A gripping history that spans law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: how to aim the big guns of battleships. These warships—of enormous geopolitical import before the advent of intercontinental missiles or drones—had to shoot in poor light and choppy seas at distant moving targets, conditions that impeded accurate gunfire. Seeing the need to account for a plethora of variables, Pollen and Isherwood built an integrated system for gathering data, calculating predictions, and transmitting the results to the gunners. At the heart of their invention was the most advanced analog computer of the day, a technological breakthrough that anticipated the famous Norden bombsight of World War II, the inertial guidance systems of nuclear missiles, and the networked "smart" systems that dominate combat today. Recognizing the value of Pollen and Isherwood's invention, the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy pirated it, one after the other. When the inventors sued, both the British and US governments invoked secrecy, citing national security concerns.
Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Analog Superpowers analyzes these and related legal battles over naval technology, exploring how national defense tested the two countries' commitment to individual rights and the free market. Katherine C. Epstein deftly sets out Pollen's and Isherwood's pioneering achievements, the patent questions raised, the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and the United States, and the legal precedents each country developed to control military tools built by private contractors.
Epstein's account reveals that long before the US national security state sought to restrict information about atomic energy, it was already embroiled in another contest between innovation and secrecy. The America portrayed in this sweeping and accessible history isn't yet a global hegemon but a rising superpower ready to acquire foreign technology by fair means or foul—much as it accuses China of doing today.
Industry Reviews
"Analog Superpowers is a brilliant-and surprisingly gripping-tale ripped from history but with real relevance today. Drawing deftly on the tools of economics, law, history, and international relations, Epstein rescues an important story and in doing so reminds us of the insistent tension between innovation and national security." -- Robert M. Chesney, dean of the University of Texas School of Law
"Brilliant. So very brilliant. I can think of no other working historian today who so seamlessly mixes typically disparate fields as Epstein. Part military history, part history of technology, a story of business and also of law, and-oh yes-mathematics too, Analog Superpowers demonstrates how modern history should be done." -- Jeffrey A. Engel, author of When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War
"Analog Superpowers offers a compelling look at Anglo-American legal and material reconfigurations of state power and political economy. This deeply researched and elegantly written book explores a critical moment at which the United States sought to seize the mantle of global hegemony from Great Britain. Epstein's careful attention to intersections between knowledges, technologies, and law makes for an innovative and important contribution to historiographies of twentieth century US and British imperialisms and militarisms as well as the fraught relationships between them." -- Mary X. Mitchell, University of Toronto
"We are in a machine learning arms race to fashion digital computers to emulate analog brainwork that can exceed human capacity. But this is not the first time that analog brain emulators have transformed warfare. In a story straight out of a cyberpunk novel, Epstein shows us how the US Navy pirated Britain's successful 'Argo system' in World War I, helped airbrush out its inventors, used secret patents to control it, and then built America's first military industrial complex. Necessary reading for anyone who wants to understand the shotgun wedding that joined technology to the military state." * Scott Reynolds Nelson, author of Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World *
"Analog Superpowers is an original and very welcome call to reconsider how scholars approach the relationships among warfare, capitalism, and law. It follows government contractors, legal battles, and a fascinating device very closely, illustrating how the government-sanctioned sidestepping of patent rights shaped Anglo-American national security states in the twentieth century. This book cuts across important archives in a new way and is sure to inspire further work investigating how the relationships between technology and law can help us write histories of secrecy and security." -- Gerardo Con Diaz, author of Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in America
