'Although an interest in technological 'failure' has become prominent in recent history of technology, historians have not always clearly articulated the presuppositions of attributing 'failure' to technology. This paper undertakes a critical examination of two main historiographies of 'failure': 'failure' as a categorization of 'pathological' technologies that clearly Demarcates them from 'successes', and 'failure' as a mundane and inevitable prerequisite of subsequent 'success'. To reconcile these divergent analyses, this paper argues that historians should not treat 'failure' as residing in the technology itself. It is rather a matter of imputation according to socially embedded criteria of what constitutes success and failure. Accordingly judgements of 'failure' are prone to interpretive flexibility in a manner that is not necessarily settled by any process of 'closure.' I will argue that any 'failure' of technologies should be located in the socio-technical relations of usage, especially in the expectations, skills and resources of human users. The moral irony of attributing responsibility for 'failure' to technologies themselves rather than to humans users will thereby be highlighted."