The Finnish society for the history of technology and its journal Tekniikan Waiheita

milestones, 1980-2010

Kirjoittajat

• Petri Paju

Abstrakti

The Finnish Society for the History of Technology and its journal Tekniikan Waiheita: Milestones, 1980–2010

The Finnish Society for the History of Technology has its roots going back more than eighty years. This is mainly because it continues the work of an earlier organisation devoted to preserving the history of technology. In 1926–28, the Finnish Society for the Museum of Technology (Suomen Teknillinen Museoyhdistys) was founded jointly by several government ministries and engineering associations. After several stages, its goal of establishing a permanent Museum of Technology was achieved: in the early 1970s the museum gradually opened its exhibitions to visitors in Helsinki.

After the success, the society began to search for new directions and purpose. As part of this era of change, the society began journal publication. The new periodical Tekniikan Waiheita, the Finnish Quarterly for the History of Technology, was founded in 1983 by members of the society who were devoted to the study of the history of technology. In 1994, a new phase began: Tekniikan Waiheita started to resemble the present-day journal in form, and its main articles usually had proper scholarly references. In 1995, the society changed its name to the 'Finnish Society for the History of Technology' (Tekniikan Historian Seura – Teknikhistoriska Samfundet, in Finnish and in Swedish). During recent years the society has had some 320 members and the circulation of its journal has been around 1100 copies which, given the small population of Finland (approximately 5.2 million), makes its distribution and availability quite high in international terms, compared with other history-oftechnology journals.