Bern Dibner

Bern Dibner was an electrical engineer, industrialist, and historian of science and technology. He made his fortune by founding the Burndy Engineering Company, which produced electrical components including the first patented solderless electrical connectors, and then he originated two major US library collections in the history of science and technology: the Burndy Library, a collection housed at the Huntington Library in California since 2006, and the Dibner Library of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. since 1976. He was a winner of both the Leonardo da Vinci Medal (1975) for the history of technology and the George Sarton Medal for the history of science (1976).