Bern Dibner (1897 – 1988) was an electrical engineer, industrialist, and historian of science and technology.
Dibner was born near Kiev, Ukraine in 1897. He moved to the United States with his family at the age of 7. In 1921, he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Soon after graduating, he designed and patented the first solderless electrical connectors and founded the Burndy Engineering Company in 1924. The company later became the Burndy Company and was eventually bought by the French corporation Framatome Connectors International (FCI). Location Map of Ukraine with Kiev highlighted. ... Polytechnic University (Brooklyn Poly, Poly, or Polytech), located in the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City, is the United States second oldest private technology university, founded in 1854. ... 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar). ...
In addition to electrical engineering, Dibner studied the history of technology. He was an avid collector of original scientific works and of books on the history of science. He established the Burndy Library in 1941 to house his collection, which also contains thousands of portraits of various scientists. In 1976 he was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society. There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... The History of Science Society (HSS) is the primary professional society for the academic study of the history of science, founded in 1924 by George Sarton. ...
The "Burndy" appellation, used for both his company and library, was invented by Dibner himself and represents a portmanteau or blend of his first and last names. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
BernDibner obtained most of the portraits during the 1940s from print dealers in Boston, London, and Paris.
BernDibner donated a large part of the Burndy Library's collection to the Smithsonian Institution in 1974 and this formed the core of the new Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology.
In the end, approximately one thousand portraits were transferred to the Dibner Library and the rest, including almost all of the over one hundred oil paintings, remained with BernDibner and are still at the Burndy Library and Dibner Institute of the History of Science and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
BernDibner was discovering the heritage he had been denied, and he was collecting books under the guidance of knowledgeable book dealers in Europe and the United States, whose contributions Dibner was always generous in acknowledging.
BernDibner’s growing collection of books and manuscripts was first housed in metal boxes in his office in the factory, but books gradually spilled out into bookcases in the offices of colleagues and in the corridors.
BernDibner’s legacy is to have gathered together books whose former ownership and use can be studied as an adjunct to reading their texts.
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