Steven A. Walton

Biography

I began my career as a mechanical engineer and then turned to the history of engineering through the history of science and technology. I am principally interested in the intersection of technology, its users, and the technical knowledge that they claim about it. Much of my work, though chronologically diverse, centers on military topics from arms and armor to artillery and the use of scientific instrumentation in war. My teaching focuses on the role of science and technology in the world and I teach on the history and philosophy of technology and science, as well as general courses in European history and military history.

I am currently at work on a number of projects:

• a book-length study on the transition from castle to fortress in the British Isles in the mid-16th century.
  • This began as a study of Jaccopo Aconcio and his 1540s fortification treatise (which I found and edited, but then was subsequently scooped by an Italian team who also found it; oh well, it made me make this a more analytical work), but now looks at a series of fortifications and writings on fortifications from the 1520s to 1570s. The argument is that the codification of the trace italienne fortification, is not quite so straightforward nor as 'scientific' as it is usually taken to be.  Aconcio's positions his treatise as an example of Renaissance method, providing a clue to the position of this new knowledge within English society.
  • I am also going to be publishing a modernized edition in the journal Fort: the journal of the Fortress Study Group in 2017
• I have also recently edited a number of projects:
  • Patty Sotirin, Steven A. Walton, and Sue Collins (eds.), Home Front in the American Heartland: Local Experiences and Legacies of WWI (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020).
  • Steven A. Walton and Michael J. Armstrong (eds.), The Majestic Nature of the North: Thomas Kelah Wharton’s Journeys in Antebellum America through the Hudson River Valley and New England (SUNY Press 2019).
  • Steven A. Walton (ed.), Fifty Years of Medieval Technology and Social Change, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science & Art (Routledge, 2019) -- hopefully out by the end of the year.
  • Lesley B. Cormack, Steven A. Walton, and John Schuster (eds.), Mathematical Practitioners and the Transformation of Natural Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Springer, 2017)

• numerous studies related to American ordnance and the West Point Foundry
  • a paper on the earliest U.S. cannon foundries
  • a paper on the question of a national foundry in the US throughout the 19th century.
  • a paper on the art collection of Gouverneur Kemble (owner of the WPF)

• And as if all that is not enough.. 
  • I am also managing editor for the journal Vulcan: the International Journal for the Social History of Military Technology; editor for IA: The Journal for the Society for Industrial Archaeology; and wrapping up a stint as a series editor (with Adam Lucas) for the Brill series, Technology & Change in History.