Merritt Roe Smith

Room	E51-194B
Phone	617-253-4008
Email	roesmith@mit.edu
website

Professor Smith received his B.A. from Georgetown University (History, 1963) and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University (History, 1971). Before coming to MIT in 1978, he taught at Ohio State University and the University of Pennsylvania. His book on the Harpers Ferry Armory received the 1977 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, the 1978 Pfizer Award, and nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He has received numerous fellowships and recognition, including a Regents Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Senior Fulbright Scholarship in Sweden, a Thomas Newcomen Fellowship at the Harvard Business School, and the Leonardo da Vinci medal from the Society for the History of Technology. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and currently serves on the boards of the American Museum of Textile History, the Thomas Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University, and the public television series, "The American Experience."

His research focuses on the history of American industrialization and the role of the military in technological innovation. He is the author of Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology (1977); editor of Military Enterprise and Technological Change (1985); co-editor (with Leo Marx) of Does Technology Drive History? (1994); co-editor (with Greg Clancey) of Major Problems in the History of American Technology (1998); and, most recently, co-author (with Pauline Maier, Alex Keyssar, and Daniel Kevles) of Inventing America: A History of the United States (2002).

Activities:

Inventing America: A History of the United States

Professor Merritt Roe Smith received an add-on grant from the Sloan Foundation to support the preparation of an electronic edition of Inventing America: A History of the United States, the textbook he co-authored with Pauline Maier, Daniel Kevles, and Alex Keyssar. (Sloan has supported the textbook project since its inception in 1994.) The Digital History Resource incorporates a wide range of multimedia materials and will be included on two CD-ROMs, one per volume, packaged with every new copy of the text at no extra cost. It was prepared by Rob Martello, a 2001 graduate of the HASTS doctoral program. Inventing America uses the theme of innovation -- the impulse in American history to "make it new" -- to integrate the political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of the American story. Publication is scheduled for summer 2002 by W.W. Norton & Company (http://www.wwnorton.com/college/titles/history/inv/).