Engineering History

In the Summer 2007 issue of Prism, the magazine of the American Society for Engineering Education, Henry Petroski writes about the fact that engineers don't get much recognition. People see the things that engineers designed but don't think about the men and women who did the designing. Very true: who designed the car you drive? the appliances you use to cook? I have no idea.

Of course, Petroski has attempted to overcome this with some of his writing about famous bridges and other engineering marvels. In this column he reiterates the need to include the history and heritage of engineering in the engineering body of knowledge (he specifically refers to a debate within the civil engineering profession). Petroski laments that young engineers don't know the names of the engineers responsible for outstanding engineering achievements and encourages engineering faculty to teach history as part of their courses.

I fully agree. I do cover history in my Production Management course because Hopp and Spearman's Factory Physics text includes a chapter on history. I also wrote some history for a chapter of the Handbook of Production Scheduling. See also my earlier post on the history of manufacturing.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has a History Center; among the listed landmarks is the FMC Citrus Juice Extractor, invented in 1947 by the FMC Corporation of Lakeland, Florida, and now used worldwide for squeezing oranges.
You can find the story of extractor in this PDF document.