic technology (within developmental projects, i.e. the steam engine) to show the transformation in technology but also the imagination of its inventors, and the recognition of error as progress.




CONT.
From Von Guericke’s experiments attempting to pull apart two air-evacuated hemispheres, for which he used two teams of eight horses each, to the publishing of Hero’s Pneumatics in 1575 (in Europe), humans have been fascinated with atmospheric pressure and human designed antidotes to , diagnostics for , and facillitations of that atmospheric pressure. The Marquis of Worcester commanded the power of steam as well as the gravity aggrandizing properties of water, with his “water commanding” steam pump, no doubt for pumping water out of mines.
Inventors pumping water out of mines for the purpose of extending the depth of the mine and increasing allocation of energy resources discursively positioned




CONT.
Newcomen’s Fire Engine in 1705.(Mumford,160, Cardwell, 67). This early steam-engine syncretized the experiments of Von Guericke and the theoretical basis developed with the Marquis. Retaining the structure of the Marquis’ pump or closer in time to that of Savory’s Miner’s Friend, the Newcomen fire-engine came closer to succeeding in the technology industry with its procedure for separating the movement of the pumping beam from the switching on and off of the heat source(Cardwell, 68). In addition Newcomen separated the boiler from the cylinder, as an improvement on Papin’s machine.
In addition, Newcomen adapted a valve for switching the steam and water injections, for the newer machines, the full scale models (Cardwell,68). In fact it was this display of scientific knowledge for innovations in technology that would have made Bacon proud. So before we talk about the eventual inefficiency and fact of the under-implementation of this technology, let’s ask Sir Francis Bacon if he has been happy with Newcomen.




CONT.
Sir Bacon, besides the fact that Newcomen was a fellow Englishman, are you happy with his experimental vigor and rigor, his invention, or rather the progress that it represents?

Sir Francis Bacon:

Well I have to say, now that Harvard University Press has shown me the light, I am concerned about Mumford’s characterization of the pseudomorph. In your presentation, it socially constructs the Newcomen engine, but I wonder if it is also not real instead of false, as you are calling it, a pseudomorph.

Digital Artist:

the pseudomorph pertains to the culture that envelopes the given piece of technology. I am more interested in the social and historical conditions of reality--yes real too. I am thinking of Watt as the turning point

Francis Bacon:

Yes, I see your reasoning, the separate cylinder theory. I am happy with Newcomen, though perhaps his invention’s inefficiency is a factor, as you were going to say...

Digital Artist:

Yes, the inefficiency of Newcomen’s engine. Thanks again Francis Bacon, we will continue to preserve you through the 21st century, like the statues of inventors in Salomon’s House, from your New Atlantis.




CONT.
The Newcomen engine, may in fact problematize syncretism as well as problematize the turning points theory. Of course one needs turning points for the pseudomorph and the pseudomorph for the turning points. In the least, the newcomen engine is a piece of “raw” technology unfettered by global competition and the type of standardization that contemporary industry entails. With the methods of construction of Newcomen considered clumsy(Derry and Williams,318) ,and without a way to bore accurate cylinders more than seven inches in diameter, plus the fact that the valve was adapted to the first engines on site, suggests a bricoleur model of technological practice (rather than a mass produced one), so that the Newcomen lacked a streamlined efficiency, streamlined efficiency being the bottom line in the production of technology,but not the history of technology.

Because some think that James Watt wholly invented the steam engine it is good to look at a piece of raw technology that almost becomes a morphological symptom of production of all types in the early eighteenth century--which returns us to the opening bit about human fascination with steam and atmospheric pressure--at least since Hero the idea of machines powered by pneumatics, was developed by inventors and theoreticians, only to the fuller realization of these ideas in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Even in a syncretic history, the steam engine is important. Through Watt, it became the operative concept for machine power in the 18th and 19th centuries. With Cugnot’s steam carriage,




CONT.
the steam engine was put on wheels. If the newcomen engine was an ingenious application of the principles of science to technological systems, the Cugnot carriage, on the other hand was a product of dystopian displeasure, and utopian desire amended to a technological construct in an ad-hoc fashion. As Wolf details the 18th century merchant class’s acceptance of commodification with new demands at the time for life-easing appliances, he mentions that several technological innovations made things such as travel more tolerable to merchants and their families(553). These include two-wheeled, light-in weight carriages, or phaetons (in France in the middle of the eighteenth century), and stagecoaches with bodies slung from the carriage-frame, minimizing violent jolting on rough ground in the 17th century, in Europe.

But with the development of steam power, carriages were theorized with steam (by Thomas Savery), or equipped with boilers as in the case of Nicholas Cugnot’s steam carriage. In 1716, Savery included the propulsion of carriages and ships with the specs for his “fire-engine” . In 1763, Cugnot built a machine that is pseudomorphic, for the very reason that it ran only 2.25 miles an hour and had to be withdrawn from service due to an accident at a busy intersection. The carriage was generally unstable, and at this intersection it turned over. It now resides in the Paris Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and a model of it is in the Science Museum of London.
With possible tie-ins to steam power, the analytical engine of Charles Babbage evokes a contemporary metaphor for power in contemporary techno-society, that of the modern network server allied to a dynamo or power plant.



CONT
We have here a gear from this very expensive calculating machine. Bowden characterized Babbage as a scientist of extreme intelligence who was interested in the cultural prospect of science and technology, and mathematics’ place in them. The Analytical engine, a 19th century computer project, was to use the punched cards of the Jacquard loom. So that, the calculator remained connected to the symbol manipulation machine even though it etched out an alternate direction in computation, for the computer. He was also interested in assembly-line production: he needed super accurate mechanical components for his analytical engine, and he was interested in then current large scale systems of transportation, namely the railroad system that would transport physical matter and people, paving the way for networks of other kinds.

Babbage shows the imagination of inventors through the ages by his breadth of interests., such as the railroad, assembly lines, and the fields of science and mathematics--not to mention his truly ambitious computer projects, that also developed the very first computers. But my sense is that the analytical engine showed the interest in automating mathematical functions such as computation of algorithms, as this interest existed in the nineteenth century, without a clear relationship to the advances that were to follow in the early and mid twentieth. Therefore, and since this project was never finished and never worked, it is a piece of pseudomorphic technology.
The main connection of Babbage’s Analytical Engine to contemporary technology comes through the concept of the computer. Digital technology informationalizes; the internet has developed into a whole new media tool.




CONT.
How was news media created pseudomorphically through the printing industry in the 19th Century, and what is it about Bessemer and Young’s Pianotype that was tied to discrimination against women through the sexual division of Labor?

Bessemer and Young’s pianotype retained the structure of a polished, historical technology, that of the musical organ or pianoforte, while serving a different function, to set up type for printing the news. When the operator pressed a key on the piano keyboard that corresponded to a letter, the type piece slid down the back of the machine into rows of type on an inclined wooden page that was then set to print a page of newspaper or other print media.

The machine was designed for James Young by Henry Bessemer, and in the latter’s autobiography, it is framed by him as presenting a number of technical difficulties. These include synchronization of the falling of the type into the wooden page and then the extra type pieces for double letters such as ff, or fl.
But Young’s political motivation for the design is rooted in a perfectly logical assumption for the time in the 19th century, that women would know how to use a piano-like keyboard because of its association with the musical instrument that they played in leisure, and so could be employed in typesetting for news. But with such strong competition from women in typesetting the machine never became popular with male organized printing establishments, thereby excluding women from the sexual division of labor entirely. (Bessemer, 47)
The pianotype is a pseudomorph because of the arbitrariness of its gender specified design, as a machine, and because of its failure in the industry to gain ground, because of that design.

Nineteenth Century technology also led to the emancipation of women in the form of the bicycle. Although it was hard to pedal in traditional female dress, as Derry and Williams show in their short history , women could travel all the major roads with the new invention. Freiherr Drais’s hobby horse in 1818 had no pedals or brakes, and was highlighted by a special pad that served to rest the upper body and assist in kicking to propel oneself forward. The drais bicycle is pseudomorphic because although Drais patented the invention it was only with Pierre Michaux in 1860s that bicycles began to be mass produced via established companies. Additionally, the hobby horse is pseudomorphic because it antedates the Michaux class of bicycles called “velocipedes”, which were the premiere form of bicycle , a major form--with pedals. Derry and Williams say both that the bicycle brought new life to the roads(390) which I imagine has to do with the lack of concealment of the body riding a bicycle, in contrast to the horse carriage, which at least concealed passengers if not drivers, and that it transformed the leisure time of civilized man(390). Thus the physical exercise element could be read as sport and uniquely frames the future asceticism of cyclists in the 20th century.

The semiotics of sport takes on various forms including animal locomotion, specifically a horse galloping, that was the subject matter for Muybridge’s initial frame successive photography that was to solve the ancient problem of the horses gallop--whether all four feet left the ground. Derry and williams say that Etienne Jules Marey was in contact with Muybridge in the late 19th century; shortly thereafter he demonstrated his chambre chronophotographique which was essentially a modern camera(664).

However the film camera was primitive(664), working in the following manner. a ribbon of photographic paper was moved by a hand-crank from a supply spool to a “take-up” spool, recording at ten to twelve frames a second. A shutter cut off the light when the paper was moved(664). The cine-camera, which derives its philosophical power from the fact of discontinuity (the shutter) allowing continuity of motion, remains problematic for the philosophy of the body. The space of the observer of the film moment is still Cartesian, a dimensionless point. While the camera obscura allowed Vermeer to paint The Artist in his Studio, a reflexive deixis positioning the body of the observer within what he observes, the film camera in the early 1900s except with errors in film development and errors which functioned as self reflection within film, although not conscious, generally did not account for subjective vision and visual anomalies as Crary points out, and was stuck with wholly transparent style--a condition of the Cartesian schema.

So how psuedomorphic is a technology that from its inception propagated the Cartesianism of contemporary cinema? One only has to point to the design of the Marey camera which placed the crank, to activate the shutter and move the photographic paper ,just below the viewfinder. One wonders how cranking was actually accomplished without knocking one’s teeth out. So in a mechanical sense the Marey Camera is implicated in Cartesianism in addition to its inheritance of the camera obscura or optical apparatus, that is, it is theoretically sound or good for mind, but not for body.

With Marey we conclude our look at pseudomorphic technology. An interesting thing to note about Mumford is that the pseudomorph, if I read Mumford correctly is a slightly pejorative term, a term that represents a culture that has not yet arrived at supreme functionality. So to appropriate the pseudomorph as a non-pejorative term is a contextualization of Mumford, who although an historical sociologist, may have slightly lacked the reflexivity of a science of errors. It is the valorization of error that works to ultimately contextualize historical and contemporary positions within the field of cultural production. The pseudomorph, Spengler’s concept of cultural hybridity, allows for machines that were inefficient to symbolize the imagination in the materialist orientation to technological, cultural production.

Thankyou.

For More: A reflection on more technology enmeshed in the figure of the Pseudomorph