Henry Petroski

"La ingeniería es humana" nos reconcilia con el error. En sus páginas, Henry Petroski analiza la ingeniería como tentativa humana y por consiguiente sujeta a error. Sin embargo, el enfoque de Petroski presenta el fallo desde un prisma novedoso demostrando que construir mas alla de los limites de lo conocido y emplear materiales nunca utilizados antes no tiene por que conducir necesariamente al fracaso. Proyectar es en definitiva evitar el fallo y conocer la forma en que otras estructuras similares han fallado nos previene de repetirlos. A lo largo del libro se analizan algunos de los fallos mas relevantes en la historia de la ingenieria como el del derrumbe de las pasarelas del hotel Hyatt de Kansas City, el Puente de Tacoma Narrows o los accidentes del DC 10 o el Comet de los que podemos extraer lecciones fundamentales para el desempeño de la ingenieria. Nadie quiere aprender a base de errores, pero de los exitos no podemos extraer conclusiones que nos permitan ir mas alla. Como sostiene Petroski, el exito puede ser grandioso, pero sin duda la decepcion puede enseñarnos mas.

Henry Petroski demuestra en este ensayo que el avance tecnológico y la mejora en el diseño son más una reacción ante la frustración por algo que no funciona bien que una forma de responder a nuevas necesidades. De esta manera el autor arroja una nueva luz sobre algunos fracasos espectaculares: desde los desastres de los transbordadores espaciales hasta la caida de las torres gemelas de Nueva York.

To explain the enduring aspects of engineering design, the author relates stories of some of the greatest engineering successes and failures of all time. These case histories, presented as paradigms for modern engineers, are intended to illuminate the design process and improve design practice.

Henry Petroski demuestra en este ensayo que el avance tecnológico y la mejora en el diseño es más una reacción ante la frustración por algo que no funciona bien, que una forma de responder a nuevas necesidades. A lo largo del libro se destaca que no existe un camino mas seguro a la ruina que el crear a partir de exitos pasados; de esta manera el autor arroja una nueva luz sobre algunos fracasos espectaculares: desde los desastres de los transbordadores espaciales hasta la caida de las torres gemelas de Nueva York.

Un paseo por la historia del libro como objeto, como transmisor de conocimiento, como medio de comunicación y todo su entorno como la iluminación de las bibliotecas, su evolución sus modos de transporte, su conservación y además diversos métodos de ordenación. Una obra para los amantes de los libros.

Why has the durable paper shopping bag been largely replaced by its flimsy plastic counterpart? What circuitous chain of improvements led to such innovations as the automobile cup holder and the swiveling vegetable peeler? With the same relentless curiosity and lucid, witty prose he brought to his earlier books, Henry Petroski looks at some of our most familiar objects and reveals that they are, in fact, works in progress. For there can never be an end to the quest for the perfect design. To illustrate his thesis, Petroski tells the story of the paper drinking cup, which owes its popularity to the discovery that water glasses could carry germs. He pays tribute to the little plastic tripod that keeps pizza from sticking to the box and analyzes the numerical layouts of telephones and handheld calculators. Small Things Considered is Petroski at his most trenchant and provocative, casting his eye not only on everyday artifacts but on their users as well.

El éxito no es simplemente la ausencia del fracaso, es la anticipación de cómo puede ocurrir el fracaso. Como demuestra Henry Petroski en este ensayo, el avance tecnológico y la mejora en el diseño es mas una reaccion ante la frustracion por algo que no funciona bien, que una forma de responder a nuevas necesidades. Los inventores, los ingenieros, los diseñadores y los usuarios comunes se enfrentan a problemas de este tipo todo el tiempo al querer usar los objetos mas alla de sus limites. De ahi que en muchas ocasiones imitar de manera facil el exito solo lleva al chasco; desde una mala presentacion en PowerPoint hasta un desastre en la construccion de un puente con tecnologia de punta o en el lanzamiento de un transbordador espacial. Todos ellos son casos que revelan en el proceso de innovacion la relacion incontrovertible y paradojica entre el exito y el fracaso.

From the author of the highly praised The Pencil and The Evolution of Useful Things comes another captivating history of the seemingly mundane: the book and its storage.Most of us take for granted that our books are vertical on our shelves with the spines facing out, but Henry Petroski, inveterately curious engineer, didnt. As a result, readers are guided along the astonishing evolution from papyrus scrolls boxed at Alexandria to upright books shelved at the Library of Congress. Unimpeachably researched, enviably written, and charmed with anecdotes from Seneca to Samuel Pepys to a nineteenth-century bibliophile who had to climb over his books to get into bed, The Book on the Bookshelf is indispensable for anyone who loves books.

A celebration culture and technology, as seen through the history of the humble yet ubiquitous toothpick, from the best-selling author of The Pencil.From ancient Rome, where emperor Nero made his entrance into a banquet hall with a silver toothpick in his mouth, to nineteenth-century Boston, where Charles Forster, the father of the American wooden toothpick industry, ensured toothpicks appeared in every restaurant, the toothpick has been an omnipresent, yet often overlooked part of our daily lives. Here, with an engineers eye for detail and a poets flair for language, Henry Petroski takes us on an incredible tour of this most interesting invention. Along the way, he peers inside todays surprisingly secretive toothpick-manufacturing industry, and explores a treasure trove of the toothpicks unintended uses and perils, from sandwiches to martinis and beyond.

Petroski reveals the science and engineering--not to mention the politics, egotism, and sheer magic--behind Americas great bridges, particularly those constructed during the great bridge-building era starting in the 1870s and continuing through the 1930s. It is the story of the men and women who built the St. Louis, the George Washington, and the Golden Gate bridges, drawing not only on their mastery of numbers but on their gifts for persuasion and self-promotion. It is an account of triumphs and ignominious disasters (including the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which literally twisted itself apart in a high wind). And throughout this grandly engaging book, Petroski lets us see how bridges became the "symbols and souls" of our civilization, as well as testaments to their builders vision, ingenuity, and perseverance."Seamlessly linked...With astonishing scope and generosity of view, Mr. Petroski places the tradition of American bridge-building in perspective."--New York Times Book Review

This collection of informative and pleasurable essays by Henry Petroski elucidates the role of engineers in shaping our environment in countless ways, big and small.In Remaking the World Petroski gravitates this time, perhaps, toward the big: the English Channel tunnel, the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the QE2, and the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, now the tallest buildings in the world. He profiles Charles Steinmetz, the genius of the General Electric Company; Henry Martyn Robert, a military engineer who created Roberts Rules of Order; and James Nasmyth, the Scotsman whose machine tools helped shape nineteenth-century ocean and rail transportation. Petroski sifts through the fossils of technology for cautionary tales and remarkable twists of fortune, and reminds us that failure is often a necessary step on the path to new discoveries. He explains soil mechanics by way of a game of "rock, scissors, paper," and clarifies fundamental principles of engineering through the spokes of a Ferris wheel.Most of all, Henry Petroski continues to celebrate the men and women whose scrawls on the backs of envelopes have immeasurably improved our world.

Why has the durable paper shopping bag been largely replaced by its flimsy plastic counterpart? What circuitous chain of improvements led to such innovations as the automobile cup holder and the swiveling vegetable peeler? With the same relentless curiosity and lucid, witty prose he brought to his earlier books, Henry Petroski looks at some of our most familiar objects and reveals that they are, in fact, works in progress. For there can never be an end to the quest for the perfect design. To illustrate his thesis, Petroski tells the story of the paper drinking cup, which owes its popularity to the discovery that water glasses could carry germs. He pays tribute to the little plastic tripod that keeps pizza from sticking to the box and analyzes the numerical layouts of telephones and handheld calculators. Small Things Considered is Petroski at his most trenchant and provocative, casting his eye not only on everyday artifacts but on their users as well.

Anyone wondering what sort of experience prepares one for a future as an engineer may be surprised to learn that it includes delivering newspapers. But as Henry Petroski recounts his youth in 1950s Queens, New Yorka borough of handball games and inexplicably numbered streetshe winningly shows how his after-school job amounted to a prep course in practical engineering. Petroksis paper was The Long Island Press, whose headlines ran to COP SAVES OLD WOMAN FROM THUG and DiMAG SAYS BUMS CANT WIN SERIES. Folding it into a tube suitable for throwing was an exercise in post-Euclidean geometry. Maintaining a Schwinn revealed volumes about mechanics. Reading Paperboy, we also learn about the hazing rituals of its namesakes, the aesthetics of kitchen appliances, and the delicate art of penny-pitching. With gratifying reflections on these and other lessons of a bygone eralessons about diligence, labor, and community-mindednessPaperboy is a piece of Americana to cherish and reread.

From the acclaimed author of The Pencil and To Engineer Is Human, The Essential Engineer is an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our worlds most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources. While the scientist may identify problems, it falls to the engineer to solve them. It is the inherent practicality of engineering, which takes into account structural, economic, environmental, and other factors that science often does not consider, that makes engineering vital to answering our most urgent concerns.Henry Petroski takes us inside the research, development, and debates surrounding the most critical challenges of our time, exploring the feasibility of biofuels, the progress of battery-operated cars, and the question of nuclear power. He gives us an in-depth investigation of the various options for renewable energyamong them solar, wind, tidal, and ethanolexplaining the benefits and risks of each. Will windmills soon populate our landscape the way they did in previous centuries? Will synthetic trees, said to be more efficient at absorbing harmful carbon dioxide than real trees, soon dot our prairies? Will we construct a sunshade in outer space to protect ourselves from dangerous rays? In many cases, the technology already exists. Whats needed is not so much invention as engineering.Just as the great achievements of centuries pastthe steamship, the airplane, the moon landingonce seemed beyond reach, the solutions to the twenty-first centurys problems await only a similar coordination of science and engineering. Eloquently reasoned and written, The Essential Engineer identifies and illuminates these problemsand, above all, sets out a course for putting ideas into action.

Here are two dozen tales in the grand adventure of engineering from the Henry Petroski, who has been called Americas poet laureate of technology. Pushing the Limits celebrates some of the largest things we have createdbridges, dams, buildings--and provides a startling new vision of engineerings past, its present, and its future. Along the way it highlights our greatest successes, like Londons Tower Bridge; our most ambitious projects, like Chinas Three Gorges Dam; our most embarrassing moments, like the wobbly Millennium Bridge in London; and our greatest failures, like the collapse of the twin towers on September 11. Throughout, Petroski provides fascinating and provocative insights into the world of technology with his trademark erudition and enthusiasm for the subject.

How did the table fork acquire a fourth tine? What advantage does the Phillips-head screw have over its single-grooved predecessor? Why does the paper clip look the way it does? What makes Scotch tape Scotch? In this delightful book Henry, Petroski takes a microscopic look at artifacts that most of us count on but rarely contemplate, including such icons of the everyday as pins, Post-its, and fast-food "clamshell" containers. At the same time, he offers a convincing new theory of technological innovation as a response to the perceived failures of existing productssuggesting that irritation, and not necessity, is the mother of invention.

Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.

How did a simple design error cause one of the great disasters of the 1980s - the collapse of the walkways at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel? What made the graceful and innovative Tacoma Narrows Bridge twist apart in a mild wind in 1940? How did an oversized waterlily inspire the magnificent Crystal Palace, the crowning achievement of Victorian architecture and engineering? These are some of the failures and successes that Henry Petroski, author of the acclaimed The Pencil, examines in this engaging, wonderfully literate book. More than a series of fascinating case studies, To Engineer is Human is a work that looks at our deepest notions of progress and perfection, tracing the fine connection between the quantifiable realm of science and the chaotic realities of everyday life.

¿Quién debería leer este libro? Quien desee saber más sobre los procesos de creación que subyacen a las grandes obras de ingeniería, comprender el papel del fracaso en el proceso de diseño y acercarse a la historia de la ingenieria; estudiantes y docentes que busquen incorporar estudios de caso en sus programas de estudio; ingenieros en activo que no quieran olvidar que existe el riesgo de cometer errores; y, por supuesto, todos aquellos lectores que quieran comprender como piensan los ingenieros. Este libro proporciona un argumento convincente para reintroducir la historia de la ingenieria en las carreras de ingenieria. Defiende la necesidad de formar al estudiante en los fallos que se cometen durante el proceso de diseño ya que el estudio del error es un excelente recurso para transferir conocimiento entre disciplinas muy diversas. El lector encontrara fascinantes las historias de caso descritas por Henry Petroski. Traducido por Juan Manuel Iranzo Amatriain