John Lienhard, University of Houston Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and host of a daily NPR radio essay on invention and creativity, has gathered together his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, human inventiveness and the history of engineering in this book.

Paperback, 262pp

Oxford University Press, November 2003

ISBN-13: 0195167317

Barnes & Noble online price: $15.95

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SYNOPSIS

Technology is too big to understand all at once, says Lienhard (mechanical engineering and history, U. of Houston), so his 17 essays merely sample some of the bits he has encountered in his half-century as an engineer. They are based loosely on the first year’s broadcast of his daily public radio series of the same name. The 2000 edition was cloth bound.
Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE PUBLISHER
A million people tune in twice each week to hear John H. Lienhard’s radio program “The Engines of Our Ingenuity.” Now Lienhard has gathered together his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, human inventiveness and the history of engineering in this fascinating new book.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity offers a series of intriguing glimpses into technology — as a mirror, as a danger, as a product of heroic hubris. The book brims with insightful observations. Lienhard writes, for instance, that the history of technology is a history of us — we are the machines we create. Indeed, our very first technology, farming, which demanded year-long care, dramatically changed the rhythms of human life and the course of our history. We also learn that war does not necessarily fuel invention (radar, jets, and the digital computer all emerged before World War II began), and that the medieval Church was actually a driving force behind the growth of Western technology (Cistercian monasteries were virtual factories, putting water wheels to work in wood-cutting, forging, and olive crushing). Lienhard also illuminates the unpredictable nature of the inventive mind, leading us through one fascinating example after another. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, for instance, were highly passionate, even combative figures, while the almost invisible Josiah Willard Gibbs, living a quiet, outwardly uneventful life, was probably America’s greatest scientist.

Lienhard ranges far and wide with stories of inventors, mathematicians, and engineers, telling the story of the canoe, the DC-3, the Hoover Dam, the diode, and the sewing machine. The result is less history thanautobiography — for the autobiography of all of us is written in our machines.

FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
An elaboration on the NPR broadcasts made by Lienhard (Mechanical Engineering/Univ. of Houston), who contends, basically, that machines are us. Lienhard begins with history, examining the growth of technology from the chance mutations that created plump-grained wheat (which required threshing) to the emergence of the computer. Lienhard observes that the interactions between society and technology result in machines that reflect social needs while also acting as the instruments of social change. Medieval monks, for example, brought hydropower and wind power to Europe and inspired a quest for perpetual motion, which led to the invention of mechanical clocks, which then became a necessity once the Black Death had decimated Europe and put a premium on time and how it should be spent.

While historians may question that particular chain of connections (as well as others that Lienhard puts forth), his wealth of detail about the who, the what, and the how of pivotal inventions is quite wonderful. One of the best chapters deals with priority, in which one learns of all the unsung predecessors of Bell’s telephone, Fulton’s steamboat, Morse’s telegraph, Edison’s light bulb, and Benz’s automobile. Another chapter underscores how machines come to reveal their purpose — recounting, for example, how the telephone was initially regarded primarily as a business tool while typewriters were considered a novelty, never meant to replace the handwritten letter.

In due course, Lienhard discusses spectacular failures of technology — bridge collapses, airplane crashes, etc. — and he makes the surprising point that (at least in terms of airplanes) it is designed instability thatenablesmaneuverability and hence safety. However, his general conclusion is that “success breeds complacency breeds failure breeds caution” — which leads again to success, hubris, and on to failure. All told, lots of neat stories of invention and inventors, told by a witness and participant who deplores the passive voice. “You and I have made the world we live in,” he says — and he, for one, rejoices in it.

About the Author

John H. Lienhard, author and voice of The Engines of Our Ingenuity, is M.D. Anderson Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and History at the University of Houston. He received BS and MS degrees from Oregon State College and the University of Washington, his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, and he holds two honorary doctorates. He is known for his research in the thermal sciences as well as in cultural history. He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.