13 May 2022
A colored etching satirizing the technological advances of the early 19th century. A conglomeration of scenes, such as a steam-powered horse, a suspension bridge between Cape Town and Bengal, and cat food labeled “delicate viands for quadrupeds.”
The phrase state of the art refers to something that incorporates the latest and most sophisticated technology or practice. The phrase as it is commonly used today dates to at least 1815, but there are precursor phrases, and state of the art is a good example of how a collocation of words can become a stock idiom.
We see the collocation of the four words as early as 1692 in Stanford Wolferstan’s An Enquiry into the Causes of Diseases:
The present state of the Art of Physick is just like that of War, both have received considerable Improvements, the one to save, and the other to destroy Mankind.
If we parse this sentence, it’s obvious that the phrase here is not the noun phrase state of the art, but rather that there are two phrases: a noun phrase, present state, and a prepositional phrase, of the Art of Physick. But Wolferstan is using the collocation to refer to technological and practical development.
And several decades later we see the noun phrase state of the art appear. A review of an essay on ancient Mycenean shipbuilding and navigation, as seen in the writing of Homer, in the Annual Register for 1775 has this to say about the technology and techniques of the ancient seafaring:
Agreeably to this account of ancient ships and ship-building, we see, that though Homer’s seamen are expert in their manœuvre, yet they are confined to the precautions of that timid coasting navigation, which is at this day practiced in the Mediterranean, in slight undecked vessels, unfit to resist the open sea. Their first care is, to venture as little as possible out of sight of land, to run along shore, and to be ready to put in, and draw up their ships on the beach, if there is no port, on the first appearance of foul weather.
We find Nestor, Diomedes, and Menelaus, consulting at Lesbos upon a doubt, which this imperfect state of the art alone could suggest. The question was, Whether, in their return to Greece, they should keep the Asiatic coast till they past [sic] Chios, which was the most secure, but the most tedious way home; or venture directly across the open sea, which was the shortest, but the most dangerous?
With the turn of the nineteenth century, we see the collocation of the words appear more often. And these appearances tend to not include references to the continuing development of technology or practices, making the earlier use in reference to Mycenean shipbuilding to be something of an outlier. For example, there is this advertisement for a book in New York’s Evening Post from 17 November 1804:
To this edition Mr. James Barry has added a supplement, containing Anecdotes of the latest and most celebrated Artists, and remarks on the present state of the art of Painting.
Or this advertisement in Philadelphia’s United States Gazette of 7 June 1805:
For the twenty-one large quarto volumes in boards illustrated with five hundred and ninety-five copper-plates, (a number not likely to be soon greatly exceeded in any similar undertaking) which bear honourable testimony to the state of the arts in the United States during the progress of the work: [price list follows].
But the phrase, as opposed to the collocation, remained in use, as can be seen from this account of cloth dying in seventh-century China that appeared in the Washington Expositor of 4 December 1807:
The dying of the Chinese, at an early period, seems to have been confined to Cotton and Silk; the colors, which were extracted from vegetable substances, were generally Red, Blue, Violet, and what is often termed a woad colour: the process being performed by the females in each family. This state of the art seems to have continued until near the end of the seventh Century, when they discarded their own, and borrowed the Indian, and Persian, art of dying, and with it the use of Alum and Coperas.
And in this article on Robert Fulton’s steam engine from Washington, DC’s Daily National Intelligencer of 7 July 1815:
Experiment after experiment had failed, and every additional unsuccessful attempt served to retard rather than to advance to progress of invention. In this state of the art Fulton enlisted in its service, and it was at once carried to the highest degree of perfection.
But the phrase state of the art remained relatively rare until the mid 1950s, when the frequency of its use skyrocketed. This rise corresponds to the technological revolution that followed in the wake of World War II.
Sources:
“Account of Books for 1775: An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer.” Annual Register, 1775, 232. ProQuest.
Davies, Mark. Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Accessed 12 April 2022.
“For the Expositor: A Brief Account of the Origin and Process of Dying.” Washington Expositor and Weekly Register (Washington, DC), 4 December 1807, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. [Database metadata says 5 December.]
Google Books Ngram Viewer. Accessed 12 April 2022.
“New Books” (advertisement). Evening Post (New York), 17 November 1804, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2012, s.v. state-of-the-art, adj, and n., state, n., status, n. and adj.
“Robert Fulton.” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), 7 July 1815, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Thomas Dobson” (advertisement). United States Gazette (Philadelphia), 7 June 1805, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Wolferstan, Stanford. An Enquiry into the Causes of Diseases. London: Thomas Bassett, 1692, sig. A5v. Early English Books Online.
Image credit: Paul Pry (pseudonym of William Heath), 1829. Wellcome Library. Public domain image.