The Rate of Technological Improvement before and after the 1830s
The Rate of Technological Improvement before and after the 1830s
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1830年代前后的技术进步率
DOI：
10.2307/3103814
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发表时间：
1979
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
J. Lienhard
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Lienhard
本文旨在探讨技术进步的速度是如何随时间变化的。当然，“改进”这个词在有用之前需要很多限制。然而，还有一些论文讨论了技术改进的概念，并讨论了技术改进发生的速度。没有被批判性地处理的是，在上个世纪左右，这种增长率是如何变化的。本文的目的是定量地考察一个适当界定的改进概念。我们将发现，直到19世纪30年代，这种技术变化的速度几乎是恒定的，但此后，改进的速度急剧增加。这种加速反映了我们应该努力理解的新能力和新态度的到来。以下限制和定义将用于以下考虑：
This paper aims to question how the rate of improvement of technology has changed in time. "Improvement" is, of course, a word that will require a lot of restriction before it will be useful. Yet other papers have dealt with concepts of technological improvement and have discussed how rapidly it occurs. What has not been dealt with critically is the way in which such growth rates have changed in the last century or so. It is the aim of this paper to look quantitatively at a properly circumscribed concept of improvement. We shall find that until the 1830s such rates of technological change were nearly constant, but afterward the rate of improvement increased radically. This acceleration reflects the arrival of new capabilities and attitudes which we should try to understand. The following restrictions and definitions will be used in the considerations that follow: