The Rolt Memorial Lecture 2004: Landscape with Writers: Engineering and the Industrial Landscape in English Literature

Abstract

The National Trust is creating an Energy Centre based on the work of Williiam George Armstrong at Cragside in Northumberland. A focal point of the Centre is the Burnfoot Powerhouse, the first phase of which was built in 1886 to house an early hydroelectric plant for incandescent lighting. The Powerhouse expanded over the years to meet the growing electrical needs of Cragside and various generating units were installed. These have now been restored by the British Engineerium to illustrate the story of electricity supply on the site. This paper describes the development of Burnfoot between 1886 and 1945 and points out the importance of Cragside in the history of hydroelectricity and incandescent lighting.     

Human guinea pigs? The history of the early oral contraceptive clinical trials

Abstract

Today it is estimated that over 100 million women worldwide have taken oral contraceptives since their first clinical trials in 1956. Despite their popularity, however, contraceptive pills have been under constant scrutiny for their safety since the time of their marketing. This paper considers the degree to which the pill was tested before it was introduced on to the market and challenges many assumptions that have been made about the use scientists made of women in its development. Examining the early testing of the pill, the paper makes clear that the success of the pill and its testing depended on the active co‐operation of the women who swallowed the tablet in its experimental stage. Far from being guinea‐pigs, women were thus active participants in the making of the pill.     

A Decade of Design: The Global Invention of the Kanga, 1876–1886

This article examines the early development of printed and manufactured cotton kanga textiles, worn popularly throughout East Africa by women as wrappers. Using archival, pictorial and object collections, I suggest that the decade from 1876 to 1886 was crucial for design. The bold colour and graphics of East African women’s cloth printing, Indonesian batik motifs, European-printed handkerchief-style borders and the inclusion of text combined by 1886 to form the now standard composition of kanga cloth.     

The Société Européenne de Culture's Dialogue Est-Ouest 1956: Confronting the ‘European Problem’

This essay, which is part of an ongoing monographic study of the Société Européenne de Culture, looks at the SEC's relationship with Europe's communist intelligentsia during the first phase of the Cold War. European intellectual life during this period is generally associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Yet the SEC, the membership of which included some of Europe's most eminent figures, ranging from Camus and Jaspers, to Adorno and Merleau-Ponty, to Lukács and Sartre, can be seen as having provided a reference point particularly for the European left, not least because of its unique openness to communist participation. Giving special attention to the Dialogue Est-Ouest (Venice, March 1956), one of the earliest encounters between Europe's eastern and western intellectuals since before the war, this essay considers how the SEC's engagement with contemporary Marxist theory there not only embedded the dialectic as the SEC's operational method. It also provided an early indication of that institution's imminent shift from a preoccupation with universal values to an awareness of cultural difference and diversity, as a result of the critique of current western liberal ideology and its cultures, undertaken by the SEC in light of the Thaw.     

France and Globalisation

The XXth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956 was one of the most extraordinary events in the history of the communist movement, taking the world by surprise by its ‘revolutionary’ content and non-confrontational overtones. The occasion served as a platform for Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation programme, which was to underpin fundamental reforms in Soviet domestic and foreign policy. Reactions to the Congress on the part of communists in the West have hitherto been analysed at macro levels, with focus on the strategic responses of political and geographical elites, whereas those of the largely ‘Stalinist’ party-base have been for all intents and purposes ignored. This article draws for the first time on the testimonies of 25 informants active in 1956 at all levels of the French Communist Party Var Federation to provide a grassroots perspective on the issues. It allows us to consider key questions from new angles and, as a result, to reconsider our overall interpretation of the ways in which ordinary communists responded to this pivotal event.     

Former Nazi Officers in the Near East: German Military Advisors in Syria, 1949–56

In the early days of the Cold War, Syria was the first Arab country where former officers of the German Wehrmacht played an active role as military advisors. This was due, in part, to the fact that Germany was not burdened by its past political relations to Arab states for, in contrast to the Western powers, Germany which had never had territorial ambitions in the Near East. Even in the very early stages, German advisors contributed considerably to the development of Syria's armed forces and military intelligence. The advisory activities of German experts became even more intensive as a result of increased trade between the two countries; however, in 1956 the political situation in Syria worsened and the country began moving towards the Eastern Bloc putting an end to the non-official activities of German military advisors.     

Revolution,uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956

There were from the very beginning two ways of conceptualising the events of 1956 in Hungary, labelling it as a revolution or a national uprising. There also emerged a third way of conceptual definition when what occurred in 1956 was named an anti-totalitarian movement. From the theoretical perspective of Begriffsgeschichte the Hungarian events of 1956 cannot simply be assumed under the notion of ‘revolution’, the term first applied to what took place in France in 1789, since it was not the kind of a forceful collective effort leading to an unknown future. The notion of ‘revolutio’ works better to describe the analytical meaning of the Hungarian anti-Soviet and anti-Communist disturbance. The reason has been that the main thrust of the Hungarian situation in 1956 was similar to the seventeenth-century English and the eighteenth-century American ‘revolutions’, to return definitively to a point of departure by regaining some of the formerly lost social and political liberties.     

新中国国防动员体制建设的实践与探索

我国的国防动员体制是在借鉴苏联国防动员体制、继承我党革命战争动员经验、结合我国实际建立起来的,其形成和发展大体经历了五个发展阶段:1949-1955年为应急性探索时期,1956-1962年为仿苏全面建设时期,1962-1978年为非常发展时期,1978-1993年为恢复调整时期,1994年至今为充实完善时期。通过对我国国防动员体制发展历程的回顾,可以得出以下启示:坚持党的领导,确保动员决策和平战转换的快速高效;突出政府的主体地位,科学规范动员供需对接机制;紧密结合国家体制改革,实现动员职责的普遍化;着眼于权威高效,构建实体性的国防动员组织领导体系;健全动员法规制度,构建“法制主导型”的运行体系;适应动员环境的发展变化,不断推进动员体制的改革创新。     

“The New World” of Karl Barth: Rethinking the Philosophical and Political Legacies of a Theologian

ABSTRACT

It is only recently that a few histories of interwar European political thought have come to acknowledge that its discursive framing of ethical and social crises was closely interwoven with upheavals in the ways Europeans rethought and debated God. The first aim of the present article is to restore to Karl Barth (1886–1968) a central place in promulgating a thoroughly interdisciplinary approach to twentieth-century European ethical and political thought. Secondly, it seeks to correct the commonplace association of Barth’s theological revolution with radical and authoritarian political ideologies by exploring his early political thought and activities, whilst focusing on several of his most politically and intellectually influential ideas. The article concludes with a discussion of the wider implications of rethinking Barth’s role in intellectual history.     

1956 and the PSI: The end of 'ten winters'

The focus of this article is the revisionist course which the Italian Socialist Party embarked upon after 1956 and which led up to the first Centre-Left government. The article challenges two quite well established views. One view is that the transformation experienced by the PSI during the 1956-64 period was simply tactically expedient and devoid of any substance and consistency. This article argues, by contrast, that these years represented, in Alessandro Pizzorno's words, a veritable 'Copernican revolution'. This period of revisionism was as important as the better-known revisionisms elaborated during the same period by other European Socialist parties such as the German SPD or British Labour. The second main argument is that 'structural reformism', the new strategy adopted by the PSI after 1956, was not, as it has often been described, an expression of 'duplicity' owing to the party's incapacity to behave like a genuinely reformist party - a phenomenon that has allegedly long characterized parties of the Left. Instead, the strategy was reflected in the changes to European socialism during the early 1960s. In particular, this period marked a contrast to the previous years which were characterized by the dominance of ideas of 'redistributive' socialism, a ¤ la Anthony Crosland. This period marked also a shift among Socialist parties towards the acceptance of greater state controls over the economy by way of public planning and ownership.     

Fireproof Mills — The Widening Perspectives

Abstract

The author discusses how fieldwork by RCHME and others has refined the typology for the development of the fireproof textile mill first put forward by H.R. Johnson and A.W. Skempton in 1956. Details of cast-iron roof framing, the different styles of supporting columns and the problems created by power transmission are all considered. It is suggested that early examples of fireproofing are generally associated with mechanised flax or cotton spinning, the branch of the industry most at risk.     

基于造纸原料分析中国手工造纸术的传承特点

对古代中国主要造纸原料发展脉络进行了梳理,并分析目前我国手工纸造纸原料现状,最后对古今中国传统手工造纸原料进行比较研究,可知当今中国传统手工纸在原料种类、比例、处理方式等方面与古代相比较,还是发生一定的变化,正是由于这样一些变化,导致手工纸质量参差不齐,很难保持其原有的特性。     

Remembering the “Queen City of the West”: The Untapped Archaeological Resources of Indianola, Texas

Though its life was quite brief (1844–1886), the now-forgotten Gulf Coast port of Indianola, Texas, played a pivotal role in the settlement of the Southwest. This flourishing metropolis was ravaged by an 1875 hurricane, then completely destroyed by an even fiercer storm in 1886. Initial investigations have revealed vestiges of the wharves, a substantial debris field, and two important shipwrecks, proving the site's tremendous archaeological potential. Because of its unique place in Texas and U.S. maritime history, the former Queen City of the West merits further study.     

Historical development of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia

This review examines the history of discoveries that contributed to development of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia. The origin of the hypothesis is traced to the recognition that neuroleptic drugs interfere with brain dopamine function. This insight was derived from two distinct lines of research. The first line originated from the discovery in 1956 that reserpine depletes brain serotonin. This finding resulted in a sequence of studies that led to the discovery that brain dopamine is involved in neuroleptic-induced extrapyramidal motor disturbances. The second line of research was aimed at determining the mechanism of action of psychomotor stimulants. This research produced evidence that stimulants directly or indirectly activate brain dopamine receptors. Because nonreserpine neuroleptics such as chlorpromazine block stimulant-induced movement, these findings suggested that neuroleptics were dopamine antagonists. Most previous accounts of the development of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia emphasize the first line of research and ignore the second.     

Historical Development of the Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia

This review examines the history of discoveries that contributed to development of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia. The origin of the hypothesis is traced to the recognition that neuroleptic drugs interfere with brain dopamine function. This insight was derived from two distinct lines of research. The first line originated from the discovery in 1956 that reserpine depletes brain serotonin. This finding resulted in a sequence of studies that led to the discovery that brain dopamine is involved in neuroleptic-induced extrapyramidal motor disturbances. The second line of research was aimed at determining the mechanism of action of psychomotor stimulants. This research produced evidence that stimulants directly or indirectly activate brain dopamine receptors. Because nonreserpine neuroleptics such as chlorpromazine block stimulant-induced movement, these findings suggested that neuroleptics were dopamine antagonists. Most previous accounts of the development of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia emphasize the first line of research and ignore the second.     

Urban Planning System in Contemporary Spain

This work analyses the main Spanish legislative and urban planning instruments, highlighting some of the most important structural problems of the current Spanish urban realities. The survey on legislation runs from the first Land Use Act of 1956 to the decentralization of the administration and the culmination of the transfer processes to the respective Spanish regions. Later, we study the complete well-structured hierarchy of urban planning instruments in use at present. Finally, we analyse how these and other factors have an influence on the capacity to control housing prices and on a lack of sustainability characterized by the excessive urbanizing use of the land.     

建国初期私立学校改造措施的考察——以北京地区为例

1949～1956年,我国对私立学校进行了全面改造,使私立学校在20世纪50年代中期一度退出历史舞台。从北京地区对私立学校的改造来看,当时国家改造私立学校有着深刻的社会原因和复杂的国内、国际背景,但党和政府对私立学校的改造是随着客观形势的变化而按部就班地推进的,对于不同类型和不同级别的私立学校采取不同的方法和措施,这种改造是"因地制宜"进行的,从中可以看出中共处理问题的灵活性。     

武夷山名义考

武夷之名始于汉武帝时期,"武夷山"之所指历代都在福建崇安县(今武夷山市),乃九曲溪贯穿而过的一片秀美峰岩。因境内名山之故,崇安县自宋代建县,已有"武夷乡"政区名。近代地理学发展,上世纪30年代始有武夷山脉命名,武夷山所指范围扩大,也导致名称的多义甚至歧义。1956年江西铅山诞生第一个武夷山地名"武夷山垦殖场",1998年改为武夷山镇。上世纪70年代末以来,武夷山自然保护区、武夷山世界自然与文化遗产成为跨省地名,但地块分割,各有所属。     

论中国社会主义市场经济发展的六个阶段

社会主义市场经济在中国相继经历了萌芽、受挫、恢复探索、理论形成、体制建立、完善成熟等六个发展阶段。中国共产党在1956年完成三大改造之后就开始了这一探索过程,毛泽东等第一代领导集体对社会主义市场经济的探索是中国社会主义市场经济的萌芽阶段,所取得的成果是邓小平经济理论的源头和起点;从“计划经济为主,市场调节为辅”到尝试“计划与市场内在统一”的社会主义有计划商品经济体制,再到建立适应社会主义有计划商品经济发展的、计划经济和市场调节相结合直到社会主义市场经济的经济体制和运行机制,中国共产党对社会主义市场经济的认识日益深化,我国经济体制改革在理论和实践上取得重大突破和进展。中国社会主义市场经济的发展过程,说明了市场经济是人类文明的重要成果,是经济发展不可逾越的客观规律。     

Last out — First in

I first met Sir Granville Beynon as a first year undergraduate student at the University College of Swansea in 1953. I later joined his research group and was his postgraduate student from 1956–1959. This was a particularly exciting time in Sir Granville's career; he was heavily involved in the International Geophysical Year, 1957–1958, was appointed to the Chair of Physics in Aberystwyth (1958) and awarded the CBE (1959). I was the last student to complete a Ph.D. in Ionospheric Physics at Swansea and the first postdoctoral research assistant to be appointed in the new group formed at Aberystwyth. I have very fond memories of this period during which I received an excellent training in ionospheric physics and radio propagation.