Lynn White began his career as medieval historian focusing on the history of Latin monasticism in Sicily during the Norman Period but realized the coming conflict in Europe would interfere with his access to source materials. While at Princeton he read the works of Lefebvre des Noëttes, and Marc Bloch. This led to his first work in the history of technology, "Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages" in 1940.


Noettes was a retired French cavalry officer who made his hobby the history of horses. He wrote that the utilization of animals in antiquity was inefficient because the ancients were limited by the technologies of their period, specifically the lack of horseshoes and a bad harness design. White expanded Noettes’ conclusions into a thesis of his own that encompassed the relationship of the newly realized efficient horse and the agricultural revolution of the time.