Melvin Kranzberg was a professor of history at Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

 from 1952 until 1971. He was a Callaway professor of the history of technology at Georgia Tech

Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...

 from 1972 to 1988.

Born in St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

, Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

, Dr. Kranzberg graduated from Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, received a master's and a PhD from Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

 and served in the Army in Europe during World War II. He received a Bronze Star for interrogating captured German prisoners and learning the location of Nazi gun emplacements. He was one of two interrogators out of nine in Patton's army that were not killed during the conflict.

Kranzberg is known for Kranzberg's laws of technology

Kranzberg's laws of technology

Melvin Kranzberg's six laws of technology state:#Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.#Invention is the mother of necessity.#Technology comes in packages, big and small....

, the first of which states "Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral."

He was one of the founders of the Society for the History of Technology

Society for the History of Technology

The Society for the History of Technology, or SHOT, is the primary professional society for historians of technology. Founded in 1958, its flagship publication is the journal Technology and Culture...

 in the US and long-time editor of its journal Technology and Culture

Technology and Culture

Technology and Culture is a quarterly academic journal founded in 1959. It is an official publication of the Society for the History of Technology, whose members routinely refer to it as "T&C." Besides scholarly articles, the journal publishes reviews of books and museum exhibitions. Occasionally,...

. Kranzberg served as president of the society from 1983 to 1984, and edited the society's journal from 1959 to 1981, when he turned it over to Robert C. Post of the Smithsonian Institution. The society awards a yearly $4000 fellowship named after Kranzberg to doctoral students engaged in the preparation of dissertations on the history of technology. The award is available to students all over the world.http://shot.press.jhu.edu/Awards/kranz.htm

External links

• Society for the History of Techonology (SHOT) Records, 1956-1998 Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
• New York Times obituary