Bern Dibner (1897–1988)

Abstract

Memorials BERN DIBNER (1897-1988) SILVIO A. BEDINI On January 6, 1988, Bern Dibner, civic leader, philanthropist, and historian of science, passed away quietly at his home in Wilton, Con­ necticut, at the age of ninety. He was born in the Ukraine, then part of tsarist Russia, on August 18, 1897, and was seven years of age when he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1904—the youn­ gest in a family of eight children. He grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he attended New York public schools and the Hebrew Technical Institute. After serving in World War I, he found employment as an electri­ cian. Receiving a modest cash settlement following a minor industrial accident, he enrolled in the Polytechnic Institute of New York (now Polytechnic University). He graduated cum laude in 1921, with a degree in electrical engineering. Employed as an engineer with an electrical construction company in Schenectady, in 1923 he was assigned the task of unifying the electrical system in Cuba. Because the system consisted of many small power plants, there was urgent need for improved methods for connecting electrical conductors and joining power system substations. Since no such device existed, he proceeded to design a universal connector, re­ quiring neither soldering nor welding, with which it became possible to produce a unified grid. Unable to interest his employers or others in fabricating his design, he proceeded to patent it himself. In 1924, in partnership with a brother-in-law, he established the Burndy Engineering Company (later the Burndy Corporation). It had its beginnings in a building in the Bronx, where Burndy Engineering began manufacturing and selling electrical connectors to the industry. In time Dibner was granted twenty-four patents and guided the growth of his firm into a worldwide organization that has pioneered in the Mr. Bedim, retired after twenty-seven years at the Smithsonian Institution, is a Smithsonian research associate. Permission to reprint a memorial in this section may be obtained only from the author. 189 190 Silvio A. Bedini Bern Dibner manufacture of electrical connectors for the utility and electrical con­ struction markets. It is also a major supplier of electronic connectors to the computer, business equipment, and aerospace industries, and to the military. In World War II Dibner attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force and was awarded the Bronze Star with two battle stars while serving in the European theater of operations in 1944-45. Bern Dibner (1897—1988) 191 Dibner’s involvement with the history of science and technology began early in the 1930s, when he first became fascinated with the multiple talents and achievements of Leonardo da Vinci that bridged the arts and sciences. He learned Italian in order to study Leonardo and began to collect technical works and books about him. During his trips to Europe he constantly sought literature on the subject. In 1936, taking sabbatical leave from his firm, he matriculated at the University of Zurich to study Renaissance art and science. In 1940 and 1941 he studied the history of science at Columbia University. By this time his interests had widened to encompass the entire field of the history of science and technology. He began to collect the primary works on the physical and biological sciences, gradually amassing an important collection of manuscripts, incunabula, and printed material on the subject. A specialty of his collection, derived from his training, consisted of works on electricity and magnetism published before 1900. At first the fast-growing collection was maintained in the company offices in the Bronx, and, after the 1951 move of the corporate head­ quarters to West Norwalk, Connecticut, in its conference rooms. As time went on, the need for a separate building to make the collection accessible to the public became increasingly apparent. This goal was finally realized with the completion in 1964 of the Burndy Library building near the corporate headquarters. There in 1974 and again in 1983 the History of Science Society held its annual meeting, at­ tended by historians of science from all over the world. The Burndy Library’s impressive series of monographs, initiated as Christmas offerings for...