By Crevettes, CC BY-SA 4.0
Elmer Belt, past president of the Society for the History of Technology, died in Los Angeles at the end of May 1980. Foremost in his profession of urology and surgery, Belt’s interest in public affairs and the history of science and technology gave him wide scholarly exposure and much public service. His early interest in the anatomical studies of Leonardo da Vinci prompted him to assemble the most comprehensive archive and library relating to Leonardo anywhere in the world. He donated his library to the University of California, Los Angeles, where it is known as the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana.
Elmer Belt was born on April 10, 1893, in Chicago. He was awarded a bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1916 and his master’s and M.D. degrees from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1920. This was followed by postgraduate study in Boston and final residence in Los Angeles from 1924 until his death. He rose to be associate professor of urology and clinical professor of surgery and urology at UCLA School of Medicine.
Belt held a strong awareness of duties of citizenship and participated in solving the health-related problems of Los Angeles. His friendship with Gov. Earl Warren of California, a former patient, helped develop the Los Angeles campus of the University of California. As a member and later president of the California State Board of Health, he became concerned with the problem of air pollution in his state and with the potential hazards of atomic radiation proliferation. During Operation Crossroads—the nuclear tests performed at Bikini atoll—he was appointed advisor to the government.
Elmer Belt’s major contribution to historical scholarship consisted of assembling his library devoted to the life and scientific contributions of the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci. Initially intrigued by the anatomical studies of Leonardo, Belt then branched out to study Leonardo’s many other interests. Belt kept his books at his medical office on Wilshire Boulevard and retained the bibliographical help of Kate Steinitz, who helped build the library into an eminent institution of Leonardo scholarship. With the gift of his library to UCLA in 1966, a professional staff was added and the library became the primary center of reference for this subject. The extent to which Belt went to fill out the source material was shown in his effort to try to duplicate Leonardo’s own library (as listed in the recently found Madrid Codex) by the titles listed and as near a dated edition as possible. This resulted in an eminent collection of Renaissance incunabula and early cinquecento publications.
In early 1966, Belt and his circle of Leonardo enthusiasts arranged an international symposium at UCLA that inaugurated the establishment of the Belt library there. The week’s symposium included papers on Leonardo by Sir Kenneth Clark of London, Ludwig Heydenrich of Munich, and Kenneth Keele of England, among other authorities. Chaired by C. D. O’Malley and assisted by Ladislao Reti, the symposium papers were so well received as to warrant their publication in 1969 under the title Leonardo’s Legacy. In the meantime, Leonardo’s Madrid Codexes were discovered, and arrangements were made to have a gathering of ten chapters on various aspects of Leonardo’s works published in large format under the title The Unknown Leonardo. The book, edited by Reti, was dedicated, fittingly enough, to Elmer Belt.
Belt’s wide-ranging interests led him to become an early member of the Society for the History of Technology, and he served as SHOT president in 1967-68. Belt lectured on Leonardo’s manuscripts, their fate and their importance; he wrote on Leonardo as anatomist. He authored and coauthored several books in the field of urology and continued on two university staffs in Los Angeles and in Louisville, Kentucky. He was among the most generous of men, ready with advice, whether on the professional or on the social level. When visiting Germany in 1939, he quarreled with the expressions of Nazi bigotry, for he was a lover of humanity as well as of rare books.
Bern Dibner
Originally published as Bern Dibner, “Elmer Belt (1893–1980),” Technology and Culture 22, no. 4 (1981): 837–38. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.1981.a890971.
Pedretti, Carlo, Elmer Belt, and Saul Marks. Leonardo da Vinci : studies for a nativity and the “Mona Lisa cartoon,” with drawings after Leonardo from the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana: exhibition in honour of Elmer Belt, M.D. on the occasion of his eightieth birthday: catalogue. Los Angeles: University of California, 1973.
Steinitz, Kate Traumann. The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana. Los Angeles: Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana, 1950.
Finger, Frances L. Catalogue of the Incunabula in the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana. Los Angeles: Friends of the UCLA Library, 1971.
Leonardo, da Vinci, and Elmer Belt. Drawings. Introduction by Elmer Belt. Los Angeles: Borden, 1962.