The Mega Machine - Mumford

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Diogenes

The First Megamachine

Lewis Mumford Diogenes 1966 14: 1 DOI: 10.1177/039219216601405501 The online version of this article can be found at: http://dio.sagepub.com/content/14/55/1.citation

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Lewis

Mumford

THE FIRST MEGAMACHINE

1.

THE DESIGN OF THE HUMAN MACHINE

Until the nineteenth century, history was largely a chronicle of the deeds and misdeeds of kings, nobles, and armies. In revolt against a general obliviousness to the daily life and affairs of ordinary people, democratic historians swung to the opposite extreme : so the part actually played by kings has, during the last half century, been grossly under-rated, even though most of the attributes of kingship are now exercized, on a larger scale than ever before, by the all-powerful sovereign state. From the earliest records, we know that the king incarnated the whole community and by divine right arrogated to himself the functions and offices of communal life. Only one aspect of kingship has been left out of this traditional account: strangely, the king’s greatest and most lasting achievement has passed unnoticed, despite the fact that all his other public activities rested upon it. For though the myth of royal power claimed divine sanction, its rise and spread would have been impossible without the invention of the human machine. That was the supreme feat of kingship: a technological exploit that was transmitted in one form...