Thomas Parke Hughes

Co-founder of the Society for the History of Technology, Hughes was an American historian of technology and an emeritus Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a visiting Professor at MIT and Stanford. He earned his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and his Master's degree in History from the University of Virginia, after which he did his graduate work in European History, receiving his Ph.D. in 1953.

Hughes, along with John B. Rae, Carl W. Condit, and Melvin Kranzberg, was responsible for the establishment of the Society for the History of Technology, and he has been a recipient of its highest honor, the Leonardo Da Vinci Medal. He contributed to the concepts of technological momentum, technological determinism, large technical systems, and social construction of technology, and introduced systems theory into the history of technology.

Hughes published books on American and European history with special attention to the history of modern technology, science, and culture. Among these were Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-8018-4614-5); The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, edited with Wiebe E. Bijker and Trevor J. Pinch (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1987); and The Development of Large Technical Systems, edited with Renate Mayntz (Frankfurt am Main; Boulder, CO: Campus Verlag; Westview Press, 1988).

Further works included American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970 (New York, NY: Viking, 1989), which was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist; Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual, edited with Agatha C. Hughes (New York: 1990); Rescuing Prometheus (1st ed., New York: Pantheon Books, 1998); and Human-Built World: How to Think About Technology and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004, ISBN 0-226-35933-6).