Laura Dumin

2/8/01

Tech Writing

Time Travels Through Technical Writing

1860’s	The Morrill Act establishes land grant colleges, allowing more middle class student to attend universities.
1870’s	Engineers were upset because they were still being perceived as blue-collar and were often close to illiterate.
1890’s	- In 1893, SPEE forms and begins to discuss the English curriculum and how it could be used to benefit engineers. - Engineering students now took 2 classes in English lit. instead of just 1. - English was still being taught be English teachers who thought that teaching engineers about literature was a waste of their time.
1911	- Samuel Chandler Earle writes a paper entitled “English in the Engineering School at Tufts College.” “Earle proposed a course as broad and varied as that given students in the arts” (Kynell 146). - He proposed 4 ideas: “1. the ability to put into words an abstract thought 2. the ability to describe, in writing, an object not present 3. the ability to write for different audiences 4. the ability to give a concept full treatment by demonstrating understanding in writing” (Kynell 147). - He also added two considerations that we still look at today: “translating the conceptual into writing and understanding the audience for whom a document is intended” (Kynell 147).
1920’s	- Engineering faculty began to really try to get the English faculty on board with their idea’s on writing. - Different Engineering texts began to emerge such as T.A. Rickard’s Technical Writing and Sada Harbarger’s English for Engineers. - By the end of the decade the question turned from the quality of the books to the qualifications for the teachers themselves.
1930’s	By now, America was changing and so was the need for technical communication. “Defense-related production influenced the development of technical writing for two reasons. First, as the sophistication of weaponry increased, manufacturers needed writers to explain that technology to workers who lacked a technical background. Second, engineers […] had only a few English courses to draw upon for the challenge of explaining technology to the sometimes technically ignorant” (Kynell 148).
1950’s	- “[E]ngineering questions began to resemble engineering education questions postulated in the nineteenth century” (Kynell 149). - “The 1950s saw a remarkable demand for technical communication in the academy and workplace” (Staples 154). - People who had been doing technical writing during the wars were kept on during peace times to write for a more general audience (Staples 155).
1960’s	- The technical communication industry saw growth during these years. - Even though there were less engineers in school, more people were opting to take the technical writing courses that were being offered at colleges. - “[T]he 1960s meant a closer and more productive relationship between industry and the academy than in previous decades” (Staples 156).
1970’s	- The average technical writer was a middle age male often with a military or technical background (Staples 156). “The audience for his work would consist of American readers of English [....] he was easily expendable in hard times” (Staples 156). - Although less writing courses were being offered at single universities, there were more classes being offered overall as more schools began to teach the classes. - Many new engineering publications and organizations were forming at this time. - “The late 1970s also saw the early development of technical communication research” (Staples 158).
1980’s	“Technical communication […] saw its own disciplinary flowering in the 1980s with the development and growth of graduate programs and research” (Staples 158).
1990’s	“This brings us to the [relatively] present decade, whose disciplinary growth […] still shows old tensions, realigned but unresolved” (Staples 160). The profile of the average technical writer has changed to a female in her late 30s who has at least one college degree (Staples 160).
2000’s	Where will we go from here? Will technical writing soon be a more easily definable term? Do you think that the demand for technical writers will shrink or grow in the next 100 years?