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.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF WILSON HARDY, JR.
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!”
“We’ve been over this a dozen times, Donald,” Alf Richards answered. “You know what the problem is. The closest sizable copper deposit is at Phalaborwa, three hundred miles to the north. Eventually we’ll establish a mining operation there and cope with the transport problems, which are daunting. But it will take awhile. We just can’t do everything at once.”
“Let me ask a naive question,” said Millie Fox. “It may even be a stupid question. But I’m not one of you brilliant engineers, so I’ll risk it. Aren’t there other metals you can use?”
I personally thought that was a very sensible question. In fact, Ruffin treated it with respect.
“You know, Millie,” he said, “gold and silver happen to be good conductors of electricity. But they’re really too soft to stand up to use in motors and transmission lines. More important, sources are extremely limited, which is one of the reason these materials have always been so expensive. The same is true of the other so-called rare metals. We need something that’s sturdy and plentiful.
“Of course,” he continued, encouraged by Millie’s interest, “iron fits that bill, and it will, in fact, conduct electricity. Folks used to use steel wire for the telegraph system that transmitted Morse Code dits and dahs. But it isn’t suitable for transmitting large quantities of electric power. For that we need copper, or as an alternative, aluminum, which has electrical conductivity about two thirds that of copper. The catch is that the best way to obtain aluminum from its ore is by electrolysis, and this requires lots of electric power, which is what we don’t have in the first place. So—cutting to the chase—copper is the only practical way to go.”
After a few moments of grim silence, Ruffin spoke again: “Guys, we’re not here just to grouse and sulk. We have a suggestion. You may remember that when Pieter Klemm first gave us a report on the area’s mineral resources, he told us about a small copper deposit at Nkanda, just forty miles inland. Well, I’ve taken the liberty of having a few of our mining engineers check it out, and they tell me that there is, in fact, some decent ore there. Not a large amount. Certainly not enough to provide the many miles of wire needed for an electrical distribution system. But something that we can start with. Enough to let us build some experimental equipment, not just dream about it.” Ruffin made boxlike gestures with his hands as if he were assembling a piece of machinery in the air in front of him.
“Maybe we can manufacture a few small generators driven by coal-burning steam turbines and use them to recharge some of the batteries we salvaged from the ship. That would put us back in business with the radio equipment that was saved. And just think how great it would be if we could bring some of our computers back to life. Also, we could plan to install generators in key locations such as hospital emergency rooms. Even without a