On the occasion of the award of the author's da Vinci Medal in 2020, this article looks back to the early twentieth-century origins of the history of technology. Spotlighted are three pioneering historians, Sigfried Giedion, Abbott Payson Usher, and Lewis Mumford, whose writings were important to society and the author's intellectual journey. Their histories, written in the wake of World War I and the Second Industrial Revolution, addressed a question as urgent today as in their time: will the human spirit survive the age of machines? Their shared quest to save the soul of technology took them into the world of machines but also cosmic realms. Their solutions are arguably just as important today, as we confront the challenges of artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, and other digital technologies. Should the current generation of historians of technology be similarly committed to applying the lessons of history to modern technogenic problems?
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