Power, Speed, and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century

by David P. Billington, David P. Billington Jr.

Power, Speed, and Form is the first accessible account of the engineering behind eight breakthrough innovations that transformed American life from 1876 to 1939―the telephone, electric power, oil refining, the automobile, the airplane, radio, the long-span steel bridge, and building with reinforced concrete. Beginning with Thomas Edison's system to generate and distribute electric power, the authors explain the Bell telephone, the oil refining processes of William Burton and Eugene Houdry, Henry Ford's Model T car and the response by General Motors, the Wright brothers' airplane, radio innovations from Marconi to Armstrong, Othmar Ammann's George Washington Bridge, the reinforced concrete structures of John Eastwood and Anton Tedesko, and in the 1930s, the Chrysler Airflow car and the Douglas DC-3 airplane.

These innovations used simple numerical ideas, which the Billingtons integrate with short narrative accounts of each breakthrough―a unique and effective way to introduce engineering and how engineers think. The book shows how the best engineering exemplifies efficiency, economy and, where possible, elegance. With Power, Speed, and Form , educators, first-year engineering students, liberal arts students, and general readers now have, for the first time in one volume, an accessible and readable history of engineering achievements that were vital to America's development and that are still the foundations of modern life.

Genres: Engineering, Science, Nonfiction, History, Technology

296 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 2006

About the author

A longtime professor of engineering at Princeton University, David P. Billington is the author of numerous books dealing with construction and design, as well as with profiles of major structural engineers. This last-named interest inspired several books on the works of the Swiss engineer Robert Maillart, including the 1990 title, Robert Maillart and the Art of Reinforced Concrete. Maillart, who lived from 1872 to 1940, was a pioneer in the expressive uses of reinforced concrete in construction and design. Writing in Technology Review, Thomas Frick felt that Billington's book "allows the reader to grasp the structural basis of Maillart's design decisions." Billington's interest in Maillart led to his cowriting the 2003 title The Art of Structural Design: A Swiss Legacy, which serves as an overview to the work not only of Maillart, but also of such designers and engineers as Christian Menn and Othmar Hermann Ammann.

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Power, Speed, and Form talks about eight of the big innovations that changed the world in the late 19th/early 20th century, being the telephone, electrical power, oil refining, the automobile, the airplane, the radio, the long span steel bridge, and building with reinforced concrete. It also looks at the major figures that contributed to these innovations, and the development of the field of engineering in the process.

In the electrical power chapter, Edison's invention of the incandescent light bulb is discussed, as well as his attempts to create generating plants and networks to provide power for these lights. Edison insisted on direct current networks, while his rival George Westinghouse was able to develop an alternate current network that is more practical over long distances, and is used today. Interestingly, Edison's inventions were not just a direct application of science, but actually doing things that almost all prominent scientists at the time believed impossible (due to faulty assumptions). Edison thought as an engineer, rather than a scientist. Later more formally trained engineers were able to solve more incremental problems in the new electrical network industry by applying scientific knowledge.

The telephone chapter was my favorite, largely due to the story of Alexander Grahm Bell. Most people thought a telephone was just an odd parlor trick, and the serious money lay in expanding the amount of messages that could be sent on telegraph lines. However Bell eventually did convince his investors to develop a telephone, and married the love of his life in the process. Later innovators were able to make more refinements to the original invention in order to meet specific needs.

The oil refining chapter talks about the rise and fall of Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, which initially established the oil refining industry in the US, but ended up stifling later innovations due to its monopoly. The drying out of early oil reserves, switch to artificial lights, and rise of the automobile created a need for new refining methods and for gasoline, rather than kerosene. William Burton was able to apply a control volume analysis to find new ways of cracking heavier kerosene molecules into gasoline (even though he did not fully understand why it worked).

Chapter Five focused on Otto's internal combustion engine and the rise of the automobile, with a particular emphasis on Henry Ford. I did not know that electrical cars existed from the very beginning, and failed because of customer taste reasons more than technical challenges. The Ford Motor Company was actually Henry Ford's third attempt at making an automobile company, after the failed Detroit Automobile Company and Cadillac (which he left). Ford had to change from a static assembly line to moving assembly to meet rising demand for his Model T. As roads got better and consumers started getting tired of the Model T, other car companies, such as General Motors, also grew into prominence in the US.

The Wright Brothers chapter was also fascinating. I did not realize how much work was put into the Wright Brother's first plane, and the amount of earlier failures they had. They had to literally rethink the fundamental assumptions of earlier thinkers about flight through experiments with Wind Tunnels until they had a workable model. Interestingly enough, they didn't unveil their plane to the public until after other inventors had made similar flying machines, out of a fear that their central insights would be stolen (which is exactly what happened).

Chapter 7 looked into the development of radio, the creation of amplitude modulated signals and frequency modulated signals (AM and FM), patent fights between individuals, and the incremental creation of mass communication.

Chapter 8 closely followed the civil engineer Othmar Ammann and his eventual design of the George Washington bridge over the Hudston, including his new method of calculating live traffic load on the bridge (which allowed him to use much less material), his erroneous assumptions with deflection theory, and design choices that affected the aesthetics of the bridge. It is shown that there is no single 'right answer' in design, but rather constraints and ultimate choices made by the designer.

Chapter 9 looks and the invention of reinforced concrete, and the struggle of certain engineers to create new forms during a very conservative era. For example the author's believe John Eastwood's arch dams were often rejected and redesigned because public work administrators and other engineers and the time dogmatically refused to accept that arch dams could be a viable (and cheaper) alternative to gravity dams. The chapter also looks at the German-American engineer Anton Tedesko, and his creation of the Hershey Arena in New Jersey with its unique thin arches. Many people, including Milton Hershey himself, were quite skeptical of the barrel shell roof structure. However the form was later praised and adopted for military aircraft hangars.

The last chapter talks about the study of how drag affects both cars and airplanes in wind. Streamlining both cars and airplanes allowed the creation of more efficient vehicles. In cars, the 1934 Chrysler Airflow was the first to have an aerodynamically shaped body, though it ultimately failed because consumers didn't find it aesthetically pleasing. Nonetheless, future cars adopted the design. In airplanes Donald Douglas's streamlined DC-3 finally made commercial flight able to carry enough passengers to be profitable, something that other companies notably Boeing's United Airlines, had failed in.


I liked this book quite a bit. As an engineer, it taught be quite a bit about the development of the field of engineering, as opposed to science, as I know it today. Literally every facet of the modern world has been shaped by these eight innovations. Our lives today would be unimaginably different even if one of them did not develop. Furthermore, it is fascinating how each innovation later launched entire industries and millions of jobs all over the world. This is very inspiring.

Finally, it was somewhat interesting to learn about the creation of very famous companies today, such as General Electric, AT&T, Bell Labs, Ford, GM, Chrysler, McDonnell Douglas, Hershey, Boeing, and even United Airlines. The book gave me the impression that these were the equivalents of Google, IBM, and Facebook in their day.

[Louis Perrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

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