President: 1983–84 Editor of Technology and Culture: 1959–81 Co-Founder of SHOT
Melvin Kranzberg was a scholar who helped establish the study of the history of technology and explained its impact on society. Dr. Kranzberg co-founded the Society for the History of Technology in 1958. From then until 1981 he was the editor of its quarterly journal, Technology and Culture.
“His life’s work was to assert the autonomy of this discipline,” Professor Giebelhaus said. “[Technology] was not just applied science, and [the history of technology] was not just a minor part of economic history, but it was a discipline in itself.”
Dr. Kranzberg argued that technological development could not be understood without seeing how it was linked to society. He wrote or edited 11 books and wrote more than 150 scholarly articles; he also popularized his field in newspaper articles.
In a 1968 article, he wrote: “Engineers, in general, live in the suburbs, vote Republican and mouth the cliches of conservatism. Actually, if unwittingly, they are greater social revolutionaries than many wild-eyed political radicals.
“Without necessarily meaning to, they invent new products, processes, systems and devices that produce profound socio-cultural transformations.”
The automobile self-starter, he wrote, freed women and children to see the world and electric washers, driers, vacuum cleaners, supermarkets and telephones freed women for “drinking, loafing, heavy thinking about issues like Vietnam and even jobs, the same as men.”
“Radicals” like the inventors Watt, Fulton, McCormick, Edison and Marconi, he said, changed the face of the world.
Early in the computer era, he foresaw immense social upheaval, but he remained optimistic, as he generally was about technological change.
Writing more than twenty-five years ago, he said, “There is no doubt that many individuals will be thrown out of their jobs by automation, and the process will accelerate with every passing year. At the same time computers are speeding and extending the advance of science and technology at a pace never before witnessed in history. This, we know, will create new lines of productivity, new and better jobs, new professions and untold wealth.”
Dr. Kranzberg was born on Nov. 22, 1917, in St. Louis. He studied history and economics at Amherst College in Massachusetts, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1938. At Harvard University he earned a master’s degree in 1939 and a doctorate in 1942.
During World War II, he served in the Army in Europe as a sergeant in military intelligence, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and interrogated German prisoners on the front lines. He won the Bronze Star for finding crucial enemy gun emplacements.
Originally a specialist in modern French history, Dr. Kranzberg taught at Harvard, the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ., and Amherst. In 1952 he joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. There, while developing a history course for engineering students, he shifted to the history of technology.
He was appointed a professor at Case in 1959, and left in 1972 to become the Callaway Professor of the History of Technology at Georgia Tech. When he retired in 1988, he became a professor emeritus, and the institute named a professorship in the history of technology in his honor.
His awards included the NASA Apollo Achievement Award, the Roe Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the State of Israel’s Jabotinsky Centennial Medal for eminence in science and letters, the Olmstead Award of the American Society for Engineering Education and the Bernal Award of the Society for Social Studies of Science.
Lawrence Van Gelder
Originally published as Lawrence Van Gelder, “Melvin Kranzberg, 78, Historian of Technology,” Technology and Culture 37, no. 3 (1996): 401–2, https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/887428/pdf
See the personal memorials written to honor Kranzberg by John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., Robert P. Multhauf, Carroll Pursell, and R. Angus Buchanan, August W. Giebelhaus, and Robert C. Post that were published in Technology and Culture in July 1996. Project MUSE – In Memoriam: Melvin Kranzberg (1917–1995)
A memorial was also published by the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC): Buchanan, R. Angus. “Melvin Kranzberg (1917—1995).” ICON 2 (1996): 9–13.
Kranzberg’s personal papers are held at the Smithsonian American History Museum. Melvin Kranzberg Papers | Smithsonian Institution
Melvin Kranzberg and Leo Marx, “Comment and Response on the Review of In Context,” Technology and Culture 33, no. 2 (1992): 406–7.
Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: “Kranzberg’s Laws,” Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (1986): 544–60.
Melvin Kranzberg, “Let’s Not Get Wrought Up about It,” Technology and Culture 25, no. 4 (1984): 735–49.
Melvin Kranzberg, “Passing the Baton,” Technology and Culture 22, no. 4 (1981): 695–99.
Melvin Kranzberg, “Foreword,” Technology and Culture 14, no. 2 (1973): Part II, v–vi.
Melvin Kranzberg, “The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Centuryby Paul Mantoux (review),” Technology and Culture 5, no. 1 (1964): 81–82.
Melvin Kranzberg, “Commentary,” Technology and Culture 3, no. 4 (1962): 519–23.
Melvin Kranzberg, “At the Start,” Technology and Culture 1, no. 1 (1959): 1–10.
The Melvin Kranzberg Dissertation Fellowship is presented annually to a doctoral student engaged in the preparation of a dissertation on the history of technology, broadly defined. This award is in memory of the co-founder of the Society and honors Melvin Kranzberg’s many contributions to developing the history of technology as a field of scholarly endeavor and SHOT as a professional organization.