Art has as many meanings as contexts in which it operates. It can mean surface decoration or the integral sum of parts and whole which a historian analyzes as structure using visual, musical, theatrical or other criteria. Art serves as decoration, but also serves to signal or sign a particular meaning. Art often confers an elite social status on its patrons or provides goods which support the power and prestige of a special group or person. Art is also used to describe the experience of viewers, usually as “aesthetic experience”; for instance, we experience art as beauty, as a shared emotional experience or empathetic understanding, or as interactive play or a process of performance by which we investigate or relate ideas, occurrences, or objects and give them meaning.

Technology, in contrast, is usually defined as “praxis” and involves doing things, as a craft practice involving materials selection and refinement, followed by making those materials into useful things, artifacts, or objects which serve useful functions for individuals, a social group, class, or culture. The products of technology can be useful as tools that enable a task to be accomplished, or as products which satisfy subsistence needs, or devices, or even practical ideas. When put to use, they enable travel, communication, transportation of goods, or control of energy. But technology has another meaning which is often thought to be less useful, namely technical marvels—things which amaze or surprise us. Some examples are the mechanical automatons of the 17th and 18th centuries, the latest computer game, a special way of hearing or seeing, or even the gas and light spewing magic machines described as being used in Greek temples to get peoples' attention. Another example is the technology described by the 11th century monk Theophilus, used to equip a church, from bells and censors, to glass windows and painted walls. In these examples, doing technology or learning to use technological marvels is a way of almost magically extending our own power and understanding beyond ourselves.

To avoid misinterpretation, the term “art-and-technology” should be hyphenated because we are looking at an integrated art form which developed, roughly, during the past 70 years (since Naum Gabo's virtual volume, Kinetic Construction, Berlin, 1920). Art-and-technology results from “incorporated” contributions of art, science, and technology or, better, from artists, scientists, and engineers (plus industry, business, government, etc.). Although art-and-technology has frequently been bad-mouthed or even pronouned “dead” by advocates and practitioners of pure art as well as science and technology, it is alive and well and enjoying more vitality, variety, and expansion than ever before. It is currently the only expanding field in the arts; it feeds vitally into technology and industry—most visibly in entertainment but it also provides stimulus beyond fun to areas of science and engineering where “art applications” have abounded since the advent of photography and its vast consequent uses in science.

We can claim an eloquent tradition for art-and-technology in ancient historic, cultural manifestations such as the Egyptian pyramids and their “environmental” scale or the Greek theater with its elaborate stage machines. We are aware of elements of that tradition when we observe contemporary art-and-technology such as sky and space art (Figures 1 and 2), computer-generated virtual reality, performance with medical inquiry and medical apparatus, and art concepts inspired by molecular biology (Figure 3). Emphasis of search—whether artistic/expressive, conceptual/philosophical, or inquisitive/scientific—depends on taste and motivation. However, Leonardo is an undisputed idol to both artists and scientists.

Charles-Augustin Coulomb published data on the size, strength, and stiffness of harpsichord wire available in Paris in the late 18th century which has not been cited in the literature on musical instruments despite this century's revival of baroque music and the instruments upon which it was played. During an investigation of the internal friction of several antique music wires by means of a torsion pendulum similar to the one invented by Coulomb and first described in the 1784 mémoire (Figure 1), it occurred to us to ask what Coulomb had used as the suspensions in his pendulum. His biographer, C.S. Gillmor, mentioned “harpsichord strings”, and in Coulomb's 1784 Torsion mémoire we found: J'ai pris trois fils de clavcin, tels qu'on les trouve répandus dans le commerce, roulés sur des bobines, et numerotés (“I used three harpsicord wires, such as one finds distributed in commerce, wound up on spools, and numbered”).

The spools of wire recently discovered in the stand drawer of a harpsichord in France fit Coulomb's description. The instrument was built in Paris in 1732 by Antoine Vater, and the wire found with it was wound up on small wooden spools similar to spools for thread. The spool of red brass wire had a mark punched in one end and the spool of iron wire had the gauge size (No 5) written on it in ink, while the spool of yellow brass wire had neither mark nor number. Samples of the wires from these three spools, generally agreed to be of 18th century manufacture, were collected by J. Scott Odell of the Smithsonian Institution as part of a research project which he initiated into the physical properties of antique wire. With these samples in hand it was possible to measure certain of their properties and to compare these properties with those reported in Coulomb's Torsion mémoire in 1784. Since Coulomb's wire was undoubtedly of 18th century manufacture (a degree of confidence that we do not always have with collected samples), and the data were taken not long after the wire was drawn, comparison with the Vater wire allows us to detect if, during two centuries, significant changes occur in highly drawn wire.

During the greater part of the 15th century, the Burgundian princes created a stable, unified center for industry and the flourishing of the arts in the Netherlands. Philip the Good became one of the most powerful and wealthy princes of the House of Burgundy in the period. Under his rule, the Netherlands became an important center for commerce. The port of Bruges, and later Antwerp, offered easy access to the important trade routes. The German merchants of the Hansa towns of Bremen, Danzig, Lübeck, and Hamburg and ships from England and the Baltic regions brought wares to be bought and sold in Flemish towns. The routes along the Atlantic and Mediterranean provided direct lines of communication between Italian merchants from Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Bruges.

The Netherlands soon became a center of a large part of the business activity in Europe and its prosperity grew. The concentration of trade, the presence of numerous banks, and the commission they charged contributed to the wealth of its bourgeois merchants and financiers. They soon became as rich and sometimes richer than the Burgundian princes. Thus they had the means to become important patrons of the arts so as to display their wealth. The acquisition of rare and exotic goods became an essential part of a society where exhibiting one's wealth was admired.

Flemish artists' corporations were well organized, not unlike modern businesses. They were well-known locally and abroad and had significant influence on the art of the period. Works of art were created in workshops where a long apprenticeship afforded the artists guidance and expert training in their craft. High standards which contributed to the good reputation of the art of Flanders, were maintained by setting the quality of the materials and establishing the techniques used. The painters' guild controlled the production of paintings and took measures to control the supply of materials to keep down prices and to control competition. Also, contracts between artist and patron would sometimes stipulate the type of materials to be used.

Majolica pottery is an earthenware covered with lead glaze opacified and whitened by adding a small percentage of tin oxide. The technology of majolica production, a Muslim contribution, was introduced into Spain and then diffused to the Western Hemisphere in the course of colonization very soon after the Spanish arrival in Mexico in 1521. (See Table I for Majolica production sources and excavation sites.)

In the 1980s there were two references on the organization of majolica production in both Spain and the New World. Descriptions of the layouts of the potters' workshops, of the sources of the clays, how the kilns were used, and how the glazes were made are taken from historical and ethnographic sources. These authors also discuss the interesting and important effect of the presence of Italian potters in both Seville and the New World. However, little has been written based on archaeologically excavated material from Seville, the main source of supply to the New World, or from known Puebia or Mexico City production.

In the 1970s a project involving neutron activation analysis of Spanish majolica ceramics was developed through the cooperative efforts of Malcolm Watkins and Richard Ahlborn of the National Museum of American History, Charles Fairbanks of the University of Florida, and Jacqueline Olin. Neutron activation analysis provides precise simultaneous determination of the concentrations of up to 35 elements. Two chemically distinct groups of ceramics were identified among sherds excavated at New World sites. They could be stylistically divided between Spanish and Mexican production with some important exceptions.

Friable natural products are often used in articles of personal adornment, and the perishable nature of these materials presents a unique challenge to museums. At the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, a collection of gowns worn by the First Ladies of the United States is a popular display of historical and sentimental import. Opened to the public on February 1, 1914, fifteen gowns were displayed as part of a “Period Costumes“ exhibit in the U.S. National Museum (now known as the Arts and Industries Building). Within just a few years, the exhibit was recognized as “one of the most interesting and popular in the Museum.” A First Ladies' Hall was created in the mid-1950s to exhibit the gown collection in period room settings. This design theme continued when the Hall moved to the Museum of American History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History) in 1964. The First Ladies' Hall was closed for renovation in 1987, allowing the curatorial staff to reassess the collection's use and conservators to perform long overdue examinations and treatments. Reinstallation of the exhibit is scheduled for spring 1992.

The First Ladies' conservation project includes a history of each gown's use and exhibition as related to its physical condition and also includes stabilization treatments to meet the demands of future display. The current conservation project provided an unusual opportunity for extensive research into fabric deterioration of a popular and important collection. The goals of the research are twofold: first, to determine each object's state of preservation by studying the effectivenss of several analytical approaches with minimal destructive sampling and, second, to begin investigating the mechanisms involved in the degradation of silk, the material predominant in this collection.

Jericho (Tell al-Sultan) lies in the Jordan rift valley north of the Dead Sea. Although now remembered as the city where Joshua blew his trumpet and the walls came tumbling down, it was an important settlement long before and long after this late second millennium B.C. battle. Jericho is located close to an important spring and was inhabited during the Natufian period between 11,000 and 9,300 B.C. as an encampment from which cereal grains were collected and gazelle were hunted. In the Aceramic or Pre-Pottery B Neolithic Period (7000–6200 B.C.), the site was the largest village in the area, covering three hectares. Jericho is thought to have had a population of perhaps 1,500 people who developed farming of wheat, barley, legumes, and fruit such as figs, and gradually, the herding of sheep and goats. Salt and bitumin were available to the south in sufficient abundance for trade. Although no pottery vessels were made and fired at this time, the clayey, calcareous soil, reinforced with fibrous dried vegetal material, was used as a ubiquitous building material for houses, storage pits, animal shelters and other structures. Sun-dried bricks were developed in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, and they became the common building element.

Variations in the color, texture, and properties of the various soils available to the Jericho villagers were well known, as exhibited by the villagers' use of different materials for specific purposes. Our studies have shown that some calcareous soils were used to make lime plaster; others, with considerable clay and sand, were used for brick and mortar; and others consisting of fine, fairly high shrinkage, montmorillonite clays were used for small objects and figurines whose manufacture required considerable plasticity and fine surface detail.

Since the development of 14C dating by W.F. Libby in the 1940s and 1950s, the method has proved to be the best absolute method for chronometric dating of organic and some carbon-containing inorganic materials. It has become an essential research tool for both archaeologists and geologists. Even broader application horizons have been opened to radiocarbon dating by use of the accelerator mass spectrometer, which allows routine analysis of submilligram samples. Art curatorship and art conservation directly benefit from this development.

There are pronounced similarities between application of radiocarbon dating in archaeology and art research but there are also major differences which make it difficult to simply take a methodology developed for archaeological research and apply it directly to radiocarbon dating of art objects.

In both fields the application of dating techniques focuses on dating an object of unknown age or cross-checking the age of an object previously dated by other methods.

The year 1992 is very special for Spain: 500 years have passed since the discovery of the American continent. That discovery helped make Spain the most powerful country in the world in the 16th century. In time, though, Spain lost its influence to England, and materials processing played a surprising role in this transfer. It has been shown that one of the main reasons Spain's “Invincible Armada” was defeated by the English Navy was that the Spanish ships used faulty cannon balls. The balls were of such poor quality that, once fired, they disintegrated before they could damage enemy warships. Faulty material technology—low compactness or degree of sintering—caused the disintegration.

As we approach the 21st century, the Spanish scientific community has reached a high level of expertise in materials science. A decade ago, Spain's R&D activities were poorly funded and research was carried out without the necessary infrastructure. In 1986, the government established a national R&D strategy which included a dedicated Program for New Materials. In addition, the Regional Communities (Autonomias) have reinforced these nationally planned and funded R&D activities. And as a member of the European Community (EC), Spain has also begun integration into European R&D. After three years, Spanish scientists are already achieving success in the Brite/Euram Program at a level comparable to more scientifically and technologically advanced countries. Figure 1 shows the Spanish government's total R&D budget in materials science from 1985 to 1991, and additions from the EC since 1989. Clearly, financial support for materials science has increased dramatically in the last few years.