The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture

by John H. Lienhard

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Science, History

Paperback

First published June 29, 2000

About the author

John Henry Lienhard IV is Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at The University of Houston. He worked in heat transfer and thermodynamics for many years prior to creating the radio program The Engines of Our Ingenuity. Lienhard is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Reviews

[Shahnawaz Haque · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the finest book to trace the development of technology over time. Covers most important development made by human from a minute nut bolt to mega bridges, aeroplanes etc. Author also looks into failures made and brings the unknown person who had made contribution to the evolving changes to limelight. It tells us how mankind is continously thriving itself with technology that is not only need-based but coming out of a powerful, driving internal need to invent.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rated Pro. Lienhard's the Engines of Our Ingenuity at three stars out of frustration and sadness. If you derived any pleasure from this book run, do not walk to your nearest radio and seek out his broadcasts under the same name from your local National Public Radio station.

His spoken word essays are a delight. The man has a sincere passion for his topic and his topics draw from a very wide range of the topics in the history of engineering. If his enthusiasm is almost childlike his insight and appreciation is sophisticated and technical. Any day I have the pleasure of hearing a broadcast of The Engines of Our Ingenuity is always a better day for that brief intelligent interlude.

Unfortunately someone convinced him to patch together his essays into something more like a lecture. The result is we get a second rate version somewhere between the old Bronowski `s The Assent of Man and Burke's Connections. Prof. Lienhard lacks Bronowski's sophistication or Burke's sense of irony and organization. Instead we move back and forth in history and paragraphs that ramble away from the theme and sometimes to no purpose :
So many words wasted on the mechanics of the old crystal radio only to assure us that it never worked.
A major digression into a discussion of tools that just hangs in space
This does not mean that none of the professor's love of his topic and determination to share his passion for engineering comes through. His observation that that invention happens outside of the "common ways and means" and is therefore a form of madness; bespeaks his respect for and curiosity about those who see what all of us see and then see how to improve upon it. Later in the book he documents the interconnected cycle of success and failure frequently flavored with hubris and thereby synthesizes ideas we have all heard but never linked together.

I like Professor John Lienhard. There is much in the publication The Engines of Our Ingenuity that is likable. It is what this book could have been it bothers me. Had he published his broadcasts he could of done for engineering what Alistair Cooke achieved in his Letters from America. In fact the radio broadcasts The Engines of Our Ingenuity are consistently more upbeat and educational than the insights of the erudite Cooke.

[Susan]

The title says it all

[Chandrashekar BC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometime when you are finished with a book, you will be in contentedness of knowing something great, wonderful piece of information from it. In rare cases, you close the book you just read with an ecstasy of reading it once again in future. You decide to read it again because you want to get immersed again into an astounding experience of "knowing something great" that will reveal before you some truths that drowns you in a pool of extraordinary experience . For that you have to wait until the current fresh experience to fade away. I am in that ecstasy of closing a wonderful book called "The Engines of Our Ingenuity" and waiting for my memory to fade away to read it again !!
The book takes you to the past; to decades, centuries and ages ago where the thinking invention started creeping into the human mind. It takes you on walk along the path of technological inventions that took place in past time in some corner of the world. The stories behind wheels, engines, roads, dams, scissors, shaving blade, aeroplanes, rockets, sewing machines, and computers and many other inventions are told simple but beautiful manner with sprincle of few poems. The author shows the reflection of human culture,necessary, desires and shear thinking in the inventions that changed the world. I like the point where he explains that "necessity is not always be the mother of invention, but the strong desire within the unstoppable, powefull human mind is the cause of many great inventions".

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book Liendhard talks about the relationship between technology and culture and they influence each other and spur each other forward. He makes a lot of insights that really opened my eyes to the idea of how interrelated things are in the world, especially everyday things. He also makes great observations into human nature and creativity. I know the subject sounds dry, but it's really a fascinating book.

[A. J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things are more interesting when you dig into them. Who inveted __________? Usually we give credit to one person who mostly added onto what was already done. Lots of fun to see the behind the scenes as to our industrialization.