A Century of Innovation: Twenty Engineering Achievements that Transformed Our Lives , George Constable and Bob Somerville Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, 2003. $45.00 (248 pp.). ISBN 0-309-08908-5
One should pay attention to this lovely large-format coffee-table book, for it is more than it seems to be. If you, like me, shrink from lists of the best and most important exemplars of anything—books or buildings, singers or sandwiches—then you naturally greet such an accounting with distrust. But give this book a chance.
It was developed under the auspices of the National Academy of Engineering. A number of engineering societies nominated the 20th-century technologies they felt had made the greatest positive impact on humankind. A committee then selected 20 of the technologies. Finally, two seasoned writers of technology and science actually wrote the book. They portrayed each technology with the help of many experts.
A book written by a committee can raise a cautionary flag in our minds. We therefore need to remember that, when committees function as groups of dedicated individuals, they can produce fine results. The King James Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution are examples. Each was produced by a committee both dedicated and contentious, and each reflects the convictions of the members. It is obvious that this book likewise has the hearts and minds of its developers written into it.
Two major questions arise immediately about the book: Is the selection of technologies a useful one? And did the authors do a good job of dealing with each technology?
One can hardly fault the selections—they are broad enough to provide remarkably complete coverage. The book’s 20 chapters begin with electrification, automobiles, airplanes, and water supply, and they continue all the way through such topics as spacecraft and the internet. The technologies that gave our century its shape and form are, by and large, all present.
The organizers of the book have deftly avoided the morass that so many fall into with books of this kind—the error of trying to pinpoint specific “great” inventors and inventions. We are perfectly aware that individuals underlie each of these broad technologies. The seriously important inventors are far too numerous, and we rightly tire of hearing about a few iconographic exemplars.
In any balanced look, compromises must be struck. The Wright brothers, for example, appear in the section about flight, but so too do Otto Lillienthal, Glenn Curtiss, Hugo Junkers, Octave Chanute, and Richard Whitcomb. If Thomas Sopwith, Claude Ryan, Andrei Tupolev, and Victor Loughhead are not mentioned, the tone of the brief article is such that we can feel their presence without reading their names. If, for example, Chester Carlson and his powerfully influential process of xerography are also absent, so too must most of the great inventors go unmentioned in such an ambitious task.
The articles nonetheless convey the sense of balance and judgment that good history should provide. I was pleased to find, for example, that the article on computers avoids the hagiographical invocation of Charles Babbage and, instead, gives both George Boole and John Atanasoff their due.
Each chapter is arranged in three parts: first, a richly illustrated overview of the technological area; second, a one-page perspective statement by someone in the field; and third, a two-page timeline of milestones in the area. Bill Gates, for example, contributes the perspective piece on the computer. However, Microsoft appears in the timeline only with the 1985 introduction of Windows 1.0.
These three storytelling elements combine in an excellent strategy for painting a clear picture of the transformation of American life that was accomplished during the 20th century. This period (I state flatly) was the most dramatic single transformation of everyday life the world has ever seen.
That drama was particularly true of the first half of the century—the period we call “modern”—and a glance at the 20 timelines in the book reflects that fact. Most are skewed toward the years before the cold war. Indeed, the chapters on such early topics as electrification, the automobile, water supply, and the mechanization of agriculture are especially strong. That is not only because the impact of those technologies was overwhelming, but also because their history has had more time to germinate.
With the exception of the internet, all the timelines have strong roots in the early 20th century, for that was when a great explosion of inventive energy occurred; that was when our lives became unrecognizably different from those of our grandparents. That soul-stretching alteration of human existence is what this fine—this surprising—committee-built book lays before us in such dramatic terms.
John Lienhard is the M. D. Anderson Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and of History at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. He is the creator of the public radio program The Engines of Our Ingenuity and the author of Inventing Modern: Growing Up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins (Oxford U. Press, 2003).
