To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design - Hardcover

Petroski, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312806809 ISBN 13: 9780312806804

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1985

Synopsis

Examines the process of the development of an engineering design and discusses the causes of the unsuccessful designs of engineering structures

About this title

Review:

The moral of this book is that behind every great engineering success is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular) engineering failures. Petroski covers many of the best known examples of well-intentioned but ultimately failed design in action -- the galloping Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which you've probably seen tossing cars willy-nilly in the famous black-and-white footage), the collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways -- and many lesser known but equally informative examples. The line of reasoning Petroski develops in this book were later formalized into his quasi-Darwinian model of technological evolution in The Evolution of Useful Things, but this book is arguably the more illuminating -- and defintely the more enjoyable -- of these two titles. Highly recommended.

About the Author:

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. The author of more than a dozen previous books, he lives in Durham, North Carolina, and Arrowsic, Maine.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0312806809
• ISBN 13: 9780312806804
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 247