Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture by John H. Lienhard

From the Publisher

Millions of people have listened to John H. Lienhard's radio program "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." In this fascinating book, Lienhard gathers his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, and human inventiveness. The book brims with insightful observations. Lienhard writes that the history of technology is a history of us--we are the machines we create. Thus farming dramatically changed the rhythms of human life and redirected history. War seldom fuels invention--radar, jets, and the digital computer all emerged before World War II began. And the medieval Church was a driving force behind the growth of Western technology--Cistercian monasteries were virtual factories, whose water wheels cut wood, forged iron, and crushed olives. Lienhard illustrates his themes through inventors, mathematicians, and engineers--with stories of the canoe, the DC-3, the Hoover Dam, the diode, and the sewing machine. We gain new insight as to who we are, through the familiar machines and technologies that are central to our lives.

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.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents