etymology - How, when and where did the phrase 'state of the art' originate?



Volume 4 of Charles Burney, A General History of Music, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1776) contains this sentence:



And while it [Rousseau's Lettre sur la Musique Françoise] was read by all the rest of Europe as an excellent piece of musical criticism, full of new ideas and views concerning dramatic Music, it was held in execration by the adherents to the ancient style of opera Music, and has been lately called "a wretched performance, dictated by spleen, bad taste, want of judgment, and inconsistence," by a writer [M. de la Borde] who, on some occasions, seems to know better, and to have ideas of good Music, more worthy of a master of harmony and the present state of the art in every part of Europe.



My questions are: How, when and where did the phrase 'state of the art' originate?



Answer



State of the art: (from TFD)




  • The highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field, achieved at a particular time.



According to the following source the expression has been in use since the 18th century and has gradually changed its meaning. The most recent shift in meaning to the present one was in the '60.


State of the art: (from www.worldwidewords.org)





  • The suggestion in the Oxford English Dictionary is that the phrase started out in the late nineteenth century as status of the art, in other words, the current condition or level which some technical art had reached.




  • By the beginning of the twentieth century, the phrase had changed to its modern form with the same meaning of “the current stage of development of a practical or technological subject”. It may have changed its form by a simple mistake, or by the process that grammarians call folk etymology or popular etymology, by which words change to fit speaker’s misconceptions of their real meanings.




  • By the 1960s the word had shifted sense slightly to the way we use it now, which implies the newest or best techniques in some product or activity.





According to Wikipedia:





  • The origin of the concept of "state of the art" took place in the beginning of the twentieth century. The earliest use of the term "state of the art" documented by the Oxford English Dictionary dates back to 1910, from an engineering manual by Henry Harrison Suplee (1856-post 1943), an engineering graduate (University of Pennsylvania, 1876), titled Gas Turbine: progress in the design and construction of turbines operated by gases of combustion.




  • The relevant passage reads: "In the present state of the art this is all that can be done". The term, "art", itself refers to the useful arts, skills and methods relating to practical subjects such as manufacture and craftsmanship, rather than in the sense of the performing arts and the fine arts.





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