The growing examples of Western firms outsourcing or “offshoring” jobs, including hi-tech ones in software, to locations such as India has triggered a certain amount of bleating in parts of the commentariat as well as some excellent responses, such as at the blog Catallarchy. What this does show, however, is that those nations best able to cope with the ever-shifting sands of the global economy are those with the ability to harness skills to best effect.
For some time, we self-deprecating Brits have tended to downplay the extent to which we can still punch our economic weight in such a harshly competitive world economy. Well, this entertaining book, Backroom Boys, by Francis Spufford (never heard of him before, BTW) is a pleasurable, if sometimes maddening account of how the British scientists have pioneered or collaborated in a range of economic fields, such as the early space race of the 1950s and 1960s, computer games, the supersonic jet plane Concorde, and perhaps most significant for our present lives – mobile phones.
What I particularly liked about Spufford’s book is how he got under the skin of how scientists work and co-operate with one another. He nailed home the point that in scientific establishments, both in the public and private sector, what counts for a scientist is not necessarily big money, but the respect of one’s peers. For a scientist, you are respected as much for the ideas you share with your peers as to how many times you get your face on the front of Time magazine. In short, he says scientists operate an intellectual “gift economy” where altruism pays.
The book also shows how British scientific efforts, often “hobbled” by supposed lack of funds, often had to adapt and employ more nimble ways of research while their better-funded American rivals could just bully ahead. The best example, of course, is the contrast between Britain’s puny efforts to launch its own space programme, including the Black Arrow rocket programme, and the various endeavours of NASA. (I wonder how many readers know Britain had this programme? I certainly did not).
The story of how Concorde, a collaborative Anglo-French venture came into being and was supported by the taxpayer before eventually being drawn into the maw of privatised British Airways was instructive. Libertarian purists will, of course, blanche at the idea of such a plane being created with tax funds in the first place. I side with them, but I could not help noticing that Concorde came into its own as part of an overall business package when BA became a private business. There is a lot of interesting description in the book about the “halo” effect, whereby a luxury, loss-making entity like Concorde is kept within a business to make the whole operation more appealing. Spufford also reflects about the nature of luxury goods and how they are priced. It may seem irrational that a Concorde seat costs X times more than that of a seat on a Boeing 747, but making the seat so costly was part of the cachet, like the cost of a Rolex watch or an Aston Martin sports car.
Perhaps in a moment of rare hubris, Spufford ends his book speculating about the now-fated Beagle 2 Mars project. He dreams that a “British suitcase is on Mars”. Oh well, you cannot win ’em all.
I have worked as a professional mechanical engineer in the UK and the US.
What Mr Spufford writes is spot-on – the vast majority of engineers, in both places, place far more importance on professional recognition, relatively speaking, than on money. Money matters, to be sure, but the recognition of one’s peers, sometimes in odd and irrational ways, counts for much, much more than it does in, say, accounting, or pharmacy.
One of my engineers may whine and snivel if his/her pay raise isn’t as good as it might be. But if you really want one on you like a cheap suit, snarling and biting, try delaying their ‘patent issued’ plaques. Every engineer I know that’s worth knowing has a ‘God, but I’m a great engineer’ wall in his/her office, where they hang the stuff that ‘really’ matters – their patent plaques, their world-record boomerangs (I kid you not), and so forth. We laugh at Dilbert because he’s funny, but, like so many things in life, also because he’s so true-to-life.
This may be because engineering, by its nature, is a much more team-oriented profession. That being said, I don’t think I’ve seen any other profession where mild eccentricity and unusual attitudes and hobbies which set individuals *apart* from the ruck have been so common and unremarkable – even admired and encouraged.
As to why the Brits can be on the forefront of a new technology, only to p**s it away – it’s simple. They let the government guide their hands way too early in development, and surrender control of design and development to political control waay too soon.
It’s been that way forever. A classic example is the ‘airship competition’ of the late ’20’s, when they built two airships to the same spec – one funded by private capital and designed by a commercial concern, the other funded by the taxpayer and designed by government employees. The ‘private’ ship flew very well, exceeded its specs, and was in every way a significant success. Students of that period will, no doubt, recall what happened to the ‘state’ airship.
They work up for WW2 and loosened the reins of state control of design of important stuff, and got good results, but from Clem Atlee on, the benign oversight of the granny state has successfully ruined one new development after another. TSR2, anybody?
The US model, of fierce competition between entirely private entities, works *much* better.
llater,
llamas
The designer of the private airship mentioned above was Barnes Wallis, who first applied the geodesic principle to aircraft design. He went on to design, among other things, the Mosquito bomber.
A great book about British innovation in aerospace and its nemesis, British government industrial policy, is Wood’s Project Cancelled. It’s out of print, I believe, but you can get a used copy via Amazon.
Another interesting book about the airships R100 and R101 is Nevil Shute’s autobiography (actually onlya half-life) “Slide Rule”. He worked on the private enterprise one (I forget which number). The other set off, inadequately tested, because the Air Minister wanted to fly to India in it. He perished in the crash.
Those who care to know more about the airship venture described may care to search the web for an article called ‘The Airship Venture’, by Mr N.S. Norway, publsihed in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ in 1934. I know the text is available on the web somewhere. Mr Norway was the sometime Chief Calculator for the Airship Guarantee Company, the Vickers’ subsidiary that built the ‘private’ airship, and worked on the project from inception to completion.
Funnily enough, you would think that there would have been far more detailed analyses of the causes of a failure in design that led directly to the loss of almost 50 lives and the waste of several millions of (1920’s) pounds sterling, but yet is is not so. Especially funny when you consider that this gave an almost unque opportunity to ‘compare and contrast’ with a different way of doing the same job, which was successful. Yet it is not so. I think Mr Norway’s article may have been the last significant publication on the matter. Any suggestion that such analyses would have been unwise because they made the Air Ministry and the British Government look like a pack of incompetent, homicidal fools, is, of course, the merest speculation.
Large sherbet for the first person who correctly identifies in what way Mr Norway may be better known to readers.
llater,
llamas
N. S. Norway was beter known in many parts of the world as Nevil Shute, author of On the Beach.
Findlay Dunachie and Bill White share the honours – tell you what, you can buy each other a large sherbet . . . .
llater,
llamas
Oops, R.E. Bishop designed the Mosquito (just thought I’d get that one in before Perry did!). Wallis contributed to the design of the Wellington bomber, the more famous Dambuster bombs and, among many others, the modern principle of the swing-wing fighter/bomber and the design of the Pershing cruise missile.
Regarding Concorde, one should be very cautious about how it ‘came into its own’. Bear in mind that the British government wrote off some £500m of actual and forecast debt prior to the privatisation of British Airways in the early 1980’s – the vast bulk of this debt was due to Concorde. Indeed it has been suggested that the only time in its history that Concorde ever made money for BA was early on in its service history when it was employed on the Singapore – London routes, under Singapore Airways livery.