Eugene Ferguson

Eugene S. Ferguson, emeritus professor, University of Delaware, has received the 1994 Engineer-Historian Award for his many works relating to history, including Engineering and the Mind's Eye (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), the Bibliography of the History of Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), and The Various and Ingenious Machines of Captain Agostino Ramelli [1588] (with Martha Teach Gnudi, London: The Scolar Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). His other books, articles, and chapters have covered topics such as Thomas Truxtun, George Escol Sellers, John Ericsson, kinematics of mechanisms, engineering economics, steam engines, central heating, hand tools, scientific management, technical museums and international exhibitions, and biographical sketches.

His recent work, Engineering and The Mind's Eye, relates the nature of engineering design with intuitive and nonverbal thinking and practical experience with materials and machines. Using examples from history to illustrate how engineers communicate, he argues that engineering education that relies solely on technical or analytical techniques will produce engineers who are dangerously ignorant of the real world.

Having been a practicing mechanical engineer, a museum curator, and teacher, Ferguson has developed a writing style rich in detail and probing in insight. Henry Petroski, Duke University, wrote "Like many a 'little book' by a master, the reader will find it overflowing with ideas and insights. It is a book that will reward many rereadings."

Phi Beta Kappa's Book Committee reviewed Mind's Eye: "The thesis of this work is that artisans, engineers, and inventors have established, throughout time, the forms, styles, and textures of much of the man-made world, despite today's growing reliance on scientific findings and on mathematical and computer-based design."

Perhaps the History and Heritage Committee enjoys special pride in presenting this award given Ferguson's long relationship with ASME. Ferguson was the first chair of the History and Heritage Committee when the program began, serving from 1970 to 1974. He is also well recognized in the history field. Among his awards are the Abbott Payson Usher Award by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in 1969 and SHOT's Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 1977. He has also received the Orthagonal Medal of the Engineering Drawing Division of the American Society for the Engineering Education (1994).

Raised in Wilmington, Del., Ferguson earned his BSME at Carnegie Institute of Technology. He worked briefly for Western Electric Company in Baltimore, in production planning, before moving to New Jersey with E.I. duPont de Nemours and Company. Working with high explosives for maintenance and construction jobs, he soon headed that department. Ferguson then spent four years as an Ordnance officer with the US Navy during WWII.

He began his teaching career as an instructor of heat-power sequence at Iowa State College in Ames, following the war. With a brief interruption as a plant engineer for the Foote Mineral Company in Exton, Pa., he continued until 1969 as assistant and then associate professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State, earning his MS in mechanical engineering in 1955.

In 1969 he became a professor of history at the University of Delaware in Newark. During that time he also served as curator of technology at the Hagley Museum in Greenville. He was consulting editor for SHOT's Technology and Culture journal from 1965 to 1975 and was president of SHOT 1977-78. He also was principal investigator for the National museum of Hsitory and Technology-National Science Foundation Bicentennial Project on American Science and Technology 1973-74. He served as vice chairman 1972-75 and chairman 1975-78 for the Advisory Committee of the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER).