Making Jet Engines in World War II
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20th century
A01=Hermione Giffard
art
Author_Hermione Giffard
aviation
Category=JWCM
Category=JWMV
Category=NHWL
Category=NHWR7
conflict
design
development
efforts
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
equipment
ernst heinkel flugzeug werke
ersatz aero-engines
germany
government
great britain
history
industrial innovation
industry
institutional
jet engines
piston
press release
production
products
public domain
publicity
second world war
supplies
technology
turbojet
united states of america
usa
Product details
- ISBN 9780226388595
- Weight: 624g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 10 Oct 2016
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Our stories of industrial innovation tend to focus on individual initiative and lone breakthroughs. With Making Jet Engines, Hermione Giffard uses the case of the development of jet engines during World War II to offer a different way of understanding technological innovation, revealing the complicated mix of factors that go into any decision to pursue an innovative, and therefore risky technology. Giffard compares the approaches of Germany, Britain, and the United States, showing that each approached jet engines in different ways because of its own particular war aims and industrial expertise. Germany, which produced more jet engines than the others, did so largely as replacements for more expensive piston engines. Britain, on the other hand, produced relatively few engines but, by shifting emphasis to design rather than production, found itself at war's end holding an unrivaled range of designs. The US emphasis on development, meanwhile, built an institutional basis for postwar production.
Taken together, Giffard's accounts make a powerful case for a more nuanced understanding of technological innovation, one that takes into account the influence of the many organizational factors that play a part in the journey from idea to finished product.
Hermione Giffard is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History and Art History at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands.
