†Howard P. Segal

Ph.D., Princeton University

Howard Segal taught at the University of Maine since 1986 and specialized in the history of technology and, secondarily, the history of science. He taught courses in those areas for both undergraduate and graduate students. His history of technology courses covered the beginnings of civilization through the present, where my history of science courses cover American history. His approach was to place technological and scientific advances in their respective social and cultural contexts, integrating them with mainstream historical developments; he also taught survey courses in American history from Reconstruction to the present.

Howard Segal’s research and writing was primarily in the history of American technology and in the history of American utopianism.


Representative Publications

  • Technological Utopianism in American Culture (1985)
  • Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America (1994)
  • Technology in America: A Brief History (with Alan Marcus) (1989; second edition 1999)
  • Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford’s Village Industries (2005)
  • Articles and essays in many journals and edited volumes and in more popular publications as well

Work in Progress

  • “The Wave of the Future: High-Tech Utopias”