To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Henry Petroski





Format: Paperback, 272pp.
ISBN: 9780679734161
Publisher: Vintage
Pub. Date: March 31, 1992

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Description and Reviews
From The Publisher:

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.


About the Author

Henry Petroski is Professor of Civil Engineering at Duke University.


Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
1	Being Human	1
2	Falling Down is Part of Growing up	11
3	Lessons From Play; Lessons From Life Appendix: "The Deacon's Masterpiece"	35
4	Engineering as Hypothesis	40
5	Success is Foreseeing Failure	53
6	Design is Getting From Here to There	64
7	Design as Revision	75
8	Accidents Waiting to Happen	85
9	Safety in Numbers	98
10	When Cracks Become Breakthroughs	107
11	Of Bus Frames and Knife Blades	122
12	Interlude: The Success Story of the Crystal Palace	136
13	The Ups and Downs of Bridges	158
14	Forensic Engineering and Engineering Fiction	172
15	From Slide Rule to Computer: Forgetting How it Used to be Done	189
16	Connoisseurs of Chaos	204
17	The Limits of Design	216
	Afterword	229
	Bibliography	233
	Index	245
	List of Illustrations
	I. Cartoons illustrating public concern over engineering failures
	II. Models of the ubiquitous cantilever beam
	III. The Brooklyn Bridge: Anticipating failure by the engineer and by the layman
	IV. The Crystal Palace: Testing the galleries and finding them sound
	V. The Crystal Palace and two of its modern imitators
	VI. Suspension bridges: The Tacoma Narrows and after
	VII. The Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkways collapse
	VIII. The Mianus River Bridge collapse and its aftermath

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