Pirsig’s book is an old favorite of mine, and of Gene Ferguson, too. Gene trained as an engineer at Carnegie Tech (Carnegie Mellon University today) in Pittsburgh before WWII and while still in school did a co-op stint at the Hoover (vacuum cleaner) Co., which he found invaluable for giving him hands-on real-world experience. Later, as an engineering school professor (before going over to the dark side of history and museums), he lamented that after graduation young engineers were customarily thrust into positions of responsibility without ever having been on the shop floor of a factory. The only thing worse was having to answer to business school grads who had no idea what the company actually made….

For more on Gene’s career and writings, see David S. Hounshell, Eugene S. Ferguson, 1916-2004. Technology and Culture – Volume 45, Number 4, October 2004, pp. 911-921

Gene’s Bibliography of the History of Technology (1969) is still worth a look after all these years, and The Early Engineering Reminiscences (1815-40) of George Escol Sellers (1965) captures the wondrous fledgling period of mechanical engineering like few other works.

Keep up the great work!

“At a 1998 presentation in London for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Professor Harry Kroto unexpectedly spent his time elucidating the merits of meccano instead of discussing his recent Nobel award winning discovery of Carbon 60. His argument being that students require tactile experience to know when to stop tightening a screw and computer use alone doesn’t teach this. When asked at the end of the lecture, whether he had read Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM), Kroto replied: ‘Yes, and that’s what it’s all about!’”.

(I’ll look up Ferguson’s article and book)

Judging from Robert’s performance, maybe we have to question how much time he has spent tending collections recently. Just kidding… However, do I think that collectors, curators, and other caretakers of artifact collections invariably acquire much tactile understanding and appreciation of objects. (An unexpectedly important personal preparatory experience for becoming a better curator was the summer job I had in a motorcycle shop while in college.) More important in my experience is the visual repertoire that technically- and artifactually-oriented persons carry around in their heads. I refer interested readers to the writings of Eugene S. Ferguson, specifically his classic article, “The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology,” Science, 197, 4306, 827-836, Aug 77, and Engineering and the mind’s eye (MIT Press, 1992).