Отправлено: 17.07.14 02:53. Заголовок: Подвернулась книга про Schlumberger (1920-1940)

Bowker, Geoffrey C.
Science on the run : information management and industrial geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920-1940 / MIT 1994


Schlumberger's story has not appeared in the history books because the company's work has not been deemed sufficiently central to general economic history (Schlumberger is not one of Chandler's ponderous "prime movers") or to the history of science (the science was complicated, but not so innovative).
What Schlumberger did was infrastructural work: exchanging, adjusting, and transforming bits of information. They facilitated interactions between oil company and oil company, between oil drill and subsoil,and( more globally) between nature and society.
Being good facilitators, they factored themselves out of the equation, so that the oil companies could believe that they were just buying a service linking their lease to an oil deposit.
As I draw this book to a close, the ghosts of the departed crowd my thoughts, clamoring for a word.

Conrad Schlumberger: Pacifist, tortured by war, good soldier. He never quite believed that his company could be such a success. He played the piano.

Marcel Schlumberger: Engineer, tinkerer. Liked planes.

Henri Doll: On his retirement he tried to apply Schlumberger's methods to the analysis of blood flowing through arteries.
Roger Jost: Ever eager, ever young-from the day he first caught the train to Pechelbronn to his work in many foreign countries and lastly to his retirement in Paris.

Vahe Melikian: Whatever happened to Melikian? Disappeared in Stalinist Russia. in the service of Schlumberger. I have not conjured my narrative in to a fornl in which their stories could be told. I hope that I have demonstrated the dignity, coherence, and worth of their infrastructural work.