The Technical Alliance was a group of engineers, scientists, and technicians based in New York City, formed towards the end of 1919 by American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

Howard Scott Howard Scott (April 1, 1890 – January 1, 1970) was an American engineer and founder of the Technocracy movement. He formed the Technical Alliance and Technocracy Incorporated. Early life Little is known about Scott's background or his early lif ...

. The Alliance started an ''Energy Survey of North America'', aimed at documenting the wastefulness of the

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

system. The Technical Alliance advocated a more rational and productive society headed by technical experts, but their survey work failed to have a significant impact. Although some waste was documented, the "prosperity and conservatism of the 1920s undermined the political orientation of the Technical Alliance", and it disbanded in 1921, and the energy survey was not completed.

Members

The Technical Alliance was by no means a mass organization, but it did have some notable members and technical experts. Apart from Scott, other members of the Technical Alliance included: * Frederick L. Ackerman * Carl C. Alsberg *

Alice Barrows Alice Prentice Barrows (November 15, 1878 – October 2, 1954) was a secretary of Dr. William A. Wirt, who headed the U.S. Office of Education in the early days of the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt. Barrows had been a member of the Co ...

* Allen Carpenter * Stuart Chase * L.K. Comstock * Bassett Jones * Robert H. Kohn *

Benton MacKaye Benton MacKaye ( ; March 6, 1879 – December 11, 1975) was an American forester, planner and conservationist. He was born in Stamford, Connecticut; his father was actor and dramatist Steele MacKaye. After studying forestry at Harvard Unive ...

Leland Olds Leland Olds (December 31, 1890 – August 5, 1960) was an American economist interested in labor, development of public electric power, and ecology. Education Olds was a son of George Olds, president of Amherst College. He studied mathematics ...

Charles P. Steinmetz Charles Proteus Steinmetz (born Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz, April 9, 1865 – October 26, 1923) was a German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer and professor at Union College. He fostered the development of alternating ...

* Richard C. Tolman * John C. Vaughan *

Thorstein Veblen Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism. In his best-known book, ''The Theory of the Leisure Class'' ...

* Charles H. Whitaker

References

Sources

* * * {{Cite book, last=Akin, first=William E., title=Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941, publisher=

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...

, year=1977, isbn=978-0-520-03110-4, location=

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

Technocracy movement