Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State
by Katherine C. Epstein
Winner of the 2025 RADM Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature, Katherine Epstein was acknowledged by the New York Commandery in New York City.
This distinguished writing prize is presented to an American author “who by his published writings has made a substantial contribution to the preservation of the history, heritage and traditions of the United States Sea Services – the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and U.S. Flag Merchant Marine.”
Overview
At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, became fascinated by a major military question: how to aim the big guns of battleships. These warships—of enormous geopolitical import before the advent of intercontinental missiles or drones—had to shoot in poor light and choppy seas at distant moving targets, conditions that impeded accurate gunfire. Seeing the need to account for a plethora of variables, Pollen and Isherwood built an integrated system for gathering data, calculating predictions, and transmitting the results to the gunners. At the heart of their invention was the most advanced analog computer of the day, a technological breakthrough that anticipated the famous Norden bombsight of World War II, the inertial guidance systems of nuclear missiles, and the networked “smart” systems that dominate combat today. Recognizing the value of Pollen and Isherwood’s invention, the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy pirated it, one after the other. When the inventors sued, both the British and US governments invoked secrecy, citing national security concerns.
Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Analog Superpowers analyzes these and related legal battles over naval technology, exploring how national defense tested the two countries’ commitment to individual rights and the free market. Katherine C. Epstein deftly sets out Pollen’s and Isherwood’s pioneering achievements, the patent questions raised, the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and the United States, and the legal precedents each country developed to control military tools built by private contractors.
Epstein’s account reveals that long before the US national security state sought to restrict information about atomic energy, it was already embroiled in another contest between innovation and secrecy. The America portrayed in this sweeping and accessible history isn’t yet a global hegemon but a rising superpower ready to acquire foreign technology by fair means or foul—much as it accuses China of doing today.
Author
KATHERINE C. EPSTEIN is a professor of history at Rutgers-Camden, where she teaches courses in US history, military and diplomatic history, and historical methods. Her research focuses on the intersection of defense contracting, intellectual property, and government secrecy in Great Britain and the United States, as well as the “hegemonic transition” from the Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, she has written two books: Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth- Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State (University of Chicago Press, 2024) and Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain (Harvard University Press, 2014). Notably, she served four years on the Board of the Naval Historical Foundation.
In addition to her historical work, she also writes essays and op-eds about politics and academia. That work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Liberties, and American Purpose.
Ordering info: University of Chicago Press