Best of Backscatter Vol1

7/29/2019 Best of Backscatter Vol1

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ieee-usa eBookspresents

By Donald Christiansen

The Best of

Volume 1from IEEE-USA Todays Engineer


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Published by IEEE-USA

Copyright 2008 by the IEEE.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States o America

Edited by Georgia C. Stelluto, IEEE-USA Publishing Manager

Cover design and layout by Gregory O. Hill, IEEE-USA Electronic Communications Manager

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Copying this material in any orm is not permitted without prior written approval rom the IEEE.


3/383The Best of BACKSCATTER Volume 1

Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................4

Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................................................................7

About the Author ....................................................................................................................................................................7

ABETS EC2000: Howre We Doin?.....................................................................................................................................8

Reality and the Virtual Engineer ................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... ................ 11

The Engineer: Proessional or Business Practitioner? ................... .................... .................... ................... ................ 14

About Working Together. . . or Not .................. .................... .................... ................... .................... ................... ............. 17

Engineers as Inventors ................. .................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... ................ 19

Engineers Cant Write? Sez Who! ................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... ................ 21

Meetings Madness .................. .................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... .................... ... 23

Whos in Charge Here? .................. .................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... ................ 25

Inside Peer Review .................. .................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... .................... ... 27

Accidents Waiting to Happen ................. .................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... ... 30

Designing Junk................... .................... ................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... .......... 33

Old Dogs and New Dogs .................... ................... .................... .................... ................... .................... .................... ......... 35


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Introduction

I suppose Ive written some two or three hundred essays, editorials, and columns over the years. All o

them in some way related to our engineering proession. My principal reward is in the eedback rom

readers oten extensions o an argument, sometime disagreements, occasional compliments. Ci-

tations are nice, too, and requests or reprint permission. It is disappointing to write something and

get no eedback.

I always hal expected to be approached by a big-time publisher wanting to compile a group o my

columns. It never happened. I supposed they were busy working with Andy Rooney or Art Buchwald.

I guessed they would have asked about the potential readership o my book. Two or three hundred

thousand, I would say. Well, they would respond, Andy Rooney has written eight hundred essays, and

he reaches millions, and every week. End o discussion.

So I was pleased to get a call rom Georgia Stelluto, publishing manager or IEEE-USA, who has over-

seen the successul publication o many e-books or IEEE-USA. Im planning to put out an e-book

o your columns, she said. Im sure it will do well and then well ollow it with additional volumes.

Great, I replied. Ill help you pick out the columns or volume one. No problem, she said. Ivealready done that. Then, I think she ollowed up with something reassuring like, Dont worry, the

readers love all your stu! I wondered i Georgia was buttering me up or some reason. I need you

to write an introduction, she explained. OK, I said. Whats your deadline? I need it the day ater to-

morrow, she replied. By then, I was beginning to wonder i some author had ailed to come through

with his or her material, and I was being moved up in the batting order.

Be that as it may, I decided a possible step toward immortality is not to be taken lightly. I said OK,

and Georgia kindly extended my deadline by a ew days. So here goes. To be serious, I am grateul or

this chance to encourage urther discussion o several issues o perennial importance not only to

engineers but to society at large.

As I looked over the columns selected or this volume, I was not surprised that most o them raiseissues that have no pat solutions. The rst is education. Some o the ongoing challenges include how

to improve K-12 math/science programs, how to provide an adequate basic engineering education

in just our years, and whether the United States is turning out the technically skilled work orce

needed to maintain its global leadership. I discuss some o these issues in ABETs EC2000: Howre We

Doin?

Times Are Changing

There is a changing pattern in who is attracted to the eld o engineering. I see less incentive, and

perhaps opportunity, or youngsters to build things on their own. Building things rom scratch or

rom discarded items was once an activity that would steer kids to an engineering career. I considersome modern-day alternatives to this waning practice in Reality and the Virtual Engineer. That es-

say also touches on the growing requirement or engineers to think and design at a higher level o

abstraction than was once the case, and its potential downside.



The E-Word

I always suspect that engineers do not like to discuss ethics. It might be that the phrase behaving

ethically immediately conjures its opposite, namely behaving unethically, and as engineers, we are

certain that our proession or its individual practitioners do not behave unethically. Unortunately,

when things we have designed ail, aulty design decisions or unortunate engineering-driven busi-

ness decisions are oten ound to be the root cause. And someone is almost sure to suspect ethical

lapses. Since good decision-making is central to the proession, I requently revisit this topic, as I didin Accidents Wanting to Happen (in which, to avoid rightening readers, I ban the e-word).

The saying I it aint broke, dont x it does not apply to the engineering proession, or, ater all, our

goal is to produce things that are better than what we already have. Put another way, we are in the

business o producing obsolescence. Designing Junk touches on the hazards implicit in this seem-

ingly noble objective. I we are too adept at churning out new products, more and more customers

may suspect that i a product works well and is aordable, it must be obsolete, and that engineers

may be more intent on creating e-waste than lasting, usable products.

You can make believe I didnt say it, but there is an aspect o ethics involved here, too.

The Engineer at WorkThe working environment o an engineer has traditionally been overlooked as a topic o interest in

undergraduate education. This is changing a bit under the new accreditation rules, in response to

which some universities are emphasizing team projects. Even so, many new graduates may eel as

John Pierce did when he arrived at Bell Labs with his Ph.D. rom Cal Tech. It was just like wandering

into hell, he remembered. He didnt know what was expected o him.

So, a number o my columns relate to the process o engineering, and in particular, to the working

environment o engineers. In About Working Together . . . or Not, I discuss the intrinsic desire o an

engineer to create something as an individual (the lone wol) vs. the probability that in todays

environment o complex systems he or she will have to work as a member o a sometimes very large

team. Members o dierent divisions o a company and o customer and supplier organizations, too,may nd themselves part o a development team that seldom, i ever, meets ace-to-ace. Invention

and innovation must take place in such an environment. That team invention is even possible is

disputed by one o the most prolic inventors o the twentieth century in Engineers as Inventors.

It seems to me that the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome, in which an engineer does not want

to use, or sometimes even hear about, a technique or development emanating rom outside the

company (or even rom another department) is prolierating. Even i an inventor is aware o how a

problem was solved elsewhere, he may not respect the solution.

Young engineers are also encouraged to think outside the box, which to some may suggest they

disregard, or worse, ail to amiliarize themselves with prior work in their own elds o interest. With

rare exceptions, engineering aculty do not encourage students to develop an interest in the history

o their own technology. This neglect o historical perspective may cause duplication o work, cost

overruns, and even reinvention o a broken wheel. This phenomenon prompted me to write Old

Dogs and New Dogs.


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Recent engineering graduates may nd it disconcerting that their work is constrained by budgets,

company policies and objectives, and supervisors whose decisions seem to be driven largely by con-

cerns or making a prot. I remember a manager who once advised an engineering colleague o mine

who wanted to add a eature that was not in the original specications o the product he was working

on. You can rene this thing orever, but i [our competitor] comes out with one that isnt quite as

good beore we do, and makes a million dollars, you may be embarrassed, his boss said. Recollections

o similar dilemmas prompted my essay The Engineer: Proessional or Business Practitioner?

As a writer on engineering topics, I would have ound it dicult to resist writing about the diculties

o writing about engineering topics. In Engineers Cant Write? Sez Who! I reveal some o my own

youthul ailures to write so that I might be readily understood by ellow engineers. Through inerence,

I hint at some ways to improve our written engineering communication.

While all engineers must write to document their work or communicate it to others, some engineers

are able to complete their careers without ever having to submit a technical paper to a proessional

journal. Perhaps they are the lucky ones, as they escape the ordeal o peer review. While the real pur-

pose o the process is to protect the reader rom erroneous, poorly documented, biased, or poorly

presented material, there can be a certain amount o gamesmanship involved.

A ellow engineer told me he once labored over a paper he wrote so that it would read as i he weretalking to a colleague. It was rejected. But when he recast it in engineeringese, it breezed through the

review process. Few readers could then understand it, he recalled. I touch upon some o the pitalls o

the review process in Inside Peer Review.

Whenever I ask practicing engineers how much time they spend in meetings the answer is always

the same. Too much. I talk a little about this in Meetings Madness, and reminisce about a ew o the

meetings Ive been part o some good, some bad.

The Big Picture

Some may think it an exercise in utility, but I like to think about the ollowing challenge to the engi-

neering proession: How can we better control, or at least infuence, the way in which the hardware orsotware that we develop is put to use? Is it really a case o once the genie is out o the bottle we have

lost control o our own technology, and in particular its misapplication or misappropriation? I not,

who are the players with whom we must work to channel the uses o technology or the betterment

o humanity, and, more important, to prevent its detrimental uses? In Whos in Charge Here?, I revisit

this open question.

Happy reading! Your thoughts and comments on any o the essays/columns are more than welcome.



Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Pender McCarter, whose idea it was that I begin writing the Backscatter essays

or Todays Engineer in the rst place. My thanks also to Greg Hill, who detly eases them into the

online version o Todays Engineer (www.todaysengineer.org), and to Georgia Stelluto or her kind

treatment o the columns that she selects and excerpts or publication in Todays Engineer Digest.

Also, my thanks to Nancy Hantman or typing, record keeping, and or her general aid in keeping

me out o trouble as I research and write each column. D.C.

About the Author

Donald Christiansen is an independent publishing consultant and the ormer editor and publisher

o IEEE Spectrum. He is a Fellow o the IEEE.


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ABETS EC2000: Howre We Doin?

When John Pierce arrived at Bell Labs in 1936 as a reshly minted Ph.D. rom Cal Tech, he knew little

about his new workplace. As he told Andrew Goldstein, an interviewer rom the IEEE Center or the

History o Electrical Engineering, I wasnt very well oriented. I didnt know much about the real world

o science and engineering. . . I sure was in a dierent world. . . Wandering into Bell Labs [was] just likewandering into hell.

But he ound his colleagues riendly and helpul in answering his questions, and he did what others

suggested. It worked out well. His inauspicious beginning turned into an auspicious career at the

Labs, culminating in his position as director o research or the communications sciences division

and his recognition as Father o the ECHO Satellite.

Today, though, the type o education that Pierce and others o his time received might not be good

enough. As ar back as the years just ater World War II, industry and educators alike began looking or

ways to change the electrical engineering curriculum particularly at the undergraduate level so

that a new graduate could get into harness (like a Clydesdale rather than a trotter, one supposes) and

immediately begin to pull his weight as a productive engineer.

The problem was seen to be that while new grads might be technically competent, they knew little

about theprocess o engineering how things were designed, rened, and put into production

and what the constraints o real-world engineering might be.

Some schools tried nobly to ameliorate this problem. Cornell University, or example, devised the ve-

year baccalaureate in electrical engineering (BEE), in which students would elect courses outside the

engineering college to broaden their perspectives, perhaps making them less nerdy, and enabling

them to speak and write well. But this well-intentioned program did not last; the opportunity or

students to earn an EE degree elsewhere in our years soon drew prospective candidates rom the

ve-year program, and it was discontinued.

Most companies kept the dream o hiring the ideal graduate on their perennial wish list, while oth-

ers assumed the responsibility or providing the necessary indoctrination and training, picking up

where engineering schools let o. A widely respected example o this support is the General Electric

test program, in which new engineers were exposed to a series o jobs in dierent departments.

But many o the post-World-War-II graduates ound themselves in the same situation that John Pierce

had encountered a decade earlier in unamiliar, sink-or-swim environments. Most swam, with the

aid o good mentors and helpul colleagues who had been through it all themselves.

Later, the solid-state revolution and the concomitant success o electronics companies spawned an

era in which continuing education or engineers was encouraged and even sponsored by many othese prosperous companies. It helped that employment or lie was then still an expectation. But

with the onset o deregulation, mergers, global competition, and downsizing, companies were less

likely to support educational programs or their engineers.

The drumbeat o discontent with the abilities o new graduates by their employers, never completely



stilled, grew once again. Engineering school alumni, many o whom are now company executives,

came back to their alma maters as advisory board members, urging aculty to devise new programs

that would make their graduates productive more quickly.

In response, over the past several years, the Accreditation Board or Engineering and Technology

(ABET) devised new Engineering Criteria (EC2000) that have been tested in pilot programs and with

which all engineering schools must now comply. Some 100 schools have already been reviewed us-

ing the new criteria. The old criteria were heavily resource-based; that is, they measured the qualityand quantity o laboratory equipment, computers, number o aculty, and the like. The new criteria

are output- or outcome-based. They ocus on what graduates ought to be able to do: know where

and when to apply appropriate math; conduct and interpret experiments; design things; work on

multidisciplinary teams; be ethically responsible; communicate well; be always ready to learn some-

thing new; know whats hot in the proession and what the contemporary issues are; and have and

use the right skills and tools to get a project done.

Proessor John Orr, head o the Department o Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Worces-

ter Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in the Massachusetts area, sees this as a transient period, when both

reviewers and schools are coming to an understanding o whats involved. The incredibly dicult

part, he said, is dening wanted outcomes so that they can be measured against the mission criteria.Dening outcomes is necessary to improve curricula and educational methodology continually, a

requirement o ABET 2000. Despite its growing pains, Orr and others consider the ABET process to

be aring well.

Design Is Making a Comeback

Many schools are placing a renewed emphasis on design. At one time, some engineering graduates

would leave school never having designed anything. Not any more. Those who support the design

emphasis say that all engineers are undamentally designers. Research engineers design experi-

ments; design engineers design products and systems; manuacturing engineers design processes

and equipment; and at the least they must all be amiliar with design aspects o the products and

systems that result rom the end-to-end process. Many schools elect to satisy the design requirementthrough a senior design project. Some schools have led the way with senior or capstone projects,

among them WPI, which implemented the project concept in the 1970s. WPI undergraduates today

are required to do three projects and usually work in teams. Their junior-year project works with an

interdisciplinary real-lie problem, oten outside the United States.

Some schools have introduced elements o design techniques during the reshman year. One might

even imagine a complete college program based on a single design project (perhaps an actual de-

sign), during which the appropriate educational material is brought in at the point where it is useul

or moving the project orward (just-in-time education). Engineering aculty might nd the Harvard

Business Schools case study approach a valuable role model. I this is all beginning to sound like a

graduate program, some aculty would agree. And can resurrected talk o a ve-year baccalaureatebe ar behind?

Employers Want Sot Skills, Too

Employers are hoping that the new graduates will have better skills in communicating, openness

and cooperation, and being sensitive to ethical issues. Faculty are hoping that such non-technical


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skills can be integrated into the curriculum or into individual course work without eroding the time

available to teach the basic knowledge-based material, which itsel is becoming more complex and

demanding. One possibility or teaching these new skills may be to incorporate them into the design

projects. The challenge to aculty will be to select projects that have believable aspects related to

ethics, easibility, and other real-world considerations, so students will be able to grapple with the

tradeos and compromise inherent in engineering design.

While there is general satisaction on the direction ABET 2000 is taking, problems remain and di-erences o opinion related to implementation persist. But the new criteria are intended to permit

fexibility on how each school implements its program. Todays Engineerwill carry discussions about

ABET 2000 in uture issues. In the meantime, input rom students, aculty, or employers on ABET 2000

or on engineering education in general are welcome. Send your thoughts to todaysengineer@ieee.

org. Please include your name, home city and state, and IEEE membership level (i applicable).



Reality and the Virtual Engineer

Electronic system designers today can cope with a degree o complexity that, beore the computer,

was beyond our imagination. Sitting beore their monitors they can assemble a new system rom

old subsystems and never touch a soldering iron or walk out to the actory foor. The new, highly

complex system will probably work ne, doing things its predecessors never did, but I worry that thedesigner may not know what is in the old black boxes that are incorporated in the new system. Dont

get me wrong. I have great intuitive condence in the quality o the components in the black boxes.

I know that back in some lab physicists and device engineers are worrying about things like stress-

induced leakage current and bulk oxide trapping, with an eye toward improving the next generation

o whatever is in the black boxes. Yet I have this uneasy eeling that the designers may be losing

touch with the hardware. Todays engineer is not as hands-on as were those o an earlier generation.

Engineers, o course, are not the only ones aected by our computerized society. There are ewer

shade-tree mechanics; who can x their own cars with all the on-board computers? TV sets and VCRs

that dont work are replaced like light bulbs.

It is my recollection that young people were once attracted to engineering because o things theyhad played with or even built when they were in grammar school. I conrmed this by doing a little

research:

Dave Packard , co-ounder with Bill Hewlett o Hewlett-Packard, built a radio receiver at age 12.

Hewlett built a pair o crystal sets, one or himsel and another or his sister. Both Hewlett and

Packard built models and conducted experiments with explosives. The latter were not always

successul. Packard would show riends a less-than-perect thumb on his let hand as proo. A

copper tube lled with blasting powder had exploded when he tried to hammer a cap onto one

end. This may have persuaded him to pursue electrical rather than chemical engineering!

As a teenager, radio communications pioneer Harold Beverage built his rst radio and a spark-

gap transmitter that had a range o some 50 miles.

While in grammar school, Leo Beranek, amous or his work in acoustics and speech communica-

tions, strung an antenna between his house and a tree to help bring in stations on a one-tube

Crosley receiver. In high school he took an International Correspondence Schools course in radio,

built a crystal set, and repaired radios or neighbors.

His uncle gave computer pioneer Ross Aiken an electrical kit containing a motor, batteries, and

carbon rods (useul in building a microphone) when he was 12. Experimenting with it, he became

captivated by electricity.

As a youngster, Charles Concordia, known or his developments in power system control,

brought his bedspring into play as an experimental radio antenna.

Many other prominent electrical engineers were propelled toward the proession through model

building, kit assembly, and taking things apart. Gordon Teal, developer o germanium and silicon

semiconductors, said he was always very curious about why things worked and why they didnt.


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For the mid-century electrical engineers, the hands-on approach continued into college, where

undergraduates not only conducted experiments with actual components and test gear, but also

were required to do mechanical drawing, make patterns in a woodworking shop, pour castings in a

oundry, and turn and grind the nished castings in a machine shop.

On their rst jobs, new grads were thrust into the real world o hardware. For the circuit designer,

this meant the occasional insulation meltdown and smoking components, signals that a breadboard

might be about to burst into fame. Notwithstanding the ailures, most o these designers recall withnostalgia the aroma o rosin-core solder and the warm glow o vacuum tubes. At home, they built

ampliers, vacuum-tube voltmeters, signal generators, and even TV sets rom kits.

What is dierent about todays potential electrical engineers? For one thing, kids toys are mostly

ready made, not built rom scratch or kits. (Is the Erector set still around? In airness, Lego oers

some o the same challenges.) Entertainment is more likely to consist o watching TV or playing

computer games, rather than salvaging wheels rom a stroller to build a new wagon. The mouse

has replaced the telegraph key, but the technology behind it is beyond the comprehension o most

grade schoolers.

Kids immersion in this new environment causes me to wonder what the actors are that condition

any o them to study electrical engineering. No doubt good teachers in math and science, especiallyat the high school level, are important. But engineering school aculty say that many who sign up or

electrical engineering arrive knowing little about the eld, its specialties, its employment opportuni-

ties, or course requirements.

Perhaps one o the best ways to help young people test their interest in and aptitude or a technical

career is through the school science air. We as individuals might volunteer to help coach partici-

pants, even encouraging those who are uncertain about a project to choose one that is electrically

or mechanically oriented, as opposed to the many that relate strictly to the biological sciences.

Other hands-on activities may be too challenging or grade- or high schoolers. These may instead

attract undergraduate electrical and mechanical engineering students. The better projects could beas worthy as some o the design projects being developed by the schools themselves under ABETs

EC2000 criteria. Robotry contests, or example, involve many interdisciplinary actors: mechanical

design, stability, mobility, motive power, electrical power, sotware, and the like. Television programs,

like The Learning Channels Junkyard Wars, sometimes oer another version o robotry. The show

adds an element o risk: a contestants well-crated entry may be demolished by its opponent!

I oten think some youngsters, particularly those who excel at and enjoy mathematics, may believe

that engineering is exclusively math-centered. I like to remind them that engineering is ultimately

product- or service-oriented and that electronics systems are oten big, complex, and both hard-

ware- and sotware-rich.

By now you must have realized that the scenario with which I opened this essay was somewhatoverdrawn. We all hope and trust that an actual design team would have on it individuals who are

versed in all aspects o the system, including specialists in hardware and sotware reliability.

Nevertheless, I oer the ollowing modest suggestion that might help narrow the gap between to-

days virtual designers and the hands-on engineers o yesteryear. As educators modiy undergraduate



electrical engineering curricula to meet EC2000 criteria, they might do well to consider a mandatory

course that would cover electronic components, physics o ailure, and elements o systems reliabil-

ity. Students might also be given the chance to spend a day in a chip abrication acility. (Yes, a ew

schools have their own ab labs.) Because the vast majority o todays components are invisible to

the naked eye, hidden by the tens o thousands in a miniscule package with lots o pins sticking out,

students would benet, I believe, in seeing their discrete component counterparts a real resistor

and a real transistor, or example as well as seeing how integrated circuits are actually abricated

and tested. I think it would lit their spirits, too, bringing a touch o reality to a proession that musttake more and more on aith as the things that really do the work disappear into smaller and smaller

black boxes.

Resources

For more about hands-on career starters see:

Packard, D., The HP Way, Harper Collins, New York,1995

Wallen, A.I., Genius at Riverhead: A Prole o Harold H. Beverage, North Haven Historical Society,

1998

Brittain, J.B., Alexanderson: Pioneer in American Electrical Engineering, Johns Hopkins, 1992

Farnsworth, E., Distant Vision: Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier, Pemberly Kent,

1989

Also:

Oral Histories o Eminent Electrical Engineers recorded by the IEEE History Center www.ieee.org/

organizations/history_center/.


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The Engineer: Professionalor Business Practitioner?

Imagine yoursel in this situation: You are part o a project team to get a newly developed electronic

device into shape or ull-scale production. It is a solid-state device with a signicant new unction. It

could enable any customer who designed it into its line o consumer products to gain a considerable

advantage over its competition. A pilot production line has been set up, but to your teams conster-

nation, yields are negligible to non-existent. Your companys marketers had alerted its best customer

to the project and provided engineering samples. The customer has redesigned a major product line

around the new device, and it hopes to obtain exclusive rights to purchase it or a period o one year.

Its marketing people are poised to roll out a major television and print advertising campaign.

Your management has elected not to inorm the customer about the low yield problem. In just a ew

days, a high-level group o engineers rom the customer is scheduled to visit. Your team knows the

visitors expect to view the production line. What would you advise management to do? Cancel or

postpone the visit? Tell the customer about the problem?

Heres what actually happened. The visit came o as scheduled. Ater a careully timed technical

presentation in the conerence room, the visitors were led to the production area to view the various

steps in the production process. Then, to a predetermined timetable, they reached the nal test sta-

tion, where an operator careully and deliberately put one ater another o the devices through their

paces. All passed with fying colors. When she completed the test o the sixth device, she excused

hersel; it was the lunch break. As she made her way to the caeteria, the visitors were invited to the

executive dining room. None were told that the six devices they had witnessed being tested were the

only ones available that adequately met all specications. Each had been pretested, and the operator

had waited patiently or the arrival o the visitors, perormed the tests, and departed on cue.

Duly impressed, the visitors let with ull intentions o going orward with their plans. They did so, andthe device manuacturer was able to debug the production processes, increase yield, and ultimately

put the new device into ull-scale production without causing any delay in the customers product

introduction.

Since I once witnessed an incident very similar to this, I have used it rom time to time and with

variations as a case history or discussion by young engineers and engineering students. It always

provokes comment. For example, why did management keep the yield problem rom its customer?

Did that action (or inaction) represent an ethical lapse? Should the engineers on the project team

have objected to the secrecy, or at least to the test charade?

Many employed engineers concluded that the incident was not unusual. They thought it more o a

business decision than an engineering decision, although they conceded that the engineers maywell have played a role in reassuring management by projecting (or even promising) timely solutions

to the yield problem. Some ound it humorous, a trivial deception worthy o any competent poker

player; a business coup o sorts.



Students exposed to the case study were more likely to believe that the customer (especially a a-

vored customer) should have been kept ully inormed. Engineers who had aced similar dilemmas

also avored disclosing the problem to the customer. Ater all, they reasoned, the suppliers engineers

and the customers engineers had in all likelihood worked as partners in earlier phases o the devel-

opment; why not continue to do so? Managers did not necessarily agree; the suppliers problems

were internal and to reveal them could defate the companys good reputation.

This case study is representative o the dilemma aced by the employed engineer. He or she is both aproessional and an employee, thus owing allegiance to both the proession and his or her employer.

As the engineer assumes managerial responsibilities, the plot thickens. Engineers are by nature and

training disposed to honesty and openness, gaining new knowledge and bartering inormation.

They keep corporate lawyers busy dening what inormation is proprietary, protecting patent posi-

tions, and limiting what can be revealed to the outside world. And managers have the daunting task

o allowing engineers selective autonomy on technical matters, while encouraging them to broaden

their understanding o business actors.

Edwin Layton, a proessor o mechanical engineering at the University o Minnesota, in his classic

bookThe Revolt o the Engineers, dened the situation succinctly. The engineer is both a scientist and

a businessman. Engineering is a scientic proession, yet the test o the engineers work lies not inthe laboratory, but in the marketplace. The claims o science and business have pulled the engineer,

at times, in opposing directions.

The pull that Layton speaks o is seen in many dierent ways, none so dramatic, perhaps, as that

experienced by Morton Thiokols vice president o engineering, who became a pivotal player in the

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Thiokol was the supplier to NASA o the booster rockets or the

Challenger spacecrat. Concerned about recommending a launch in extremely cold weather that

could exacerbate a known ailure mechanism in the boosters, the vice president called a meeting o

his sta. Together they concluded the launch should be postponed. Later in the day, at a meeting o

his management peers, he was asked by his boss to think like a manager rather than an engineer. He

then changed his mind, voting or the launch. It went o on schedule. An O-ring in the booster ailed.Challenger exploded. All aboard were lost.

What caused the engineering vice president to change his mind? In the meeting with his engineers,

wearing his engineers hat, did he think the consequences o a Shuttle loss would be unacceptable,

regardless o any benets that might be gained i the launch were successul? Then, in the meeting

with his boss, donning his managers hat, did he think the risk o a Shuttle loss was outweighed by

the potential benets o a successul on-time launch (accolades to NASA, an increase in its budget,

support or uture space programs, more business or Thiokol)?

In airness, there were many actors leading to the disaster, not the least o which was the weakness in

the O-rings, long known to engineers and managers o both Thiokol and NASA. But the critical actor

seemed inarguable to most post-accident analysts the engineering vice president had switchedhis vote when he thought like a manager.

One o the byproducts that scholars see as engineers move into management is a de acto loss o ex-

pert knowledge, and a concentration on the exigencies o business. The engineer values knowledge

and the manager initiative, loyalty, and team eort, they note.


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Engineers interviewed as part o a study* o how engineers, engineering managers, and managers

work together under normal conditions gave a broad range o comments, varying rom We operate

by consensus to Technical questions get short-changed to make schedule, and Theyll [managers]

sacrice quality to get it out the door. A manager interviewed in the same study said Engineers

have high weight on technical issues. The problem is integrating technical recommendations into

company interest. Cost. Marketing strategy. Change in technology. Etcetera. Its important that the

engineers recommendations get out beyond [his] immediate group. When he sees how his decision

does not t into the larger picture, hes likely to rethink it.

It seems to me necessary and even benecial, this perennial tug-o-war between perectionist

engineers and their managers, the latter more concerned with price and delivery demands o the

marketplace. This contention, or collaboration, as the case may sometimes be, ater all represents

a check-and-balance system. However, danger signals may be that one party wins too requently

or that the engineers withdraw rom the dialogue prematurely. An engineer who ails to make a

convincing case or lack o trying cannot expect to shit the blame to his or her boss when something

goes awry as a result. Nor should sensitivity o the engineer to the needs o the business require

the abrogation o his or her principal responsibilities: quality, saety and the search or technical

sophistication and superior design.

Resources

For more about the engineer-manager interace, see:

*Davis, M., Thinking Like an Engineer, Oxord University Press, 1998.

Layton, E., The Revolt o the Engineers, Case Western Reserve University Press, 1971; reprinted with a

new introduction by the author, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

Pool, R., Beyond Engineering, Oxord University Press, 1997.

Vaughn, D., The Challenger Launch Decision, University o Chicago Press, 1996.

Vincenti, W. G., What Engineers Know and How They Know It, The Johns Hopkins University Press,1990.



About Working Together. . . or Not

I rst thought o calling this column The lone wol: endangered or extinct? That was based on the

common belie that engineers who practiced beore the middle o the 20th century (up until World

War II, say) did their best work as individuals, not in teams. They liked to work alone, and even disliked

working with others. And that with the technological watershed stemming rom wartime develop-ments and the subsequent complexity o systems, team engineering became the necessity and the

norm. Can we possibly imagine todays extraordinary computer and communications systems being

developed in any other way?

Yet most historians o technology subscribe to the notion that engineers are, or at least were, in-

dividualistic and independent, and proud and protective o their own accomplishments. They cite

pioneers such as Tesla, Armstrong and Farnsworth, who seemed to do their best work in isolation

and did not work especially well in the corporate environment. In those days, it seemed easier to

determine who deserved credit or a particular invention. Admittedly, there were contests concern-

ing who was rst when engineers working independently developed essentially similar inventions,

but ultimately the engineering community, i not always the legal community, was able to determinewho did what and when.

Contrast that with todays situation. One seasoned engineer, serving as a judge or a major award to

an engineer or outstanding technical accomplishment, told me recently that it is more and more

dicult to single out one person or the award, or even judge the merit o a nominees contribu-

tion. For one thing, he said, the supporting papers are likely to list multiple authors and, likewise,

the supporting patents list multiple inventors. It would be embarrassing, he said, to have to ask the

nominee, How much o this work is yours?

Engineers dont always relish working in teams, despite the need to do so. They embrace the idea o

autonomy, and they dont expect the boss or even colleagues to have to tell them how to do their

job. They respect originality, and thus neither avor nor enjoy copying the competition. Oten they

are even skeptical o ideas oered by members o their own project team, particularly i adopting

those ideas means scuttling an idea o their own. They may go to great lengths to prove why a col-

leagues idea is unworkable or at least how their own is better.

In part because o todays team approach to engineering, the EC2000 curricula accreditation requires

that some undergraduate projects (e.g., research or design projects) be done by student teams. Aside

rom the technical and procedural knowledge gained thereby, students are exposed to both the

advantages and hazards o team dynamics. A student project may ail or be poorly done in spite o

technically competent team members. A strong leader may suppress the role o other team members,

permitting little or no collaborative eort. The mere presence o a emale on an otherwise male team

may encourage stereotyping. She may assume the role o data taker or some other non-leadership

role, or even become the subject o minor harassment (someone will write me that no harassment is

minor, and they may be right). The solution here may be close monitoring o student interaction, or,

as happened in one case, tape recording o the sessions or later analysis by the proessor and team

participants. In any event, these projects provide a preview o what the student may nd in his or her


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rst encounter with team engineering in industry.

Is there a serious downside to team engineering? Too many meetings? Too much time spent sell-

ing your ideas? Too little time or creative engineering? A lack o psychic reward or ones own

contributions?

When social scientist and management consultant Michael Maccoby interviewed engineers in major

U.S. electronics companies in the 1970s, many said they were nagged by thoughts o being merely

part o a huge machine. For many, Maccoby concluded, the ideals o individualism persisted withinengineers even in the contemporary corporate environment.

My senior colleagues and I (old-timers, i you preer) marvel at the amount and diversity o technical

knowledge todays active engineers require and can assimilate, and the amount o time they must

spend communicating via e-mail, technical conerences, and ace-to-ace meetings. How do they

nd time to think? Junichi Nishizawa, inventor o the semiconductor injection laser, demanded quiet

and solitude while working. Prolic inventor Jacob Rabinow said that inspiration came to him in

solitary moments while shaving or driving, or example.

Could it be that there remains a bit o the lone wol in each o us that we should nurture? Do we need

to set aside some time or engineering meditation? Is there such a thing?Resources

For more about the working habits o engineers, see:

Ingram, S. and Parker, A., The Infuence o Gender on Collaborative Projects in an Engineering Class-

room, IEEE Transactions on Proessional Communication, March 2002, pp. 7-20.

Kidder, T., The Soul o a New Machine, Little, Brown, 1981, Avon, 1982.

Maccoby, M., The Innovative Mind at Work, IEEE Spectrum, December 1991, pp. 23-25.

Vincenti, W.G., What Engineers Know and How They Know It, The Johns Hopkins University Press,

1990.



Engineers as Inventors

Someone once said that there is an order o magnitude dierence in talent and ability between

Michael Jordan and the lowest-paid NBA player, but that the talents o engineers are more tightly

bunched. Perhaps. The point could be argued. I patents are chosen as one metric or engineering ac-

complishment, then we must accept the act that most engineers have not been issued patents, ando those who have, only a minuscule number reach the Inventors Hall o Fame (the Michael Jordans

o invention?). Does this imply that most o us are not inventive?

I dont think so. Lawrence Kamm, an inventor and holder o many patents, distinguishes between

inventions and patentable inventions. In his bookReal-World Engineering, he uses the word inven-

tion to mean any good design you think up.

That seems to me a reasonable denition. An invention may thereore represent a small yet creative

improvement in a product or a process. For a variety o reasons, including the wish to keep an inven-

tion proprietary or an employers wish to do so an engineer may not seek a patent.

What makes a good engineer, I would suggest, is the proclivity to invent, without necessarily think-ing o the process as invention. Is inventiveness inborn or can it be taught? Prolic inventor Jacob

Rabinow said, I never had any doubts that one could teach creativity in engineering just as one could

teach music composition or any other art. Yet he devised a test that he used to evaluate the inventive

talent o prospective engineering employees, and noted that a bright Ph.D. once funked it.

Why Do Inventors Invent?

The incentive to invent may vary. Some independent inventors are not concerned about the techni-

cal sophistication o an invention or about the eld in which they invent. They might tackle a way

to open a cardboard milk carton without destroying it, or develop an easy way to nd the end on aroll o duct tape. They may invent to solve a problem or to devise something o value to the general

public that could also make their ortune. Then theres Jacob Rabinow, who said, I dont invent to

make money [but] because I get a kick out o it. Its an achievement, where nothing is at stake. I I

dont succeed, the world is not going to come to an end.

In the corporate world, problems that arise during a design or development project oten trigger

the need to invent. But theres little agreement on how one goes about the process o invention. A

systems engineer is likely to believe the process can be codied. But successul inventors dont think

so; Rabinow says that in seeking a solution to a particular problem, a person guratively puts all the

inormation he or she knows about the subject on cards and tosses them in the air. They hit the foor

in random combinations and the person scans them, looking or combinations that trigger new ideasand discarding those that dont. What is important is the ability to select the good combinations, he

said. But the expected price o one good idea, he added, is the consideration o many bad ones.

Inventing En Masse?

Then theres the question o the lone inventor versus team invention. In recent years several inventors


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were inducted into the National Inventors Hall o Fame as members o a team. In 2002, or example,

our individuals were named or inventing the implantable debrillator and three or inventing pho-

toreractive surgery. On the other hand, inventor Rabinow insisted that invention by a team is ction.

Inventions are almost always single-minded. And a digital-business consultant, Wally Bock recently

wrote it takes individuals with time and a tinge o zealotry to do the kind o work that makes or

invention or innovation in organizationsGood creative work pretty much happens in isolation. It

can then be modied, massaged, improved upon and implemented by teams, but generally [inven-

tors are] set o by themselves, beavering away and getting the job done. (Is it true that inventioncannot be done all that well in teams? I dont know the answer to this one, i indeed an answer is

needed. Your comments are welcome.)

The Engineer as Inventor

In my experience, I have observed that the characteristics that lead to success as an engineer are

largely the same as those that dene inventive talent. Among them are curiosity, good observational

powers, and a tendency to be dissatised with the status quo. A questioning attitude is good: How

does it work? Why do we do it this way? Isnt there a simpler, more elegant solution? I wonder

why it was designed like that? A readiness to experiment also helps: Lets try this. Finally, sensitivity

to weaknesses in an existing design helps, as does the ability to anticipate uture customer needs.The most important question may hark back to the issue o whether engineering creativity and in-

ventiveness can be taught. How does one know, when hiring a bright young engineer, what his or

her creativity quotient is? Can electrical and computer engineering curricula be designed to oster

inventiveness?

Resources

For more about invention and creativity, see:

Kamm, L. J., Real-World Engineering, IEEE Press, 1991.Middendor, W. H., What Every Engineer Should Know about Invention, Marcel Dekker, 1981.

Rabinow, J., Inventing or Fun and Proft, San Francisco Press, 1990.

Simonton, D. K., Genius, Creativity, and Leadership, Harvard University Press, 1984.



Engineers Cant Write? Sez Who!

To begin with, it is widely accepted even among ourselves that we engineers dont write very

well. In truth, at least in some cases, we write too much; in others, too obscurely. Yet we are stuck with

the need to write. We must document and communicate what we do, or what would be the purpose

or the result o our inventing, developing and designing?

As a young engineer, I was invited to address an IEEE Section meeting. My subject was an unusual

stereophonic/ quadraphonic audio system developed at CBS Laboratories. This technical presenta-

tion may have been my rst beore a large engineering audience. I worried at the prospect. I prepared

and projected a number o slides containing a bunch o mathematics that no one could ollow during

their brie exposure. Ater all, I had sat through many conerence papers that were ritually peppered

with unintelligible (at least to me) equations. I had responded in kind, despite my audience having

many spouses present most o whom hadnt a clue what their mates did or a living. I was grateul

to the wives, who did not boo or stamp their eet, but discreetly nodded o. The saving actor was

that I concluded with a stirring demonstration o the audio system that elicited many compliments.

Nevertheless, ater the talk, a colleague asked me why I had included all the theory, especially in viewo the mixed audience. I could not give him a good answer. I was an engineer, I thought to mysel. The

theory and the supporting math seemed obligatory.

But I took the criticism to heart. Later, when the paper was published or a strictly technical audience,

I heavily edited the math, converting it whenever possible to a word statement o what was physi-

cally happening.

What is it that drives us to embed our writing in arcane mathematics and phraseology, and to en-

cumber it with acronyms decipherable only in context and by the knowledgeable and sometimes,

not even then? Could it be our response to the obscure, Latin-rich writing o the medical proession?

Are we hoping somehow to acquire the respectability, awe and occasional notoriety accorded medi-

cal doctors? A riendlier explanation is that we seek to express ourselves in a way that is complete,

accurate, precise and not subject to misinterpretation, and that we nd it necessary to rely on excess

verbiage and the jargon o our proession to do so. The case also exists or satisying the patent

lawyers, leaving no possible uture extensions o our disclosure uncovered.

Whatever the reason, engineers are not unique. Every proession worth the designation has devised

a cryptic language to communicate among its own members. Coincidentally or not, it helps exclude

the uninitiated. How we write is one way to separate ourselves rom the general public and rom

other proessions, and even to distinguish the members o our particular technical specialty.

When John Pierce o Bell Labs took over as editor o the Proceedings o the Institute o Radio Engineers

(the predecessor to the Proceedings o the IEEE), he ound he could not understand most o the ar-ticles. He asked each member o his editorial board to read an issue o the Proceedings to see i they

could understand what they were reading. The answer came back universally that they could not.

This exercise helped instigate using specialist reviewers or each Proceedings article, a procedure still

in use today.


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Notwithstanding, we continue to joke about the incomprehensibility o the articles in many IEEE

publications. A perennial comment, seeming always to elicit a sympathetic chuckle, is that only its

author and possibly one or two o its reviewers can really understand a Transactions paper.

Woody Gannett, the sta executive who oversaw publishing the technical journals or both the Insti-

tute o Radio Engineers and the IEEE, oten told this story: A member submitted a paper to one o the

Transactions purporting to describe a revolutionary new circuit component. Ater due peer review,

the paper was published. Only then did the author admit to the hoax. He had described the resis-tor, but in such a convoluted way that its true identity had eluded the reviewers. Woody was never

able to recall exactly when and where the article was published, but generations o his colleagues

enjoyed the story, and I still believe it might have been true.

Ironically, even those who proess to know good communication when they see it are not immune

rom the trappings o scholarly publication. In a recent article in the Transactions on Proessional Com-

munication, the phrase motivating users to process/engage text-based communication is used.

Probably this means motivating users to read, or even to read with interest and comprehension. I am

not sure.

Engineers have plenty o occasions to write more than just technical papers reports, proposals

and operating and maintenance manuals, plus stu that helps promote and sell what they create.But perhaps Ill save those or a uture column, and or the proessors who are teaching engineering,

writing and marketing to todays undergraduate engineering students.

Meanwhile, can you please keep whatever you write a bit shorter, more to the point, and limit your

use o acronyms? And as a personal avor, can you nd a title or your next journal article that has

ewer than 20 words? Thanks.

In airness, I will say that I have both written and criticized technical papers, and I should tell you the

latter is much easier.

Resources

For more on writing, see:

J. G. Paradis and M. L. Zimmerman, The MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication, MIT

Press, 2002.

IEEE Transactions on Proessional Communication

IEEE PCS Newsletter

For insights to contemporary engineering jargon, see Technically Speaking, a column appearing

periodically in IEEE Spectrum (1981-present).



Meetings Madness

Why is it that whenever I want to talk to real people instead o sending e-mail, theyre in a meeting?

Everyone talks about how to have better meetings. My question is, is there a way to have ewer meet-

ings? Could it make us more productive?

Nowadays, more reasons exist to hold more meetings. For example, the IT people hold requent

meetings to bring everyone up to speed on updates (or idiosyncrasies) o the corporate IT system.

With nearly every employee a user (or a victim) o the IT system, no alternative is clear. But extra

meetings urther limit the time available to do ones job. And it disconcerts the customer or col-

league who must be told Im in a meeting just now; please leave a detailed message. What detailed

message? Callers want person-to-person dialogue, not an exchange o detailed messages.

Meetings seem an endless source or horror stories. Take, or instance, the marathon meetings, in

which a whole day is dedicated to a series o meetings. To survive such an ordeal, an engineer I know

learned to doze o with his eyes partly open. But when he woke up he was sometimes beuddled.

Once he made a comment to which his boss replied, Jim, we nished that meeting 10 minutes

ago!

One o my bosses would hold noontime meetings to critique projects. His secretary would order in

sandwiches that we were expected to devour quickly so we could actively engage in critical com-

ments on one anothers projects. Some o us would have preerred a more leisurely lunch in the

caeteria, with shop talk interspersed with discussions about breaking news and sports. Or a game o

pinochle with our colleagues as a warm-up to the aternoons creative engineering challenges.

Conerence calls are supposed to be a good substitute or ace-to-ace meetings. While waiting or

everyone to join the call, youve got an opportunity to talk to someone already on the line about

some problem unrelated to the meeting, or about your daughters wedding. But problems abound

there, too. Have you noticed that two or three key people might excuse themselves because theyve

been called into real meetings by their bosses? Have you then been tempted to say something likeOh, excuse me. Ill be leaving the call. My boss just beckoned. Theyre having a birthday party or the

departments newest employee, and I dont want to miss it.

I wasnt even going to mention the motivational meetings, or which you and a group o colleagues

are dragged away rom your computer terminals to spend a day or so olding paper airplanes, or

driving a BMW through a cone-lled obstacle course while blindolded. In the latter, a seeing-eye

colleague inorms you o oncoming hazards. These types o exercises are intended to make you more

o a team player and thus a better engineer...

Some Good Meetings

I like meetings that have not only an agenda, but also a point. As a young engineer assigned to aproduction engineering job, I encountered just such a meeting. At the end o each day, the plant

manager would hold a meeting o all engineers and production supervisors. He would want the

answers to three questions rom each engineer. How were the yields today? I any were low, Why?

And nally, What is your program to increase yields tomorrow? The meetings were short one hal

hour at the most, and, by dictate and practice, to the point.


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Design review meetings are important and can be productive. I they are held too oten, however,

you may nd that a lot o the agenda issues get labeled no change in the post-meeting report.

Unortunately, a string o no changes may be erroneously interpreted as no problem, and a critical

issue may be dropped rom urther consideration, oreshadowing disastrous consequences.

Some MBA is always telling us 10 ways to run a good meeting. Im sure MBAs spend a lot o time in

meetings, so maybe they know how to run them. But perhaps we are looking in the wrong place or

such advice. Consider the New England town meeting. A small town o, say, 5,000 people can makeits major decisions in just one evening per year. All interested townspeople are invited to attend, one

o the selectmen runs the meeting, and it is over beore midnight. Has a selectman ever written an

article or the Harvard Business Review on how to run a meeting?

Despite the MBAs who say they know how to run a meeting and the New England selectmen who

actually do it, I admit to being dubious about my own meeting-running qualications. With competi-

tion rom cell phones, laptops, the arrival o the coee wagon, and conficting meetings youd rather

be in, is it even possible to run an ecient meeting in todays business world? Id like to hear rom

you. More horror stories are welcome, but Id really like to hear something about the best meeting, or

series o meetings, that you have attended or led.



Whos in Charge Here?

It seems to me that engineers always like to be in charge and in control. History conrms this notion,

as do most polls.

When we are asked to name desirable job characteristics, we put technical challenge at the top o thelist. Then we like to pursue the challenge unencumbered by bureaucratic intererence. The bosses

we like best are those we perceive as colleagues or mentors. We are optimistic that our technology

will be useul to society. Furthermore, we would like to believe our customers will use our ingenious

systems as we intend them to be used, not in some dangerous or antisocial way.

It doesnt always work out like that. Nevertheless, this inherent desire o engineers to control their

work and the way society uses their contributions dates back to the beginnings o the proession.

Inventors, entrepreneurs and pioneering electrical engineering leaders promulgated these objec-

tives as both desirable and attainable. A theme soon developed that engineers themselves ought to

be in charge o the work they do, and not beholden to some non-engineering-schooled boss. In the

extreme, engineering proessionalism was dened as not having to take orders rom ones employer.

The thinking seemed to be that, like physicians, engineers were masters o a body o arcane knowl-

edge that only they could apply or the greater good.

Historian Edwin Layton noted that, carried to the extreme, the notion o engineers being in charge

even as CEOs o major corporations was tantamount to saying that engineers should control

society (not exactly technocracy, but nevertheless embracing many o its elements).

One suggestion that might have supported this concept was a cabinet-level department o engi-

neering, with an engineer heading it up. Although suggested more than once around the time o

World War I, it never came to be. Would it stand a better chance today?

Oddly, the employers and clients drive or prots was seldom mentioned as an overriding actor

that would undermine the engineers quest or autonomy. Perhaps this was because many electrical

engineers were employed by telephone, telegraph and electric utilities whose customers had no

control o rates and no competitive options. However, with the development o consumer appli-

ances and the burgeoning industrial and military markets, the empowerment o players other than

engineers (or the engineering proession) made it clear that engineers would do well to consider

themselves business community partners, not rulers or adversaries. They also had to be sensitive to

customer wants.

It became evident that no employer, CEO, board o directors or shareholders committee would buy

into the concept o engineering autonomy. It was no surprise, then, to nd a paper titled Engineering

as an Implement o Management, written by an engineer who had become vice president o Com-

monwealth Edison, appearing in the American Institute o Electrical Engineers fagship publication

in the early 1940s. Even so, another Commonwealth Edison engineer thought the title o the paper

could very well have been reversed to read, Management as an Implement o Engineering, refecting,

one supposes, the accelerating interdependence o the two and the ongoing argument about which

ought to prevail.


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Meanwhile, it had become clear that once an engineer had developed and revealed a new technol-

ogy or product, the genie was out o the bottle. Short o government regulation and enorcement,

he or she could not control its misapplication or misappropriation. Our wishes and even promises

to the contrary, we could not orestall ill-conceived uses o our technologies by quacks, charlatans,

militarists and terrorists. For that matter, we couldnt predict all o the unwanted consequences o

our technologies neither unoreseen ailure mechanisms nor unanticipated societal eects.

In the 1930s, spurred by social scientists opinions, the public blamed engineers or unemploymentcaused by mechanization o production lines. Stunned by the charges, the engineering commu-

nity had oered little response beyond promises that technology would ultimately redeem itsel by

putting even more workers in jobs. Today, some critics are laying any negative societal impacts o

television, the Internet, nuclear power and military technology at the doorstep o the engineers who

developed the underlying technology.

While history has proven that unettered control by engineers o their own destiny is unrealistic,

and the notion o an engineer-dominated technocracy nave, we continue to seek ways to infu-

ence bureaucracy and serve society. With astonishingly rapid developments in technology and a

diminished ability o engineers to control its applications, a more leavened approach by engineers

and their proessional societies to whos in charge has evolved. Layton described it as one in whichwe maintain our moral and ethical obligation to the public interest, while being sensitive to our role

as part o the bureaucracy which, he reminded us, our technology helped create! This assignment

isnt easy. But it is one that, when successul, enables us to do our duty while we do our job.

For More Inormation

For more about engineering autonomy, see:

A. Michal McMahon, The Making o a Proession: A Century o Electrical Engineering in America, IEEE

Press, 1980.

E. T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt o the Engineers, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

H. B. Gear, Engineering as an Implement o Management, Electrical Engineering, August 1942.

A. S. Bix, Inventing Ourselves Out o Jobs: Americas Debate over Technological Unemployment 1929-1981

(especially Chapter 6), Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.



Inside Peer Review

I you want to get a paper published in a journal o some repute, you will encounter the peer review

process. To the neophyte, peer review might seem a jungle; to others, a amiliar hurdle to surmount.

In simple principle, peer review is intended to let only the worthy papers survive, matching the wor-

thiest o them to journals o the highest reputation. Its sometimes orgotten objective is to avor theultimate reader.

The power player in peer review is the publication editor, who selects reviewers and denes ac-

ceptance criteria. He or she usually wants the reviewer to comment on the premise o the paper and

address these questions: Whats new, and how new is it? Does it ollow logically rom previous work?

Is it believable? Are experimental results well documented? Whats missing? I it is a review paper, is

it well organized and historically accurate?

Three reviewers seem to be the accepted norm, although in my own experience at IEEE Spectrum

I sometimes used as many as 20 reviewers or a sta-generated, multi-viewpoint article. Unless a

paper is in the editors own eld o interest, he cannot be an arbiter o its technical suitability, but will

instead rely on expert reviewers. Invited reviewers who are insuciently qualied are expected to

disqualiy themselves.

Should an editor nd a submitted manuscript ar o the mark, he can, i the publications policy

permits it, reject it without review. He might be tempted to ollow the lead o Harold Ross, the brash

ounding editor oThe New Yorker, and simply dismiss the manuscript with the line, I regret to say

we did not like this piece well enough to use it. But the journal editor is likely to eel obligated to let

the author o an inerior manuscript down more easily, even i with an invented apology. An editor o

a trade publication known to most o us would say something like this: We have received so many

articles covering essentially this same topic that we cannot accept another, excellent though it is.

On the other hand, i an editor nds it necessary by policy perhaps to have a manuscript that hends unworthy o publication reviewed nonetheless, he may resort to reviewers likely to agree with

him. The process, o course, will be a sham; the editor may even alert the reviewers that he expects

no more than a supercial seconding o opinion.

In general, such exceptional tactics are unnecessary. Rather, both editor and author hope or thought-

ul, unbiased reviews that will help the author correct errors and extend the papers arguments, and

so enhance its worthiness or publication.

Blind Reviews

A journal may have a policy o blind reviews that is, the author will not be told who the review-

ers are. A double-blind approach keeps the authors identity rom the reviewers as well. In narrowspecialties, however, authors and reviewers can sometimes easily guess one anothers identities.

An editor may send reviews to the author with or without comment, or, as I sometimes did when

editor oSpectrum, send the author only excerpts he deems pertinent. Also, a reviewer might some-

times volunteer to speak directly with an author an oer I would invariably accept. In the same


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vein, when I received a comprehensive, detailed review, I might encourage the reviewer to identiy

himsel to the author so they could communicate directly.

The Job Doesnt Pay Well

Reviewers dont have an easy task and usually are not paid or their eorts. Their recompense may

come only in what they learn that might enhance their own work. Editors cannot expect review-

ers to duplicate research that involves experimentation; at best, they can expect comments on the

research methodology. At the same time, reviewers cant be expected to uncover alsications inreported results. They can, however, conde their suspicions to the editor.

Bias and Rejection

Editors and authors sometimes suspect a reviewer o bias, to put it kindly. A particularly vicious re-

view might suggest to an editor that a reviewer has athomed who the author is. (Perhaps the author

once voted against tenure or the reviewer!) Most editors will discount a vituperative review and seek

a replacement.

Academics admit that reviewers oten denigrate papers that are based on innovative work but are

counter to accepted wisdom; such reviewers seem to want to avoid the publication o contrary schol-

arship in their journals. As one o them put it, those who review essays or inclusion in scholarlyjournals know their unction is to take exciting, innovative and challenging work by younger scholars

and nd reasons to reject it. I think this is overly cynical, especially in our elds.

Nevertheless, skeptics say with some justication that an author has an advantage i he has been

published in the journal beore; has co-authored a paper with one o the reviewers; or has avorably

reviewed a paper o the reviewer. Furthermore, an overburdened editor eels saer dealing with an

established author.

Lest I too rmly implant the notion o peer review as raught with pitalls and gamesmanship, I should

say that I believe most editors, reviewers and authors respect the process or its value in assessing thequality and accuracy o proessional journal content.

Electronic Publishing Reviews Are a Diferent Matter

Too many variants exist in the time-honored process or print journal peer review to cover in this brie

discussion. And many innovative review procedures to deal with the prolieration o electronic pub-

lishing are under study. William Arms, a computer science proessor and part o a Cornell University

team developing the National Science Foundations new digital library or education in the sciences,

decries the junk on the web. He notes that while major libraries harbor materials so inerior that it

is hard to believe they were ever printed, the problem is even more severe on the web, where the

barriers are very low; anybody can be an author and anybody can be a publisher.

We hope to discuss some o the approaches to peer review o web-based publishing or a uture

column.



Resources

For more about peer review, see:

Harnad, Stevan, Rational Disagreement in Peer Review, Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol.

10, p. 55, 1985.

Arms, William Y., What Are the Alternatives to Peer Review? Quality Control in Scholarly Publications

on the Web,Journal o Electronic Publishing, Vol. 8, No. 1, August 2002.


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Accidents Waiting to Happen

Why do complex systems ail when they shouldnt? Why did the Challenger explode? Why did Co-

lumbia disintegrate? Why were large areas o the northeastern United States blacked out in 1965

and again in 2003?

Technology historians oer a pair o explanations: 1) Designers are not cognizant o what caused

predecessor systems to ail; or 2) They are aware, but are willing to accept risks based on a succession

o prior successes.

When the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge (Galloping Gertie) collapsed in 1940 rom the eects

o aerodynamic phenomena, it was widely reported that the bridge had been perectly designed or

static loads; it was simply that unanticipated eects o wind caused its demise. In act, an engineer-

ing proessor at the University o Washington recalled in 1949 that 10 suspension bridges had been

destroyed or severely damaged by wind between 1818 and 1889.

Brooklyn Bridge designer John Roebling noted in 1841 that storms are unquestionably the greatest

enemies o suspension bridges. Fourteen years later he wrote, the catalogue o disastrous [suspen-sion bridge] ailures is now large enough to warn against light abrics, suspended to be blown down,

as it were, in deance o the elements. So, historians believe, the Tacoma bridge disaster should have

come as no surprise and could have been averted. Roebling, they say, learned rom studying ailures;

the designers o the Tacoma Narrows Bridge did not. Were they unaware o the suspension bridge

ailures o the 1800s, or did they consider them too remote or serious consideration?

Shuttle Faults

In the case o the Challenger, a potential ailure mechanism in the orm o a propulsion-rocket joint

seal that would deteriorate during launch was well known. But successive launches in which NASA

got by culminated in the 1986 explosion in which the Challenger and its crew were lost. For many

NASA engineers, the cause was easy to guess. In her post-accident analysis, author Diane Vaughan

labeled it a case o normalizing deviation. That is, NASA engineers and management were lulled into

complacency and some hubris through a string o well publicized, successul launches. Ater each

fight, theyd analyze the degree o joint degradation, but did not eliminate the ault mechanism.

They accepted it as normal.

When the Columbia disintegrated in February 2003, the cause was ound to be another known ault

mechanism chunks o oam insulation rom the external tanks impinging on the spacecrat. This

time, 81 seconds into the launch, a chunk o oam destroyed enough o the vehicles thermal protec-

tion shield to cause burning and melting and ultimate break-up o the crat during re-entry. The lead

accident investigator said his task orce had determined that NASA is not a learning organization.

They do not learn rom their mistakes. There was no way to monitor any damage to the spacecrat

during its mission, nor repair it in fight. The commission called or both in its nal report.

Power Outages

Ater the great Northeast blackout o 1965, the public was assured that such an event could not



happen again. Failures would be localized and the oending power company isolated quickly rom

the grid. That it happened again was a surprise to the public and grist or politicians and the media,

but perhaps not that much o a surprise to power engineers. They may have known where the weak-

nesses lay, but elt powerless in the ace o any risk-benet analysis to do much about it. At this

writing, the cause has not been ully dened. Some suggest the grid was not suciently automated,

others that it was too automated.

There is a theory that catastrophes in large systems or major engineering projects occur cyclically.One study revealed a 30-year interval between major bridge disasters in the United States, an in-

terval thought to be the result o a communication gap between one generation o engineers and

the next. I valid, this suggests that only the inormation on successul designs is passed along rom

one generation to the next, while inormation about what didnt work and why is not. We can guess

why this might be so. We all like to be recognized or our successes, not our ailures. Published pa-

pers seldom recount ailed approaches to an ultimately successul design. Design and development

today is commonly done in teams; the consensus vote may be to emphasize successes only. And

corporate patent attorneys may preer to suggest that the path to any successul invention be seen

as straightorward, not strewn with miscues or ailed approaches. Finally, a company may need to

consider pending or potential lawsuits.

In his book Design Paradigms, Duke University engineering proessor Henry Petroski encourages

designers to study past ailures. In contemplating new systems or even incremental steps orward

in existing systems, the designer should ask how ailure can occur and what design changes can

obviate that ailure mode without introducing another. Petroski warns that once a design becomes

accepted, incremental design extrapolation in succeeding generations tends to be the norm and

rst principles tend to be overlooked. And design decisions that may prove critical are given to less

experienced engineers, urther ostering the generation gap mentioned earlier.

It strikes me that the likelihood o accidents waiting to happen and actually happening will

only increase as our systems become more complex. There may be greater hope or boundable

systems, like a bridge or a space vehicle, but I worry most about systems that are universal andexpansive, yet consist o numerous, potentially allible, semi-independent pieces like a power grid

or, worse yet, the Internet.

The burden will rest on uture hardware and sotware designers to prove my projection wrong. I

hope they can.

Resources

For more about design ailures, see:

J. A. Roebling, Remarks on Suspension Bridges . . .,American Railroad Journal and Mechanics Maga-

zine, Vol. 6, 1841.

F. B. Farquharson, Aerodynamic Stability o Suspension Bridges, with Special Reerence to the Ta-

coma Narrows Bridge, University o Washington Structural Research Laboratory, 1949.

D. Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, The University o Chicago Press, 1996.

T. E. Bell (ed.), Special Report: Managing Risk in Large Complex Systems, IEEE Spectrum, June 1989.

T. E. Bell and Karl Esch, The Fatal Flaw in Flight 51-L, IEEE Spectrum, February 1987.


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H. E. McCurdy, The Decay o NASAs Technical Culture, Space Policy, November 1989.

Columbia Accident Investigation Board Final Report, August 2003 (www.caib.us).

H. Petroski, Design Paradigms: Case Histories o Error and Judgment in Engineering, Cambridge University

Press, 1994.



Designing Junk

My neighbor was cleaning out his garage when I stopped by. He showed me this huge carton that once

must have contained some large appliance. Now it was lled with smaller stu answering machines,

cell phones, VCRs, CD players, ax machines, a computer terminal, and a smoke alarm. Knowing I was an

engineer, he asked i I wanted any o it. None o it works any more, he told me. I reached or any deenseI could think o, telling him Id never heard o a smoke alarm that didnt work. Did it have new batteries?

Yes, but it doesnt work, he assured me. I think the engineers today are designing more junk than ever,

he said, in a manner that seemed to exempt me rom the otherwise broad condemnation.

But that was small solace. I tried to think o some way to deend the proession. Weakly, I pointed out

that soon ater World War II, executives o some large electronics companies bought into the philoso-

phy that product durability could be anathema to corporate protability and economic growth. Yes,

he agreed, I heard that GE once designed its light bulbs to have a deliberately short lie. Im not sure

about that, I told him. Later I did a bit o covert research and discovered that, indeed, in the late 1930s,

in letters to subsidiaries and licensees, instructions were given to reduce the design lie o lamps, in

one case rom 1000 to 750 hours, and in another rom 300 to 200 hours.During this same period, business and trade publications were lled with discussions o the advan-

tages o planned obsolescence o consumer products. There were three ways to go about this. The one

most appealing to engineers was that o designing a higher perormance product that would make

existing ones obviously inerior. This approach is still popular, although it sometimes results in bells

and whistles that entice customers but are largely unused.

A second approach is designing or wearout or to a targeted lie span, the aorementioned light bulbs

being one example. In the late 1950s, a Design News editor called or designing to product death-dates.

One engineering executive at Whirlpool Corporation agreed, saying that without such an objective

some parts o a product might last ar longer than others and incur a needless cost penalty in the pro-

cess. A spokesman or Fairchild Aircrat and Missiles took a more positive approach to the suggestion,saying that knowing the expected service lie o the weakest component o, say, an aircrat, is needed

as the criterion against which the service lie expectancy o every other component is judged. But his

argument weakened when he insisted it is wasteul to make any component more durable than the

weakest link, and ideally a product should all apart all at once This philosophy has a classic model

in Oliver Wendell Holmes mythical wonderul one-hoss shay, which was said to end its lie when all o

its parts disintegrated simultaneously.

In airness, major corporations, and numerous engineers, were dismayed at the notion o deliberately

degrading all parts o a system to match that o its weakest component. Instead, they ocused on

upgrading the weak link.

Psychological Obsolescence

Finally, the third approach to planned obsolescence appeals to the consumers wish to own products

that are stylish and, above all, not dated. Termed psychological obsolescence, it may well have its

roots in the womens ashion industry, and, later, in the automotive industry. General Motors legendary

designer Harley Earl challenged his counterparts in other industries to ollow Detroits lead in bring-

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