The Big Questions in the History of American Technology

Abstract

One way of approaching an assignment on the state of our field would be to recite for you the number of technologists whose biographies are yet unwritten, of industries that remain unstudied, of machines whose origins are still shrouded in mystery, of captains of industry whose rise is yet unchronicled. I could then close with a plea to assign your graduate students these topics and assure you that we would soon have a complete understanding of our subject. However useful this approach might be in certain fields, I am persuaded that in the history of American technology it would be both depressing and superfluous-depressing because, in truth, we have barely scratched the surface of any of these important areas, and the lists would be very long; and superfluous because I am sure that every historian of American technology already has more ideas for dissertation topics than he will have graduate students for a good many years to come. I therefore concluded that perhaps the best contribution I could make would be of an altogether different nature. During the past year, I have read a great deal about the history of American technology. Is there anything I can conclude from all this reading? I asked myself. Now that these studies have been made, the articles and books written, what do we know with a relative degree of certainty about the history of American technology? What do we have reason to suspect? In light of our present knowledge, what seem to be the most fruitful lines for further study? These lists, I find, are a great deal shorter.

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