Confession--
I have long been fascinated with engineering. It gets me rapt-eyed and sweaty-palmed; I will sit through reruns of NOVA for segments on it; and if I see "50 Greatest Marvels of Human Civil Engineering" on your coffee table I will be on that like white on rice. Surprising, given that I'm a humanities-person and I'm no great shakes at math (I hate it). But maybe this has its roots in the mysteries of my father's profession which I've always been too embarrassed to ask about (what the h
Confession--
I have long been fascinated with engineering. It gets me rapt-eyed and sweaty-palmed; I will sit through reruns of NOVA for segments on it; and if I see "50 Greatest Marvels of Human Civil Engineering" on your coffee table I will be on that like white on rice. Surprising, given that I'm a humanities-person and I'm no great shakes at math (I hate it). But maybe this has its roots in the mysteries of my father's profession which I've always been too embarrassed to ask about (what the hell
is
electrical engineering anyway?!), and has thus seemed akin to magic in my eyes.
Well for one reason or another, yesterday I picked up (via archive.org) the autobiography of
John Hays Hammond
, one the most famous mining engineers from the turn of the 20th century, and his other book,
The Engineer
. And I've been reading it. And I've been loving it.
Hammond's boyhood on the California frontier reads like a condensed adventure story, and his education at Yale and post-grad at the Royal School of Mining in Freiberg, Germany are full of fistfights and friendly rivalries. His travels and burgeoning engineering practice back in the American West chronicle a period of toil, danger (murders!), and continual learning, plus, of all things--Wyatt Earp. What I've enjoyed most though is Hammond's frank and unadorned voice, which is never obtrusive, and simply
reads.
"I am not only the world's worst freehand drawer, I cannot even draw with a ruler."