Until recently, Americans have been little concerned with the preservation or recording of their industrial and technological heritage. This is paradoxical for the nation that is the most materially prosperous and industrialized in the world. Industrial archeologists have been attempting to fill this gap.

Industrial archeology, broadly defined, is a method of evaluating and interpreting the man-made physical environment. Recently it has been defined as "the field work aspect of the history of technology." In 1965, Kenneth Hudson, an Englishman to whom the credit must go for the current interest in industrial archeology, pointed out that "weaving together the results of field research on the one hand and library and archive research on the other . . . [is] the fundamental craft of the industrial archeologist." In this respect, industrial archeology is no different in its aims and methods than those of folklore and folklife research, geography, architectural history, and many other fields.