Education

College of the Holy Cross. A.B. in History, summa cum laude, 1977.

University of Pennsylvania, History and Sociology of Science. M.A., 1981; Ph.D, 1984. Major Field: history of American technology. Minor Fields: business history, history of American science, and American social history.

Professional Positions

Associate Professor, Department of Science, Technology, and Society, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia, since 1992.

Associate Professor, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia, since 1993.

Visiting Associate Professor, Science, Technology, and Society Program, Stanford University, January-March 1999.

Assistant Professor, Humanities Division, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia, 1986-1992.

Newcomen Fellow in Business and Economic History, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1988-1989.

Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Social Sciences Department, Michigan Technological University, 1983-1986.

Research Associate, Thomas A. Edison Papers, Rutgers University, 1983.

Predoctoral Fellow, Division of Electricity and Modern Physics, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1982.

Visiting Instructor, History Department, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Summer 1981.

Lecturer, College of General Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 1981.

Academic Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

Grant from the National Science Foundation for "Rethinking Technology, Nature, and Society: A Research and Training Program," 2004-2007. With John K. Brown and Edmund P. Russell.

Research Grant from the Sloan Foundation to write a biography of Nikola Tesla, 1997-2000.

Travel Grant from Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 1999.

Research grant from the Bankard Fund for Political Economy, University of Virginia, for "Understanding the Conservative Introduction of Network Technologies: Tesla, Marconi, and the Development of Radio," 1998.

Harris Trust Fund Salary Bonus, University of Virginia, 1996.

Summer Research Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Virginia, 1996.

Senior Fellow, Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change, University of Virginia, Spring 1995.

Resident Fellow, Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fall 1994.

Research grant from the Bankard Fund for Political Economy, University of Virginia, for “Science and Industry: From Heroic Inventors to the Research Laboratory,” 1994.

Research Associate, Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities, University of Virginia, 1993-4.

Dibner Library Resident Scholar, Smithsonian Institution, 1993.

Research grant from the Bankard Fund for Political Economy, University of Virginia, for "The Coordination of Business Organization and Technological Innovation," 1992.

Research Grant from the National Science Foundation for "Mapping the Innovation Process: An Integration of Cognitive and Social Approaches to the Invention of the Telephone, 1870-1880," 1992-93. With Michael E. Gorman.

Research Grant from the Spencer Foundation for "The Social Construction of Technological Knowledge: A Network Analysis of the Invention of the Telephone, 1870-1880," Summer 1991. With Michael E. Gorman.

Research Grant from the National Science Foundation for "Technological Innovation as a Cognitive Process: A Comparative Study of Telephone Inventors, 1870-1880," 1990-1991. With Michael E. Gorman.

International Travel Grant, American Council of Learned Societies, 1990.

IEEE Life Members Prize in Electrical History, Society for the History of Technology, 1989.

Research Grant from the National Science Foundation for "The Cognitive Style of American Inventors: A Comparative Study of the Electric Light and the Telephone, 1870-1885," 1988-1992. With Michael E. Gorman.

Summer Research Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Virginia, 1988.

Research Grant from the Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life, Minneapolis, 1982.

John E. Rovensky Fellowship in Business History, 1981-1982.

Newcomen Award for Business History, University of Pennsylvania, 1981.

IEEE Fellowship in Electrical History, 1980-1981.

At Holy Cross College:
Phi Beta Kappa
Sigma Pi Sigma (national physics honor society)
Phi Alpha Theta (national history honor society)
Crompton Gold Medal in Physics, 1977.

Publications

A. Books

Technology in World History. 7 volumes. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. General editor and author of 7 chapters.

Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Paperback Reprint, 2002.

B. Chapters in Books

"Taking on the World: Bell, Edison and the Diffusion of the Telephone in the 1870s" in P. Lyth and H.Trischler, Eds. Prometheus Wired: Globalisation, History and Techology (Denmark: Aarhus University Press, forthcoming).

"The Telephone as a Political Instrument: Gardiner Hubbard and the Political Construction of the Telephone, 1875-1880." in M. Allen and G. Hecht, Eds., Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 25-55.

"Invention and Evolution: The Case of Edison's Sketches of the Telephone," in J. Ziman, Ed., Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 137-58.

"Electrical Inventions and Cultural Traumas: The Telephone in America and Germany, 1860-1880," in K. Plitzner, Ed., Elektriztat in der Geisteschichte (Bassum, Austria: Verlag fur Geschichte de Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, 1998), 143-54.

"Innovation and the Modern Corporation: From Heroic Invention to Industrial Science" in J. Krige and D. Pestre, Eds., Science in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997), 203-26.

"The Coordination of Business Organization and Technological Innovation within the Firm: A Case Study of the Thomson-Houston Company in the 1880s" in P. Temin and D. Raff, Eds., Coordination and Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 55-94.

"Competition and Consolidation in the Electrical Manufacturing Industry, 1889-1892" in W. Aspray, Ed., Technological Competitiveness: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on the Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Industries (New York: IEEE Press, 1993), 287-311.

With Michael E. Gorman, "The Cognitive Process of Invention: Bell, Edison, and the Telephone" in D. Perkins and R. Weber, Eds., The Inventive Mind: Creativity in Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 48-79.

"Artifacts and Frames of Meaning: Thomas A. Edison, His Managers, and the Cultural Construction of Motion Pictures" in W. E. Bijker and J. Law, Eds., Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 175-198.

With Michael E. Gorman, "Thinking and Doing at Menlo Park: Edison's development of the Telephone, 1876-1878," in W. S. Pretzer, Ed., Working and Inventing: Thomas Edison and the Menlo Park Experience (Dearborn: Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, 1989; reprinted by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 84-99.

With A. J. Millard, "Defining Risk Within a Business Context: Thomas A. Edison, Elihu Thomson, and the AC-DC Controversy, 1885-1900" in B. B. Johnson and E. V. Covello, Eds.,The Social and Cultural Construction of Risk (Boston: D. Reidel, 1987), 275-93.