Henry Petroski Quotes
41 quotes
in 669 categories
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The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.
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Engineers are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable; that they catch…
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Any design, whether its for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.
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I emphasize that virtually every engineering calculation is ultimately a failure calculation, because without a failure criterion against which to measure the calculated result, it…
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All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it requires an ensemble…
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What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of design is still to obviate failure, and thus it…
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A failed structure provides a counterexample to a hypothesis and shows us incontrovertibly what cannot be done, while a structure that stands without incident often…
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Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them…
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There's so much written about the Titanic, and it's hard to separate what's fact and what's fiction. My understanding is that the way the Titanic…
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No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.
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The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past…
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I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing about these things…
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I relax by looking at things and reading about things. Even the simplest thing can reveal a great deal about the world around us. It…
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I was always told that I was good in mathematics, and I guess my grades and standardized test scores supported that. My worst subjects were…
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Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.
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Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.
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Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece…
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Companies selling a product play down its vulnerability and emphasize its robustness. But only after technology leaves the dock is it really tested. For human…
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Failures are much more dramatic than successes, and people like drama. I think this is why automobile races draw such crowds. People expect spectacular crashes,…
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When something succeeds, we learn little more from it than that it did succeed. When something fails, however, we are driven to try to understand…
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