Robert C. Post received his doctorate in American history from the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1974 to 1996 he was employed by the National Museum of History and Technology/Museum of American History. His books include Street Railways and the Growth of Los Angeles (1989) and Technology, Transport, and Travel in American History (2003). For fifteen years he was editor of Technology and Culture, the quarterly journal of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). He was SHOT's president in 1997-98 and recipient of its Leonardo Da Vinci Medal in 2001.