Henry Petroski





Henry Petroski

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born
January 01, 1942 in Brooklyn, The United States

gender
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About this author

Henry Petroski is a civil engineering professor at Duke University where he specializes in failure analysis.

Petroski was born in Brooklyn, New York, and in 1963, he received his bachelor's degree from Manhattan College. He graduated with his Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1968. Before beginning his work at Duke in 1980, he worked at the University of Texas at Austin from 1968-74 and for the Argonne National Laboratory from 1975-80.

He has received honorary degrees from Clarkson University, Trinity College, Valparaiso University and Manhattan College. He is a registered professional engineer in Texas, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers,...more


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Average rating: 3.50 · 1,441 ratings · 237 reviews · 21 distinct works
The Evolution of Useful Things...
3.46 of 5 stars 3.46 avg rating — 320 ratings — published 1992 — 5 editions
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To Engineer Is Human: The Role...
3.54 of 5 stars 3.54 avg rating — 285 ratings — published 1985 — 4 editions
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The Book on the Bookshelf
3.59 of 5 stars 3.59 avg rating — 294 ratings7 editions
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The Pencil: A History of Desig...
3.58 of 5 stars 3.58 avg rating — 129 ratings5 editions
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Small Things Considered: Why T...
3.37 of 5 stars 3.37 avg rating — 111 ratings — published 2003 — 4 editions
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Remaking the World: Adventures...
3.59 of 5 stars 3.59 avg rating — 41 ratings — published 1997 — 4 editions
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The Essential Engineer
3.05 of 5 stars 3.05 avg rating — 41 ratings — published 2010 — 5 editions
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Engineers of Dreams: Great Bri...
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4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 1995 — 3 editions
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Invention by Design: How Engin...
3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 45 ratings4 editions
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The Toothpick: Technology and...
3.11 of 5 stars 3.11 avg rating — 36 ratings — published 2007 — 3 editions
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“In order to understand how engineers endeavor to insure against such structural, mechanical, and systems failures, and thereby also to understand how mistakes can be made and accidents with far-reaching consequences can occur, it is necessary to understand, at least partly, the nature of engineering design. It is the process of design, in which diverse parts of the 'given-world' of the scientist and the 'made-world' of the engineer are reformed and assembled into something the likes of which Nature had not dreamed, that divorces engineering from science and marries it to art. While the practice of engineering may involve as much technical experience as the poet brings to the blank page, the painter to the empty canvas, or the composer to the silent keyboard, the understanding and appreciation of the process and products of engineering are no less accessible than a poem, a painting, or a piece of music. Indeed, just as we all have experienced the rudiments of artistic creativity in the childhood masterpieces our parents were so proud of, so we have all experienced the essence of structual engineering in our learning to balance first our bodies and later our blocks in ever more ambitious positions. We have learned to endure the most boring of cocktail parties without the social accident of either our bodies or our glasses succumbing to the force of gravity, having long ago learned to crawl, sit up, and toddle among our tottering towers of blocks. If we could remember those early efforts of ours to raise ourselves up among the towers of legs of our parents and their friends, then we can begin to appreciate the task and the achievements of engineers, whether they be called builders in Babylon or scientists in Los Alamos. For all of their efforts are to one end: to make something stand that has not stood before, to reassemble Nature into something new, and above all to obviate failure in the effort.”
Henry Petroski

“Ink is the cosmetic that ideas will wear when they go out in public. Graphite is their dirty truth.”
Henry Petroski, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance

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