Ronald Kline

Ronald Kline headshot
Ronald R. Kline earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Kansas State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the Sue G. and Harry E. Bovay, Jr. Professor in History and Ethics of Engineering at Cornell University, with a joint appointment between the Science and Technology Studies Department in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering. He directs the Bovay Program in the History and Ethics of Engineering in the College of Engineering and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of science and technology in the Cold War and the history of information technology.

The author of numerous articles on the history of engineering, industrial research, technology in rural life, and information science and technology, as well as engineering ethics, he is past president of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the IEEE Society for the Social Implications of Technology, and former chief editor of IEEE’s
Technology & Society Magazine. In 2016, SHOT awarded him its highest honor, the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, for contributions to the history of technology. He is the author of three books, Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist (1992), Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America (2000), and The Cybernetics Moment, Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (2015), all published by Johns Hopkins University Press.


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Steinmetz eBook cover