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A million people tune in each weekday to hear John H. Lienhard's
radio program "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." Now, Lienhard has gathered
together his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, human inventiveness,
and the history of engineering in this fascinating new book. The
Engines of Our Ingenuity offers a series of intriguing glimpses into technology
-- as a mirror, as a danger, as a product of heroic hubris. The book brims with
insightful observations. Lienhard writes, for instance, that the history of technology
is a history of us -- we are the machines we create. The technology of farming,
for example, altered life on earth when humans and wheat became dependent upon
one another for their mutual survival. We also learn that war does not necessarily
fuel invention (radar, jets, and the digital computer all emerged before World
War II began), and that the medieval church was actually a driving force behind
the growth of Western technology (Cistercian monasteries were virtual factories,
putting water wheels to work in wood-cutting, forging and olive crushing). Lienhard
also illuminates the unpredictable nature of the inventive mind, leading us through
one fascinating example after another. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, for instance,
were highly passionate even combative figures, while the almost invisible Josiah
Willard Gibbs, living a quiet, outwardly uneventful life, was probably America's
greatest scientist. Lienhard's themes are illuminated
with stories of inventors, mathematicians, and engineers, telling the story of
the canoe, the DC-3, the Hoover Dam, the diode, and the sewing machine. The result
is less history than autobiography -- for the autobiography of all of us is written
in our machines. John Lienhard is M.D. Anderson Professor
of Mechanical Engineering and History at the University of Houston. He has worked
as an engineer and educator since 1951, and is known for his work in the thermal
sciences. He has also worked actively in history since the 1970s. He is the author
and host of "The Engines of Our Ingenuity," a daily essay on creativity
produced by KUHF-FM Houston and heard nationally on Public Radio. He lives in
Houston, Texas. |
