Text-mining historical sources to trace technological change: The case of mass production

This paper explores the use of large-scale and longitudinal textual analysis of historical sources to trace technological change over periods longer than 100 years. The notion of technical change has been central to research efforts in Economics of Innovation, Science Policy and Innovation Studies, and Science and Technology Studies. Research efforts in these areas have focused on different aspects of technological change: these ranging from examining the determinants of technological trajectories on the basis of quantitative analysis of technological artifacts, to investigating the socio-technical factors shaping technological evolution on the basis of qualitative historical case studies. Building upon recent advances in text-mining techniques, this paper examines to what extent technological and social aspects can be jointly explored with the analysis of historical textual sources. To do so, the paper explores how these techniques can be used to trace technical change, to explore controversies relating to the acceptance of technologies, and to map the diffusion of technologies across socio-technical systems using the case of mass production.