Reviews of The New Engineering
In 1973, when I first seriously considered writing a book about the new engineering, I was reluctant to use the title The New Engineering because the title is so grandiose it strongly suggests the work of a crackpot, and potential readers would likely assume that the new engineering is nonsense.
When The New Engineering was delivered from the printer in 2002, I sent review copies to editors of more than 300 engineering journals and magazines. To the best of my knowledge, only two reviews were published (presumably because many editors assumed that a book entitled The New Engineering could only have been written by a crackpot):
· A serious and very favorable review published in Chemical Engineering and Technology, a German journal published by Wiley-NCH.
· A humorous and very unfavorable review published in Modern Power Systems, a British trade magazine.
Eight or ten editors published brief summaries of the book. Most editors published nothing about the book, and did not acknowledge receipt of the book. A few editors had the courtesy to reply that no review would be forthcoming, such as the letter dated 7/24/02 from Chemical Engineering Science published by Elsevier Science. Note that the letter states:
Unfortunately, our review editor does not feel that
the book is suitable for review in this journal and has declined to review
it.
It would be interesting to learn how long it took the review editor to determine that the book was not suitable for review in Chemical Engineering Science, particularly in light of the high praise the book received in Chemical Engineering and Technology.
Of the many, many American journal and trade magazine editors to whom I sent review copies of The New Engineering, not one (to the best of my knowledge) saw fit to publish a review. Several published short summaries, but most, including Chemical Engineering Progress, made no mention of The New Engineering.
The serious review was by J. L. A. Koolen, and was published in the October, 2002 issue of Chemical Engineering & Technology (formerly Chemie-Ingenieur-Technik), a Wiley-VCH publication. J. L. A. Koolen is a well known and respected member of the engineering profession:
· He had long been a process engineer for the Dow Chemical Co.
· He is the author of Design of Simple and Robust Processing Plants published by Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany.
· His book received a very favorable review by G. Jan Harmsen, Shell International Chemical B. V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in the October, 2003 issue of Chemical Engineering Progress.
· In 2003, he received the Chairman of the Judges Award from The Institution of Chemical Engineers.
Koolen’s review strongly suggests that he had read the entire book. Note the following in his review:
. . . this book . . . should
have the interest of the scientific as well as the engineering world . . .
In his excellent work, Adiutori
explains the difference between the conventional and new engineering approach .
. .
The advantage of the new
engineering method is that it greatly simplifies the solution of non-linear
problems.
In the book, the application of
new versus conventional engineering method is well illustrated for the
scientific engineering fields of electricity, heat transfer, mechanical stress,
and fluid flow.
Striking are the examples about stability phenomena of resistive electrical systems and of heat transfer systems. With simple manual calculations, the non-linear behavior is demonstrated and the oscillation and hysteresis effects shown.
The work is well written and worth reading . . . It is applicable to the whole engineering field.
The humorous review
The humorous review was by Jug Wollensky, and was published in the January, 2004 issue of Modern Power Systems, a trade magazine published in England. (The text in the review is shown more legibly in text of Wollensky review.) Jug Wollensky is a free- lance writer whose articles often appear in Modern Power Systems.
The review is clever and funny. Note in the following that the reviewer candidly admits that he read only a small fraction of the book:
You, however, may be open-minded and patient enough to persevere longer than I have done, and to follow the author's reasoning through to his new method of electrical calculation.
The “new method of electrical calculation” is described in Chapter Two.
I thought the review was clever and funny, and sent the reviewer the following e-mail dated 7/8/2005 (via Leonard Sanford, an editor of Modern Power Systems):
Jug,
I loved your review of my book, The
New Engineering. Your review was so funny, I laughed out loud.
"Ohmless" and the picture of the ohmless engineer are both so
clever. I especially liked the bit about ohmmeters, and the fire
in Alexandria. I wish the ads I write for my book could be
as fun to read as your review.
By the way, Ohm's law as expressed by Ohm
in his book was not E = IR. It was E = IL where L is the length of a
copper wire of a standard diameter. Therefore, if Ohm had had his way, we
would in fact be ohmless. And all the meters that we now call ohmmeters
would be calibrated in centimeters instead of ohms, and instead of being
called "ohmmeters" they would be called some other name.
In your review, you ask what to do with
all the ohmmeters. My answer is very simple. Call them E/I meters
(which in fact they are), and indicate that the units are volts/amp (which in
fact they are) rather than the nondescript pseudonym "ohms".
And there is to be no global burning of
books. But there is to be a global revision of books. Just
as there was a global revision of books (but no burning) when the world turned
from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican system.
Warm and sincere regards,
Eugene F. Adiutori