By NASA on The Commons
Editor’s Note.—Tales of Mel Kranzberg’s unselfish enthusiasm for the achievements of others, and his care that they be suitably recognized, are legion. It is more than fitting that this, his final publication in Technology and Culture, presents Mel in this familiar role again. He wrote me [John Staudenmaier] in April 1995, shortly after the death of T. Keith Glennan, to suggest that Technology and Culture publish a memorial to this early and important patron of the Society. In his letter Mel named several people he thought would be able to write something appropriate, but it occurred to me that his own graceful and spontaneous reminiscences might prove at least as fitting a tribute to his old colleague. here, then, is a slightly edited version of Mel’s letter.
Enclosed are an obituary from the April 12 New York Times telling of the death of Dr. T. Keith Glennan (1905–1995) and a copy of my letter to his widow, Ruth Glennan. Glennan was president of Case Institute of Technology (now part of Case Western Reserve University) when we founded SHOT, and he played an important part in that. For he was so impressed with SHOT’s potential that he provided me with the time and material assistance that allowed me to serve as secretary of SHOT and editor of Technology and Culture from their beginnings. He thus had a direct influence on my career and also, indirectly through SHOT and T&C, on all historians of technology.
If you look at footnote 1 of Melvin Kranzberg, “At the Start” (Technology and Culture 1 [1959] :1–10), you will see that on January 30–31, 1958, there was a meeting at Case of an Advisory Committee for Technology and Society, which led directly to the formation of SHOT and the creation of T&C. Glennan had provided funding (from Case) for the meeting, but I think what really impressed him was when he joined us at lunch and met Lynn White, jr., the great medieval historian who was so valuable in providing SHOT with a scholarly reputation from our very beginnings.
In 1958 the Case Faculty Dining Room, in the basement of Tomlinson Hall, had only eight tables, seating eight people each. Since the president did not have a private dining room at his office, he ate with the faculty; and when he came to eat at Tomlinson, he had no private table, but had to sit with members of the faculty. Those eight-seat tables also meant that since faculty could rarely get seven colleagues from their own department to go to lunch at exactly the same time, they had to sit with colleagues from several other departments.
Those of us from the Humanities and Social Sciences were thus brought into daily and close contact with our science and engineering colleagues—a real blessing for all concerned. When Glennan came to the dining room on that momentous day of our Advisory Committee meeting, he found a seat at our table right next to Lynn White, who was then president of Mills College, a prominent women’s college in northern California. Glennan was very impressed that the president of Mills should come to Case for a meeting, and Lynn’s presence helped sell Glennan on the idea of creating a home for the history of technology at Case. That got us started, of course, but it was certainly not the end of Glennan’s beneficence to the history of technology.
Whoever writes Glennan’s memorial article should note the many and major scholarly works which have derived from NASA’s commitment to history. When Glennan took a leave of absence from Case to be the first head of NASA, he still returned to Cleveland from time to time on weekends to see his family and keep in touch with doings at Case (for he was still president, even though on leave).
By a stroke of luck, I happened to meet him while waiting in line at the supermarket checkout counter one day in mid-October, when there was, of course, lots of talk about Columbus Day. Commenting that historians had little real knowledge of the actual maritime difficulties of Columbus’s voyage to the New World and how they were overcome, because neither Columbus nor his officers had recorded the day-to-day details of the voyage, I asked Keith, “Since NASA is now going to voyage to ‘new worlds,’ wouldn’t it be nice if the agency had a history program, in order to make certain that accurate records were kept of its activities? For those would not only be helpful to NASA’s current operations, but would then also be available to succeeding generations.” Glennan thought it a good idea, and a few weeks later I received a letter from NASA headquarters asking me if I would agree to serve on a History Advisory Committee which NASA was forming.
The first NASA historian was Eugene M. Emme, who organized a program session at SHOT’S 1962 meeting on “The History of Rocket Technology” that provided the basis for the fall 1963 theme issue of T&C. Remember, that was at a time when there were still very few historians of technology, and I was having trouble getting enough articles to put together issues of our journal. Hence that program provided an opportunity for SHOT to pioneer in the history of a new field of technology—and to fill an issue of its journal.
At the time, one of the problems was to find scholars who would and could work on the history of NASA. Indeed, many historians of science and technology whom I tried to lure into the study of aerospace history balked at the idea. They claimed that any account of NASA’s operations and activities was “current events,” and most of the older generation of historians simply did not want to get involved in researching what was not yet considered “history.”
But this eventually provided an opportunity for SHOT to get younger scholars to enter this new field of advancing technology. When Glennan was no longer head of NASA, his successors were equally open to advice on writing the history of the agency as it happened. So NASA’s History Advisory Committee got the agency to fund Fellowships in Aerospace History. Yet we avoided the appearance of utilizing this as a promotional device for the space program by having these annual fellowships, although “sponsored” (i.e., supported) by NASA, administered by the American Historical Association, which set up a committee for the purpose that included representatives from the Economic History Association, the History of Science Society, and SHOT.
NASA also subsidized the publication of research dealing with its history, giving rise to the Johns Hopkins Series in Aerospace History among others, and supported research conducted at NASA’s History Office in Washington. The effectiveness of those subsidies may be seen in the many historians of technology, now mature and at the top of our profession, who were helped to get started in our field through NASA’s efforts—including SHOT’s current president, Alex Roland.
As you can see, my reminiscing about Keith Glennan’s impact on the history of technology leads to a wide variety of topics. In addition to his backing of SHOT and T&C in the early years, and of historical research on the many facets of aerospace history, his support helped create the first graduate program specifically in the history of technology at any American university. And of course Case and NASA do not encompass Keith Glennan’s remarkable career. He was also, in the course of a long public life, a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1950 to 1952, and the U.S. representative, with the personal rank of ambassador, to the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1970 to 1973.
All of these “causes” supported by Glennan have had major impacts on the history of technology, and on many other fields of scholarship. I think you can see, then, why I believe that he deserves a memorial in the journal in whose creation he had such a crucial part.
Melvin Kranzberg
Originally published as Melvin Kranzberg, “T. Keith Glennan (1905–1995),” Technology and Culture 37, no. 3 (1996): 659–62, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.1996.0069.
D. Hunley, ed., The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan. Washington, DC: NASA, 1993.
[The diary is not a boastful account of his exploits in providing the foundation for America’s great successes in space exploration. Instead, in showing the problems which arose and his means of dealing with them, Glennan unwittingly reveals both his fine scientific/technological background and his innate talents in organizational development—qualities that he demonstrated in his presidency of Case Institute, in his management of NASA, and throughout his career as a public servant.]