Bern Dibner

Bern Dibner was an electrical engineer, industrialist, and historian of science and technology. Dibner was born in Lisianka, 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 Corporation and was bought by the French corporation Framatome Connectors International in 1988. In 2009, Burndy was acquired and became a subsidiary of Hubbell Incorporated. Dibner died at his home in Wilton, Connecticut on January 6, 1988. 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, as well as thousands of portraits of various scientists. Bern Dibner also wrote a great number of books on the history of science, such as The Atlantic Cable in 1955. In 1976 he was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society.