
Henry Petroski
Henry Petroski is the A. S. Vesic Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering Emeritus at Duke University. His new book is Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop (2022, Yale University Press).
Content By Author
Article
- Building Knowledge
- Museums of Bridges
- The Public Lecture and Social Mobility
- Altering an Icon
- The Push and Pull of Friction
- Science and Engineering as Puzzle Solving
- Infrastructure in Service to Well-Being
- Frozen Tomatoes and Other Construction Materials
- Annus Mirabilis
- The Beauty of Threes
- All Things Cryptic
- What Lessons Will Be Learned from the Florida Condo Collapse?
- Engineered for Trust
- Elevators Rise to the Occasion
- Quick Is Beautiful, Slow Less So
- A Bicentennial in a Pandemic
- Towers: Upright, Leaning, and Collapsed
- What Happened to the Genoa Bridge?
- The Sonnet as Science
- The Hard Hat
- Testing 500-Year-Old Hypotheses
- Solving Failures Around the House
- Super-Tall and Super-Slender Structures
- A Taxed Infrastructure
- Foundations: From Solid to Faulty Towers
- This Is the Title. Or Is It a Head?
- Overlooked or Ignored Modes of Failure
- Pill Organizers as Organized Design
- The Rise and Fall of Cantilever Bridges
- Assembling Big Data from Failures
- Miami Bridge Collapse
- The Business Card as an Object of Design
- Through the Lens of The Big Bang Theory
- Will the Museum of Failure Succeed?
- Problematic Pedestrian Bridges
- The State of Our Infrastructure
- Bright Light or Blight Over Brighton?
- Slide Rules: Gone But Not Forgotten
- Bottle and Can Openers as Levers
- Setbacks and Prospects for Autonomous Vehicles
- Lecterns Are Not Podiums
- Paying for Roads and Bridges
- How Paperweights Emerged from the Desk of Necessity
- The Road Ahead
- Traffic Signals, Dilemma Zones, and Red-Light Cameras
- The Merritt Parkway and Other Driving Respites
- The Bridge that United Two Cities
- From Lowly Paper Clips to Towering Suspension Bridges
- An Incubator for Cooperation Across the Disciplines
- Global Shipping and the Raising of the Bayonne Bridge
- Robert Wilson: Fermilab's Master Physicist, Sculptor, and Engineer
- Second Life of a Tied-Arch Bridge
- Can an Engineer Appreciate Art?
- Anonymous Design
- Aspirants, Apprentices, and Student Engineers
- The Story of Two Houses
- Rise and Fall of the Pocket Protector
- Impossible Points, Erroneous Walks
- In Memory of the Offprint
- Unbuilding a Maine Landmark
- The Evolution of Eyeglasses
- Geothermal Energy
- Tappan Zee Bridge
- An Anthropomorphic Model
- Engineering in the Abstract
- Overarching Problems
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Engineer
- Government Bridge
- Backseat Designers
- Opening Doors
- The Washington Monument
- Moving Obelisks
- Silver Bridge
- A Round Pie in a Square Box
- Controlled Demolition
- Arches and Domes
- Bridges of the Mediterranean
- Rereading Vitruvius
- Hoover Dam Bypass
- Technology Plus
- Reusing Infrastructure
- Challenges and Prizes
- Occasional Design
- The Minneapolis Bridge
- Infrastructure
- Once an Engineer . . .
- Akashi Kaikyo Bridge
- Tacoma Narrows Bridges
- Machu Picchu
- Tower Cranes
- Scientists as Inventors
- William Barclay Parsons
- Twists, Tags and Ties
- Thomas Telford
- A Bridge and Observatory
- The Simplest Thing
- The Cantilever
- What's In a Name Tag?
- Why Things Break
- Long Crossings
- Waldo-Hancock Bridge
- On the Road
- A Great Profession
- Things Small and Large
- Bridges of Charleston
- Levees and Other Raised Ground
- Shopping By Design
- Next Slide, Please
- Technology and the Humanities
- The Bay Bridge
- Painful Design
- Industrial Origami
- Past and Future Failures
- Lives of the Engineers
- Big Dig, Big Bridge
- Pyramids as Inclined Planes
- Deployable Structures
- Boat Lifts
- Hotel Design
- Fuel Cells
- Floating Bridges
- Early Education
- St. Francis Dam
- Framing Hypotheses: A Cautionary Tale
- Dorton Arena: On the occasion of its 50th anniversary and its dedication as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark
- Benjamin Franklin Bridge
- Art and Iron and Steel
- Delivering Papers
- The Civil Engineer: On the occasion of a sesquicentennial
- The Fall of Skyscrapers
- Everyday Design
- Millennium Legacies
- China Journal II
- China Journal I
- Bath Iron Works
- Twin Bridges
- Vanities of the Bonfire
- Concrete Canoes
- Human Factors
- Making Headlines
- Why 'The Pencil'?
- Time-Sensitive Material
- Buildings and Bookstacks
- Daubert and Kumho
- Drawing Bridges
- Work and Play
- Down Under
- Fazlur Khan
- New and Future Bridges
- From Connections to Collections
- Bilbao
- An Independent Inventor
- Technology and Societies
- John Scott Russell