Things We Make - SFBA Book Club

English language

Published June 8, 2023 by Sourcebooks, Incorporated.

ISBN:: 978-1-7282-1575-4

(1 review)

Discover the secret method used to build the world . . . For millennia, humans have used one simple method to solve problems. Whether it's planting crops, building skyscrapers, developing photographs, or designing the first microchip, all creators follow the same steps to engineer progress. But this powerful method, the "engineering method", is an all but hidden process that few of us have heard of-let alone understand-but that influences every aspect of our lives. Bill Hammack, a Carl Sagan Award-winning professor of engineering and viral "The Engineer Guy" on YouTube, has a lifelong passion for the things we make, and how we make them. Now, for the first time, he reveals the invisible method behind every invention and takes us on a whirlwind tour of how humans built the world we know today. From the grand stone arches of medieval cathedrals to the mundane modern soda can, Hammack explains the …

Discover the secret method used to build the world . . . For millennia, humans have used one simple method to solve problems. Whether it's planting crops, building skyscrapers, developing photographs, or designing the first microchip, all creators follow the same steps to engineer progress. But this powerful method, the "engineering method", is an all but hidden process that few of us have heard of-let alone understand-but that influences every aspect of our lives. Bill Hammack, a Carl Sagan Award-winning professor of engineering and viral "The Engineer Guy" on YouTube, has a lifelong passion for the things we make, and how we make them. Now, for the first time, he reveals the invisible method behind every invention and takes us on a whirlwind tour of how humans built the world we know today. From the grand stone arches of medieval cathedrals to the mundane modern soda can, Hammack explains the golden rule of thumb that underlies every new building technique, every technological advancement, and every creative solution that leads us one step closer to a better, more functional world. Spanning centuries and cultures, Hammack offers a fascinating perspective on how humans engineer solutions in a world full of problems.

3 editions

technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed Things We Make by Bill Hammack

Engineering, the real stories

4 stars

I'm a big fan of Edward Petroski's books on engineering, and this is in the same vein, peeling away the simplistic lone inventor eureka stories created by media, marketing, and yes education (in high school I participated in a "gifted" program where they told us how inspiration came in dreams and we ran around smashing ice to see who could make water first) to show the far more complex and nonlinear paths to creating things that work. The final few chapters illustrate that forcefully, using the light bulb (Edison gets all the credit, but everyone should know about Lewis Latimer) and microwave oven (the candy bar story is a hoax) as examples. Another point that the author is attempting to make is that engineering is not just applied science, which is where the book starts off describing how the ancients could construct huge pyramids and arches and domes without all …

I'm a big fan of Edward Petroski's books on engineering, and this is in the same vein, peeling away the simplistic lone inventor eureka stories created by media, marketing, and yes education (in high school I participated in a "gifted" program where they told us how inspiration came in dreams and we ran around smashing ice to see who could make water first) to show the far more complex and nonlinear paths to creating things that work. The final few chapters illustrate that forcefully, using the light bulb (Edison gets all the credit, but everyone should know about Lewis Latimer) and microwave oven (the candy bar story is a hoax) as examples. Another point that the author is attempting to make is that engineering is not just applied science, which is where the book starts off describing how the ancients could construct huge pyramids and arches and domes without all the math and physics knowledge we have today (not to mention the software), there was a lot of intuition and experimentation and ultimately rules of thumb coded into practice. Of course, the book describes as it progresses, engineering reaches its full potential when it can incorporate the latest math and science understanding, as came to be with steam engines, but ultimately engineers stand on the shoulders of other engineers. Now, it did take me a while to get through this book, partly because the writing is not quite as good as I recall Petroski's, there's some awkward phrasing and the prose is not quite dry but seems to drag sometimes, but I think it's also the text formatting, it has the feel of those bargain bin Barnes and Nobles classics prints which strain my eyes. So I thought I might not make it to the end before the library due date but the afterword although brief is the best part, where the author recounts how he got into engineering (to everyone's surprise including his own after intellectually lackluster teen years), discovered engineering is a different animal from science (I think it's similar to how I viewed my first economics class - they had all these graphs but it looked to me like they're just making stuff up), and his mission to impart the wonderfully intricate and human nature of engineering. The enthusiasm is infectious.