12/00 mechanical engineering: editorial

editorial

The Best Is Yet to Come

By
John G. Falcioni, Editor-in-Chief

It doesn't seem like it has been quite that long, but almost a year has passed since engineering author Henry Petroski took us on a splendid journey through 100 years of technological achievements. It was last January, when his article in this magazine captured the essence of the top 10 engineering achievements of the past 100 years.

Now, in the final month of 2000, we are fortunate to have Petroski back in this issue to give us his articulate recap of those achievements and of what may lie ahead.

Throughout the course of this year, the editors of Mechanical Engineering have been proud to present each month articles that denoted the engineering achievements you selected, by way of ballot, as most significant of the past century. Your letters and e-mails throughout the past months tell us that our series of articles touched many of you deeply.

I've said time and again that celebrating the past has the effect of honoring the present. Today's technology is a result of yesterday's achievements. Technological triumphs have been the keys to unlocking current trends and growth as well as our dreams for tomorrow. Even as our series of articles concludes, we will never stop honoring the past, both the engineering and the individuals behind it.

The future, as uncertain as it is, promises some absolutes. For sure, technological advancements will reach the unimaginable. Whether change significant enough to impact our lives occurs in five, 20, or 50 years, we know that in the year 2100 the world of today will be unrecognizable.

Ironically, perhaps the most significant technological event of the much anticipated year 2000—certainly the one that was written about most—was the nonevent of the Y2K bug. A year ago, we were all prepping for the unexpected. And as some of us purchased confetti and party hats to welcome 2000 in a special way, many others were hoarding water, milk, and nonperishables, fearing the worst.

How would we handle refrigerators that would stop cooling and heating systems that on January 1 would stop warming us? We were fearful of looters causing havoc as we envisioned blackouts in the world's biggest cities. Some doomsayers even predicted an Armageddon caused by the unintentional high jinks of the world's most secure computing systems.

How fortunate, if anticlimactic, when no more than a handful of minor computers in noncritical applications hiccuped when the calendar turned to 1/1/2000.

We look to the beginning of 2001 with much less panic, but with the same anticipation we had for this year. We recognize that hand-held wireless Internet connectivity is but the beginning of a wave of products that will make our lives easier—if easier means becoming ever more reachable in the most remote of places.

And, certainly, the discourse over nanotechnologies, in which scientists and engineers will build smart systems by lining up atom atop atom, has only just begun.

How the 10 achievements you voted as being tops (Automobile, Apollo, Power Generation, Agricultural Mechanization, Airplane, Integrated Circuit Mass Production, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, CAD/CAM and Other CAE Technology, Bioengineering, Codes and Standards) will affect new developments, or themselves be influenced by them, is a question we can only take a crack at answering. But, as Petroski says at the end of this month's article, "The engineering of the best is always yet to come."

Email your comments or questions to: falcionij@asme.org