Acclaim for Henry Petroski’s
THE EVOLUTION OF USEFUL THINGS
“[It] offers the reader many fascinating data about human artifacts.… Petroski is an amiable and lucid writer.… He belong[s] with the poets, extending the Romantic embrace of nature to the invented, manufactured world that has become man’s second nature.”
—John Updike, The New Yorker
“Petroski weaves wonderfully odd facts into this book.… [He] makes us pay attention to ordinary objects … just the ticket for the technophile.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A constellation of little marvels [that] all make good stories.… [A] paean to Yankee ingenuity … an informative, entertaining book.”
—Boston Globe
“One has to admire a man who delivers an intelligent tirade on a garbage bag.… Readable and entertaining … Petroski liberally mixes biography, social history, design theory and even word derivations into these affectionately told tales.”
—Chicago Tribune
“This book is a monument to the historian’s curiosity and the engineer’s tenacity. It is a treasure trove of fascinating facts and amusing anecdotes.”
—New Criterion
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 1994
Copyright © 1992 by Henry Petroski
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
New York, in 1992.
Some of this material first appeared, in different form, in
American Heritage of Invention and Technology, Technology Review,
Wigwag, and Wilson Quarterly.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Barrie & Jenkins: Excerpts from The Nature and Aesthetics of Design by David Pye (Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1978). Reprinted by permission of Barrie & Jenkins, a division of The Random Century Group Limited.
Caliban Books: Excerpt from William Smith, Potter and Farmer, 1790–1858 by George Sturt (Caliban Books, London, 1978). Reprinted by permission.
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.: Excerpts from Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage by Emily Post. Copyright © 1965 by Funk and Wagnalls Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Harvard University Press: Excerpts from Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander (Harvard University Press, 1964). Reprinted by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Petroski, Henry.
The evolution of useful things / Henry Petroski.—1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: A. Knopf, 1992.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77305-0
1. Inventions. 2. Patents. I. Title.
T212.P465 1994
609—dc20 93-6351
Author photograph © Catherine Petroski
v3.1
to my mother,
and to the memory of my father
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
1 How the Fork Got Its Tines
2 Form Follows Failure
3 Inventors as Critics
4 From Pins to Paper Clips
5 Little Things Can Mean a Lot
6 Stick Before Zip
7 Tools Make Tools
8 Patterns of Proliferation
9 Domestic Fashion and Industrial Design
10 The Power of Precedent
11 Closure Before Opening
12 Big Bucks from Small Change
13 When Good Is Better Than Best
14 Always Room for Improvement
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Preface
Other than the sky and some trees, everything I can see from where I now sit is artificial. The desk, books, and computer before me; the chair, rug, and door behind me; the lamp, ceiling, and roof above me; the roads, cars, and buildings outside my window, all have been made by disassembling and reassembling parts of nature. If truth be told, even the sky has been colored by pollution, and the stand of trees has been oddly shaped to conform to the space allotted by development. Virtually all urban sensual experience has been touched by human hands, and thus the vast majority of us experience the physical world, at least, as filtered through the process of design.
Given that so much of our perception involves made things, it is reasonable to ask how they got to look the way they do. How is it that an artifact of technology has one shape rather than another? By what process do the unique, and not-so-unique, designs of manufactured goods come to be? Is there a single mechanism whereby the tools of different cultures evolve into distinct forms and yet serve the same essential function? To be specific, can the development of the knife and fork of the West be explained by the same principle that explains the chopsticks of the East? Can any single theory explain the shape of a Western saw, which cuts on the push stroke, as readily as an Eastern one, which cuts on the pull? If form does not follow function in any deterministic way, then by what mechanism do the shapes and forms of our made world come to be?
Such are the questions that have led to this book. It extends an exploration of engineering that I began in To Engineer Is Human, which dealt mainly with understanding why made things break, and that I continued in The Pencil, which traced the evolution of a single artifact through the cultural, political, and technological vicissitudes of history. Here I have focused not on the physical failings of any single thing but, rather, on the implications of failure—whether physical, functional, cultural, or psychological—for form generally. This extended essay, which may be read as a refutation of the design dictum that “form follows function,” has led to considerations that go beyond things themselves to the roots of the often ineffable creative processes of invention and design.
As artifacts evolve from artifacts, so do books from books. In writing this one, I have once again benefited from the physical and intellectual resources of many libraries and librarians. As always, I acknowledge Eric Smith, head of Duke University’s Vesic Engineering Library, who remains ever-patient in the face of my frequently vague requests for often obscure sources, and even pursues avenues of information I would never have dreamed of following. Stuart Basefsky, of the Public Documents Department in Duke’s Perkins Library, helped me get oriented in patent literature, which proved to be so important for my case, and the patent repository of the D. H. Hill Library of North Carolina State University graciously filled my numerous requests for documents. Several manufacturers, by freely providing their company histories, catalogues, and ephemera, enabled me to read beyond library walls and find invaluable documentation of things as they have been and are. Also, many friends, readers, and collectors generously shared with me art, facts, and artifacts that have found their way into my work. Where I have remembered my debts, I have acknowledged them in the notes at the end of this volume.
Correspondence and conversations with inventors and designers over the years have certainly shaped the ideas in this book,
but, as in so much invention and design, individual contributions must necessarily remain largely anonymous, because they have become so threaded into the fabric of the work that to try to pick out even the most conspicuous of them would but lead to a lot of loose ends. Where practitioners have written or spoken for the record, their works are referenced in my bibliography, as are all those in which I can recall having read support for my thesis. By their example and encouragement, certain writers, engineers, and historians of technology have been especially instrumental in influencing this book, and I must single out Freeman Dyson, Eugene Ferguson, Melvin Kranzberg, and Walter Vincenti for their support.
A book naturally takes time and space to write, and I am indebted to a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for the former and to a carrel in Perkins Library for the latter. I am grateful to my supportive editor, Ashbel Green, and to the many others at Alfred A. Knopf who have read the manuscript with pencils of various colors and in other ways prepared it for the press. Whatever shortcomings that remain are naturally my responsibility. Finally, my family once again understood my need to think and read at home each evening, and they quietly and constantly added to my store of examples by leaving interesting thing after interesting thing, from the broken to the bizarre, on my desk. I am, as always, grateful to Stephen, to Karen, who indexed this book, and especially to Catherine, who read the book for me at each stage of its evolution.
William R. Perkins Library
Duke University
April 1992
1
How the Fork Got Its Tines
The eating utensils that we use daily are as familiar to us as our own hands. We manipulate knife, fork, and spoon as automatically as we do our fingers, and we seem to become conscious of our silverware only when right- and left-handers cross elbows at a dinner party. But how did these convenient implements come to be, and why are they now so second-nature to us? Did they appear in some flash of genius to one of our ancestors, who yelled “Eureka!,” or did they evolve as naturally and quietly as did the parts of our bodies? Why is Western tableware so alien to Eastern cultures, and why do chopsticks make our hands all thumbs? Are our eating utensils really “perfected,” or is there room for improvement?
Such questions that arise out of table talk can serve as paradigms for questions about the origins and evolution of all made things. And seeking answers can provide insight into the nature of technological development generally, for the forces that have shaped place settings are the same that have shaped all artifacts. Understanding the origins of diversity in pieces of silverware makes it easier to understand the diversity of everything from bottles, hammers, and paper clips to bridges, automobiles, and nuclear-power plants. Delving into the evolution of the knife, fork, and spoon can lead us to a theory of how all the things of technology evolve. Exploring the tableware that we use every day, and yet know so little about, provides as good a starting point for a consideration of the interrelated natures of invention, innovation, design, and engineering as we are likely to find.
Some writers have been quite unequivocal about the origins of things. In their Picture History of Inventions, Umberto Eco and G. B. Zorzoli state flatly that “all the tools we use today are based on things made in the dawn of prehistory.” And in his Evolution of Technology, George Basalla posits as fundamental that “any new thing that appears in the made world is based on some object already there.” Such assertions appear to be borne out in the case of eating utensils.
Certainly our earliest ancestors ate food, and it is reasonable to ask how they ate it. At first, no doubt, they were animals as far as their table manners were concerned, and so we can assume that the way we see real animals eat today gives us clues as to how the earliest people ate. They would use their teeth and nails to tear off pieces of fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat. But teeth and nails can only do so much; they alone are generally not strong enough or sharp enough to render easily all things edible into bite-sized pieces.
The knife is thought to have had its origins in shaped pieces of flint and obsidian, very hard stone and rock whose fractured edges can be extremely sharp and thus suitable to scrape, pierce, and cut such things as vegetable and animal flesh. How the efficacious properties of flints were first discovered is open to speculation, but it is easy to imagine how naturally fractured specimens may have been noticed by early men and women to be capable of doing things their hands and fingers could not. Such a discovery could have occurred, for example, to someone walking barefoot over a field and cutting a foot on a shard of flint. Once the connection between accident and intention was made, it would have been a matter of lesser innovation to look for other sharp pieces of flint. Failing to find an abundance of them, early innovators might have engaged in the rudiments of knapping, perhaps after noticing the naturally occurring fracture of falling rocks.
In time, prehistoric people must have come to be adept at finding, making, and using flint knives, and they would naturally also have discovered and developed other ingenious devices. With fire came the ability to cook food, but even meat that had been delicately cut into small pieces could barely be held over a fire long enough to warm it, let alone cook it, and sticks may have come to be used in much the same way as children today roast marshmallows. Pointed sticks, easily obtained in abundance from nearby trees and bushes, could have been used to keep an individual’s fingers from being cooked with dinner. But larger pieces of meat, if not the whole animal, would more likely first have been roasted on a larger stick. Upon being removed from the fire, the roast could be divided among the diners, perhaps by being scored first with a flint knife. Those around the fire could then pick warm pieces of tender meat off the bone with pointed sticks, or resort to their fingers.
This damascened blade of a thousand-year-old Saxon scramasax is inscribed, “Gebereht owns me.” Early knives were proud personal possessions and they served many functions; the pointed blade not only could pierce the flesh of an enemy but also could spear pieces of food and convey them to the mouth. This knife’s long-missing handle may have been made of wood or bone. (photo credit 1.1)
From the separate implements of sharp-edged flint for cutting and sharp-pointed stick for spearing evolved the single implement of a knife that would be easily recognized as such today. By ancient times, knives were being made of bronze and iron, with handles of wood, shell, and horn. The applications of these knives were multifarious, as tools and weapons as well as dining implements, and in Saxon England a knife known as a “scramasax” was the constant companion of its owner. Whereas common folk still ate mostly with their teeth and fingers, tearing meat from the bone with abandon, more refined people came to employ their knives in some customary ways. In the politest of circumstances, the dish being sliced might have been held steady by a crust of bread, with the knife being used also to spear the morsel and convey it to the mouth, thus keeping the fingers of both hands clean.
I first experienced what it is like to eat with only a single knife some years ago in Montreal, in a setting that might best be described as participatory dinner theater. The Festin du Gouverneur took place in an old fort, and a hundred or so of us sat at long bare wooden tables set parallel to three sides of a small stage. At each place were a napkin and a single knife, with which we were expected to eat our entire meal, which consisted of roast chicken, potatoes, carrots, and a roll. It was relatively easy to deal with the firm carrots and potatoes, for pieces of them could be sheared off with the knife blade, speared on its point, and put neatly in the mouth. However, I had considerable trouble just cutting off pieces of chicken. At first I tried to steady it with my roll, but it was soft to begin with and soon became crumbly and soggy. I had to resort to eating the chicken with my fingers. What I remember most about the experience was how greasy my fingers felt for the rest of the evening. How convenient and more civilized it would have been at least to have had a second knife.
My only other experience eating with a single knife occ
urred at a barbecue restaurant popular with the students and faculty of Texas A & M University. I had been visiting the campus, and for a light dinner before I caught my plane back to North Carolina one of my hosts thought I might enjoy trying what he described as real barbecue—Texas beef instead of the pork variety I had come to know and love in the Southeast. I ordered a small portion of the house specialty, and the waitress brought me several slices of beef brisket, two whole cooked onions, a fat dill pickle, a good-sized wedge of cheddar cheese, and two slices of white bread, all wrapped in a large piece of white butcher paper, which when opened up served as both plate and place mat. On the paper was set a very sharply pointed butcher knife with a bare wooden handle.
I followed the lead of the Aggies I was with and picked up a piece of brisket with the point of the knife and laid it atop a piece of bread. (In medieval times, the piece of bread, called a “trencher,” would have been four days old to give it some stiffness and body, the better to hold the meat and sauce.) We proceeded to cut off bite-sized pieces of this open-faced sandwich, and everything else set before us, and it all was delicious. The single knife worked well, because it was very sharp and could be pressed through the firm food, which itself did not slip much on the paper. However, I was quite distracted throughout the meal by my host, who used his knife so casually that I feared any minute he would cut his lip or worse. He also kept me a bit uneasy with his jokingly expressed hope that no one would come up behind us and give us a good pat on the back just as we were putting our knives into our mouths.
Eating a meal with two knives might seem to have been doubly crude and dangerous, but in its time it was thought of as the height of refinement. For the most formal dining in the Middle Ages, a knife was grasped in each hand. For a right-handed person the knife in the left hand held the meat steady while the knife in the right hand sliced off an appropriately sized piece. This piece was then speared and conveyed to the mouth on the knife’s tip. Eating with two knives represented a distinct advance in table manners, and the adept diner must have manipulated a pair of knives as readily as we do a knife and fork today.
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to Be as They Are. Page 1
