Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
5. Jean Lave,
Cognition in Practice
(Cambridge University Press, 1988); Lucy Such-
man,
Plans and Situated Actions:The Problem of Human-Machine Communication
(Cam-
bridge University Press, 1987).
6. The term “tacit knowledge” was coined by Michael Polanyi to describe the per-
sonal way of knowing that informs the explicit knowledge characteristic of science.
Such knowledge is present in the creativity of laboratory practice and the passion
of discovery. See Polanyi,
Personal Knowledge
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958) and
The Tacit Dimension
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967).
7. Harry M. Collins, “The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks,”
Science Studies
4 (1974), 165-186.
8. Athena Steen, Bill Steen, David Bainbridge, and David Eisenberg,
The Straw Bale
House
(Chelsea Green, 1994).
9.
House of Straw
(US Department of Energy, 1995).
10. Roger Welsch, “Baled Hay,” in
Shelter
(Shelter, 1973).
11. Matts Myhrman and Judy Knox, “A Brief History of Hay and Straw as Build-
ing Materials,”
The Last Straw
4 (1993), fall, 1-8, 18.
12. Today scale is again the issue in baling hay.Throughout Texas and the grain belt,
technology producing large round bales predominates over that producing rectangu-
lar bales suitable for building. Just as the demand of stables for the patented “flake”
bale (shipped by rail during the Industrial Revolution) supported the marketing of
the smaller baler in the 1880s, the continued demand for baled straw for animal bed-
ding has kept up square-bale production when the large mechanized farms have
turned to round bales and (in some cases) large square bales. The large scale that
almost kept the baler from succeeding as a commercial enterprise is now the rule.
Ironically, a search of patent documents reveals that round-bale technology was intro-
duced in the late 1800s but did not succeed commercially in its small-scale form.
13. The only early straw-bale home outside Nebraska was built by Warren Withee
near Alsen, South Dakota. Withee, who had only one arm, used flax as well as
meadow hay bales and mortared between them. Still standing, it is currently being
used for storage. In 1925, the Martin-Monhart house in Arthur, Nebraska was con-
structed; it was originally plastered with mud, but re-stuccoed with cement by new
owners in 1930. It is currently a museum. Arthur is also the site of a Pilgrim Holi-
ness Church built in 1925. The bales used to build it were pressed at a homestead
nearby using a stationary baler, hand tied, and carted to town by mule.The church,
28 by 50 feet in size, including four rooms used for living quarters, saw active use
for 35 years and is now a museum.
