Speeches > Art Club

Engineering & Life
Speech by Bill Hammack to the Champaign-Urbana Art Club January 17, 2001
(pdf version available)

Introduction
Thank you. I'm honored to be invited to speak to your club. As you've heard I do weekly radio commentaries on engineering. They're broadcast throughout Illinois during National Public Radio's Morning Edition. These pieces are aimed at people just like you: My goal is to show everyone - with or without a scientific inclination - that all of the material stuff the effects our lives has a very human origin. Its the result of trials and tribulations, of hard work and surprises, and of disappointments and victories. In short, it's the same as any creative work.

I've taught engineering for over a decade now. And in that time I've collected stories - stories about inventors and entrepreneurs; and stories about how technology affects our humanity. I'm going to share with you today five brief stories over the next twenty-five minutes. Each makes a simple, but important point about technology and how its shapes our lives, and how we shape it.

I'll start in the kitchen. Most of you have plastic container like this piece of tupperware. It's history helps dispel a common myth about engineering and technology. The myth is that all innovation is simply the result of a scientific breakthrough, and that once that breakthrough is made the new technology will, of its own accord, take over our world. In truth, though, each of the many engineered items around us succeeded only partly because of a scientific breakthrough, equally important is the social aspect of each object. Or, to put it another way, it must fit into our human world to succeed. Good engineering is a blend of these two sides. In fact tupperware containers became permanent cultural fixtures through both great engineering and by tapping deeply into the psyche of our culture. And that's my first story.

Tupperware
Tupperware began with Earl S. Tupper, described once as a "failed tree surgeon and archetypal reader of the Reader's Digest, [who] combined faith in technological progress with a Protestant conservative's suspicion of bar-hopping men and cigarette-smoking women." Tupper was a prolific inventor of bizarre gadgets: A "knee-action Gypsy Gun", which explosively removed gypsy-moth eggs from trees. And things like self-standing toothpaste and shaving-cream dispensers, slip-proof garter hooks, and shields for dyeing eyebrows. This last item he tested on his sisters. He even invented something called the "tupper bomb", which discharged carbon dioxide on impact; he advertised it as useful for dispersing striking factory workers.

Tupper spent a couple of years in the 1930s as an engineer at DuPont. He worked with a new plastic called polyethylene, but the work frustrated him because DuPont only used the plastic for military work. Tupper, with his inventive and oddball mind, saw other uses for it because it was tough, yet flexible, non-toxic, odorless, and lightweight. In 1939 Tupper talked his bosses into selling him a few tons of the stuff cheaply. Then he spent every spare moment at his farm in a tiny Massachusetts town playing with the polyethylene to find a way to prepare it so it wouldn't crack when shaped into something.

With these experiments Tupper pioneered thermosetting plastics: By heating the plastic Tupper could make it pliable and moldable. The trick was to find just the right amount of heat so the plastic became like chewing gun and could be slapped into shape, but not so much heat that the plastic melted. After three years of trial and error Tupper found the perfect hybrid of material, technology and design to make plastic kitchen ware. He began with a simple tumbler, but sales of it and other items were poor. Tupper had made the scientific breakthrough that allowed tupperware to be made, but that alone wasn't enough to make the dish ware successful. To really become part of our national culture, as tupperware did in the 1950s, it needed to tap deeply into our traditions and anxieties.

Subliminally tupperware resonated with American's anxieties in the 1950s because it could keep food from rotting in fallout shelters. But tapping into America's traditions was beyond Tupper himself, so he hired Brownie Wise, a women with an intuitive grasp of female popular culture.

Brownie Wise grew up poor in the south. She married at age 23 and lived there until the depression hit the south and she and her husband headed to Detroit, where he found a job on a Ford assembly line. Their marriage was unhappy and short-lived. Three years after the birth of their only child they divorced. Wise then started selling Stanley Home Products. The company employed former housewives as saleswomen and encouraged them to push its wares through their social contacts.

So Tupper hired Wise, this single mother from Detroit, to pioneer tupperware's famous "Hostess Parties." In these a hostess, usually a housewife, gathered a dozen or so women in her house and demonstrated tupperware. What Wise did in these parties was graft the selling of tupperware onto the American traditions of sewing circles and quilting bees. And she tapped into the psyche of the new suburban housewife: The parties took advantage of the isolation, and nearly neurotic sense of social obligation among suburban women in the 1950s.

A feminist called these parties a "form of organizational parasitism analogous to ... colonialism which [used] ... the existing tribal structure ...." Maybe so, but within this "tribal" system Brownie Wise was so successful that by 1954 tupperware sales topped fifty four million dollars - and made her the first woman on the cover of Business Week. And now today there is a tupperware party somewhere in the world every two point two seconds, so during this twenty-five minute talk some 600 parties will have occurred!
The history of tupperware, then, shows that any technology produced by a scientific breakthrough must also fit into our culture in order to be successful. Let's look now at the essence of the engineering part of Tupperware's success.

Inherent in all engineering - in what Earl Tupper did - is that it is an extremely creative act. The creative impulse is the same in science, engineering and the humanities. Its essence is to fuse together two ideas or media in a novel and insightful way. Here's an example from the theater, which is something in my blood. My father was a theater professor. As a child I was the best dressed at halloween, and I spent hours and hours watching rehearsals. And I even acted in a few plays!

When Romeo finds Juliet apparently dead Shakespeare has him cry out: "Death has sucked the honey of thy breath." Jacob Bronowski, in his book Science and Human Values, suggests that this line shows great creative energy because it fuses with another idea. The key is the word "honey." A common expression of Shakespeare's time was that death is like a bee in that it stings. Here, at Juliet's lips is this bee of death ready to sting. Shakespeare evokes this image just by putting the word "honey" in Romeo's mouth.

We can see this fusion of ideas in all types of art - or in any creative enterprise. I think of all the humanities, engineering has its closest link to art. They are both a craft of sorts - art is applied humanities if you will, and engineering has been called applied science. In fact my wife, who is also an engineer, and I often approach viewing technology the same as we do art.

If you love art our honeymoon will appal you. My wife and I toured Munich, Vienna, and Prague visiting one art museum and even there we saw only one painting - instead we looked at the art of engineers. We spent four hours learning how steel is made at the Deutsches Museum - Munich's incredible technology museum. In Vienna we skipped most of the art to visit the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts to study, with fascination, metal chairs and cigarette boxes. In Prague we examined carefully the colored aluminum lining the subways. Appalling, no doubt, to any art lover, yet to us the products of engineers have much in common with those of artists. This brings me to my second story.

Plastic pop bottle
When I take a two liter pop bottle from my refrigerator, I think of a painting at the Museum of Modern Art called Christina's World, the American masterpiece of a women lying in a field. The graceful contours of the two liter pop bottle echo the graceful lines in this painting Christina's World. These lines, their simplicity, comes from the same source. These two works of art are the work of two brothers, Nat and Andrew Wyeth, mediated by the influence of their father.

Their father, N.C. Wyeth, was a well-known illustrator of children's books. He was famous for giving life to his illustrations through precise and simple details; for example, in N.C. Wyeth's painting of a man plowing you can feel muscle strain. What links together Christina's World and the two-liter pop bottle is this feeling for simple details that N.C. Wyeth passed on to his sons.

The father taught Andrew, the painter of Christina's World, to master simple details. One day Andrew was painting and his father walked in and said "You've lost your simplicity." He used his thumb to simplify a shadow and, as Andrew said, "He made it sing" - this simple detail brought the painting to life.

Andrew's brother, Nat, also spend his childhood learning detail and simplicity from their father. Of course the result isn't in museums or galleries, but in your refrigerator: Its engineers art, it's that two liter plastic pop bottle. Nat, although he came from a family of painters, became an engineer, which to his father, a painter, was just fine. He said, "An engineer is just as much an artist as a painter."

In the 1960s Nat Wyeth created his masterpiece by asking himself "Why isn't plastic used for beverage bottles?" At the time only glass or metal was used to store soda. He went home filled a plastic detergent bottle with soda, and left it in the refrigerator over night. By morning the container was swollen from the "fizz" leaving the soda. Wyeth thought, "No wonder they don't put carbonated beverages in plastic bottles. They're too weak." Wyeth realized that to make stronger plastic he needed to weave the long strands of molecules - the molecules making up the plastic - into a kind of a net, a tic tac toe pattern. But how to do this on the tiny scale of molecules?

When he mentioned this to a top scientist he was told he "had as much chance as balancing a steel ball on the end of a needle." Wyeth, though, succeed by using the simplicity he'd learned from his father: Nat used a puff of air to weave the molecules and to create his masterwork.

In a mold, shaped like a bottle, Wyeth lowered a tube of molten plastic. He shot air through the plastic to splatter it all over the mold making a tic-tac-toe pattern weaving, on a tiny scale, a net of strong plastic and giving birth to the graceful contours of the plastic soda bottle - contours related to the simple lines his brother's painting Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World. Their source is the same: From their father both Andrew and Nat learned how in designing a painting or a pop bottle simplicity and attention to details are of prime importance.

So now you can be like my wife and me: The next time you feel like going to the Museum of Modern Art, instead, just open your refrigerator!

Now I've talked about two items that are ubiquitous in our lives: tupperware and plastic bottles. The implication is that technology is always a force for good. Even though I'm a member of this technological community I don't think all so-called progress in technology is good for humanity. Its too rosy a view. Whether the effect of technology is good or bad must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Let me give you an example in my third story.

Electronic communications & a sense of community
Recently I‘ve start to look at technology from a different viewpoint - I'll explain why in a moment. From this new vantage point I noticed that just a few days ago my wife and I helped break down the social order. We're not revolutionaries, but as I mentioned earlier just two placid engineers. What we did was this: We bought groceries. Not at the store, but via the internet. Our local store has a web site where we just click and then the next day the groceries appear on our doorstep.

Now I say "break down the social order" because ordering via the internet takes us out of contact with people. It doesn't foster interactions and build communities and relationships. I came to this view while touring Amish farms with my uncle.

He lives in Indiana, and as a realtor has sold farms to Amish settlers from Pennsylvania. As we drove past the new farms he pointed at one and said "the Amish farmer who lived there publishes a newsletter, he writes it on his laptop." Laptop? Amish? Yes, I learned. I thought the Amish were anti-technology, but I learned that their approach is not disdain, but wariness.

They watch how a piece of technology affects others in the "outside" world and then with caution bring it into their lives. For example, the laptop computer can be used only in the barn - it isn't to invade their home. Now I'm not saying the life style and methods of the Amish would solve our ills. In fact, clearly not everyone in our world of five billion could live this way, but there is a message here: carefully analyze any technology before adopting it.

In my field there is a saying: "Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral" - each aspect that touches our lives must be examined. I took time last week to observe this adage in practice. I focused on how technology insulated me from people. For example, I noticed I got cash from an ATM, instead of a real bank teller. Or, I used e-mail extensively to talk to my co-workers. There were few face-to-face meetings. And when I called information for a telephone number I got a recording. The phone company equipment taped my request, processed my voice and fulfilled my request by computer. There were no human beings involved at all.

Now I've been very negative about using electronic communications, but as I said "technology is neither good, nor bad - nor is it neutral." Each application must be analyzed. In the case of electronic communications the positive side is being able to "talk" with my wife via e-mail when she is travelling for business. So I'm certain not anti-technology - in fact, my wedding ring confirms this. The most important thing to me about this ring, this most traditional of symbols, was that if I lost it I wanted it returned. So I had my jeweller engrave not my wife's name, or the date of my marriage, but instead he engraved my e-mail address.

I've brought a picture with me today that is purely gratuitous. This is my wife on our wedding day. I had originally brought it to show you a picture of my wedding ring, but as I arrived I realized it is my normal policy to always have my hand with me. It does, though, give you a chance to see the most beautiful bride in the history of the universe. You might notice that in my radio talks I often mention my wife. She likes it when I do this. She listens to my radio pieces as she drives to work at a nearby Alcoa plant where she's the senior metallurgical engineer.

We don't usually discuss the pieces before hand, so she hears them fresh on the air, which often makes her my harshest critic. I get a phone call if the piece was particularly good or bad. Or, if I get e-mail from a listener telling me I'm an interesting person, my wife helps keep any ego in check. She is quick to remind me that I can be interesting for two and a half minutes a week - the length of my radio pieces - but then adds, with the precision of the engineer that she is, that in theremaining 10,077 minutes of the week I'm pretty dull.

One of the things we did when newly married was to take ballroom dancing lessons. I learned to dance because of this year's physics Nobel prize winner, although he doesn't know about my dancing. His name is Jack Kilby, the inventor of the microchip. This large, soft-spoken man, who favors working in a sports shirt over a suit, figured out how to miniaturize electronics. This brings me to my fourth story.

The Microchip
In the nineteen fifties he'd watched workers put together the circuits for radios and saw the problems in making electronic equipment. He noticed they packed hundreds of components into a box and then hooked them together with thousands of wires. Kilby realized that the bottleneck to making more complex electronics - like a computer or a cell phone - was hooking up all the wires. In the electronics industry they called this the "tyranny of numbers." To get rid of all these components Kilby figured out how to take a single piece of silicon and, in a sense, draw wires on it. Kilby invented the microchip in the 1950s when he was left alone at his new job at TI, Texas Instruments.

The company had an enforced vacation policy: Everyone left for the same few weeks, but because Kilby was too recently hired and had no vacation time he had to remain in the lab - alone. He spent his time playing with bits of silicon. Kilby noticed that silicon by itself was about as useful for passing electricity as a piece of rubber. Kilby knew that TI researchers changed silicon to be more like a metal - something that conducts electricity - by adding small bits of conducting stuff to the silicon. He sketched out a solution to this "tyranny of numbers" in his notebook: Take a single chip of silicon, and add conducting bits where he wanted a current to run, then leave a small layer of insulating silicon, and then add more conducting bits to produce another component. In a sense Kilby drew wires on the silicon, but not real or physical wires, there would be no connections to tie up workers for hours when making a circuit - just a single, tiny chip with potentially thousands of components on it.

Now as an engineer I marvel at this accomplishment, but I actually appreciate it more as a husband. As I mentioned my wife and I joined a ballroom dancing class. Our goal was best put by this dance slogan: "Go from two left feet to the dancing elite." Because I'm an engineer you might expect I couldn't dance. You're thinking of the stereotype: The nerdy engineer festooned with microchips - digital watch on wrist with calculator in breast pocket. The lessons started with the waltz. As the teacher called out "1-2-3 1-2-3" my feet, unable to follow the beat, became a tangle. My wife looked at me and said "What is this? Am I dancing with Woody Allen?" I was determined, though, to join this elite. A large part of the problem was I couldn't hear the beat of the music.

So I went to the music store and bought a metronome so I could practice every day. I looked for the metronomes I remembered from my childhood piano lessons: large pyramidal objects with swinging pendulums. To my surprise the clerk handed me a metronome no bigger than a credit card and with no pendulums, just press a button and out beeps a waltz rhythm of "1-2-3 1-2-3." I ripped my calculator from my breast pocket and tossed in this metronome and practiced everywhere; I danced in the hallways at work, down the aisle of the library and even turned a head or two on the street. And now I'm part of that elite group of ballroom dancing people.

The heart of my tiny solid-state metronome is the microchip, invented by this year's physics Nobel Laureate Jack Kilby. His microchip miniaturized all sorts of devices. This can be seen in the case of a metronome: Instead of gears and mechanical movement it only takes a piece of silicon to produce a regular beat. It's a very elite group that even know of him: only one in ten thousand know his name yet his work spawned the billions of microchips that run our watches, cars, computers, calculators, and ... metronomes.
've been concentrating on old things, but I want to talk about a new thing. There is an illusion about technology that it is a constant rush forward - and that what is newer or different succeeds. Yet most often it is a blend of old and new that succeeds. How engineers would love to start completely from scratch, yet most often they are restrained by having to at least meet the forms of the old technology. You can see this in automobiles. My father bought a new Oldsmobile every five years or so - and when you hoped into the new one it felt like his old car, with all the controls in the right places. Everything else - the engine, the chassis, etc. - were entirely different. The main engineering principle is that to succeed you must blend the new and the old. And that brings me to my fifth and final story.

E-books
I've started to see ads for electronic books, called e-books. These ads insist that paper based books are out of date. They'll be replaced by an e-book which looks like a small laptop computer. The ads promise a "new way to enjoy reading." Now as a dedicated reader - I have some two thousand books in my home - I wasn't aware the old way had any problems.

As an engineer I going to make a rash predication about technology: E-books will flounder at best because they don't blend the old and new together. Its mostly because they won't appeal to core book buyers. By core I mean the seven percent of the population that buys fifty books or more a year, compared to nearly half of the public that buys fewer than five books.

The main problem with e-books is they focus only on content. The ads promise you can "read comfortably on a large, clear screen", but they miss the tactile aspects. I didn't fully realize this facet of reading until my wife pointed out that after I turn a page I slowly run my hand down the center of the book - caressing it in a sense. Touching and holding the book helps to communicates its information: I can remember if a phrase was on the left or the right hand page - and my hands tacitly tell me just how far into the book the information was located. All of this lost with an e-book where each page is tactically identical to the previous one.

Next, the ads promise "thousands of titles." But getting thousands of titles isn't ever my problem, its getting through thousands of titles. The e-book ads proclaim that when you travel you can have "dozens of books" at your fingertips. But I've found over the years that the secret to reading a lot is to take only one book with me. If I take two I never get much read; I spent the time choosing which book to read, but with one book I have no choice and so I plow through it on the trip. I'm not upbeat about e-books, but I do think technology is going to revolutionize the publishing industry.

Here is where I'd place my bet. Usually technology impacts us the most when it blends the new and the old together. So, keep your eye on the machines, which are just beginning to appear, that print books on demand. Its a very fancy laser printer with a binder attached. Choose a title, press a button and out pops a paperback not much different than one you might buy today. This radically changes the distribution and cost of books, and also leaves the book lover with exactly what he or she wants: A real book to touch and hold.

Conclusion
Well, there are my five stories. My central theme is that engineering and its product, technology, are not some oppressive force that overtakes us, but instead that it is a very human and creative enterprise. I've shown you that technology succeeds best when it somehow meshes with our humanity. In sum it is not just a mechanical drone-like application of scientific principles, but is as complex and rich as any creative human endeavor.

Thank you for inviting me to talk to you today. To show my appreciation I have a gift for each of you. I've brought a suitcase of CDs of some of my most popular radio pieces. There is at least enough so that you'll each get one if you'd like one. Also, you might be like the people who sometimes call the radio station and ask for a CD for a grandchild or niece or nephew - certainly if there are any left over you may take an extra. Or if there are none left, I've given Edie my address and asked her to contact me if anyone needs another copy.