THE ESSENTIAL ENGINEER

Henry Petroski is a man with a mission. He feels that the engineering profession gets too little respect in the media, and he's out to change that. It's a correct assessment. The crux of the situation is crystallized in a quotation from a 1967 book (emphasis in original):1

The result is that the public generally misunderstands what engineers do, and how vital their work is to the continued functioning of society. Petroski, a civil engineer, has written fifteen books to correct that misunderstanding. Petroski supports his point here by recounting the history of the industrial revolution — a revolution in which, to simplify matters, engineering did the work and science got the credit. The renown of science was enhanced by World War II, in which many scientific advances contributed to the free world's victory over the Axis powers. The breakthroughs were scientific — radar, the jet engine, cryptography, the atomic bomb — but the great majority of the development work was done by engineering teams.

After the war, because of commercial pressure for consumer goods, and political pressure to spread the contracts to as many districts as possible, the emphasis began to shift from science and toward engineering. Government funding for pure research declined; industrial applied science laboratories burgeoned. The public, however, still ascribed the host of developments, from color televisions and microwave ovens to communications satellites, to the efforts of scientists rather than of engineers. The image of the engineer in the public's mind, in fact, became a stereotype of the technically adept but socially awkward individual who would rather tinker with a radio than talk to a girl.2

That image is one that Petroski has labored mightily to correct. In this book, however, he is only partly successful. One reason is apparently contradictory statements. I wondered numerous times if Petroski truly believed the point of view he seemed to be expressing. For example:

• "Such was the case in New Orleans, where a Category 5 hurricane had been expected to strike someday, but levees were constructed to withstand only Category 3. Even in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it was clear that the mere possibility of an even stronger hurricane hitting the city was not a sufficiently compelling argument for spending the additional money to rebuild the levees and bring related storm protection equipment up to the higher standard." [Page 190]
• "As Katrina demonstrated, the existence of a deliberately designed 'engineering barrier' system of levees, pumps, canals and the like is no guarantee that a city like New Orleans is adequately protected." [Page 190]
• "The facts that the New Orleans levees were inadequately designed, poorly maintained, and overly relied upon combined to lower the probability that they would function adequately when tested by the likes of Katrina. One would hope that the lessons learned from that storm, as well as those from Hurricane Gustav three years later, will ensure more robustly redesigned hurricane protection systems." [Pages 190-191]

Is he saying in the first statement that protecting New Orleans is not deemed cost-effective even now? No, it only seems that way; a careful reading shows that the key phrase is "mere possibility." In other words, the chances of a Cat-5 storm hitting the Big Easy were not high enough to justify the expense of augmenting its protection. I don't agree with that assessment (and, probably, neither does Petroski), but I understand that reasonable people hold such views.

Numerous such statements, on wind patterns around Antarctica, on nuclear power and other forms of alternate energy, diminish the quality of the book. I've detailed these on the Errata page. Also, he omits a good part of the alternate-energy story, and spends too much time on extraneous material, as in his excursion into the typography of the ampersand (pages 97-8) and in the chapter titled "Two Cultures."3 However, Dr. Petroski supports his main theses well. These are that science and engineering are more akin to each other, and more intertwined as professions, than commonly recognized, and that engineering is essential to solving the challenges that face us in the twenty-first century, including climate change and the need to transition to renewable fuels as petroleum runs out. A corollary is that greater respect must be accorded the engineering profession so that sufficient new graduates enter the profession and bolster a technologically competent American workforce. So, while this is a worthwhile book, it falls short of its potential and I don't consider it a keeper. I would rate it lower, but in view of Dr. Petroski's many contributions to advancing the recognition of engineering, I'll give it a 4.5.

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