Intellectual property and national security: the case of the hardcastle superheater, 1905–1927

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complex and changing relationship between technological development, intellectual property, and national security in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Its specific case study concerns an important invention developed by a naval officer. Technological innovations not only were vital to British security but also embodied commercially valuable intellectual property. The state’s interest in acquiring control of the intellectual property to maintain Britain’s naval supremacy was not automatically aligned with the interests of inventors. The alignment was especially fraught in the case of service inventors—that is, inventors in government service, rather than in the private sector. Service inventors, who played a crucial role in maintaining Britain’s naval-technological edge, were governed by special regulations, and they invariably utilized state resources for their inventive work. Exploring these issues sheds important light on the attitude of the British state toward innovation and technological development from the 1850s through the 1920s.     

Legislative Coalitions and Presidential Signing Statements

We examine how the congressional coalition in favor of a law affects the probability of the president appending a positive or negative signing statement to it. Our results show that coalitions matter—presidents consider the power and status of a law's sponsor and the composition of its cosponsorship coalition when deciding whether to offer praise or raise concerns. Moreover, the factors driving praise and criticism differ from one another in important ways. These analyses demonstrate the value of assessing the valence of a signing statement rather than just its presence, and of extending the focus of research on signing statements beyond aggregate factors to investigate how the context surrounding a particular law shapes the president's reaction to it.     

Minutes of Meeting

Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt. By W. M. Flinders Petrie. Methuen &; Co., London, 1898. By A. H. Sayce.

A History o China, from the Earliest Days Down to the resent. By Rev. J. Macgowan, London Missionary Society. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, &; Co., 1897.

Le Folklore de l'Ile de Kythnos. Conférence donnée a la Société Royale Belge de Géographie le II Novembre, 1897. Par Henri Hauttec?ur. Bruzelles: Havermans, 1898.

L'Ile de Siphnos. Henri Hauttecojur. Bruxelles: Soc. Gén. d'Imprimerie, 1898.

Bergische Sagen. Gesammelt und mit Anmerkungen Herausgegeben. Von Otto Schell. Elberfeld, 1897. Baedekersche Buchdruckerei.

Antiker Aberglaube. Wilhelm Kroll. Hamburg: Richter, 1897.

Zur Albanesischen Volkskunde. Von Dr. Holger Pedersen. Kopenhagen: Siegfried Michaelsen's Nachfolger, 1898.

Weather Lore: a Collection of Proverbs, Sayings, and Rules Concerning the Weather, compiled and arranged by Richard Inwards, F.R.A.S. 3rd. ed., revised and augmented. London: Elliot Stock, 1898.

Deutsche Kinderreime und Verwandtes. Gesamuelt von Friedrich Drosihn. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1897.

Die Sage vom Heiligen Gral, in ihrer Entwicklung bis auf Richard Wagner's Parsifal. Von Eduard Wechssler, Privat-dozent der Romanischen Philologie an der Univ. Halle-Wittenburg. Halle, Max Niemeyer, 1898. By Jessie L. Weston.

Whilst thoroughly concurring in Miss Weston's criticism, I may be allowed to point out that as regards the most perplexing incident of the Grail legend, the question omitted by Perceval at his first visit to the Fisher King, an incident unexplained by every other student of the legend, Dr. Wechssler approves my suggestion. His words are: "Nutt schlagt eine Erklarung vor, die ich tiberans wahrschelnlich finde." What was my suggestion ? That the incident is traceable back to the geasa or taboos of early Irish saga; that it survived on into the mediaeval Arthurian romance, that it was completely misunderstood by the French adapters of the earlier Celtic stories, and that to this misunderstanding is due the obscure and Inconsistent way in which it Is presented by them. The suggestion involves, of course, the existence of a Perceval story innocent of all Christian admixture, based upon themes and conventions familiar in Irish romantic legends of the pre-eleventh century; yet although Dr. Wechssler approves the suggestion, he, as I understand him, rejects what It logically involves, and without which It has no claim to consideration. This is an even more striking instance than those adduced by Miss Weston of the author's inability to see the drift of his own statements and to follow up an argument to its logical conclusion. By Alfred Nutt.     

Ophthalmoscopy in Charlotte Brontë's Villette

This essay re-examines the representation of scopic conflict and discipline in Charlotte Brontë's novel, Villette (1853), within the context of the reconfiguration of the eye during the 1850s. Villette is pioneering in its representation of an ophthalmoscopic conception of the eye, as an organ which could be looked into by medical practitioners as well as looked at. This notion of the eye was only possible after Hermann von Helmholtz's invention of the ophthalmoscope in 1850. Villette is thus one of the first literary responses to the newly visible living retina. This essay argues that in light of the novel's emphasis on a penetrable, legible eye, the critical emphasis that scholars have placed on surveillance as a disciplinary model in Villette is overstated. Visual exchanges are described not in the disembodied abstractions of panopticism, but with references to a violent lexicon derived, in part, from the novel terminology of ophthalmoscopy. The prominence of opthalmoscopy points towards a remedial narrative in which diagnosis is succeeded by surgical intervention, and ultimately the restoration of sight. M. Paul Emanuel is the principal emblem of this visual practice: a merciless autocratic ophthalmologist who brings pain but also palliation. Villette's remedial narrative is organized around three devices designed to respectively look into, perforate, and enhance the human eye: the ophthalmoscope, the stylet (an instrument used in eye-surgery), and spectacles. This analysis adopts a historicist approach to re-contextualize Brontë's imaginative depiction of optical technology and perception within the mid-century emergence of ophthalmology.     

A Round Table discussion of The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth Century Italy (edited by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall)

Based on the Round Table discussion held at the Remarque Institute, New York University, in November 2012, this paper consists of comments on the volume of essays The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth Century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), edited by Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall, followed by the editors' responses.