Reddit reviews To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
We found 15 Reddit comments about To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Vintage
If you're looking for casual reads, I have a few:
To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski
Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design by Henry Petroski
If you're into racing at all, The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue and Paul VanValkenburgh is a great account of Donohue's career. It talks plenty about engineering as well.
I might be able to recommend a few others if you can point me toward a specific field of engineering.
To Engineer is Human by Henry Petroski
To Engineer is Human
Good question, good answers so far. I'd also recommend To Engineer is Human by Henry Patroski for a thorough look into that question, the design process in general, and what elevates the truly great engineers from the good ones.
We won’t know for a long, long time. Take a look at To Engineer is Human. It’s got some neat stories.
Great explanation of this and other engineering failures in this book: To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734163/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_u7DUzbYPVVVET
Well, they didn't. During the industrial revolution, it was largely trial and error, causing great catastrophes.
Bridges are an interesting example: In the nineteenth century with the expansion of the railroad, iron replaced timber in bridge building as wood was unable to hold the load of trains. At that time, engineers knew how to build stone and wooden bridges - due to the accumulated knowledge during the centuries- but iron was a new material (technology). These iron brides collapsed in numbers that are still discussed today causing the death of thousands of people. Due to the great number of collapses of iron railway bridges, in 1847 Queen Victoria appointed a commission to look into the use of iron in bridges charging its members to
> "endeavor to ascertain such principles and form such rules as may enable the Engineer and Mechanic, in their respective spheres, to apply the Metal with confidence, and shall illustrate by theory and experiment the action which takes place under varying circumstances in Iron Railway Bridges which have been constructed"
Even that commission, whose report was published in 1849, promulgated a misguided idea about the fatigue of metals, theorizing that "crystallization" occurred under vibratory action, and this misconception was to persist well into the 20th century (Petroski, 1992).
Notable examples are the Tay bridge collapse in 1879 and the Quebec bridge failure in 1907. After the collapse of the 157-foot long truss bridge at Ashtabula, Ohio in 1876, which killed almost a hundred people, prompted Harper's Weekly to ask "Is there no method of making iron bridges of assured safety?". Of course, this question sounds ridiculous today.
All the above is from Henry Petroski's excellent book "To engineer is Human. The Role of Failure in Successful Design", 1992 which provides great examples of how failures guide the technological progress.
I'm a fairly intelligent person (graduated with honors from a top engineering school), and really don't enjoy reading books... what now? I just don't enjoy reading stories, I have enjoyed books like this one... but those are few and far between. Granted I would never use "in2" to save one keystroke.
On the Facts About the Ledge site, you'll see they retract for easy cleaning. I read that and thought, "Oh, double hell no!" They move? More things to go wrong!
I've read too many Henry Petroski books (Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways, anyone?) to trust any man made structures.
This is a difficult question since I don't know the person that you're buying for, but blue print posters are a great gift for engineers. Here's a blue print to the space shuttle that is cool from think geek http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/13e7/. Zazzle has a lot of cool blue prints as well http://www.zazzle.com/wright_bros_flyer_blueprint_1903_posters-228648945618474151. It just depends on what he or she wants.
In terms of books I really liked To Engineer is Human by Henry Petrokski. http://www.amazon.com/Engineer-Human-Failure-Successful-Design/dp/0679734163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419188349&sr=8-1&keywords=To+Engineer+is+human. I hope this gives you some more ideas for gifts for engineers.
you might like this then
"No matter how well you design for failure, that design for failure will itself fail"
Henry Petroski wrote a pretty good book about that: To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design.
http://www.amazon.com/To-Engineer-Is-Human-Successful/dp/0679734163
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0385267746
Not sure if this counts as a book precisely, but Feynman's lectures on EM are free online!
I'm actually far more into the subatomic physic and aerospace side of electrical engineering so that's been my main focus. I'm currently (slowly, and not doing the homework problems) going through this look into everything JPL has been doing in regards to electric propulsion: "Fundamentals of Electric Propulsion: Ion and Hall Thrusters."
Mulling over your question, I should specify that I read educational books aimed toward a technical audience but probably wouldn't be considered "technical" themselves. These were my last three:
math (differentiation, integration, C [the miscellaneous topics in calculus class], multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations)
science (chemistry, physics [mechanics and electricity and magnetism])
engineering (statics, mechanics, dynamics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, combustion, aerodynamics, controls)
i think i just described the first 2 years of any engineering program -.-
to engineer is human is a good quick read as well regarding design and failure