Frances and David Dibner Professor
of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing
Professor of Engineering Systems
Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow
Director, Program in Science, Technology and Society

David A. Mindell is Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and Professor of Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is founder and director of MIT's "DeepArch" research group in technology, archaeology, and the deep sea. His research interests include the history of automation in the military, the history of electronics and computing, theories of engineering systems, deep ocean robotic archaeology, and the history of space exploration. His book War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS Monitor was published in April, 2000 by Johns Hopkins University Press and won the Sally Hacker Prize from the Society for the History of Technology for the best book in the field accessible to a broad audience. His second book, Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics was published in the Spring of 2002, also by Johns Hopkins. Mindell is currently completing a book, Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in the First Six Lunar Landings (MIT Press, 2008). He is also co-leading a 10-year collaborative project with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutional and the Greek Ministry of Culture to explore the deep Aegean sea for ancient and bronze-age shipwrecks using autonomous underwater vehicles.

At MIT, Mindell teaches courses that combine engineering and the history of technology, including a doctoral seminar in engineering systems. He teaches "Engineering Apollo: The Moon Project as a Complex System," which integrates technical, political, and operational perspectives on the history of space exploration. From 1992-95 he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, in 1995-96 he was a fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. Before coming to MIT Mindell worked as a research engineer in the Deep Submergence Laboratory of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he is currently a Visiting Investigator. There he conducted research in parallel distributed control systems for remotely-operated and autonomous underwater vehicles for exploring the deepest parts of the ocean. He developed the control system and pilot interface for Woods Hole's JASON vehicle, as well as its high-frequency acoustic navigation system, called EXACT, which has been licensed for commercial production by Marine Sonic Technology Ltd. (Gloucester, Virginia). He is currently developing acoustic methods for modeling 3-d structures buried in the seafloor. Mindell has consulted on engineering and policy for a number of industrial and research organizations including the National Academy of Sciences. Mindell is a member of the Deep Submergence Science Committee of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System that oversees the scientific use of deep submergence vehicles for the U.S. government and science communities. Mindell has participated in over twenty-five oceanographic cruises, including expeditions to hydrothermal vents, Guadalcanal, the Lusitania, the Yorktown, and Carthaginian and Phoenician shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea. He has degrees in Literature and in Electrical Engineering from Yale University, and a doctorate in the history of technology from MIT.

Professor Mindell's new book, Digital Apollo, is scheduled for publication by MIT Press in spring, 2008.

Updated June 2007

News and announcements:

Books Published by David A. Mindell

Deep-sea robot photographs ancient Greek shipwreck (February 3, 2006)

Professor Mindell discusses his new book, "Between Human And Machine: Feedback, Control and Computing Before Cybernetics." (February 2003)