My dissertation was in the history of technology (on technology and management structure at the nineteenth-century Lowell textile mills, University of Chicago 1982), and it’s always been a primary interest. I was curator of the history of technology at the National Museum of American History for twenty years, and curated exhibits and published several books and articles in the history of technology then. Exhibits included Engines of Change and Information Age; I wrote books to go with each of them. I wrote on pin machines, the patent system, and representation in technological thought. I stepped away from the field when I started to teach public humanities at Brown, but in the past few years I’ve returned, with an especial interest in making, skill, and repair. My new book, Tools: A Human History will be published by MIT Press in Spring 2027.

• Tools: A Human History (MIT Press, 2027)
• “Tale of a Wrench,” in Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar, 2026
• “Bibliography on Tools and Toolmaking in New England,” in Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar, 2026
• “Museums of Progress: Early 20th-Century Museums of Technology and Industry,” in Never Neutral, ed. Laura Shiavo (Routledge), 2024
• “Fixing as Learning,” in Repair: Sustainable Design Futures, edited by Markus Berger and Kate Irvin, Routledge, 2022
• “American Technology Museums: From Machines to Culture,” Ferrum, 2011
• “Technology, in Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life, ed. Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda, ABC-Clio, 2007
• “The Transformation of Antebellum Patent Law,” Technology and Culture 1991 32(4): 932-959. Reprinted in Joseph Scott Miller, Patents (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010). Reprinted in Steven Wilf, ed., Intellectual Property Law and History (Ashgate, 2012)
• Videohistory of Walking Robot Designs:  University of Maryland walking robot class; National Institute of Standards and Technology “Erica” robot; Odetics, Inc., walking robot program; and Carnegie Mellon “Rover” project, 1988-90
•  “Men, Women, Production, Consumption,” in Arwen Mohun and Roger Horwitz, His and Hers: Gender and American Consumerism, 1900-1960 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998), pp. 7-37.
• “Learning from Technological Things,” in W. David Kingery, ed., Learning from Things (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), pp. 31-34
• “Representation and Power,” Technology and Culture, 1995 36 (Supplement): S54-S81.
• “Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate: The Cultural History of the Punchcard,” Journal of American Culture 1992 15(5): 43-55
• “Transmitting the Power of Niagara: Scientific, Technological, and Cultural Contexts of an Engineering Decision,” Technology and Society 8 (1989): 11-18.
• “Culture and Technological Design in the 19^th-century Pin Industry: John Howe and the Howe Manufacturing Company,” in Technology and Culture, 1987 28 (2): 253-282
• “Promoting the Hudson River Railroad,” in Railroad History 1987 (157): 55-63
• History from Things: Essays on Material Culture, ed. with W. David Kingery (Washington: Smithsonian 
• InfoCulture: The Smithsonian Book of Information Age Inventions (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993)
•  “Machine Politics: The Political Construction of Technology,” in History from Things, edited by Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 197-214. 
• Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790-1860, with Brooke Hindle (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press,1986)
• “Managerial Structure and Technological Style: The Textile Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts,” Business and Economic History, Second Series 13 (1984): 
• The Philosophy of Manufactures: Early Debate on Industry in the United States, ed. with Michael Folsom (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1982)

• Vibe-coding for local historyFebruary 20, 2026
  AI makes it possible to write interesting and useful programs even if you don’t know how to code. Describe what you want, wait a few minutes, and wow! Here’s your site. It’s called “vibe coding.” It’s not quite that easy. The first draft appears in a minute or two. It… Read more: Vibe-coding for local history
• Rhode Island Industrial SitesJanuary 3, 2026
  An experiment to take the Historic American Engineering Record’s 1978 RHODE ISLAND Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites and make it an interactive website. Map generated with assistance from Google Gemini. My first vibe-coding experiment. It’s a map, but look closely and it’s also a bit of a mess.… Read more: Rhode Island Industrial Sites
• Books, Material and DigitalAugust 15, 2021
  A mashup of a course: book history, material and digital explorations, and making. This past semester (Summer, 2021) I taught a course titled “Books, Material and Digital,” a course that combined book history, hands-on making, and explorations of libraries, reading, and digital scholarship. (Kristen Iemma co-taught as TA.) Designed originally… Read more: Books, Material and Digital
• Paper, ink, type, booksJuly 16, 2020
  Next year I will be teaching a new course on books that combines my interest in making with my new focus on digital scholarship. This summer I worked with three Brown undergraduates (Elena Newman, Malery Nguyen, and Mara Jovanovic) to invent the course, and especially to think about hands-on projects.… Read more: Paper, ink, type, books
• BoatbuildingJuly 12, 2020
  In Fall semester 2019 I co-taught a course called Boatbuilding: Design, Making, and Culture, with Chris Bull and Shep Shapiro. Here’s the description: This course introduces the study of the design, engineering, work, material culture and history through the construction of a traditional workboat, a Maine peapod. As the class… Read more: Boatbuilding
• Open Access Articles! or, what happens to old articlesJune 19, 2018
  How best to make journal articles accessible? Over the years, I’ve published a few dozen essays, in a range of journals, books, encyclopedias, newsletters, and blogs. A recent discussion with folks from the Brown University Library about the Brown Digital Repository got me thinking about how accessible they were, and… Read more: Open Access Articles! or, what happens to old articles
• Teaching SkillJanuary 14, 2018
  In the Fall semester, I taught a new course, a seminar for first-year students: “Skills: From the Medieval Workshop to the Maker Movement.” It was historical and hands-on: I wanted students to understand skills by reading and writing as well as by doing. We read history, psychology, and anthropology; manifestos,… Read more: Teaching Skill
• “Just measure, cut and bolt together”May 7, 2017
  I which I find out what I don’t know about building things by building things. Making a potting bench. On Medium. https://medium.com/@lubar/just-measure-cut-and-bolt-together-4a48c9dd2647   View at Medium.com
• Making thingsSeptember 30, 2016
  I’ve finished my “Lessons from the Lost Museum” book manuscript and I’m starting to think about a new project. I’ve gotten in the habit of writing and may as well keep at it! The new project is about making and technical skill. Not sure how to frame it, or what the end… Read more: Making things
• Design Objects in MuseumsMarch 13, 2016
  [my talk to the Questioning Aesthetics Symposium, RISD, March 2015] The call for papers placed this conference in the context of RISD’s recent interest and success in “transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries to encourage more holistic, multi-faceted approaches to art and design practice.” In my talk I’d like to focus on disciplinary boundaries… Read more: Design Objects in Museums
• Connecting with The Wright BrothersJanuary 30, 2016
  I was honored to give a brief talk as part of the kickoff for Reading Across Rhode Island’s everyone-should-read-it book, David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers. Here are the notes from my talk.  
• Building a skiascopeJune 14, 2015
                  “The theoretic value of the skiascope is incontestable.”  —Benjamin Ives Gilman In his Museum Ideals of Purpose and Method (1918 ), Gilman gives detailed instructions for making a skiascope, a device that will allow museum to see paintings and sculptures more clearly, by blocking… Read more: Building a skiascope
• Collecting the History of Technology at the National Museum of American HistoryNovember 10, 2014
  Collecting for history museums is challenging work, and there needs to be more research and writing on both its history and how to do it. We need to understand how and why collections came to museums; what decisions that shaped collections they hold today? And we need to talk more about… Read more: Collecting the History of Technology at the National Museum of American History
• Beautiful DataJuly 4, 2014
  I spent the last two weeks of June at Beautiful Data, a workshop funded by the Getty Foundation and run by Harvard’s MetaLab. I’m not sure why the name, “Beautiful Data”: but it seems fair, given that the workshop address both data about beautiful things and data made beautiful by… Read more: Beautiful Data
• 21st-Century History of Technology: Fashioning a Usable PastOctober 10, 2013
  Yesterday the MIT Museum and the Hagley Museum and Library ran a fascinating workshop on “Doing the History of Technology in the 21st Century.” The workshop, at the MIT Museum, brought together historians, museum curators, public humanists, and more to talk about how the history of technology is changing – and… Read more: 21st-Century History of Technology: Fashioning a Usable Past
• MOOCingSeptember 9, 2013
  My post on my summer of being a student, and watching students work as professionals, is up on the Public Humanities Center blog.
• LeGrand Lockwood, Early AdopterJune 29, 2013
  Back in April I gave a talk at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk, Connecticut. They’ve done a very nice exhibition about the technology of the day, focusing on some of the remarkable technologies Lockwood put into his 1864 home. My talk focused on what Lockwood and others of his… Read more: LeGrand Lockwood, Early Adopter
• Creative Providence: Past, Present and Future. An NEH Grant Proposal.January 4, 2013
  We’re  submitting a planning grant to the NEH for a new program that will link Providence’s creative past with its creative future. Here’s a summary: The Brown Center for Public Humanities seeks $34,100 to cover the costs of planning and testing a series of pop-up installations and events that tie… Read more: Creative Providence: Past, Present and Future. An NEH Grant Proposal.