During World War I, submarine detection presented a strategic technological challenge, which inspired, among others, the invention of new methods and the employment of a hitherto unused scientific phenomenon. Two prominent physicists, Ernest Rutherford and Paul Langevin, independently suggested the use of this phenomenon: piezoelectricity. Yet they employed it in different ways, leading Rutherford to a useful, if limited, measuring device and Langevin to sonar. Contrary to a claim that is commonly made, Rutherford's work did not lead to sonar. These different results originated on one hand in diverging goals of the two physicists, and on the other in Langevin's more extensive knowledge of and practice with piezoelectricity, which allowed him to manipulate the crystals and contrive the novel ultrasonic design required. Nevertheless, previous encounters with the effect and prior familiarity with it were crucial for its employment by both.
In 1894 Pierre Curie formulated rules for relations between physical phenomena and their symmetry. The symmetry concept originated in the geometrical study of crystals, which it served as a well-defined concept from the 1830s. Its extension as a rule for all physics was a gradual and slow process in which applications, though often partial, preceded the formulation and clear conceptualization of the rules. Two traditions that involved ““interdisciplinary”” study were prominent in applying consideration of symmetry to physics. One is a French tradition of physical crystallography that linked crystalline structure and form to their physical, chemical and even biological qualities, which drew back to Haüüy, and included Delafosse, Pasteur, Senarmont, and Curie. This tradition (until Curie) employed qualitative argument in deducing physical properties. A mathematical approach characterizes the second tradition of Franz Neumann and his students. During the 1880s two members of this tradition, Minnigerode and Voigt, formulated rules of symmetry and implicitly recognized their significance. Yet, until 1894 both traditions studied only crystalline or other asymmetric matter. Then, Curie, who drew on the two traditions, extended the rules of symmetry to any physical system including fields and forces. Although originated in a specific idealistic ontological context, symmetry served also adherents of molecular materialism and was eventually found most effective for a phenomenological approach, which avoided any commitment to a specific view of nature or causal processes. Therefore, the rule of symmetry resembles the principles of thermodynamics. Its emergence suggests parallels to the history of energy conservation.
The quartz clock, the first to replace the pendulum as the time standard and later a ubiquitous and highly influential technology, originated in research on means for determining frequency for the needs of telecommunication and the interests of its users. This article shows that a few groups in the US, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands developed technologies that enabled the construction of the new clock in 1927-28. To coordinate complex and large communication networks, the monopolistic American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and national laboratories needed to determine and maintain a common 'standard' frequency measurement unit. Exploiting novel piezoelectric quartz methods and valve electronics techniques, researchers in these organizations constructed a new crystal-based frequency standard. To ensure its accuracy they compared it to an accepted absolute standard - an astronomical clock, constructing thereby the first quartz clock. Other groups, however, had different, though connected, technological aims, which originated from the diverse interests of the industrial, governmental and academic institutes to which they belonged, and for which they needed to measure, control and manipulate with frequencies of electric oscillations. The present article suggests a comparative examination of the research and development paths of these groups on their incentives, the technological and scientific resources they utilized, and the kind of research carried out in the various institutional settings.
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