Henry Petroski - look him up!

'Henry Petroski' is Alexander S. Vesic, Professor of Civil Engineering and professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of more than a dozen books on engineering and design, including "To Engineer Is Human (Vintage)", and was the writer and presenter of the BBC television series with that same title.

His books delve into the historic journey of many of man's greater creations, from simple hand tools to giant bridges. He compiles his studies into easy to digest stories and anecdotes that show the progression of design and engineering through the ages.

One book in particular is "Success Through Failure - The Paradox of Design". This is a really fascinating book as he goes to great lengths to show that no one design is ever perfect of 100% fit for its intended purpose. His opening chapter alone delves through at least 1000 years of progression from simple shadow shows leading up to the modern projector. He highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the inventions and also the improvements in technology and building skill that lead them through development.

For example, he describes the invention of the first projecting light box that would be used to display images on a wall for larger audience viewing around about the 14th century. A very simple concept by modern standards but hugely advanced at the time. It was called lanterna magica as it was seen as witchcraft to some people! It showed technical flourish and opened up a huge gap in the advancement of early picture theatre shows and also for use in the academic environment.

Obviously such a device would evolve and so it became smaller and easier to handle with more improvements such as a moving 'reel' that the user could put several display sheets or images on to allow easier changing. Compare that to the modern electrical projector and he highlights the somewhat annoying elements of computer adaptability in making a projection work anywhere. With the lanterna magica and its predecessors it required a large wall and a light source and the images could be moved nearer the light source to make it fit on the screen. With the advent of computer programmes like Presenter, many projectors and computers have different set-ups meaning it either distorts an image or crops it off at the side. They sometimes take forever to set-up for a presentation as Im sure most designers would be aware!

Basically, check-out his studies. He really does bring to life the fact that any design is flawed otherwise there would be no need to re-desing or try to improve on it. If everything we used was perfect then thousands upon thousands of designers would be out of jobs! Failure is a required part of success as you need an improvement point with which to progress from!

Three of his books I found particulary good are:

"Success through Failure - The Paradox of Design"

"To Engineer Is Human"

"Invention by Design"

meccano... the key to good design?

I remember when I was young, I always had a habit for venturing into my dad's or my grandad's sheds and simply helping myself to the various instruments of tooling and then finding whatever scrap (at least I thought it was) pieces of wood I could find and start banging, sawing, cutting, twisting and dimembering away.

The problem was, it never amounted to anything other than a sound thrashing based on the mess I created. Though it never stopped me, my parents decided to do something about it and introduced me to many marvels that would carve out my future.

These included Lego sets, young woodwork sets (nothing like them these days!), small construction toys and the king of them all....Meccano!

My grandad tells me that when I was 5 or 6 I was determined to become an undertaker due to my fascination with the wrestler of the same name and my habit of cutting up wood. Once I came into contact with Meccano, I soon learned I wanted to do something else!

The sheer simplicity, uniformality and standardised design of the sets left infinite amounts of creative space for the young engineers of the days. Similar to Lego; almost any piece could be bolted to another piece using the small nuts and bolts and spanners. It paved the way for any young boy who would look at a huge piece of engineering genius and thought how wonderful it would be to be involved in such a spectacle.

The pieces were so simple and yet so diverse because of the range in lengths and shapes. Hours would be spent every day tightening the bolts, adding sections, improving structural integrity, re-thinking the counterbalance I put on the crane model, trying to make a stronger suspension bridge using fewer parts... it filled me with so much joy and kept me fascinated in a way that I haven't experienced since.

I'm saddened when I see the Meccano on offer today as it is nothing by comparison. The original sets, up until the mid-90s, used standard components that left the creativity up to the budding builder. Today, however, the sets that are available give you fewer parts, more custom parts for the particular model and lesser creative control. I remember getting a set with nearly 200 parts in it one Christmas, and I could create whatever I want from it. The sets available in the shops today can contain fewer than 60 parts and are usually designed to result in a specific end product with only minore variations.

Young boys (and girls!) are not being given the creative space that they so deserve. Tony Blair banged on about "Education, education, education!" That's all well and good, but the future generations of the world are being dumbed down and spoon fed everything and their imaginations are not being given the room to expand and to absorb the educations being offered to them. Lego is exactly the same. I used to have boxes under my bed filled with hundreds upon hundreds of Lego blocks and I would carve a masterpiece of geniusness from them. Today, everything is being simplified and including specialist parts for particular sets and so the young designers have to follow strict rules to build a finished model.

If you want the future designers and engineers of the world to continuously create brilliant pieces of work then everything has to go back to basics.

Design principles can be taught and so can the science behind engineering. Creativity is something that an individual person develops themselves and cannot be taught. You can give them lessons on how to be more creative and open up their minds but you can't simply take someone into a room and teach them creativity. It is an individual quality unique to each person.

To get someone on the path of creativity in the design, architecture and engineering world they need something like good old fashioned meccano. With something so simple, anyone can begin the build and come up woth concepts that can then be worked at at a further level. They aren't restricted by things like regulations, standard parts, things that aren't immediatley available to them... they are simply coming up with an answer to a problem that they can then develop into feasible solutions.



To conclude on my rant, I strongly believe that the simplest of tools available can help anyone realise their ideas as reailty in simple forms. The designers of the future need to be given the simple building blocks of Meccano and Lego as a starting point to build and develop their ideas. In order to move forward we need to step back and use the simple things that work!