The International Committee for the History of Technology, ICOHTEC, welcomes submissions for the Maurice Daumas Prize, which aims to encourage innovative scholarship in the history of technology. ICOHTEC is interested in the history of technological development as well as its relationship to science, society, economy, culture, and the environment. There is no limitation as to theoretical or methodological approaches.

The prize will be awarded to the author of the best article submitted which deals with the history of technology in any period of the past or in any part of the world and which was published in a journal or edited volume in 2019 or 2020. Eligible for the prize are original articles published in (or later translated into) any of the official ICOHTEC languages (English, French, German, Russian or Spanish). Submissions are welcomed from scholars of any country who are currently in graduate school or have received their doctorate within the last seven years. Please send your submission and a brief (not to exceed one-page) cv to each of the seven Prize Committee members no later than 15 January 2021. Electronic submissions are preferred. The winner will be contacted in late April 2021.

The prize will be awarded at our 48th Symposium, to be held in Prague, in summer 2021 (25 - 31 July 2021). The winner will receive a cash prize of Euro 500 as well as a travel grant of Euro 300 (if needed) to attend the ICOHTEC Symposium, which will feature a special panel organized around the winning article. Alongside the first prize, articles in the second and third-ranking positions will receive an honorarium/diploma award.

The Daumas Prize is sponsored by the Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM), France.

 PRIZE COMMITTEE

MAURICE DAUMAS (1910 - 1984) – The French Trailblazer

The history of technology would never have become a prominent field of historical research without energetic pathbreakers. Maurice Daumas was one of them. One of his better known early works is Les instruments scientifiques aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, which was also published in English. Between 1962 and 1978, he edited a highly acclaimed history of technology, Histoire générale des techniques, in five volumes, which has been translated into English and Spanish, and used as a textbook in various countries. In France, Daumas was also the pioneer of industrial archaeology. Daumas was the first secretary general of ICOHTEC and the host of its symposium at Pont- à-Mousson in 1970.

For further information about Daumas:

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/issue/rhs_0151-4105_1984_num_37_3

LIST OF RECIPIENTS

2020: Luke Keogh, Senior Curator at the National Wool Museum in Geelong, Australia, for his paper “The Wardian Case: Environmental Histories of a Box for Moving Plants” published in 2019 in Environment and History, 25, 219-244.

2019: Suvobrata Sarkar for his paper The Electrification of Colonial Calcutta: Role of the Innovators, Bureaucrats and Foreign Business Organization, 1880-1940” published in Studies in History 34.1 (2017): 48-76.

2017 : Gemma Cirac Claveras (Post-doc atLaboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés, France) for her paper: “Factories of Satellite Data Remote Sensing and Physical Earth Sciences in France”. In: ICON. Journal of the International Committee of the History of Technology, 21 (2015): 24–50.

2016 : William Rankin (Yale University) "The Geography of Radionavigation and the Politics of Intangible Artifacts," published in Technology and Culture, Volume 55, Number 3, July 2014.

2015 : Stefan Krebs (Université du Luxembourg) ‘“Dial-gauge versus Senses 1-0”: German Car Mechanics and the Introduction of New Diagnostic Equipment 1950-1980’ published in Technology and Culture in April 2014.

2014 : Donna J. Drucker (Technische Universität Darmstadt) for her article 'Keying Desire: Alfred Kinsey’s Use of Punched Card Machines for Sex Research' published in Journal of the History of Sexuality in 2013.

2013 : Nathan Ensmenger (Indiana University) for his article 'Is chess the drosophila of artificial intelligence?' published in the journal Social Studies of Science in 2012.

2012 : Mara Mills for her article 'On Disability and Cybernetics: Helen Keller, Norbert Wiener, and the Hearing Glove' published in 2011 by the Duke University Press journal Differences. 

2011 : Joseph Masco (University of Chicago) for his article 'Bad Weather: On Planetary Crisis' published in the journal Social Studies of Science in 2010.