SHOT, the History of Technology, and Engineering Education

Abstract

SHOT, the History of Technology, and Engineering Education BRUCE E. SEELY And how does one go about forming a new scholarly society? [Melvin Kranzberg, 1956] According to the accepted “creation story,” the Society for the His­ tory of Technology (SHOT) took form after Melvin Kranzberg, John B. Rae, and Carl Condit met in Ithaca, New York, in June 1957 with Henry Guerlac, president of the History of Science Society (HSS). The trio hoped to persuade Guerlac that HSS and its journal Isis should pay more attention to the work of historians of technology. They were disappointed, however, for, according to Kranzberg, the history of science was focused on ‘“intellectual giants.’ What was im­ portant were thinkers. Technologists, so-called tinkerers, were simply Dr. Seely, associate professor of history at Michigan Technological University, writes: “This essay is a serendipitous product of the overlap between my research interest in the history of engineering education and my responsibilities as SHOT secre­ tary since 1990. Secretaries are expected to provide an institutional memory for an organization, so I began to learn about SHOT’S early years in order to answer occa­ sional queries. At the same time, I was visiting university and engineering school ar­ chives, including Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University), in Cleveland, where Melvin Kranzberg taught from 1952 to the early 1970s. This article emerged after I stumbled on information about Kranzberg, his department, and SHOT’S early years. In preparing it, I have incurred numerous debts. Support from the National Science Foundation Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, awards SES-8711164 and SES-8921936, supported research visits. Two of SHOT’S founding members, Melvin Kranzberg and Thomas Hughes, offered recollec­ tions, while many others, including Michael Sokal, Robert Post, Terry Reynolds, Mark Rose, Bruce Sinclair, Merritt Roe Smith, John Staudenmaier, and Charles Weiner, provided information, a willing ear, or useful suggestions and criticism. Comments from audiences who heard versions at a meeting at the American Society for Engi­ neering Education in Toledo in June 1992, at MIT’s STS Colloquium in October 1993, and at Hagley’s Research Seminar Series in October 1994 provided ideas for further development. Finally, the T&C referees offered important guidance and suggestions. My thanks to all, as well as to the members of the society who put me in the position where I could think about these matters.”© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3604-0009$01.00 739 740 Bruce E. Seely not worth considering. Guerlac said as much to me.”1 Kranzberg labeled the meeting a disaster for “the small group that traipsed to Guerlac’s house in Ithaca with such great hope and which saw us going down the hill from his house thoroughly cowed and almost, but not quite, completely discouraged. [Yet] looking back on that episode years later, we can realize that the refusal of HSS (personified by Guerlac) to include the history of technology in its purview was probably the best thing that could have happened to us.”2 According to Kranzberg, Guerlac’s decision precipitated the formation of SHOT in 1958: Kranzberg remembers saying to Condit, “By God, we’re just going to have to start our own society and our own journal.”3 But was SHOT’S formation really a response to Guerlac’s rebuff? Historians usually suspect that straightforward explanations contain hidden complexities, and that is the case here, for Kranzberg’s account does not include the context of the meeting in Ithaca. This article fills in some of that background, stressing connections between the history of technology and engineering education. Since the 1890s, engineering educators had struggled to combine technical, pro­ fessional, and general education in a four-year curriculum, and, on occasion, historical courses emphasizing engineering and/or science were identified as contributing to a better engineering curriculum. At Case Institute of Technology in the post—World War II years, these concerns took a special form. I want to reexam­ ine the origins of the Society for the History of Technology and suggest that educational developments at Case were a crucial ele­ ment in the emergence of SHOT and the history...