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
engineering achieve function
Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.
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My first book, 'To Engineer Is Human,' was prompted by nonengineer friends asking me why so many technological accidents and failures were occurring. If engineers knew what they were doing, why did bridges and buildings fall down? It was a question that I had often asked myself, and I had no easy answer.
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Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.
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Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration at best and failure at worst.
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Everything we do is designed, whether we're producing a magazine, a website, or a bridge. Design is really the creative invention that designs everything.
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Because they are so humbled by their creations, engineers are naturally conservative in their expectations of technology. They know that the perfect system is the stuff of science fiction, not of engineering fact, and so everything must be treated with respect.
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The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure can occur, we are more likely to produce successful designs.
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I was always told that I was good in mathematics, and I guess my grades and standardized test scores supported that. My worst subjects were those that generally involved a lot of reading - English and history. So, having good test scores in math and mediocre ones in reading, I was naturally advised to major in engineering in college.
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Too much redesign has to do more with fad and fashion than with fitness and function. It is change for the sake of change. Such redesign is not only unnecessary, it is all too often also retrogressive, leading to things that work less effectively than those they were designed to replace.
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Many of the familiar little things that we use every day have typically evolved over a period of time to a state of familiarity. They balance form and function, elegance and economy, success and failure in ways that are not only acceptable, but also admirable.
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Any design, whether it's for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.
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You can almost say that a design error is a human error because, after all, it's we humans who do the designing.
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It seems to be a law of design that for every advantage introduced through redesign, there is an accompanying unintended disadvantage.
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Betting on the success of innovative technologies in the marketplace can carry all the uncertainty and risk that betting on the next card in the deck does at a blackjack table in Las Vegas. There is a factor of randomness that must be factored in, but precisely how to do so is anyone's guess.