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.The problem of the German system, de-localized production with centralized control, was solved by the introduc-tion of a medical official into the production process.Although the statewas not directly involved in the process of production, the mediatingmedical official gave the state a view of the production process and a directinfluence over it, ensuring compliance with official regulations and norms.In case of any problems, the constant communication between serum pro-ducers and the ISRSS served to bridge the distance between these differentlocations. Axel C.Hüntelmann 43The logbook could also be read as if the entire process of evaluation had beencarried out in one place.The distance between the medical official and theISRSS was abolished, giving one virtual space of control.58 While the distancebetween the on-site medical official and the ISRSS was minimized, a virtual dis-tance was constructed between the medical official in the production plant andthe producer.This distance became apparent in the symbolic transfer of theserum: the medical official took the serum after it had been extracted from theblood, closed the storage vessel and kept it apart.After the medical official hadreceived the certificate from the ISRSS, he returned the serum to the producer.The medical official and ISRSS constituted one unit leading to a virtual frontierbetween the producer and the medical official at the production plant.Chronological order institutions are founded on experiencesPast experience is encapsulated in an institution s rules so that it acts as aguide to what to expect from the future.The more fully the institutionsencode expectations, the more they put uncertainty under control, withthe further effect that behaviour tends to conform to the institutionalmatrix: if this degree of coordination is achieved, disorder and confusiondisappear.59The institution of evaluation was built on past experience.On the produc-tion side the leading company, the Hoechst Dye Works, gained much expe-rience of the handling of the new serum.60 Starting at the end of October1894, representatives of the Prussian and Imperial ministerial bureaucracymet fortnightly with scientists and producers to discuss the production, dis-tribution and regulation of the new drug.61 The state bureaucracy and publichealth administration had already had some experience with the regulationof food production in the 1880s, another complex and sensitive industrialconsumer good that could represent a public health risk.In implementingthe resulting food act, the Imperial Health Office had defined normal foodand developed appropriate skills and techniques to measure it, trainingexperts and founding institutions for control.62Similar problems emerged with the industrial production of high preci-sion instruments and electronic and optical devices.With a growing science-based industry, new technical requirements like high precision devices aswell as the generation of national standards and norms became necessary.Founded in the 1880s, the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt was giventhe task of compiling the scientific basis of the domains of optics, electricityand high-precision mechanics, before approving and certifying technicalinstruments, tools and commodities.They ensured that these goods corre-sponded to the official norms and issued instructions to ensure the uniform-ity, equality and normality of devices, measuring units and materials as wellas generating standardized physico-technical norms.63 44 Evaluation as a Practical Technique of AdministrationAt the end of the nineteenth century, the chemical and pharmaceuti-cal industries were also prospering and were confronted with comparablestandardization problems.To fabricate a standardized drug, the outputdepended on exact definitions of pure, normal chemical ingredients.InGermany, therapeutic substances, their definition as pharmaceuticals andtheir grade of purity were regulated by the Pharmacopeia Germanica, whichwas regularly revised, being updated in 1883 and 1890.64 While pharmaceu-ticals, sera, food and physico-technical devices are quite different products,they had several things in common from the perspective of risk, regulationand standardization.In all cases, new problems emerged in the context oflarge-scale, industrial production, when qualitatively variable products hadto be transformed into standardized mass products conforming to nationalstandards.This transformation was accompanied by official instructions con-cerning a (valid) certification procedure and the introduction of an admin-istrative system including reporting and journals.In all cases, the state wasinvolved and became a central actor in the generation of national standardsaimed at the minimization of public (health) risks.Thus, the Imperial authori-ties already had considerable experience of how to set up a system of indirectcontrol over a free market system, how to implement an information networkand how to process different data
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