Trained as a social and cultural historian, Joseph H. Corns dissertation dealt with the reception of a new technology in the United States: heavier-than-air flight. That became his first book, The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation. He has subsequently done research and written about other kinds of popular responses to and expectations regarding new technologies and is presently completing a book on the history of users of complex personal technologies, starting with clocks and sewing machines and ending with automobiles and computers.