Winner of the 1969 Abbott Payson Usher Prize given by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).

Bibliography of the History of Technology

Science & Math

Ferguson, Eugene S.

History & Philosophy

Mit Pr

The things that engineers design are everywhere, and the influence that engineers have on daily life is far out of proportion to their numbers. In this expanded version of a remarkable essay published in Science more than a decade ago, Eugene Ferguson takes a probing look at the process of engineering design, arguing that despite modern technical advances, good engineering is still as much a matter of intuition and nonverbal thinking as of equations and computation. Ferguson, who has been successively a mechanical engineer, a technical museum curator, and a teacher of the history of technology, uses examples ranging from the development of the American axe to the collapse of the Hartford Coliseum and the performance of the Hubble space telescope to illustrate the ways in which visual thinking enriches engineering and the ways in which engineering that relies solely on technical sophistication can go wrong. He argues that a system of engineering education that ignores this heritage of nonverbal thinking will produce engineers who are dangerously ignorant of the many ways in which the real world differs from the mathematical models constructed in academic minds. In Engineering and the Mind's Eye, Ferguson discusses the nature of engineering design and traces the development of visual and other nonverbal thinking, offering examples of how engineers and other technologists have used such strategies since the Renaissance. Accompanying these examples, and demonstrating the ways in which engineers have shared their knowledge, is a parallel text of illustrations showing how visual thinking has been expressed over the past five centuries. Ferguson concludes his provocative account by arguing that engineering education since 1945 has been skewed toward analytical techniques - which are easiest to teach and evaluate - and away from the art of engineering design as taught by experienced engineers. Eugene Ferguson is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Delaware.

Engineering and the Mind's Eye

Engineering & Transportation

Engineering

In this insightful and incisive essay, Eugene Ferguson demonstrates that good engineering is as much a matter of intuition and nonverbal thinking as of equations and computation. He argues that a system of engineering education that ignores nonverbal thinking will produce engineers who are dangerously ignorant of the many ways in which the real world differs from the mathematical models constructed in academic minds.

Engineering and the Mind's Eye (Mit Press)

Evolution

The MIT Press

The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli: A Classic Sixteenth-century Illustrated Treatise on Technology Translation and Biographical Study

Ramelli, Agostino

Gnudi, Martha Teach

History

Ashgate Publishing Group

A perfect copy. No library, owners' or remainder marks.

Truxton of the Constellation

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Naval_Institute_Press

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Books by Ferguson, Eugene S.