Updated 24 July 2024
It is not possible yet to nominate essays for the 2025 Samuel Eleazar and Rose Tartakow Levinson Prize.
The Samuel Eleazar and Rose Tartakow Levinson Prize is awarded each year for a single-authored, unpublished essay in the history of technology that explicitly examines, in some detail, a technology or technological device or process within the framework of social or intellectual history. It is intended for younger scholars and new entrants into the profession.
Manuscripts already published or accepted for publication are not eligible. In order to be considered, manuscripts must be in English and of a length suitable for publication as an article in Technology and Culture–approximately 7,500 words (not including notes) and 100 notes. The winning manuscript will be considered for publication in Technology and Culture.
The award consists of a check and a certificate, to be presented at the Society’s annual meeting.
To nominate an essay, please upload it to the online submission system, in MS Word or PDF format. The judging will be blind, so authors should take care not to self-identify in the text of the article. The SHOT Secretariat will forward the nominated essays to the committee.
For more information, please contact the SHOT Secretariat, [email protected].
2023 Levinson Prize Winner Tom Kelsey. (Photo SHOT)
| Xiaochang Li (2022-2025) – Chair |
| Zehra Hashmi (2024-2026) |
| Jeff Schramm (2022-2024) |
| 2024 | Madeleine Ware, “Kegel’s Perineometer: Reframing Vaginal Disability in the Postwar United States” |
| 2023 | Tom Kelsey, “Fighting the Supersonic Deception: the critics of Concorde in post-war Britain“ |
| 2022 | Alexander Parry, “Home Is Where the Harm Is: Laundry Equipment, Injuries, and the United States Voluntary Safety System, c. 1920–1980“ |
| 2021 | Leah Samples, “Your Eyes Are Your Breadwinners So Protect Them! Goggles, Safety Work, and the Prevention of Industrial Blindness, 1900s-1940s“ |
| 2020 | Not awarded |
| 2019 | Yuan Yi, “Custom-Made Machines in the Era of Mass Production” |
| 2015 | Gerardo Con Diaz, “The Text in the Machine: American Copyright Law and the Many Natures of Software, 1974-1978” |
| 2014 | Roberto Cantoni, “What’s in a Pipe? Technopolitical Debate over the Ontology of Oil Pipes at NATO (1960-1962)” |
| 2011 | Christopher S. Leslie, “as We Should Have Thought: The Intellectual Legacy of the Memex” |
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2009
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Finn Arne Jørgensen, “Simple Comforts: Technology, Convenience, and Simplicity in Norwegian Leisure Cabins, 1950-1980” |
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2008
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Christopher Beauchamp, “Who Invented the Telephone? Lawyers, Patents, and the Judgments of History” |
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2007
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Eric Hintz, “Portable Power: Inventor Samuel Ruben and the Birth of Duracell” |
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2006
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Jonathan Hagood, “Bottling Atomic Energy: Distinguishing Between Science and Technology in Perónist Argentina, 1948-1952” |
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2005
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Christopher W. Wells, “Inventing the Automobile: Culture, Road Conditions, and Innovation at the Dawn of the Motor Age, 1895-1907” |
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2004
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Matthew Adams Axtell, “In Pursuit of a Barren Scepter: The Life and Death of the James River and Kanawha Canal in Antebellum Virginia’s Forsaken West, 1784-1860” |
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2003
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Scott Gabriel Knowles, “The One Place Where It Pays to Play with Fire? Underwriters Laboratories and the Invention of Fire Safety” |
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2002
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Timothy S. Wolters, “Beyond the Line: Signalling Technology and Professionalization in the Eighteenth Century Royal Navy” |
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2001
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Gerard Fitzgerald, “Babies, Barriers, and Bacteriological Engineers: Instrumental Technologies at LOBUND, 1930-1952” |
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1999
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William Boyd, “The Real Subsumption of Nature? Science, Technology, and the Industrialization of the American Chicken” |
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1998
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Toby Jones, “Path to peace? Britain, Technology, and Resistance in Palestine, 1929-1939” |
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1997
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Linda Nash, “The Changing Course of Nature” |
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1996
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Miranda Paton, “Seeing How to Listen” |
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1995
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Michael Allen, “The Golleschauer Portland Cement Factory: Modern Management, Technological Modernization, and Concentration Camp Labor in the SS Business Administration Main Office” |
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1994
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Greg Clancey, “The Balloon Frame Revisited: Mechanization, Mass-Production, and Prefabrication in American Building-Carpentry” |
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1993
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Cheenu Raman Srinivasan, “No Free Launch: Designing the Indian National Satellite” |
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1992
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David Jardini, “From Iron to Steel: The Recasting of the Jones and Laughlin Work Force between 1885 and 1896” |
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1991
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Gabrielle Hecht, “Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in France” |