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Time-Sensitive Material A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society This reprint is provided for personal and noncommercial use. For any other use, please send a request to Permissions, American Scientist, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to [email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and other rightsholders ENGINEERING TIME-SENSITIVE MATERIAL Henry Petroski e mark time differently than we mea- other digit repeated three times. However, the Wsure distance. Although none of us is freshness of the preface numeral 2, after a millen- likely ever to have seen a new car nium of years beginning with the numeral 1, odometer read 000000, we infer that that was in- seems special and remarkable. The change in the deed the reading when it was installed at the facto- prefix attracts the kind of attention that a decadal ry. As the car was driven from the assembly line to birthday or anniversary does, with just about its parking lot, the wheels began to turn and the everyone forgetting or abandoning the fact that machine registered tenths, miles, tens of miles and we measure age by different numerical rules that so forth as they were reached. With dates we mark we mark dates. From newspapers and maga- the days, months and years before they are com- zines, and now including this column, to profes- pleted, however, and so from the instant after mid- sional societies and organizations, millennial night on New Year’s Eve 1999, we by custom write madness has triumphed over reason—with lists the date as 01/01/00, even though it will be anoth- modified by top, best, greatest and other superla- er 24 hours before that day is completed. And it tives being voted on, compiled and disseminated. will not be until midnight on 12/31/00 that the year 2000 is completed, and with it the 20th century. The Best of Lists; the Worst of Lists Y2K notwithstanding, the second millennium will Lists are always interesting, of course, even to en- really end not with a bang but a whimper. gineers—and even though we realize the arbitrari- Engineers and scientists know all this, of ness of numbers, including “round” numbers end- course, but it would have been difficult for us to ing in 0 or 5. It is only an accident of our base-ten persuade the mass media to hold out for an en- system and the multiple recurrence of 5, we might tire year before recognizing the arrival of the 21st tell ourselves rationally, that make top-10 lists or century and the “new millennium,” which truly 25th anniversaries special, but we get caught up in begins on 01/01/01. If we were to insist on wait- the process of compiling lists, perhaps because lists ing until 2000 turned into 2001 for our celebra- appear to have a rationality of their own, a begin- tions, we would risk being seen as spoilsports at ning and an end, an ordering, a definiteness, a de- best or hopelessly out of date at worst. Ironically, cisiveness. The phenomenon is nothing new. it has been the focus on the very technical prob- A survey conducted 70 years ago by the Amer- lem of Y2K computer compliance, a problem ican Society for the Promotion of Engineering Ed- closely associated with engineers and scientists, ucation sought to identify “the outstanding engi- or at least computer scientists, that has empha- neers of the past twenty-five years; also those who sized the four-digit year, which in turn has dri- might fairly be considered the greatest engineers ven the focus of the date change to the odometer- of all time.” In addition to the still-familiar Edison like event of 1999 turning into 2000. The year and Ford, listed among the outstanding engineers change is being treated as a counting event, of the first quarter of the 20th century, there were when in fact all it is, is a marking event. John F. Stevens and George W. Goethals, who Not since the upside-down year 1961 almost played central roles in the construction of the four decades ago or the palandromic and mirror- Panama Canal, completed in 1914. These two en- image year 1881 over a century ago has a new gineers were also identified as among the greatest year’s number been treated as such an icon. Such engineers of all time, but a 1974 article about oddities will not occur again until the numero- Stevens in Civil Engineering magazine was entitled, logically rich seventh millennium gives us the “The Forgotten Engineer.” (Ferdinand de Lesseps, year 6119, and the ninth millennium gives us the French entrepreneur who pushed the canal 8118. In terms of numerical patterns, 1999 and project, was named the fifth greatest engineer of all 2000 are identical—a single digit followed by an- time, even though he was not an engineer.) Number 10 on the list of outstanding engineers Henry Petroski is A. S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering of the first quarter of the 20th century was Ralph and a professor of history at Duke University, where he also Modjeski, the builder of Philadelphia’s Benjamin chairs the Department of Civil and Environmental Franklin Bridge, completed for the nation’s 150th Engineering. Address: Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708-0287 birthday, in 1926, and thus a name more familiar © 2000 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 18 American Scientist, Volume 88 with permission only. Contact [email protected]. identifying the 125 most significant innovations Outstanding Engineers that shaped the industry during the magazine’s (ca. 1930) lifetime and also the industry’s 125 most influen- tial people who made contributions since the Top engineers identified by a survey magazine’s founding in 1874. Eads made ENR’s of deans of engineering list, but Modjeski did not. (John’s son,Washington Outstanding Engineers of the Roebling, and his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, Past 25 Years (ca. 1930) are on the list as project managers, but the elder Herbert C. Hoover Roebling, who died in 1869, did not qualify.) Charles P. Steinmetz Should ENR identify the top 150 people to cele- Thomas A. Edison brate its 150th anniversary in 2024, it should not John F. Stevens surprise anyone if on second thought, and in the John Hays Hammond context of a longer history, some of last year’s 125 George W. Goethals do not make the cut 25 years hence. Lists are George Westinghouse products of their times. Guglielmo Marconi In the wake of the Centennial of Engineering Henry Ford celebration, which took place in 1952 and coincid- Ralph Modjeski ed with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Benjamin G. Lamme the American Society of Civil Engineers, the coun- Michael Pupin try’s first national engineering professional society, John R. Freeman the ASCE undertook to identify outstanding Clemens Herschel American civil engineering works. The 1955 list re- Gustav Lindenthal flected the importance of water supply, treatment and control in the first half of the 20th century, with Greatest Engineers of All Time (ca. 1930) the majority of the “seven wonders” being in that James Watt category. When the mid-century list was updated Leonardo da Vinci in 1994, the water works were largely displaced by Thomas A. Edison works of transportation. Each list contained a sin- William B. Eads1 gle bridge, with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Ferdinand de Lesseps Bridge being displaced by the Golden Gate Bridge Charles P. Steinmetz on the newer list. The mid-century list recognized George Westinghouse the greater engineering achievement of the lesser- John Ericsson known bridge, but the late-century list, which Archimedes seemed to be driven more by popular than by tech- Lord Kelvin nical criteria, was topped by the notable but when John L. Roebling2 constructed state-of-the-art span that had become George W. Goethals the tourist symbol of San Francisco. John F. Stevens 1 most likely James Buchanan Eads Seven Modern Civil Engineering 2 most likely John A. Roebling Wonders of the United States in 1930 than today. Two other bridge builders Identified by the American Society were also included on the 1930 list of greatest en- of Civil Engineers in the wake of its centennial and updated almost 40 years later gineers of all time, but that is not to say that they got any respect. James Buchanan Eads was Seven Wonders of the United States (1955) misidentified as William B. Eads and a John L. 1 Chicago’s Sewer Works Roebling was listed, presumably John A. Roe- 2 Colorado River Aqueduct bling, the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge. 3 Empire State Building Also included on the list, among Archimedes, 4 Grand Coulee Dam Leonardo and Lord Kelvin, was John Ericsson, 5 Hoover Dam now hardly a household name. Yet this builder of 6 Panama Canal the Monitor ironclad “revolutionized navigation by 7 San Franscisco–Oakland Bay Bridge his invention of the screw propeller,” as stated on the little known but prominent monument to Eric- Seven Wonders of the United States (1994) sson that stands in Washington, D.C. to this day, 1 Golden Gate Bridge beside the Potomac River, next to the Arlington 2 Hoover Dam Memorial Bridge and a stone’s throw from the Lin- 3 Interstate Highway System coln Memorial. Lists do not have the staying pow- 4 Kennedy Space Center er of monuments, but neither ensures familiarity. 5 Panama Canal Engineering News-Record, the distinguished 6 Trans-Alaska Pipeline magazine of the construction industry, celebrated 7 World Trade Center its 125th anniversary during 1999, and it did so by © 2000 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.
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