What are the historical foundations of technical communication?
Some scholars claim that the beginnings of technical communication can be traced back to “the writings and artifacts of many cultures, including the Aztecs, Chinese, Egyptians, and Babylonians” (O’Hara 1). Whereas the writing of technical documents has been around for centuries, what is critical to our current discussion is the development of technical communication as a profession. According to Robert R. Rathbone, the driving force behind the beginnings of technical writing as a profession was World War II (26). This event prompted the disassociation of writing about science from performing scientific acts when “a special task force was recruited to deliver the paperwork” of scientists and engineers (Rathbone 26). In the post World War II era of the 1950s, technical communication grew in response to wartime technologies being applied to peacetime use (Staples 155). Then, in the 1960s, technologies associated with the Cold War and new market trends, such as proposal writing, spurred th
