Richard H. Schallenberg (1943–1980) was born in Chicago in June 1943 and received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1965. In 1968 he came back from the war in Vietnam and started reading economic history at Columbia; he continued these studies at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute with Rom Sviedrys, who whetted his interest in the history of technology and led him to do his early pioneer work on the charcoal iron industry. He came to Yale in 1970, still markedly affected by his war experience and by a brittle diabetic condition.
From the beginning he was a model student; I have never known another who habitually turned in all papers a week early and his thesis six months ahead of deadline. He saw at the outset that the crucial areas in history of technology were its interfaces with business and economic history, on the one side, and history of science, on the other. He set out to make himself well read and competent in both areas, and he succeeded, exhibiting mastery of such consolidation of internal and external histories of science and technology in his thesis on The Electric Battery 1800-1930: A Case Study in Technological innovation.
On appointment to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, he rapidly became an excellent teacher, full of new plans for the substantive development of our field. Professionally he gave tremendous service within our societies, most notably by doing all the work that enabled us to have a series of guides to graduate study and estimates of manpower and employment at a time when such documentation was crucial for all institutions in the fields. just as he had won his tenure and associate professorship and was in the midst of publishing increasingly important papers, Dick died suddenly at his home in April 1980. He had achieved so much already, and we are in his debt. The loss of one of the few such competent persons is a professional as well as a personal matter of heavy grief.
Derek de Solla Price
Derek de Solla Price, “Richard H. Schallenberg (1943–1980),” Technology and Culture 22, no. 4 (1981): 845, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.1981.a890974.
Schallenberg, Richard H. “The Anomalous Storage Battery: An American Lag in Early Electrical Engineering.” Technology and Culture 22, no. 4 (1981): 725–52. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/890937.
Schallenberg, Richard H., and David A. Ault. “Raw Materials Supply and Technological Change in the American Charcoal Iron Industry.” Technology and Culture 18, no. 3 (1977): 436–66. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/891939.