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Henry Petroski

Henry Petroski

civil engineer, engineer, historian, university teacher

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1942  – 2023

Henry Petroski was an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he was also a prolific author. Petroski wrote over a dozen books – beginning with To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985) and including a number of titles detailing the industrial design history of common, everyday objects, such as pencils, paper clips, toothpicks, and silverware. His first book was made into the film When Engineering Fails. He was a frequent lecturer and a columnist for the magazines American Scientist and Prism.

All Quotes by Henry Petroski

I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing about these things satisfies my curiosity about the made world while at the same time giving me an opportunity to design a new explanation for the processes that shape it.

Henry Petroski

Design is nothing if not decision making.

Henry Petroski

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

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

I employ case studies of failure into my courses, emphasizing that they teach us much more than studies of success. It is not that success stories cannot serve as models of good design or as exemplars of creative engineering. They can do that, but they cannot teach us how close to failure they are.

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

As engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world - not just study it.

Henry Petroski

Failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Henry Petroski

The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure can occur, we are more likely to produce successful designs.

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

Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.

Henry Petroski

The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure can occur, we are more likely to produce successful designs.

Henry Petroski