The keypad of a telephone has the digits 1,2,3 at the top. That of a calculator has the digits 7,8,9 in this position. Most of us use both devices every day. How serious is this failure ofdesign? This is one of the questions left as an exercise for the reader by Henry Petroski in his survey of the design history of a selection of familiar objects. He starts small, with paperclips, pencils, zip fasteners, beverage cans and fax machines, and finishes big, with aircraft, water distribution systems, bridges and buildings. His themes are the Darwinian, evolutionary nature of the engineering design process and the slow, often irregular optimization of its artefacts. The book is a series of stories about how his chosen products came to be the way they are.
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