Bhalla-Ladd, India (2024) Typing Physics: The Essential Role of Typists in Intra-Scientific Communication. [Preprint]
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Abstract
I present a case-study of intra-scientific communication, focusing on the role of technical typists for the Physical Review (PR) c. 1957-1977. I argue PR became a trading zone amidst the page-charge crisis, and analyze the working networks of physicists, typists, and editors to resolve this threat to the equality of intellectual authority of qualified practitioners. Challenging the picture of typist as “automaton,” I identify the skills and technical knowledge necessary to perform manuscript translation, and offer an account of the material culture of intra-scientific communication to situate the typists’ epistemic role in the broader project of science. I claim this is a case of an epistemic contribution that has been instrumentalized, akin to human computers and human scanners. However, unlike these cases, the technical typists were not directly involved in the production or critique of scientific data. Rather their novel contributions occurred in the new field of mathematical typesetting that emerged from this trading zone. Thus I seek to differentiate the material culture of scientific experiments from the material culture of intra-scientific communication. I see this project as an extension of Galison’s trading zone framework for the material culture of experiment, recognizing that there are many more material objects besides those of the laboratory that are created in the scientific process.
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