Technology transfer and cultural exchange: Western scientists and engineers encounter late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] During the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Engineer was only one of many British and American publications that took an avid interest in the rapid rise of Japan to the status of a fully industrialized imperial power on a par with major European nations. In December 1897 this journal published a photographic montage of "Pioneers of Modem Engineering Education in Japan" (Figure I), showing a selection of the Japanese and Western teachers who had worked to bring about this singular transformation.' The predominance of Japanese figures in this representation is highly significant: it is an acknowledgment by British observers that the industrialization of Japan-the "Britain of the East"-was not a feat accomplished solely by Western experts who transferred their science and technology to passive Japanese recipients. Yet in focusing primarily on native teachers active in Japan after 1880, this image excludes several of the very foreigners who had trained this indigenous workforce in the preceding decade. Rather than attempting to assess the careers of each of the many international experts involved in Western encounters with Japan before and after the Meiji restoration in 1868, we will focus on disaggregating the highly individualized responses of just some of the Englishspeaking characters. In documenting their diverse encounters with Japanese people and technologies, we will look at the complex phenomena of cultural exchange in which they participated, not always without chauvinism or resistance

Preparing women for dead-end jobs? Vocational education and training (VET) for information and communication technology (ICT) jobs

This paper discusses the role that vocational education and training (VET) in ICT subject areas plays in contributing to the gender and social class structuring of ICT occupations, focusing in particular on education and employment data from the UK. The paper also makes reference to similar data about ICT VET in Germany and Japan to argue that the new areas of ‘soft’ ICT skills – in education and in occupations - have become feminised, and channel women into low skilled and low paid work. Unlike university level ICT education, which has opened opportunities for women and students coming from families with no experience of higher education, sub-degree level ICT VET seems to be continuing to reproduce gender and socio- economic class within and through ICT occupations. I argue that those concerned with gender equity research and interventions in ICT need to work with an analysis that disaggregates what are now appearing to be quite different skills sets, and different career opportunities often misleadingly conflated under the umbrella term ‘ICT’. I also argue for better analytical models for the gendering of ICT than those offered by the ‘leaky pipeline’ or ‘critical mass’ models, and for new analyses that would incorporate both a structural analysis and new ways of looking at women’s choices, such as Hakim’s ‘orientation to work’

Samuel Holland: From Gunner and Sapper to Surveyor-General 1755-1764

The British Army engaged, in 1755, the young Dutch officer, Samuel Holland (whose patron was already the Third Duke of Richmond), to serve in North America as an artillery and engineering subaltern. Following many months’ service directly under the field commander, Holland became deeply involved in the siege of Louisbourg (1758) as the engineering assistant to James Wolfe. The latter warmly commended Holland to Richmond for his superior efficiency and his bravery under constantly heavy enemy fire. After the siege, Holland drew an accurate plan of the fortified port, illustrating the steps of the siege-attack and defence. He became busy in 1758 and 1759 in the preparation of the British attack on Quebec, during which he met the famous British navigator, James Cook, with whom he exchanged expertise. At the siege of Quebec he continued to serve Wolfe until the latter’s death in the battle of September 1759. From then until 1762 Holland served James Murray, first as part of a team of engineers participating in the defence of Quebec against a French siege, during which he was named acting chief engineer in place of a wounded officer and eventually confined in the city with the rest of the garrison until the siege was raised by the Royal Navy. Thereafter, under Murray’s command, Holland’s main achievement was his part in the surveying and mapping of the St. Lawrence valley, leading to the production of the “Murray Map”, an immense contribution to eighteenth-century cartography. Murray vehemently held, in the face of claims by officers of the Royal Engineers, that Samuel Holland deserved the most credit for the success and high quality of the product. During the Seven Years War, Holland had been promoted Captain. Excluded from the Royal Engineers, he was therefor quite independent of the bureaucracy of that corps when in 1763 he sought-in new American colonies ceded by France-an appointment in surveying and cartography. As a guest in the London house of the Duke of Richmond he had the opportunity of meeting influential politicians, where the recognition by Wolfe and Murray of the high quality of his professional competence finally led the British government to appoint him Surveyor General in North America

A research study on Hong Kong's building services engineering profession: a review of the building services engineering profession in the United Kingdom

A review of the building services engineering profession in the United Kingdom is considered in this document. It provides supporting information for a comprehensive study into the profession in Hong Kong which is being conducted by Hong Kong Polytechnic University on behalf of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. The overall aim of the work is to investigate mechanisms for raising the profile of building services engineers in Hong Kong