This article attempts to summarize the history of ATTW. It focuses on issues that led to the need for an organization devoted to technical writing, and the individuals who were leaders in ATTW, as well as in NCTE and CCCC, whose efforts provided the foundation for the presence of technical writing as a legitimate teaching and research discipline. We draw on existing historical pieces and the contributions provided by many of the first ATTW members to capture the history of ATTW. We describe the major changes in ATTW from 1973–2007 and conclude with our reflections, as well as important questions we believe to be critical to the future of ATTW

Abstract As the discipline of technical communication undergoes increasing scrutiny by scholars and teachers and as the discipline continues to evolve with advancements in technology, we should pause to consider some foundational, historical issues that led to the formation of a technical communication pedagogy in the first place. This piece evaluates shifts in an engineering curriculum from roughly 1850 to 1960 that made possible the development of a technical communication curriculum.

Evaluation of Samuel Chandler Earle's 1911 presentation to the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education demonstrates Earle's role as a key player in the shift of a technical writing course which combined both the goals of an engineering curriculum with the ultimate, real-world needs of the graduated engineer. Earle's Tufts Experiment, discussed in his paper, “English in the Engineering School at Tufts College” [1], would not only provide the impetus for a decade of discussion among engineering and English educators, but would provide, in part, the impetus for the Committee on English, a committee Earle would chair, charged with studying engineering English offerings in the United States.

Evaluation of five editions of John M. Lannon's Technical Writing (1979–1991), one of the top-selling technical writing texts available to educators today, demonstrates not only where technical communication has been, but also where it is going. Lannon's book (and his comments in an interview) begins to shed some light on how one man's textbook on technical communication responded to social conditions in the 80s.