Henry Petroski Zitate – Sprüche auf Englisch mit Übersetzung

Zitat des Tages von Henry Petroski:

Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Henry Petroski

Everything we do is designed, whether we're producing a magazine, a website, or a bridge. Design is really the creative invention that designs everything.

Henry Petroski

Companies selling a product play down its vulnerability and emphasize its robustness. But only after technology leaves the dock is it really tested. For human operators in control of a supposedly infallible system, complacency and overconfidence can take over, and caution may be thrown to the wind.

Henry Petroski

It seems to be a law of design that for every advantage introduced through redesign, there is an accompanying unintended disadvantage.

Henry Petroski

We can't simply blame the engineers when things go wrong because, no matter how well they plan, things don't always go according to plan.

Henry Petroski

A common misconception about how things such as space shuttles come to be is that engineers simply apply the theories and equations of science. But this cannot be done until the new thing-to-be is conceived in the engineer's mind's eye. Rather than following from science, engineered things lead it.

Henry Petroski

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

Henry Petroski

All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it requires an ensemble of correct assumptions and valid calculations.

Henry Petroski

Many new technologies come with a promise to change the world, but the world refuses to cooperate.

Henry Petroski

An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.

Henry Petroski

Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration at best and failure at worst.

Henry Petroski

Betting on the success of innovative technologies in the marketplace can carry all the uncertainty and risk that betting on the next card in the deck does at a blackjack table in Las Vegas. There is a factor of randomness that must be factored in, but precisely how to do so is anyone's guess.

Henry Petroski

I was always told that I was good in mathematics, and I guess my grades and standardized test scores supported that. My worst subjects were those that generally involved a lot of reading - English and history. So, having good test scores in math and mediocre ones in reading, I was naturally advised to major in engineering in college.

Henry Petroski

You can almost say that a design error is a human error because, after all, it's we humans who do the designing.

Henry Petroski

It has been said, by engineers themselves, that given enough money, they can accomplish virtually anything: send men to the moon, dig a tunnel under the English Channel. There's no reason they couldn't likewise devise ways to protect infrastructure from the worst hurricanes, earthquakes and other calamities, natural and manmade.

Henry Petroski

Failures are much more dramatic than successes, and people like drama. I think this is why automobile races draw such crowds. People expect spectacular crashes, which we tend to find more interesting than cars just racing around the track. The same is true of bridges, buildings, or any structure or machine.

Henry Petroski

Luxury, not necessity, is the mother of invention. Every artifact is somewhat wanting in its function, and that is what drives its evolution.

Henry Petroski