It is an honour and a great privilege to present the Kranzberg Lecture, which opened the International Committee for the History of Technology’s symposia for the past 17 years. ICOHTEC was founded in Paris in 1968 as a scientific section of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Sciences. Its principal promoters were the American professor Melvin Kranzberg, whose name is given to this lecture, and the French professor Maurice Daumas, who was elected our first secretary general. Maurice Daumas passed away 30 years ago; he was my professor and master in the field of the history of technology, and I dedicate this presentation to his memory.
This Kranzberg lecture is oriented, as reflected by the title, towards the history of technology and the unity of Europe. It will set into parallel lines the birth and the evolution in Europe of a discipline – the history of technology – and that of an idea and its implementation – the unity of Europe. It will show their dependence on human thought, on cultural and spiritual contexts and, at the same time, a wide range of chronological similarities. I divide my presentation chronologically into five parts: the Middle Ages; the Renaissance; the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries; the mid-nineteenth century to World War II; and, finally, post-World War II until the Treaty for the European Union signed in 1992. Each part deals with the evolution of European unity as well as with the history of technology in Europe. (more…)
Alexandru Herlea 