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

John H. Lienhard (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195167317 | ISBN-13: 978-0195167313 | Publication Date: December 4, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Technology is not just a byword to refer to the sum of designs and applications that enable us to do things like open cans--or make cans in the first place. It is, writes engineer John Lienhard in this imaginative survey, an instrument by which we become more human, a means of interacting with and learning from the world. Technology mirrors humans, and humans mirror technology, and the question that remains is "whether we are to be lifted up or dragged down in the process."

Although he is quick to acknowledge the harmful applications of technology over the years, especially in producing ever more novel and efficient ways of killing each other, Lienhard is inclined to point toward the beneficial uses of machines and tools and the innate beauty of a thing well made. (Not for nothing, he notes, did Henry David Thoreau proudly carry a calling card that identified him as a civil engineer.) As he ranges throughout history, Lienhard offers wonderful case studies of well-intentioned attempts to make the best uses of technology--Christopher Wren's construction of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the colonial American oddball John Fitch's invention of the first paddlewheel steamer, Mark Twain's financing of a revolutionary and doomed typesetting machine--and to change the world in the bargain. Lienhard's pages are populated with characters who have been largely forgotten in the standard history books, but whose work added greatly to the quality of life of succeeding generations. His book deserves a place on the shelf alongside Kenneth Clark's Civilization and Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man as a spirited celebration of the practical imagination. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Based on episodes from Lienhard's widely broadcast public radio series, this intriguing set of essays begins with a simple premise: more than we often care to admit, our lives are shaped by our machines. Fleshing out this proposition, Lienhard ransacks 2,000 years of scientific and technological history, cobbling together a quirky biography of the strange being he calls homo technologicus. From Galileo's inspired tinkerings to a thumbnail history of the DC-3, this book plunges into the annals of mechanical culture and turns up a technophile's delight of canny observations. For example, an obscure German clergyman suggested that the Americas be named for the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, and one of Napoleon's resident archeologists turned up the Rosetta Stone during a military stalemate in Egypt. A fascinating history of St. Paul's Cathedral in London reveals that architect Christopher Wren sneaked the magnificent dome into his plans after a stodgy commission insisted on an ungainly spire instead. Then there's J. Willard Gibbs, the man Lienhard calls "the greatest American scientist who has ever lived," who made forays into vector analysis and statistical mechanics that paved the way for Einstein and Fermi. Though Lienhard groups his material conceptually (one chapter reviews major landmarks in the history of inventions, another examines war and technology), his freewheeling associations can make one's head spin. Still, approached as an almanac of serendipitous discoveries, this work remains a fitting introduction to the human obsession with invention. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195167317
• ISBN-13: 978-0195167313
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #938,398 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genuinely ingenious!, October 9, 2000

By 

Adam Rutkowski (Lennox Head, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture (Hardcover)

An enjoyable writing style combined with a wealth of interesting facts makes this a book that few would dislike. Every story that glorifies engineers is matched by one showing their shortcomings or failures, providing a book that seems to have a well balanced perspective on the impact of technology on science, not the biased view one might anticipate in a book by an engineer about engineering.

The huge volume of assorted facts borders on random trivia, but it is always organised in a logical fashion, and enthusiastically written, so the end result is hardly tedious, but rather a very compelling read.

I would love to have access to his radio program if it is anywhere near as good as this book.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars milestone classic on technology and culture, August 22, 2000

By 

Robert Nagle "idiotprogrammer" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture (Hardcover)

The first thing I want to say about this book is: about time!!!

John Lienhard is a philosopher who has been using his daily public radio broadcasts to share his wonderful meditations on art, science and humanity. He reads with a inspirational tone, and often his meditations wander into territories unforeseen. I remember one episode where Leinhard starts by talking about a tabloid column about bigfoot on the north pole, then shelley's frankenstein and then some scientific topic. I remember also with fondness Leinhard's paean to the man who invented leaded gasoline and how significant a technological improvement it was considered at the time (and how maligned his invention is in the modern day). Leinhard writes with a keen sense of historical irony and can transition from one discipline into another with ease.

I would compare Leinhard's prose to that of a Francis Bacon, a Carl Sagan or an Edmund Wilson. His writing is at the top of his field, and his mastery of the intracies of engineering, physics or any other scientific field are truly astounding. The 5 minute radio program form forced them to be concise, and frequently I've been impressed by how succinctly he can convey an entire life of a scientist in less than 5 minutes: the tragedies and triumphs.

Perhaps in book form these meditations won't seem as remarkable. (I compare it with Garison Keilor, whose wonderfully witty spoken prose hangs limp on the book page). However, I've read many of his essays at his web site at University of Houston, and there is still the same excitement and vigor in the written prose. My only complaint is that they are not available for download in audio form.

I am not a scientist, but Lienhard makes me want to be. He has helped me to see the connections between art and science, life and science, god and science. I can't tell you how many times I've been driving in a daze and how Mr. Lienhard's 5 minute meditation suddenly fills my life with clarity.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, June 26, 2000

By 

Mike Potter (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture (Hardcover)

If you love hearing The Engines of Our Ingenuity on Public Radio then you will love this book. Professor Lienhard (Professor of Engineering at the University of Houston) is a master storyteller, weaving together tidbits of information and little know facts to explore civilization's machines and how they came to be. I have been anxiously awaiting this book because Lienhard is limited to only about 3 minutes on the radio. In book form I was not at all disappointed. I could hear his deep voice resonating on each page.