From the Titanic to the Challenger: An Annotated Bibliography on Technological Failures of the Twentieth Century by Susan Davis Herring

Abstract

152 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE From the Titanic to the Challenger: An Annotated Bibliography on Technological Failures of the Twentieth Century. By Susan Davis Her­ ring. New York: Garland, 1989. Pp. xxv + 459; indexes. $54.00. One productive line of research in the history of technology is “what happens when things go wrong?” Thorough inquests into technological failures (or disasters, depending on one’s viewpoint) offer insight not only into the shortcomings of the actual equipment but also into the surrounding environment. As the 1986 Challenger review board demonstrated, red flags had been raised but not heeded by industry, government, or the media. This annotated bibliography provides a good beginning for the disaster researcher. Susan Herring provides 1,354 well-indexed en­ tries on the best-known engineering failures of our century. Not surprisingly, transportation—particularly under the water and above the land, regimes where failures have the most serious consequences— dominates, followed by nuclear and chemical plants. The focus is on technological failures caused by poor design, such as airplane crashes, as opposed to technological failures caused by natural disasters, such as earthquakes. Future editions might benefit by expanding the section on engi­ neering ethics to explore the paths engineers and others have followed when confronted with a potentially unsafe system. Another line of future work is predisaster coverage. The section on radioactive-waste disposal, for example, covers only the Soviet Union. Surely the technological and political failure of the United States to develop suitable repositories after four decades of experience warrants some comment. A third area is the notion ofchronic, as opposed to discrete, technological failure. Incremental innovation and diffusion are in­ creasingly recognized as major factors in technological growth. Might a similar process of gradual degradation occur in technological failure also? Some government documents are cited, but full use was not made of the wealth of congressional hearings, General Accounting Office reports, and executive branch documents, to mention only the U.S. government. Another useful source, the reports of the National Research Council, also was excluded. Although Garland published the book in 1989, some recent works, such as Henry Petroski’s To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), are absent. Despite its gaps, this annotated bibliography deserves a place on a library reference shelf. Jonathan Coopersmith Dr. Coopersmith is an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University with an interest in large-scale technologies. ...