We are deeply saddened to share the passing of our dear colleague and longtime ICOHTEC member Barton (Bart) Hacker (1935–2025). Bart was a leading scholar of military technology and a generous presence in our community, remembered especially for his sustained work in shaping ICOHTEC discussions on the social history of military technology. Below, we publish in full an obituary written by Yoel Bergman, in tribute to Bart’s life, scholarship, and service to the field. This year we hope to dedicate a session in remembrance of Bart in Greece, depending on the participants
Our dear and longtime ICOHTEC colleague, Barton (Bart) Hacker, passed away on June 7, 2025, in Annapolis, at age 89. Bart was a friendly and noticeable erudite in ICOHTEC, where he skillfully organized sessions on military technology histories for many years with the annual symposia. The sessions brought together global participants, familiarizing with various researches and histories.
Bart earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1968, widely researching and publicizing since on the histories of military technology, social dimensions of warfare, women and the military, war art, military museums, and non-Western military institutions. All was done while serving for years as a Military Historian and Senior Curator at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History. Previously he held teaching and research positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Iowa State University, the University of Houston, University of Chicago, and Oregon State University. He recently edited an anthology named “Astride Two Worlds: Technology and the American Civil War”, and based on a conference that he organized at the Smithsonian. Bart was the recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci Medal from the Society for the History of Technology and of several writing prizes. With his partner, Margaret S. Vining (1933-2018) who was also active in ICOHTEC symposia, he co-authored numerous works and established the Vining Hacker Fellowship in Women’s Military History at the Smithsonian.
In 1994 Bart called for changes in the scope and methods of researches performed on the history of military technology (Hacker, “Military Institutions, Weapons, and Social Change: Toward a New History of Military”, Technology and Culture, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1994). He noted that in recent decades new approaches, new methods and evidence have allowed historians to reclaim a broader range of human experience than the older political-military history could encompass. The new history now interdisciplinary, can draw from the innovations in the social sciences and anthropology. His points materialized into the new field of Social History of Military Technology (SHMT), which examines the reciprocal relationships between warfare, military technology and institutions, and society. It was built under the new perspective that military-technology history touches much more aspects than realized before. As a method it was designed to depart from mil-tech historians internalist tradition that focused on weapons technical novelties, or “hardware” and the role in battles
Thus, within ICOHTEC symposia, Bart created and a primarily organized for years, “the Annual Symposium on the Social History of Military Technology”. The last symposium, number 14 was held in Katowice, Poland 2019, a year before the Corona. As usual with these meetings, the sessions first began with the earlier times as the Middle Ages progressing lastly to modernity. The annual meetings have gradually led to the creation of the related journal, Vulcan: The Journal of the Social History of Military Technology. Bart was the initial editor and later Steve Walton. It was published under Brill during 2013 to 2022 (10 volumes).
Photo by Sławomir Łotysz, 2103.