Bern Dibner

Presented here is an image of Bern Dibner, a pioneer in the preservation of the history of science and technology, taken from the Smithsonian Libraries website. Additionally, a memorial of Bern Dibner, printed by the University of Chicago after his death, is displayed. The memorial, written by Silvio Bedini - an American Historian - presents a brief biography of Bern Dibner. This piece was published in 1989 in the University of Chicago's Technology and Culture Magazine in order to honor the legendary historian and his contributions to the preservation of important technological works. Below is a brief biography of Dibner, taken from the memorial.

Bern Dibner, the namesake of the Dibner Library, immigrated from tsarist Russia to the Lower East Side in 1904 at the age of 7. After serving in the Great War, Dibner found work as an electrician; during one of his jobs Dibner was injured, leading to a sizable cash settlement. He used this money to enroll himself into Polytechnic Institute where he studied electrical engineering.

After graduating cum laude, Dibner worked as an electrical engineer where he was tasked with unifying the electrical grid in Cuba. Finding it hard to connect the countless electrical conductors in Cuba together, Diber developed a universal connector that could be used without any sautering or welding. Dibner took this idea and used it to found the Burndy Engineering Company in 1924. While at Burndy, Dibner was granted 24 patents in electrical connectors, which he used to transform his company into a worldwide organization that pioneered the manufacturing and development of electrical connectors. 

In the 1930s, Dibner became facinated with the history of art and science after being introduced to the great works of Leonardo di Vinci - the prime example of an artist + scientist. In 1936, he took a sabbatical from his firm and studied Rennaissance art and science history at the University of Zurich and Columbia University.

In his studies, Dibner amassed countless primary sources regarding science and technology, mostly dating before the 1900s. He stored these priceless documents in the empty conference rooms of his company headquarters, but he had always wanted to find a way to display his findings to the public. In 1964, his dream was realized as the development of the Burndy Library was finally finished. 

Following his retirement from the Burndy Company, Dibner dedicated the majority of his time to the curation and cultivation of his collection and library. Dibner also made generous donations to various institutions including his collection of 1,000 works on Leonardo Di Vinci to Brandeis University. In 1974, he made a significant donation to the Smithsonian Institution which included around 1,600 units of manuscripts, 300 incunabula, and 10,000 printed works; all of which were featuring the 200 "heralds of science". This insane collection was dubbed the Dibner Library in the Smithsonians Special Collections Branch (Smithsonian Institution Libraries). 

4 years after his passing in 1988, Polytechnic dedicated its first building on the new Metrotech campus to Bern Dibner. Soon after this naming, the Bern Dibner Library at Polytechnic University opened its doors, serving as the main library of the institution.

Similarly to Joe Jacobs, Dibner was an alumnus of Polytechnic University that amassed great success in the private sector of engineering. However, the honoring of Dibner and the construction of his building was paid for academically instead of monetarilly. Being that Dibner had collected one of the most significant libraries of works of science and technology, Polytechnic felt that it was appropriate to honor their late alumnus by dedicating their new library to him. Dibner had been a trustee and benefactor to the university, contributing to the development of many academic programs at Poly as an alumnus. However, his contributions were never like Jacobs' in the sense that they could pay for the development of a whole library. Instead, the university deemed his contributions to their curriculum and to the history of science and tech as a whole significant enough to receive the honor of the naming. 

Below, an image of the Dibner Library, taken from NYU Libraries, is shown.