Bern Dibner
Bern Dibner | |
|---|---|
| Born | 18 August 1897 |
| Died | 6 January 1988 |
| Education | Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn |
| Occupation | Engineer |
Bern Dibner (1897 – 1988) was an electrical engineer, industrialist, and historian of science and technology.
Dibner was born near Kiev, Ukraine in 1897. He moved to the United States with his family at the age of 7. In 1921, he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Soon after graduating, he designed and patented the first solderless electrical connectors and founded the Burndy Engineering Company in 1924. The company later became the Burndy Corporation and was bought by the French corporation Framatome Connectors International (FCI) in 1988.[1] In 2009, Burndy was acquired and became a subsidiary of Hubbell Incorporated.[2]. Dibner died at his home in Wilton, Connecticut on January 6, 1988[3].
In addition to electrical engineering, Dibner studied the history of technology. He was an avid collector of original scientific works and of books on the history of science. He established the Burndy Library in 1941 to house his collection, which also contains thousands of portraits of various scientists. Bern Dibner also wrote a great number of books on the history of science. He wrote and published The Atlantic Cable in 1955[4]. In 1976 he was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society.
Dibner, who was fascinated by both art and technology, found great pleasure in studying Leonardo da Vinci. This interest led him to obtain a small library (eventually called the Burndy Library) of works about da Vinci which grew over the years as Dibner's interests expanded into the history of electricity, the history of Renaissance technology, and finally the history of science & technology in general. His collection continued to grow, and in 1941 he formally set up the Burndy Library as a separate institution "to advance scholarship in the history of science." By 1964, Dibner's collection totaled over forty thousand volumes and he opened a new building in Norwalk, Connecticut, to house the library. After Bern Dibner's death in 1988, the contents were moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it became the research library for the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In November 2006, the complete Burndy Library collection, comprised of 67,000 rare volumes and a collection of scientific instruments, was donated to and become part of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where it is available to scholars. The library offers a Dibner History of Science Program to fund fellowships, a lecture series and annual conference.[5]
Bern Dibner donated one-quarter of the Burndy Library's holdings to the Smithsonian Institution in 1974 to form the nucleus of a research library in the history of science and technology to be located in the young (established 1964) National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History,Behring Center. In 1976, the Smithsonian's Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology was established at the Smithsonian. The Burndy Library gift provided the Smithsonian Institution Libraries with its first rare book library, located in the National Museum of American History, Behring Center. Contained in this collection are many of the major works dating from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in the history of science and technology including engineering, transportation, chemistry, mathematics, physics, electricity, and astronomy.
The Smithsonian Institution Libraries has cataloged the books and manuscripts of the Burndy Library donation and entered the records into the international database OCLC and the Smithsonian's own online catalog, SIRIS.[6] The Dibner Library reopened after construction in spring 2010.[7]
The "Burndy" appellation, used for both his company and library, was invented by Dibner himself and represents a portmanteau or blend of his first and last names.
References
- ^ COMPANY NEWS; Burndy Takes Bid From Framatome - New York Times
- ^ COMPANY NEWS; Hubbell Agrees to Acquire Burndy
- ^ http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0040-165X(198901)30%3A1%3C189%3ABD(%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G
- ^ The Atlantic Cable by Bern Dibner
- ^ Dibner Collection at Huntington Libray.
- ^ Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology.
- ^ Dibner Library of Science and Technology Reopens after Construction.