Towards the end of 1919, American engineer

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

 Howard Scott

Howard Scott

Howard Scott was a controversial engineer who had an interest in technocracy, and helped to form the Technical Alliance, Committee on Technocracy, and Technocracy Incorporated.-Early life:...

 formed the Technical Alliance, a group of engineers, scientists, and technicians based in New York. The Technical Alliance started an Energy Survey of North America, aimed at documenting the wastefulness of the capitalist

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 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.

The Technical Alliance was by no means a mass organization, but it did have some impressive technical experts. Apart from Scott, other members of the Technical Alliance included:

• Frederick L. Ackerman
• Carl C. Alsberg
• Alice Barrows
  Alice Barrows
  Alice Prentice Barrows 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 Communist party since 1919, the same year she began working for the Office of Education...
  
  
• Allen Carpenter
• Stuart Chase
  Stuart Chase
  Stuart Chase was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His hybrid background of engineering and economics places him in the same philosophical camp as R. Buckminster Fuller...
  
  
• L.K. Comstock
• Bassett Jones
• Robert H. Kohn
• Benton Mackaye
  Benton MacKaye
  Benton MacKaye 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 University , Benton later taught there for several years. He joined a number of Federal bureaus and...
  
  
• Leland Olds
  Leland Olds
  Leland Olds was an American economist. Olds was interested in labor, development of public electric power, and ecology....
  
  
• Charles P. Steinmetz
  Charles Proteus Steinmetz
  Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a German-American mathematician and electrical engineer. He fostered the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States, formulating mathematical theories for engineers...
  
  
• Richard C. Tolman
  Richard C. Tolman
  Richard Chace Tolman was an American mathematical physicist and physical chemist who was an authority on statistical mechanics. He also made important contributions to theoretical cosmology in the years soon after Einstein's discovery of general relativity...
  
  
• John C. Vaughan
• Thorstein Veblen
  Thorstein Veblen
  Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...
  
  
• Charles H. Whitaker