To engineer is human: the role of failure in successful design

Contents

1. Being human
2. Falling down is part of growing up
3. Lessons from play; Lessons from life appendix: “The Deacon’s Masterpiece,” by Oliver Wendell Holms
4. Engineering as hypothesis
5. Success is foreseeing failure
6. Design is getting from here to there
7. Design as revision
8. Accidents waiting to happen
9. Safety in numbers
10. When cracks become breakthroughs
11. Of bus frames and knife blades
12. Interlude: the success story of the crystal palace
13. The ups and downs of bridges
14. Forensic engineering and engineering fiction
15. From slide rule to computer: forgetting how it used to be done
16. Connoisseurs of chaos
17. The limits of design
Afterword
Bibliography
Index

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.