The Machine in Neptune's Garden: Historical Perspectives on Technology and the Marine Environment (review)

This handsomely produced and heavily footnoted collection begins with an introduction in which Helen M. Rozwadowski and David van Keuren lay out an ambitious agenda for developing a more coherent and professionalized history of oceanography. The bulk of the book, however, is devoted to ten exemplary case studies that nicely illustrate how the application of science and technology has expanded understanding of the oceanic world and how, in return, increased knowledge of the oceans has contributed to the advancement of science. These case studies clearly demonstrate that historians of science and technology should pay more attention to the history and historiography of oceanography.

Michael Reidy, in his study of the development of gauges for recording tidal cycles in nineteenth-century Britain, illuminates new links between the study of tides and the broader theoretical concerns of physical astronomy. Leading scientists such as William Whewell and the astronomer royal George Airy soon found ways to use this new tidal data to critique and revise mathematically based equilibrium theories of physical astronomy, such as those proposed by Jacob Bernoulli and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Eric Mills develops a closely related argument in his study of the temperature and salinity-gradient surveys that Henrik Mohn, director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, made in the North Atlantic during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Mohn used his new data to argue that there is a previously undetected circulation within the oceans which is driven by the prevailing winds and by variations in the density of ocean water at different depths caused by differences in temperature and salinity.

The links between the U.S. Navy's need for information about what was going on below the surface of the oceans and the development of scientific oceanography is another theme explored in these case studies. German submarine successes in World War I meant that the navy could no longer focus on surface warfare alone. Gary Weir tells the story of how Columbus O'Donnell Iselin, who had recently been appointed director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, joined forces with the navy to help develop an effective program for antisubmarine warfare. The key technical development was the creation of a sturdy bathythermograph (BT), an instrument that records water temperature at different depths. With the information provided by the BT, one could begin to sort out the sounds made by submarines operating underwater and track their movements.

Ronald Rainger tells the surprising story of the impact on oceanography of atomic-weapons testing in the Pacific and the tracking of the radioactive isotopes the weapons produced. After the end of World War II, the Office of Naval Research and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography cooperated on studies that led to the atomic bomb being called "a wonderful oceanographic tool." Clearly this needs to be folded into the larger and still somewhat Strangeloveian history of nuclear weapons and modern science.

Kathleen Williams also addresses the links between the U.S. Navy and oceanography in her story of Mary Sears, a Harvard-trained plankton specialist who joined the navy in 1943 and served in the Hydrographic Office's Oceanographic Unit. There, she assembled oceanographic intelligence that was used when planning amphibious military operations in the Pacific. When the war was over the navy called her reports "invaluable," while she dryly observed that "military necessity does not wait for explorers and scientists to accumulate sufficient information." She then happily returned to full-time science at Woods Hole.

The other case studies are equally diverse, well-researched, and interesting, though space limitations prevent summarizing them here. A few words must be said, however, about this book's more ambitious programmatic statements. Since 1997 historians of science and technology who are interested in oceanography have been meeting with oceanographers in what they call Matthew Fontaine Maury Workshops, and the essays in this collection are derived from...