A History of Technology: A Young and Vibrant Discipline

Abstract

In 1958 a group of scholars led by Melvin Kranzberg established the Society for the His tory of Technology (SHOT). Late in 1959 the first issue of the Society's journal, Technology and Culture, appeared. Responding to the urgent need of an increasingly technologi cal civilization to understand the evolution of its relationship with tools, machines, and other products of human inventiveness, SHOT and its members have produced a stead ily growing body of historical literature documenting and in terpreting this relationship in an increasingly sophisticated way. Although SHOT is an in ternational organization, its members are heavily concen trated in the United States. Accordingly, they have probed intensively, in a steady out pouring of books and articles, the role of technology in American development. The survey that follows is necessarily selective, but will convey some idea of the themes and approaches that have been most fruitful in this sustained effort, concentrating par ticularly on books and articles that have won prizes and awards. These include the Dexter Prize, awarded annually by SHOT to outstanding books and monographs, and the Abbott Payson Usher Prize, awarded to outstanding articles published in Technology and Culture. As the title of their journal indicates, historians of technology have aimed to produce contextual studies that successfully integrate two perspectives: The internalist, relating to the design and function of machines and other inventions, and the externalist, relating to the political, economic, social, and intellectual milieu within which tech nology has developed. An outstand ing work that effectively achieves this goal is Merritt Roe Smith's, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New