>> from the library ofcongress in washington dc. >> so i'm here to introduce a manwho has the unusual distinction of having made a career of failure and a very successfulcareer at that. professor henry petroski'sacademic expertise is in what's called failureanalysis, the process of collecting and analyzing data to determinewhat caused something to go wrong, which is one of the thingsthat first drew me to his work. nine years ago this monthafter two planes flew
into the world trade centerand a third into the pentagon, i telephoned professor petroskifrom the post offices and asked him about what had just happened. what about those structureshad worked and what had failed,i wanted to know. and what could we learn from that. the following week in the sundayoutlook section of the post he wrote from an engineer's perspective aboutthe impact at two different sites in two different cities, one withits buildings arranged vertically
in celebration of america'stowering supremacy, the other horizontally crouchedsymbolically in defense. and he wrote about the effectthose disasters might have on the future of building design. with characteristicfor-site, he wrote, the pentagon will likely be restored to it's full geometry long beforeany decision is made about what to do with the land on whichthe world trade center stood. the ability to breathe interestinto the objects that surround us
from great engineering featsof our age like the twin towers to the most mundane ofobjects, memorably the pencil and the toothpick, hascharacterized petroski's work. he's a prolific writer, theauthor of 15 popular books as well as numerous articles and reviews,some of which we've run in the post. last year a particularly provocativearticle ran under the headline, want engineer real change,don't ask a scientist. most people who aren't scientists orengineers seem to think that science and engineering are thesame thing, he wrote.
they're not. science seeks to understandthe world as it is. only engineering can change it. and that's what his new book theessential engineer is all about, the role that engineering and notscience can play in responding to the great global threatswe face from climate change to producing cleanand renewable energy. he even suggests thatscience can sometimes get in the way of technological change.
i'm going to invite himto tell us how and why. henry petroski has been widelyrecognized for his academic and literary accomplishments,not only in his own field of civil engineering, butalso through fellowships in several gust bodies asthe american academy of arts and sciences and the americanphilosophical society. he's the aleksander vesic professorof civil engineering and a professor of history at duke university andthe author most recently, as i said, of the essential engineer.
and here is the essentialengineer professor henry petroski. [ clapping ] >> thank you, francis. that was a very nice introduction. it's a pleasure andan honor to be here. and i've been enjoying the day eventhough it is a little warm for me. francis made a verygood summary of my book. and i'd like to elaborate onsome of the things that she said. there is, i think, an incompleteunderstanding of the difference
between science and engineering,between scientists and engineers. it's sometimes reflectedin the mass media where engineers are justgrouped with scientists. this is not absolutely speakingincorrect, but it loses some of the fine distinctionsbetween the two professions. during the space raceback in the late '50s and early '60s there was agreat need to develop a lot of different rockets to achievewhat we wanted to achieve then in our battle or competitionwith the soviet union.
so it was news on a regular basisto report on whether test firings of rockets were successesor failures. when they were successes,the headlines often read, science achieves new recordof thrust or some such thing, attributing the success to scienceand by implication to scientists. when there was a failure, when a rocket failed toignite, it was a dud. or when a rocket did begin totake off, but then went astray, the headlines more often thannot read something to the effect
that latest rocket test,great engineering failure. and engineers, obviouslyme included, really tell that storyover and over again. and they think it summarizes thedifference in the way scientists and engineers are treated. it has a lot of implicationsnot only for how they're treated or how they're perceivedto be treated, but also the statusthat they're held in. and this book that has justbeen published is largely
about issues like that. the fact of the matteris, as francis indicated, there are distinctions betweenscientists and engineers. and the general way thesedistinctions are framed is to say that scientists study what isoriginally the given universe. scientists are interestedin the planets, the stars, the origins of the universe,how old is the universe. questions like that are trulyscientific questions, but, of course, scientists have alsobeen interested in what are the laws
of physics, what arethe laws of nature. they look not only to the cosmos,but also down into the atomic level. and, generally speaking,the principle objective of science is knowledge,understanding, facts, measurements. engineering, on the other hand,as again francis indicated, seeks to change the world. engineers, the professionof engineering would like to develop better systems ofair conditioning tents in hot summer or i guess we're in the fall now.
and i guess they geta lot of support from that judging fromthat response. but historically there has been alot of engineering that was done, believe it or not, without muchof a contribution from science. it's a fallacy and it's avery significant fallacy that you take the results of scienceand you just do something to them and then you get engineering. in realty it doesn'twork quite that easily. this is sometimes calledthe linear model,
that you make scientific discoveriesand then by some process, which is seldom reallyelaborated upon, there comes an engineering outcome. and, again, it's like theattribution of the successes to the science and thefailures to the engineers. in the history of science, historyof technology there are a lot of very, i think, convincingexamples that it just isn't so simple. the steam engine, for example, wasdeveloped in the late 17th century
for a very practical purpose. and this is characteristicof engineering. there's a purpose to what engineersdo, not just to understand, but to produce something,to accomplish an invention or a new development in technology. and in the late 17century the purpose was to pump water out of mines. it was hard to mine coal if thecoal mine was full of water. so the steam engine had that andonly that purpose originally.
throughout the 18thcentury it was developed to be a much more versatile machine. and, of course, when weget to the 19th century, the steam engine was put onwheels and the wheels put on tracks, and we had the railroad. so this steam engine,which is symbolic of the whole industrial revolution, really revolutionized the way wenot only experienced transportation, but also by extension how weexperience society and culture.
it was only after really therailroads had gotten started that scientists seriously beganto look at the steam engine, because now it wassomething that existed. it could be an object ofstudy in its own right. and it was out of thatcame a science that we call thermodynamicsor the notion of heat. the fact of the matter is thatthe steam engine was developed with virtually no science. another, i think, very persuasiveexample is what the wright brothers
tried to achieve, mainlypowered flight. the wright brothers recognizedwhen they were trying to design and build their flyingmachine that they had to know somehow what shapeto make the propeller. what would be the actualcurve of the propeller? and, also, the wings were important, but the propeller particularlyvexed them. they even wrote to the smithsonianinstitution here in the mall asking for scientific results that wouldhelp them develop an airplane.
well, the answer they got back was that there was a piosityof really information. and what did the wright brothers do? well, they didn't say, well wecan't go on and do engineering because we haven't donethe scientific foundations. they proceeded to do it themselves. the wright brothers experimentedwith different shapes and came up with the shape of thepropeller that they use. in engineering you don't haveto have the perfect answer.
you have to have ananswer that works. and when they achievedthat, they were satisfied, because they had a lot ofother things to do, too. so the airplane, which againrevolutionized transportation in the 20th century this time, was atruly -- an engineering achievement. the engineers welcomed allthe science they could get, but there just wasn'tmuch in the beginning. it was only after the airplanewas demonstrated to be effective that true aerodynamics,the science was developed.
now, so what this suggests, thislittle story, is that engineering and science may be separate,but there are overlaps. and, furthermore, engineerscould actually do science. and they often have toin order to proceed, in order to achieve their objective. because when you're tryingto develop something, whether it be a steamengine or a flying machine, you evidently reach apoint in your pursuit where you just don't know enough.
so you do have to getsome more knowledge. but, generally speaking,it's of such a practical kind that it hasn't interestedscience, and the engineers have to do the science themselves. scientists also canand do engineering. some people argue that a lot of modern science especiallyreally wouldn't be getting very far if it weren't for the engineeringthat produces the machines and the devices thataccelerate particles
to unheard of speeds and energies. but let me tell a littlestory about albert einstein. nobody will deny that he wasa scientist of the first rank. it's generally known thatalbert einstein worked in the patent officewhen he was young. it's less generally knownthat the reason he did that is he couldn't get anacademic job as a scientist. but he eventually, of course,did publish significant papers. he published them while he wasworking in the patent office.
and those brought himall sorts of recognition. but publishing papers in science isreporting on, you know, the facts, the knowledge that has beenlearned by the experiments or the program that was pursued. but what's less widely knownabout albert einstein is that he was also interestedin invention. he was not only interestedin it through his work at the patent office, but he wasinterested in inventing himself. and he was interestednot only in inventing,
but also patenting his inventionsand patenting his inventions because he was interested inprofiting from his inventions. and this is also acharacteristic of engineering. sometimes it's very difficult toseparate invention from engineering. back in the 1920s after alberteinstein had earned his nobel prize or won his nobel prize, oneof the big practical problems that the world faced waswith electric refrigerators. they were new at the time,but they had one big fault or flaw -- well, actually two.
they had motors and they hadcompressors, but they were noisy. so refrigerators were noisy. that was one thing, but that'ssomething you can live with. there was a more deadlyproblem with refrigerators. and that was that all the noise,all the vibration associated with the motor and thecompressor shook up the system, and it developed cracks,and it developed leaks. and that meant that the refrigerantwas being used could escape. at the time the refrigerant thatwas being used was poisonous.
so if a refrigerator sprung aleak in the middle of the night and a family was sleepingand it wasn't detected, then there would be a real tragedy. and there were many newspaperstories reporting on such tragedies. einstein read one ofthese, so the story goes. and he and his colleagueleo szilard, who had a pact, a formal pact about inventing, and that anything theyinvented together, they would have anunderstanding of how the proceeds
of licensing the patentwould be divided. they invented and patented inseveral countries a refrigerator that didn't have a motor,didn't need a motor. they used the principles ofthermodynamics to figure out how to get this refrigerant, of course,through the system and condense and do whatever it had to do toexchange heat without a motor. and we would probablyhave those kinds of refrigerators today hadit not been for the fact that at the same time therefrigerator manufacturers
like say general electricfigured out another alternative to this deadly refrigerant problem. and that was develop a newrefrigerant that isn't poisonous. and that ended up being freon. so the refrigerator companies wereintroducing freon at the same time that einstein and szilard weretrying to promote their machine. and by simply changing therefrigerant, that was a lot better and more profitable for thecompanies than einstein's invention. and so that was sortof lost in history.
there is a serious scientistdoing serious science who could also do engineering. and that shows to me that there'splenty of room for cooperation between and among scientistsand engineers. in fact, we hear the termresearch and development a lot. research and developmentroughly to a lot of people means scienceand engineering. too often it means that the researchis done and then it's handed over to the development peopleand there isn't the interaction.
so a lot of research anddevelopment programs are not as efficient as they might be. these things are veryimportant in the present time, because we hear a lotabout innovation. the country needs a lot ofinnovation, which is equated roughly with invention, but it'sgoing beyond invention. it's going not just getting thepatent, but also commercializing it, something that einstein andszilard were not able to achieve because of the circumstances of thetimes in which they were working.
but innovation brings newindustries, brings new ways of life literally and alsoenables things to be achieved that might not otherwise. but how do you achieve innovation? well, if you listen tosome of the politicians in washington here thesedays, you achieve innovation by throwing a lot ofmoney at science. and just call up on google, youknow, these stories reporting on strategies to improve theinnovation in our country
so that we can improve theeconomy and, therefore, have a greater employment andso forth in new industries. it's not associatedwith engineering. it's associated with science. i think this is a short-sightedview. and i think it really fails toappreciate the lessons of history. and i think unless there is amore widespread understanding, especially among those who writethe laws and vote on the laws and are involved with public policy,we're not going to see the kind
of innovation that we all reallywant, including the politicians. so coming around to wherei started, it shows i think that if we really want to getengineers and scientists together, we have to stop separatingthem in newspaper headlines or in political speechesor in political policies. we have to be seriousthat we recognize that engineering is a veryimportant contributor to innovation and to the way things aredone and will be done. let me just say one morething, one more anecdote,
and that has to dowith the steamship. a lot of these stories have to dowith transportation and, you know, consumer stuff, becausethat's so important. that's where innovationis really going to happen. in the early 19th centurysteamboats were popular. and they were mostlyon rivers, though. and one of the reasons was it wasgenerally the case that these boats that ran on steam that had steamengines had to refuel regularly. so they had to be closeto a source of fuel,
coal or wood or whatever they burn. and, of course, if you'renear the coast or on a river, that generally is nottoo hard to do. but the question was, whatabout transatlantic shipping? what about the sailing ships thatwould come over from say england over to boston or new york? could you build a steamship thatcould carry enough coal, let's say, to make that voyage withoutdepending on sail at all? that was a key question.
now, that was very important,because without considering that, we would not have today whatwe call scheduled shipping or scheduled crossings. because before the steam engine wasapplied to ships, relying totally on the wind meant that yourelied totally on the weather. and sometimes the wind blewand sometimes it didn't. that meant that if a ship leftsay liverpool and was heading for boston, you didn't knowwhen it was going to get there. it could be two weeks orit could be two months.
so you couldn't promise peoplein boston that there's going to be a return trip to liverpool. you just didn't know when. but with the steam engine, if youwere driving the ship regardless of the weather, then youcould have scheduled shipping. so it was truly a revolution. well, the scientists of the time -- i won't say "the," but somescientists of the time said that it was physically impossible,it was against the laws of nature
that a ship large enough to carryits own coal could be designed and built. they believed and they maintainedand they lectured on the fact that the larger you make the ship, the more coal you neededto drive it. and therefore, you know, youjust have endless growth of ship without achieving your goal. well, engineers in the1830s thought otherwise. and they reasoned differentlyfrom the laws of nature,
but the bottom line is that theybuilt steamships that did cross under steam and carriedenough coal to do it. and, in fact, laterthey expanded that, but that would be another story foranother time, because i did want to allow some time for questions. but just a few closing remarks, and that is that this is whatthe essential engineer is about. and the subtitle is whyscience alone will not solve our global problems.
we need not only science,but we need engineering. we need a true partnershipbetween them. and we need a recognition that thereis an equal status of engineers and scientists in that theycontribute differently, but they both contributeto the objective end, which is to effectivelyinnovate and change the world. well, thanks very muchfor your attention. and i would be very happyto answer questions. >> start over here on the left.
>> yes. i'd like your response tothe conundrum and the controversy about the collapse of three,not two, but three towers at the eastern end of manhattaneleven years ago this month as if they were the productsof planned demolition. not only were these two towers -- two of these towers struckby airplanes, in addition, at least one other, another buildingas tall as either of the twin towers in this planet anddamaged as much as either of the twin towers withstoodthe shock and remained standing.
what are civil engineerssaying about this controversy? >> you're talking abouti believe what is known as world trade center seven, abuilding that was hit by some debris and caught on fire and burnedessentially almost overnight, as i recall, and eventuallydid collapse. the fact of the matter is that therewas so much attention being paid to the world trade center towersproper, world trade center tower one and two, which were much tallerthan that world trade center seven, by a factor of roughly two,that that was not a big issue,
because people had beenevacuated from that. and there was justnot the same concern. but there are conspiracytheories about the fall -- about the -- what did you call it? controlled demolition. >> yes >> i think generally civilengineers, structural engineers in particular don't subscribeto those conspiracy theories. they believe, generally speaking,
that all three towers collapsedlargely due to two factors. one was that by the planes striking or the debris strikingthese structures, certain key structuralelements were damaged, columns. if you take one of these polesout from under this tent, you don't expect thetent to be as strong as it is with all of its poles. and that, secondly,as the fires burned, they naturally generated heat.
and the heat, if you heatup these columns here, they appear to be metal,they're going to get soft. and they're just notgoing to have the strength that they were intended to. so as a result, eventuallythis structure will collapse. there are reasonable structuralengineering explanations for those collapses. yes, sir? >> as somebody who had his educationand career in engineering physics,
i'd be very interested in yourcomments on the convergence as we get into the nano regionof both theoretical physics, theoretical -- let'ssay theoretical science, experimental scienceand engineering. they seem to be comingtogether in this ring. >> well, that's right. in order to produce especiallysome of the electronic devices and components thatare being projected, you have to know a lot of physics.
and as i think it's a gosh example of what i was saying is therehas to be close interaction. i will say that it's hard to predictwhat's going to happen or going to be the limitations,because almost by definition we don't know whatthey are, because we don't know as much about the scienceas we really should. there's still open questions. >> yes. the previous twospeakers in this tent were dealing with different issues, be it farmproduced poultry and products.
edmund o. wilson was here before. i think the key to bridging science and solutions is human factorsengineering and the expansion of human factors engineering. i haven't heard you speak on it. would you have an opinion on that? >> well, i didn't mention it today. i have talked about humanfactors engineering, but human factors engineeringhas various definitions.
to some people it meanssimply making machines that people can interactwith, that humans can interact with without ambiguityand with safety. i think there are someattempts to broaden the idea of what human factorsengineering means. and i think that'sa good development. it's hard to be againstsomething like that. and, well, i think it bodes wellfor the objectives that we all have. >> given the failures of this decadeending in 2010, what do you feel
about universities'professors teaching engineers for the global warming changes,things that have come up? any challenges for the next decade so that we maybe don'thave katrina two, gulf spill two, thosetype of things? do you think we're preparedenough going forward? >> well, you know,katrina sensitized people to the weakness of levies. and not only to the weakness oflevies, but also to the weakness
to the entire system that wassupposed to help new orleans respond to something of that nature. the gulf spill, the recent gulfspill has sensitized people to deep water drilling and so forth. so these failures will have animmediate effect of making engineers and people that commissionengineers a little more cautious, a little more conservative. so i would predict, if you're askingme to predict, over the next decade that we're not going to seeanother katrina in new orleans.
we may see another katrinaelsewhere, because so many of the resources that it wouldtake to bring levies elsewhere up to speed are reallygoing to new orleans. and there's just alimit to, you know, how many resources we can have. the netherlands, which has hadhistorically a levy problem, if you will, is thinkingin terms of 200 years and in some cases a millennium. they are very long range thinkingand action on a national scale.
we haven't gotten to that point yet. so i think we really have to lookelsewhere for some further lessons about what we can doto prevent disasters. yes? >> professor, you wrote abook 11 or 12 years ago, the book on the bookshelf. >> yes. >> and in that you discuss many ofthe things you brought up today, invention, innovation,the profit motive.
and in that context i wonder if youwould just address the evolution in publishing today of e-booksand p-books [assumed spelling]. >> i wish i knew. there is so much being reportedand written on that topic that i will admit to beingbewildered about what's happening. i think e-books are anatural development. whether they will actuallydisplace the physical book or not, i think remains an open question. and i think the publishers play moreof a role in this than they seem
to have admitted orseem to be acting upon. i think the publishers in acertain way are silent partners to the e-book revolution. it's a lot easier to produce andmore profitable to produce an e-book than it is a regular printed book. i wish we would see more innovation,innovated thinking on the part of publishers withregard to e-books. and i simply haven't seen it yet. so i think that's goingto be the next wave
if the publishers are going to really fight what theyclaim they'd like to fight. they're largely fighting it onthe basis of money and profit, but not in terms oftechnology in my opinion. >> yes. professor, a lot of peoplehere don't realize that you're one of the experts on failure analysisand that you teach that at duke. and my question is,the current modes of failure analysis we see now, thatis, the software failures that is like the 1990 national telephonefailure, i would say that is not
so much between scienceand engineering, but a failure between high levelengineering or systems engineering and detailed engineering. essentially that failure wasbecause they wanted to save money, they took the system engineeringspecs and they brought it into code instead of letting thesoftware engineer develop the code himself. my question is, i know your bookmerge science and engineering. what about in termsof failure analysis,
what about systems engineeringand detailed engineering? >> well, i'm gettingthe overtime sign. so i'll be very brief. and basically i'm workingon a book right now that deals with those issues. i'm interested in systems failures. well, thank you very much. i'm sorry, but i've been toldwe have to keep on schedule. [clapping].
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