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Current Issue Links
If you live here or have anything to do with China Lake,
prepare to make a space on your bookshelf — one that
measures precisely 0.875" wide to allow for “An Engineer’s
Alphabet” plus a sliver of air for sliding it out easily and
often.
Henry Petroski has written a very special dictionary-
format compendium of brief essays and lists not only about
calculators, concrete, land surveying, mechanical drawing,
patents, railroads and other nuts-and-bolts aspects of the
field, but also architects vs. engineers, disasters and near-
disasters, Erector sets, famous engineers, grand
challenges, greatest engineering achievements of the 20th
century, the highway numbering system, postage stamps
commemorating engineers and engineering and women in
engineering.
He discusses proof tests conducted before a structure
admits general traffic, in other words, subjecting the
structure to loads heavier than any expected in the future —
driving heavy locomotives and tenders over railroad bridges,
or in the old days, herding elephants across them when the
circus passed through town.
“In some eastern-European countries it has been
customary for the design engineer to stand, sometimes
accompanied by his family, under a bridge being proof
tested to demonstrate confidence in the design.”
prepare to make a space on your bookshelf — one that
measures precisely 0.875" wide to allow for “An Engineer’s
Alphabet” plus a sliver of air for sliding it out easily and
often.
Henry Petroski has written a very special dictionary-
format compendium of brief essays and lists not only about
calculators, concrete, land surveying, mechanical drawing,
patents, railroads and other nuts-and-bolts aspects of the
field, but also architects vs. engineers, disasters and near-
disasters, Erector sets, famous engineers, grand
challenges, greatest engineering achievements of the 20th
century, the highway numbering system, postage stamps
commemorating engineers and engineering and women in
engineering.
He discusses proof tests conducted before a structure
admits general traffic, in other words, subjecting the
structure to loads heavier than any expected in the future —
driving heavy locomotives and tenders over railroad bridges,
or in the old days, herding elephants across them when the
circus passed through town.
“In some eastern-European countries it has been
customary for the design engineer to stand, sometimes
accompanied by his family, under a bridge being proof
tested to demonstrate confidence in the design.”
Petroski explains how St. Patrick of Ireland became the patron saint of engineers and why former U.S.
President Herbert Hoover ranks as one of America’s outstanding engineers for his humanitarian relief efforts
necessitated by World War I and his service in President Woodrow Wilson's wartime cabinet (hint: Hoover
“exemplified the larger role that engineers had long been predicting for their profession”).
Petroski includes pranks, as when students from MIT rigged a trap door to pop open midfield at an
opportune moment during a Harvard-Yale football game, releasing a large balloon that inflated and displayed
the letters “M.I.T.”
He writes conversationally, and little escapes his notice, hence the entries on Dilbert and on jokes about
engineers, personality of the engineer and pocket protectors.
For school cheers, he cites “Secant, cosine, tangent, sine/ 3 point 14159/ Square root, cube root, BTU/ Slip
stick, slide rule, Yay, Purdue!” and variations such as “Integral! Radical! V dV/ Slip stick! Slide rule! MIT!”
Perhaps it takes an engineer to see wide ranges of components with such a comprehensive grasp.
However, engineer/storyteller and Duke University professor Petroski (author of an entire volume devoted to “The
Pencil”) has a unique gift for entertaining while enlightening.
This weekly column is written by members of the Ridge Writers, the East Sierra Branch of the California
Writers Club. Meetings are held the first Wednesday evening of each month at High Desert Haven, and free
programs are offered throughout the year.
Ridge Writers’ book “Planet Mojave: Visions From a World Apart” is available at Carriage Inn, Jawbone
Station, the Historic USO Building, the Maturango Museum, Red Rock Books and online from the official website
www.planetmojave.com.
President Herbert Hoover ranks as one of America’s outstanding engineers for his humanitarian relief efforts
necessitated by World War I and his service in President Woodrow Wilson's wartime cabinet (hint: Hoover
“exemplified the larger role that engineers had long been predicting for their profession”).
Petroski includes pranks, as when students from MIT rigged a trap door to pop open midfield at an
opportune moment during a Harvard-Yale football game, releasing a large balloon that inflated and displayed
the letters “M.I.T.”
He writes conversationally, and little escapes his notice, hence the entries on Dilbert and on jokes about
engineers, personality of the engineer and pocket protectors.
For school cheers, he cites “Secant, cosine, tangent, sine/ 3 point 14159/ Square root, cube root, BTU/ Slip
stick, slide rule, Yay, Purdue!” and variations such as “Integral! Radical! V dV/ Slip stick! Slide rule! MIT!”
Perhaps it takes an engineer to see wide ranges of components with such a comprehensive grasp.
However, engineer/storyteller and Duke University professor Petroski (author of an entire volume devoted to “The
Pencil”) has a unique gift for entertaining while enlightening.
This weekly column is written by members of the Ridge Writers, the East Sierra Branch of the California
Writers Club. Meetings are held the first Wednesday evening of each month at High Desert Haven, and free
programs are offered throughout the year.
Ridge Writers’ book “Planet Mojave: Visions From a World Apart” is available at Carriage Inn, Jawbone
Station, the Historic USO Building, the Maturango Museum, Red Rock Books and online from the official website
www.planetmojave.com.
|
| Book Review |
| Ridge Writers on Books ‘An Engineer’s Alphabet’ By Henry Petroski, 360 pages, photos, hardcover Cambridge University Press, 2011, $21.99 |
| By DONNA McCROHAN ROSENTHAL |
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