Audio of the Da Vinci Medalists Roundtable is online here.

Audio of the Thursday evening opening plenary session, “What SHOT Hath Wrought: A New Appraisal,” is online here.

Audio from Wednesday night’s (17 October 2007) lecture and panel discussion, “Recasting Engineering,” with Henry Petroski, Charles Vest, and Rosalind Williams, is available here.

In the premiere issue of Technology and Culture, published by Wayne State University Press in 1959, Kranzberg summarized the “pre-history” of what would become the Society for the History of Technology.

The “pre-history” of the Society for the History of Technology begins with the Humanistic-Social Research Project (1953-1955) of the American Society for Engineering Education. Under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Humanistic-Social Division of the ASEE undertook a survey of the Humanistic-Social stem in engineering curricula and issued a report (published under the title General Education in Engineering [1956]) which pointed out that the study of the history of technology was “of special interest and importance for engineering education” and recommended that it be “encouraged,” while at the same time guarding against possible over-emphasis and distortion.

A special committee, headed by Dr. Melvin Kranzberg, was appointed to implement this aspect of the Humanistic-Social Research Project’s report; this committee soon discovered that the history of technology was being taught only sporadically and that there was no organization or publication specifically devoted to its study. Despite this lack of a systematic approach, it was evident that there was tremendous interest in the development of technology, not only among engineering educators and historians, but among all academic disciplines. Indeed, the demand for the systematic, scholarly study of this field was found to extend far beyond academic circles.

With encouragement from many individuals, most notably Drs. Carl W. Condit and John B. Rae, Professor Kranzberg formed the Advisory Committee for Technology and Society, which included academicians, engineers, and industrialists who had evinced interest in the history of technology. A preliminary meeting at Cornell University in June 1957 discussed the areas of study comprehended within the field of technology and its relations with society and culture. These areas of study were circulated among the members of the Advisory Committee, as were various proposals for promoting the study of the development of technology.

In January 1958, Case Institute of Technology sponsored a meeting of the Advisory Committee for Technology and Society in Cleveland, Ohio. At that time it was decided to establish The Society for the History of Technology, which would conduct programs, publish a scholarly journal, and take any other steps necessary to encourage the study of the development of technology and its relations with society and culture. The Society for the History of Technology was incorporated in May 1958, as a non-profit educational organization, in accordance with the laws of the State of Ohio, and the constitution of the Society was adopted at a meeting at the University of California (Berkeley) in June of that year. At the same time the first program of the Society was held in conjunction with the Humanistic-Social Division of the American Society for Engineering Education. . . .

In a series of letters beginning in 1954, Kranzberg outlined a project he already had in the works and a plan he was beginning to formulate. The project, a Western Civ textbook he was co-authoring, ultimately failed to attract a publisher, and the unfinished typescript languishes to this day in the Kranzberg Papers. The plan, for a new scholarly society, began to take shape in Mel’s mind even as the textbook project was going aground. His first mention appears in the fall of 1956 in correspondence with Marie Boas, secretary of the History of Science Society (HSS), about possibilities for cooperative ventures with the ASEE. Boas and Kranzberg were old friends, having previously been together on the faculty at Amherst.

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It is not certain that Condit was a “poor liason,” as Boas remarked; probably not. At one point, Kranzberg wrote that the problem “was more my fault than Carl’s” as there was “nothing for him to report.” Kranzberg noted that Condit was “a great one for prompt letters” and indeed he had already responded to Mel’s memo of 15 February remarking on “the desirability of the formation of a new society.” Condit was opposed. But he also urged Kranzberg to contact various scholars whom he knew to be interested in the history of technology, among them Lewis Mumford and Robert Multhauf.

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Even though Condit was not the only one of Kranzberg’s committee of correspondents to warn him about plunging into “the formation of a new society,” it now seemed as if he had made up his mind. Indicative is the memo he sent to his ASEE Committee of Cooperation preceding their participation in the ASEE’s annual meeting in June. The meeting was to take place at Cornell University, where the ASEE was headquartered in Willard Straight Hall, and in this memo we see the groundwork laid for a meeting with Guerlac. The ASEE delegation was to be led by Condit, not Kranzberg.

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As the meeting in Ithaca approached, Kranzberg began referring to more than a society and a learned journal. Having apparently garnering some interest in his plans from people in the Case administration, he was also writing about “a research center in technology and society,” and he sought to enlist a larger group of scholars as advisors, eventually ending up with a list of nineteen names. Typical of his approach to people he had never met was his correspondence with Robert P. Multhauf of the Smithsonian Institution, who would soon become as faithful an ally as Lynn White and one of Mel’s closest friends.

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(American Heritage of Invention and Technology, winter 1989)

By Robert C. Post

When the history of technology donned academic cloaks in the United States, some three decades ago, the man most directly responsible was a professor at the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland. His name was Melvin Kranzberg. For quite a while afterward Mel (almost everyone calls him Mel) remained directly responsible for sustaining the new field’s two key institutions, the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the society’s quarterly journal, Technology and Culture (T&C). He served as the society’s secretary for fifteen years and edited eighty-eight issues of T&C between 1959 and 1981. Along the way he received SHOT’s highest award, the Leonardo da Vinci Medal.

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As part of SHOT’s 50th Anniversary celebrations, the society will sponsor a series of interviews with some of the scholars whose work has helped most to advance the field of the history of technology over the past half century. Those interviews will be available via the web beginning some time in the fall.

In the meantime, and in keeping with the retrospective mood of the October meeting’s theme of “looking back,” we call your attention to another series of interviews with eminent historians of technology, which appeared in the pages of American Heritage of Invention and Technology.

“Technology and the Human Dimension.” Elting Morison (interview by Hal Bowser), summer 1985.

“Made in America.” John Kouwenhoven (interview by Richard Conniff), summer 1986.

Walter Vincenti

“How the Space Race Changed America.” Walter A. McDougall (interview by Hal Bowser), fall 1987.

“America’s Golden Age.” Thomas P. Hughes (interview by Arthur P. Molella), spring/summer 1989.

“A Life with Trains.” John H. White Jr. (interview by Robert C. Post), fall 1990.

“The Frailties and Beauties of Technological Creativity.” John Staudenmaier (interview by Robert C. Post), spring 1993.

“Why Things Bite Back.” Edward Tenner (interview by Jackson Lears), spring 1997.

“What Engineers Know.” Walter Vincenti (interview by Robert C. Post), winter 1997.

“The Secret Triumph of American Engineering.” Thomas P. Hughes (interview by Fredric Smoler), winter 1999.

Ruth Schwartz Cowan

“This Is the History People Often Care About Most.” Ruth Schwartz Cowan (interview by Robert C. Post), summer 2003.

“Inventing America.” Pauline Maier and Merritt Roe Smith (interview by Arthur P. Molella), winter 2004.