Dante from a scientific, rather than strictly literary, point of view. The result of his statement was a series of talks on the scientific structure of Dante's works. Professor Woodbury's work on the history of technology has earned him several professional honors. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961, which he used to do research in Denmark for a year. He won the Usher Prize of the Society for the History of Technology, and was awarded a $35,000 grant from the Wilkie Foundation. The professor has lectured by invitation at the Polish Academy of Science, the Soviet Academy of Science, and the International Congress of History in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, Robert Woodbury spent one year on loan from MIT to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C. There he served as curator of the division of engineering and acted as an advisor in planning the new Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology. When he realized that few historians have dealt with the technological aspects of the Industrial Revolution, Woodbury decided to publish a series of books and monographs on the history of tools. "The first stage in my program on the History of Tools consists of a series of monographs planned to provide scholarly foundations for writing a complete History of Tools. My history will be characterized by two principles of approach-careful examination of primary sources, such as patents, catalogs, trade journals, actual machines; and careful consideration of the technical development, which without which there would have been no economic or social effects." The History of the Gear-Cutting Machine, the History of the Grinding Machine, the History of the Milling Machine, and the History of the Lathe to 1850 are complete. Professor Woodbury is working on several other monographs which he hopes will result in a twovolume History of Metal-Cutting Machine Tools. The professor's 1971 lecture series, "Technology and Society," will focus on little-known but important contributions to technology in several fields-agriculture, research, science, recJanuary-February 1971
reation, transportation, production, accounting and education. Several of the lectures concentrate on relatively unknown men who had the original idea for a major invention but were unable to carry it out for various reasons. The father of five children, Woodbury has been married to the former Constance Vos for 21 years. He met her in Washington, D.C. when he was director of the Office of Naval Research and she was employed by the Dutch Embassy. Professor Woodbury does not foresee an end to the age of technology. Instead, he predicts a gradual change in the field and those who work in it. "The day of the cookbook engineer is almost over. Engineers of the future will have to be trained in the humanities, not because it is a nice thing to do but because it is a necessary part of their profession. "Beautiful designs and plans are worthless if they do not fit the needs of those who will use them. Engineers need to have some knowledge and understanding of human beings so that they can apply their skills to creating a better world." Professor Woodbury does not think technology is the major source of the current pollution problem." "Pollution is not a technological problem, it fe an economic and social problem at this point. Industry can correct or control its part of the problem, but people themselves are the only ones who can ultimately correct the situation. We need to educate people to reduce pollution on an individual basis." Nor is Robert Woodbury afraid that computers and advanced machinery will take over society and eliminate the need for humans in industry. "The main advantage of the computer is the rapidity with which it can assimilate and distribute knowledge. A major disadvantage is the difficulty with which mistakes are corrected. It is expensive and timeconsuming to weed through material to correct an error. Man should not be concerned with the potential of the computer, because even the most advanced computer is only a machine that relies on humans to feed knowledge and instructions into it. The computer is an empty machine that cannot compare with the human brain." • 17