Thomas P. Hughes

Thomas Parke Hughes (September 13, 1923 – February 3, 2014) was an American historian of technology. He was an emeritus professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor at MIT and Stanford.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1953.

Hughes, along with John B. Rae, Carl W. Condit, and Melvin Kranzberg, were responsible for the establishment of the Society for the History of Technology and he was a recipient of its highest honor, the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 1985.

He contributed to the concepts of technological momentum, technological determinism, large technical systems, social construction of technology, and introduced systems theory into the history of technology.

His book ''American Genesis'' was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2003. Provided by Wikipedia