Henry Petroski is a professor of history and Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering at Duke University. His book Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering has fust been published by Knopf. This essay is adapted from one that accompanied “Toying With Architecture: The Building Toy in the Arena of Play, 1800 to the Present,” the catalogue for an exhibition of that name at the Katonah (New York) Museum of Art.
Articles by this Contributor
A leading historian of technology picks ten lesser known bridges that deserve to be better known.
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FOR THE BETTER PART OF A CENTURY, Erector and Meccano sets started children on the road to professional engineering Read >>
Fall 1992
Invention is an unending succession of imperfections. A case in point: the beer can. Read >>
Fall 1989
He is remembered now as the solitary philosopher of Walden Pond, but he also conceived of the best, most advanced pencils in the nation and helped run the factory that made them Read >>
