Main entry:

Petroski, Henry.

Title & Author:

Remaking the world : adventures in engineering / by Henry Petroski.

Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Description:

xiii, 239 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-226) and index.
Images of an engineer -- Alfred Nobel's prizes -- Henry Martyn Robert -- James Nasmyth -- On the backs of envelopes -- Good drawings and bad dreams -- Failed promises -- In context -- Men and women of progress -- Soil mechanics -- Is technology wired? -- Harnessing steam -- The Great Eastern -- Driven by economics -- The Panama Canal -- The Ferris wheel -- Hoover Dam -- The Channel Tunnel -- The Petronas towers.

Summary:

This collection of informative and pleasurable essays by Henry Petroski elucidates the role of engineers in shaping our environment in countless ways, big and small. In Remaking the World Petroski gravitates this time, perhaps, toward the big: the English Channel tunnel, the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the QE2, and the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, now the tallest buildings in the world. He profiles Charles Steinmetz, the genius of the General Electric Company; Henry Martyn Robert, a military engineer who created Robert's Rules of Order; and James Nasmyth, the Scotsman whose machine tools helped shape nineteenth-century ocean and rail transportation. Petroski sifts through the fossils of technology for cautionary tales and remarkable twists of fortune, and reminds us that failure is often a necessary step on the path to new discoveries. He explains soil mechanics by way of a game of "rock, scissors, paper," and clarifies fundamental principles of engineering through the spokes of a Ferris wheel.

Resources:
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description
Cover image

ISBN:

0375400419
9780375400414 (hardcover ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Engineering.
Ingénierie.
engineering.
Technologie.
Ingenieurs.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 191447
Call No.: ID TA145.P47; ID:97-B2350
Status: Available