"In 1973 the Oxford University Press invited me to edit two further volumes (VI and VII) of A History of Technology, covering roughly the period 1900 to 1950. In 1978, the Press's quincentennial year, these two volumes were published, thus bringing to a conclusion a project on which work had begun in 1949. The first volume was published in 1954 and covered the period from the dawn of civilization to the fall of the ancient empires. The fifth, bringing the History up to the end of the nineteenth century, appeared in 1958. At that stage it was thought appropriate to pause and prepare a smaller work covering much the same ground but designed to introduce the subject to a wider readership; this led to the publication in 1960 of A Short History of Technology, which I wrote with Dr T. K. Derry..."