Student Receives Lemelson Fellowship to Research History of Telecommunications

MCC doctoral candidate Matthew Hockenberry has been awarded a fellowship from the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. Through the Fellows Program, researchers are granted access to the Museum's vast archives; 2-3 fellows are selected annually. Hockenberry hopes to reconstruct the supply chains of the early telecommunication technologies, following their development from prototype to mass manufacture (1876-1927).

"This project, through a close examination of these material networks and supply chains, interprets the invention of telecommunication in a new way, emphasizes this materiality’s fundamental role in the story of communication, and connects this story to a world that is struggling with the problematic forces bound up in these global networks of production," explains Hockenberry.