The International Committee for the History of Technology will hold its 36th symposium as part of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in Budapest. The general theme of the Congress is “Ideas and Instruments in Social Context” and ICOHTEC encourages proposals for sessions dealing with the history of technology within this broad framework. While open to all proposals, the program committee suggests the following subthemes for the consideration of session organizers and contributors:

- impact of ideas and ideologies on technical innovations
- theories in the history of technology
- impact of politics in technology during the Cold War
- social demands in shaping technology and designing products
- epistemic status of instruments and lab-technology
- interaction between ideas, theories, models, paradigms and the development of instruments
- use of lab-technology in everyday work
- instruments in different cultural and ethnological contexts

We urge contributors to consider organizing a full session of three or more papers. Individual paper submissions will, of course, be considered. It is also possible to propose papers unrelated to the general theme. They can be presented in a “Special Topics” session.

Note: Membership in ICOHTEC is not required to participate in the symposium.

INDIVIDUAL PAPER proposals must include: (1) a 250-word (maximum) abstract in English; and (2) a one-page CV. Abstracts should include the author’s name and email address, a short informative title of the paper, a concise statement of the thesis, a brief discussion of the sources, and a summary of expected conclusions. In preparing your paper, remember that presentations are not full-length articles. You will have no more than 20 minutes speaking time, which is roughly equivalent to 8 double-spaced typed pages. Contributors are encouraged to submit full-length versions of their papers after the conference for consideration by ICOHTEC’s journal ICON. If you are submitting a paper proposal dealing with a particular subtheme, please indicate this in your proposal.
SESSION proposals must include: (1) an abstract of the session (250 words maximum), listing the proposed papers and a session chairperson; (2) abstracts for each paper (250 words maximum); (3) a one-page CV for each contributor and chairperson. Sessions should consist of at least three speakers, and may include several sections of three speakers each, which might extend over more than one day.

Proposal submissions
The final deadline for all submissions is Monday 3 March 2008.

Please submit proposals for papers and sessions to Reinhold Bauer (chair of the program committee) at rbauer@hsu-hh.de

If email is unavailable, proposals may be sent by fax to Reinhold Bauer : 0049-40-6541-2762. Otherwise they may be sent via regular mail, postmarked 3 March 2008 to: Reinhold Bauer, Helmut Schmidt Universität, Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, Fakultät für Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, Postfach 700822, D-22008 Hamburg, Germany.

Graduate students who are members of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) are eligible for travel support. Go to:
http://www.historyoftechnology.org/awards/icohtec_tg.html