SHOT Founders’ Themes and Problems

Abstract

What did SHOTs founders believe were the major themes and problems that should be explored? It will be interesting to compare the founders' problem choices with those Wiebe Bijker identifies today and those Rebecca Herzig envisions for the future. To explore the founders' choices, I shall begin with the formation of a Kranzberg-organized advisory committee in 1957 and continue through 1959 using the correspondence I have on file. Then I will turn to the first issue of Technology and Culture to find what themes and problems were raised there. On 29 May 1957, Melvin Kranzberg invited nineteen persons, including me, to serve on an advisory committee to guide the establishment of a research center in technology and society, the formation of an organization for the history of technology, and an accompanying learned journal. This was several weeks before the legendary meeting of Kranzberg with Henry Edward Guerlac at Cornell on 17 June, and Kranzberg's supposed decision then to found a journal. Among those invited to serve on the all-male advisory committee were Lewis Mumford; Carl Condit, then associate professor of history at Northwestern University; Robert Multhauf, acting head curator, Department of Engineering and Industry, Smithsonian Institution; John Rae, professor in the humanities at MIT; and Lynn White, medieval historian and president of Mills College. Kranzberg asked committee members to gather during the American Society for Engineering Education meeting to be held at Cornell University on 17 June 1957. Among those in attendance at Cornell were Kranzberg, Condit, Rae, and me. Attempting to define in discussion the history of technology, we divided it into five broad and overlapping categories: technol-