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Description of the Tula Weapon Factory in Regard to Historical and Technical Aspects by Iosif Gamel

1991; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1991.0129

1097-3729

Joseph Bradley,

Military History and Strategy

442 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Description ofthe Tula Weapon Factory in Regard to Historical and Technical Aspects. By Iosif Gamel. Translated by Franklin Book Programs (Cairo); edited by Edwin A. Battison. New Delhi: Amerind for Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the National Science Foun­ dation, 1988. Pp. xxxv+ 218; illustrations. $35.00 (paper); $8.00 (microfiche). Available from National Technical Information Ser­ vice, 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, Virginia 22161; item TT 81-52147. The United States arms industry has become the paradigm of the processes of 19th-century technological change. Recent studies of U.S. arms production have opened a window on innovation and diffusion, the relationship between government and industry, the methods of working metals, and the organization of work. Historians of U.S. and British technology have been blessed with rich contem­ porary sources, which reflect the 19th-century fascination with indus­ trial processes. Less well studied have been the international transfer of technology and the diffusion of innovation, particularly in the arms industry, outside England and the United States. Although continen­ tal Europe generally attached greater priority to theoretical than applied science, its industries, frequently government controlled or aided by activist government agencies, were in a position to take advantage of innovations elsewhere by purchasing foreign technology and hiring foreign technicians. Tsarist Russia provides a classic case of the borrowing of foreign technology to sustain, improve, and even create native industry. Government priority made the arms industry an “island of moder­ nity” in a preindustrial world. Indeed, several early-19th-century sources suggest that the largest government armory, located south of Moscow in the town of Tula, was well equipped with gunmaking machinery capable of making weapons with interchangeable parts. Thanks to the Smithsonian Institution Translations Publishing Pro­ gram and the National Science Foundation, the most striking descrip­ tion of the state of the art in the 19th-century Russian small arms industry is now available in English. Originally published in Russia in 1826, the book offers a startling account of the advances in the application of special-purpose machines and in the attainment of uniformity. Rich with illustrations of machinery and descriptions of metalworking techniques, the study was deemed important enough to submit as evidence of Russian production methods before the British Parliamentary Select Committee on Small Arms in 1854. Iosif Gamel opened his study of the Tula Armory with the arresting claim that recent mechanical improvements had surpassed those of even the best English small arms factories and that “mechanically no other small arms factory in the world can be compared to it.” Since the improvements to which Gamel was referring were introduced by an TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 443 English mechanic, the book also offers an example of the technology available at the time in England. Several milling and woodworking machines were introduced at Tula; in addition, drop hammers using forging dies replaced hand forging of the lock parts. As a result, “the parts come out of the die in a finished state,” and “the fitters actually have little else to do but file and polish the parts.” It would appear that, by the 1820s and 1830s, the Tula factory had special-purpose machines that compared well with the metalworking technology then available. But is Gamel’s account reliable? In all likelihood Gamel was not an impartial observer. Commissioned by the imperial government and dedicated to Nicholas I, his study was no doubt calculated to tell the new emperor what he wanted to hear. Furthermore, Gamel knew his manufacturing processes as a govern­ ment official, not as a machine maker or tool builder, and it is unlikely that he had firsthand experiences of armory practices at home or abroad. Like Tsar Nicholas I, Gamel was given a showcase tour and was shown model workshops, new machines, orderly work processes, and diligent workers. The assembly of muskets from scrambled parts was a common demonstration everywhere in those days, but it was difficult to check the parts for randomness. Even if one accepts Gamel’s account of sophisticated machines and uniformity of parts, the advanced technology of the day was not domesticated: a genera­ tion later Russia’s small arms industry had become technologically...