Science in the Triangle | Duke Professor Studies Design of Everyday Objects

Some folks are always finding fault with things, and never seem satisfied with anything. But it’s this very attitude, says Duke Professor Henry Petroski, that drives new inventions, designs and innovations.

So grouches and pedants of the world rejoice – for irritability (not necessity) is the true mother of invention.

Native New Yorker Henry Petroski has been studying, teaching and writing about engineering and design since he moved to the Triangle eighteen years ago. Now a Professor of History and Structural Engineering at Duke University, Petroski has authored a host of popular books on engineering and design. But while his teaching and research focus on the large-scale products of engineering, such as buildings and bridges, his writing focuses on the smaller, simpler objects found in our homes and offices. Although you might not think it, says Petroski, even the simplest designs can teach us a great deal about how new technologies and products evolve. And whether you’re talking about bridges, Space Shuttles or paperclips, one thing holds true:

“What generates new ideas, designs and products is largely dissatisfaction with things as they are, or with existing products. And that most noticeably happens when something fails – either in a big, dramatic way, or even just in a small, annoying way, during everyday use.”

The paperclip, for example, began life as a pin used to hold the pages of paper documents together. Many things drove its development and design, but foremost was an annoyance with the limitations of its predecessor - the pin itself. Pins would mutilate the tops of pristine pages, leaving holes rimmed with rust on older documents. The sharp ends would snag and tear other documents, and of course they were all-too-easily jabbed into fingers when handled by cursing clerks.

That said, the most widespread paperclip design used today – the oval loop of steel wire known as the Gem clip – is by no means a perfect solution to the paper-fastening problem. While cheap and easy to make (and less likely to mutilate your digits and documents) Gem paper clips can still be tricky to push onto thick batches of paper. Worse yet, they frequently slip off, leaving school and business reports scattered across unfeasibly large tracts of flooring. Non-slip plastic alternatives fare little better, so it’s probably fair to say that the perfect paper-fastener still awaits us. “In fact”, Petroski maintains, “there is no perfect design”. Only a series of gradual improvements, each addressing some perceived failure in the one before.

Clever cutlery

Another highly-evolved design – but one so simple that we tend to take it for granted – is the humble table fork. Early cutlery consisted of two knives: one for cutting and the other for holding the meat or vegetable still. Either one could then be stabbed into chopped morsels to lift them to your mouth (keeping your fingers clean and unburned by hot food). But while pointed knives cut well, they aren’t too good at holding things steady. Just imagine trying to hold a steak steady with one knife and cutting with another – the steak would rotate and skid about the plate while you tried in vain to hack lumps off it.

So over time, frustrations with the shortcomings of the knife led to a specialized pair of eating tools. On the right, a knife with a sharp blade but no point; on the left, a stabbing and holding tool otherwise known as the table fork. A fork with two points (or tines) could happily hold meat steady during cutting – and indeed, is still used for carving turkeys and beef joints. Adding a third and fourth tine gave it the added ability to scoop and shovel small pieces of food from the plate (again, imagine how irritating it would be to try this with a two-tined, miniature carving fork).

Fork or chopstick?

While clever, the fork was just one solution to the problem of safely, cleanly conveying food to the mouth. The Chinese developed an elegant alternative in the form of the chopstick. But again, the tapered, square-handled shape wasn’t arrived at all at once by some inventive genius of the Orient. The current stick shape emerged after years of experimenting with different stick shapes and sizes, spurred on by the failings (i.e. trickier handling) of their straight, round predecessors.

Forks and chopsticks show us that there is more than one way to solve a problem. This, says Petroski, flies in the face of the idea that “form follows function” – that inventors and engineers design products precisely to fit a specific job or purpose. What engineers and inventors are actually thinking about are ways in which their new design will keep from failing, rather than all-out succeed.

A whole host of everyday objects we see around us, says Petroski, were designed – or rather, have evolved – this way (such as can openers, toothbrushes, and zippers). These and other examples also demonstrate that contrary to popular belief, necessity is not the mother of invention. That, he says, is a cliché – or a half-truth, at best.

“Often”, says Petroski, “we don’t know that we need something until we have it. I mean, who knew five years ago that they needed an iPod? Of course its features were desirable. But people weren’t saying to Apple ‘WE NEED THIS! WHEN ARE YOU GONNA GIVE US THIS?!’ That just didn’t happen.”

All in the details

Over the years, the Duke Professor has developed a near-fanatical interest in the life stories of such everyday objects as pencils and paperclips, and devoted entire books to exploring the origins and evolution of their designs. His latest book, in fact, is a complete history of the toothpick.

“Originally I thought the toothpick would be an interesting example of the design of something very simple. You can’t get much simpler – it has a single part, it’s made of a single material, and it has a single purpose. But I tried to write its history as a single chapter in a bigger book and I couldn’t because the story was just too big – the story kept expanding!”

If you think that painstakingly researching and writing an entire book about a toothpick could be thought a bit . . . well . . . obsessive – then you’re not alone. A few book critics have questioned the need for this level of detail. But the toothpick, says Petroski, is merely a vehicle for exploring the wider aspects of engineering, manufacturing and design. Moreover, his books are engaging, enlightening and hugely popular. The reason, says Petroski, is that people get involved when you talk about everyday things. And when it comes down to it, he says, “we’re all engineers of a sort – whether we’re conscious of it or not. Because when we get something, we adapt it to our uses - we modify it, change it.”

Look and learn

Even if you never plan on inventing anything, says Petroski, you can get huge enjoyment out of simply looking at something and figuring out where it comes from. “Just look at things, and ask yourself: How did that come to be? How and why was it made like that?”

This same spirit of inquiry lies at the center not just of technology, but of all the sciences. Biologists look at animals, plants and bacteria and try to imagine how they got that way though the process of natural selection. Chemists look at natural chemical structures so that they can create new versions in the lab and make new fuels, materials and pharmaceuticals. And physicists look at the very structure of matter and energy itself – at atoms, particles and waves – and try to figure out where it all came from, how it all fits together and how it all works.

Henry Petroski’s latest book The Toothpick: Technology and Culture is available online and at book stores nationwide. His other titles include Small Things Considered, Success Through Failure, and The Evolution of Useful Things.