It is believed that the Romans learned by the method of trial and error, which is just another way of saying try and fail. By means of observing and analyzing unintended failures, they deduced rules of thumb.
For multiple arch bridges, one rule was to have the dimension of the spans be no more than an order of magnitude greater than the dimension of the piers between them. Although there do not appear to be any records explaining the architectural or technical purpose of the stepped rings surrounding the base of the dome of the Roman Pantheon, there should be little doubt that they were introduced to contain the concrete dome and thus prevent cracks from opening up in it.
And, as Vitruvius so explicitly explained, the Greeks learned that a stone lintel spanning more than about three column diameters was prone to crack and fall. In his book, he advised that when longer spans were desired, timber lintels should be employed.
Such stories of success and failure in ancient engineering are instructive not because we still use rules of thumb to design masonry arch bridges or stone temples. The stories are relevant to modern engineering design because they reveal in their simple contexts the way engineers accumulate knowledge and engineering advances.
Experience, both good and bad, guides us in extending the state of the art toward new limits. Those limits are seldom well defined in advance. It is the essence and adventure of engineering for us to be the pathfinders who push against and through the frontiers of knowledge and bring back news of what lay beyond and how to reach it.
As the ancients did, we find ourselves now and then designing things that do not work as intended. But the overwhelming number of engineered things large and small do work, and do so safely and reliably in service to society, advancing civilization. Engineers today may not be designing ancient monuments, but they are working in the grand tradition of those ancient engineers who did.
As seemingly distant in time, technology, and scale from those ancient structures as the integrated circuit and digital computer and other modern electronic devices may seem, they and all engineering marvels are our contemporary masterpieces of engineering design and execution. They have their origins in the same conceptualizing and synthesizing processes that the ancient engineers employed. Like our professional ancestors, today’s engineers are essential to civilization.
I don't know if risk taking should be encouraged in all areas of business, Rob, but I can't see how you could have very much success in the area of innovation without it.
The underlying commonality of these great enigeering feats is slave labor. Would projects of this size been built without slave labor? I wonder if the engineers worked under forced conditions.
Even today we enjoy great products build under dubious conditions in foreign countries that are lax at preventing unfair labor conditions and human suffering.
We know for sure that today there are truly awful conditions for many workers in different parts of the globe. But it turns out that not even the Pyramids, the supposed classic slave labor example, were built entirely with slave labor. Most evidence now points to wage workers building them. As far as the megaliths go, many were apparently built by local communities over long periods of time.
I'll add a point to your point, Droid. The cars of the "good old days" were doing well to get to 100,000 miles. Today, many vehicles reach 200,000 to 250,000 miles. Today's cars are far, far more reliable.
Good point, Chuck. Risk is not an intrinsic virtue any more than all movement is forward. I think the point of the IBM study is that the company had created a risk adverse culture and that was a problem that needed to be solved. I'm sure IBM has lived through 17 cultures since that study. My guess is that rick adversity is not the company's major concern any longer. They may be more worried about whether all major golf courses are willing to welcome their CEO.
That's good news Bdcst. I didn't realize some of the Android handsets were doing that. It would be nice to see Apple adopt that model. With each new release, they send millions of phones to the trash can.
Being a civil engineer, Professor Petroski naturally focuses on monuments of civil engineering. Certainly the examples which he gives, such as the Pyramids, are iconic of the civilizations which produced them.
But as a materials engineer, I'd like to think that the role of materials engineering has been even more fundamental to civilization. After all, entire historical epochs are named after the materials which were used (the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, etc.). The Mesoamerican civilizations prove that highly advanced societies can be built using primarily stone tools -- but they were unable to defend themselves against less-civilized European invaders, because the Europeans had steel weapons. And, of course, the Bible records that the Bronze Age Israelites were unable to overcome Caananite tribes who had iron chariots.
Of course, mechanical engineers might argue that tool use is even more fundamental. It used to be said that tool use is what separated humanity from other animals, although now there is some evidence to the contrary. (And, by the way, all tools need to be made out of something).
All in all, it seems clear that it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate the superstructure of human civilization from its technological and material base.
Dave, I agree with you about the importance of materials and materials engineering, as well as structures and civil/architectural engineering, helping to define different eras of human cultural advance. Since those advances happened at different times in different parts of the world, the Old Stone, New Stone, Bronze and Iron Age labels turned out to be not as useful as when they were invented to describe what early archeologists were discovering about ancient European history. I think the combination of materials and what's made with them--tools, machines, buildings, art--are some key indicators of the nature of a particular culture, as much as the particular ideology.
@Ann: You're definitely right about the "three age" classification system not being particularly applicable to Africa, Australia, or the Americas. I was alluding to that with my reference to Mesoamerica. On the other hand, history might have turned out very differently if the Aztecs had developed ferrous metallurgy. In terms of civil engineering, Tenochtitlan was much larger and better laid-out than any city in Spain, and Nezahualcoyotl, who is credited with designing the city's levees, was probably at least the equal of any Renaissance European thinker. But it's hard to beat gunpowder and steel.
Dave, "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond is a great read and also an excellent analysis of the big-picture reasons behind why Spaniards conquered the in many ways more advanced New World cultures, the Incas and Aztecs, instead of the other way around. The lack of iron and steel is certainly a major, but not the only, factor.
In a world that's going green, industrial operations have a problem: Their processes involve materials that are potentially toxic, flammable, corrosive, or reactive. If improperly managed, this can precipitate dangerous health and environmental consequences.
An analysis of what’s needed to implement Design for Disassembly and Design for Recycling results in eight strategies engineers can use to design an intentional end-of-life stage into their products.
Government regulations, coupled with growing consumer sensitivity about data and identity theft, require that data storage organizations demonstrate proper protection and due diligence in protecting sensitive information stored inside datacenter enclosures.
When a crane doesn't have a monitoring system, crane owners schedule service every six months and simply scrap the parts they replace, even if a part has had little use and doesn't need replacing. This can cost thousands.
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A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
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