Henry Petroski

Henry Petroski

9/22/2009 @ 6:00PM

Hit Or Miss Revolutions

Although all revolutionary technological change initiates in the minds of inventors and entrepreneurs, technology itself also seems to have a mind of its own. As carefully thought out as a new product or system may be, it can hold surprises for its originators and its adopters alike. Many new technologies come with a promise to change the world, but the world refuses to cooperate. Other less hyped technologies, which come suddenly onto the scene as if they had flown in under the radar, prove to be what the world really wanted all along. In short, some of the most promised and promising innovations fail to catch on, and predicting the next big thing can be as frustrating as fishing.

The history of technology provides numerous examples of world-changing innovations that proved predictors wrong. In the early 19th century, there was no scheduled transatlantic shipping because there was no telling how long an individual voyage would take. If the winds were favorable, a sailing ship could travel from England to America in weeks; otherwise it could take months. Powering ships by steam promised to make the transit time more predictable, but scientists asserted that no ship could be built large enough to carry all the coal it needed for the journey.

The heroic Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, among others, did not accept that. In 1838, Brunel’s steamship, Great Western, using only the coal that it carried aboard, arrived in New York harbor just hours after a rival steamship, the Sirius. The Sirius, which had traveled from Cork in 19 days, ran out of coal and had to burn some of its wooden paneling to complete its historic journey. The Great Western, which had left Bristol four days after the Sirius left Cork, made its own journey in 15 days entirely under coal power. Transatlantic crossings would never be the same, and who would have predicted back then that the steamship would ever be superseded?

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After centuries of hopeful inventors, human flight became a dream fulfilled at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903. As the 20th century advanced, so did the airplane. By mid-century, jet aircraft were a reality and soon supersonic flight was a possibility. Supersonic transports, epitomized by the Concorde, seemed to be the way of the future in the 1960s, but non-technical forces all but grounded the technological marvel. The unanticipated level of social resistance to noise pollution, particularly sonic booms, led to such severe flight pattern restrictions that the Concorde could not break free of the regulatory red tape that can restrain even the sweetest of technology.

Like the Concorde, many a technological innovation has been limited not by science and technology but by people and purpose. In the opening years of the 21st century, there was a great deal of media buzz about what promised to be a revolutionary but unspecified transportation technology. The anticipation was fueled in part by the secrecy that surrounded the innovation: While under development it had the code name “Ginger,” and in the months before being unveiled the mystery machine came to be referred to simply as “It.” Interest was further fueled when the Harvard Business School Press, sight unseen, paid an unprecedented high advance for a book on the story behind the as-yet unveiled device.

“It” turned out to be a two-wheeled “personal transporter” upon which the rider stands erect and controls its motion by leaning: forward to go, backward to stop, sideways to turn. The highly computerized electrically driven and gyroscopically stabilized machine was widely reported upon and discussed; it was a hit on late-night television. Of the device’s inventor, television-news anchorman Dan Rather reported on the CBS Evening News that “Lots of people talk and dream about changing the world. Dean Kamen is actually doing it.”

Unfortunately, the anticipated change did not reach deep into the minds, hearts and wallets of the population at large. The transporter, brand-named Segway, found few buyers beyond celebrities, tour guides and police officers. Among the problems it faced was a confusion of laws and regulations about what could and could not be ridden on streets and sidewalks. With a top speed of just over 12 miles per hour, and without the usual motor vehicle accessories like brake lights and turn signals, the Segway was perceived to be too slow and ill equipped for the street and too fast and dangerous for the sidewalk. What was expected to change the way we travel sold at a snail’s pace. (Click here to see what Dean Kamen is up to now.)

Some technological innovations enter the world more quietly and humbly but in time prove to be truly capable of taking it over. The digital computer, which made its debut in the middle of the 20th century, was initially a very specialized calculating tool for solving very specific problems associated with the trajectories of objects (missiles mainly) propelled through the atmosphere. An oft-repeated prediction of an IBM executive shortly thereafter was that he foresaw a market for maybe a half dozen of what some people called electronic brains.

Of course, once the power and versatility of the programmable computer was realized, a lot more than a half dozen were manufactured and purchased. In time, the machines grew in capacity and capability and shrank in size, but as late as 1977 the president of Digital Equipment Corporation saw “no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.” But before too long the personal computer was all the rage, and, of course, the rest is history.

The idea of the Internet, which has truly changed the world, started out similarly modestly. Communication between computers was a military-sponsored research and development project in 1969, but in three years the earliest “net”–the Arpanet, named after the advanced research projects agency that sponsored it–grew to tie together fewer than a couple dozen computers. Who knew or envisioned at the time that just decades later groups ranging from grassroots anti-war organizations to lonely singles would use the Internet as a principal tool of communication?

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.

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Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of over a dozen books on engineering and design, including the forthcoming The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems.

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