Henry Petroski
Henry Petroski
Henry Petroskiis an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he is also a prolific author. Petroski has written over a dozen books – beginning with To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Designand including a number of titles detailing the industrial design history of common, everyday objects, such as pencils, paper clips, and silverware. He is a frequent lecturer and a columnist for the magazines American...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth6 February 1942
CountryUnited States of America
A common misconception about how things such as space shuttles come to be is that engineers simply apply the theories and equations of science. But this cannot be done until the new thing-to-be is conceived in the engineer's mind's eye. Rather than following from science, engineered things lead it.
Because every design must satisfy competing objectives, there necessarily has to be compromise among, if not the complete exclusion of, some of those objectives, in order to meet what are considered the more important of them.
Failures are much more dramatic than successes, and people like drama. I think this is why automobile races draw such crowds. People expect spectacular crashes, which we tend to find more interesting than cars just racing around the track. The same is true of bridges, buildings, or any structure or machine.
Although engineers want always to make everything better, they cannot make anything perfect. This basic characteristic flaw of the products of the profession's practitioners is what drives change and makes achievement a process rather than simply a goal.
As long as there are things to wonder about, there are stories to be written about them. That makes me happy, because writing about things seems to be my thing.
Companies selling a product play down its vulnerability and emphasize its robustness. But only after technology leaves the dock is it really tested. For human operators in control of a supposedly infallible system, complacency and overconfidence can take over, and caution may be thrown to the wind.
For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by things large and small. I wanted to know what made my watch tick, my radio play, and my house stand. I wanted to know who invented the bottle cap and who designed the bridge. I guess from early on I wanted to be an engineer.
I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing about these things satisfies my curiosity about the made world while at the same time giving me an opportunity to design a new explanation for the processes that shape it.
Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.
An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.
As engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world - not just study it.
Successful design is not the achievement of perfection but the minimization and accommodation of imperfection.
Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.
We can't simply blame the engineers when things go wrong because, no matter how well they plan, things don't always go according to plan.