Robert Messler - Reverse Engineering: Mechanisms, Structures, Systems & Materials

Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies, and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him?

WERNHER VON BRAUN

in a letter to the California State Board of Education, September 11, 1972

Dr. Wernher von Braun (19121977), German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, and space architect, directed the U.S. space program from the Marshall Space Center of NASA, Huntsville, Alabama, from 1950 to 1972.

Cover: The background image is the most recent diagram depicting the gears that constituted the Antikythera mechanism, discovered in the wreck of a first century BC Greek cargo ship off the small Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea in 1900. Deduced by mathematician Dr. Tony Freeth and his associates as part of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project for which Dr. Freeth is a principal, this refinement on the gear system originally put forth by Professor Derek de Solla Price in 1974 in his Gears of the Greeks was the result of clever reverse engineering from high-resolution x-ray images taken of a large corroded lump of brass, together with a great deal of mathematical expertise. Permission for use of the 2012 image was granted by Tony Freeth, Managing Director, Images First Ltd.

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To all of those who taught me by their example and by mentoring me in the
practice, ethics, and art of engineering, your names reside in my mind and your spirits in my heart.

Robert W. Messler, Jr., Ph.D., FASM, FAWS, is Emeritus Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He spent 16 years in industry, 11 years at Grumman Aerospace and 5 years at Eutectic-Castolin, and then returned to Rensselaer, where he earned his degrees, to serve as Technical Director and Associate Director of the Center for Manufacturing Productivity. Dr. Messler later became a tenured professor and was appointed Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs. He is the author of six books, including Engineering Problem-Solving 101 (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2013). He has also written more than 140 papers in diverse areas of materials processing, joining, design, manufacturing, and engineering education. Dr. Messler is a Fellow of ASM International and of the American Welding Society for career accomplishments and contributions.

There are those, especially engineers involved in the design of new mechanisms, structures, systems, or materials, who resent and would argue with the saying extracted from Ecclesiastes 1:9, there is nothing new under the Sun. But with some honest reflection, most would soon probably agree with it, particularly as they gained experience and grew older and, hopefully, wiser. It is practically impossible to create something completely new, with nothing like it under the Sun. As intelligent physical beings living in a physical world, we are immersed in our environment, where our brains are inundated with inputs to our five senses. Our minds, from which come all our thoughts, are shaped by our experiences. How would one create something from a vacuum of nothing, whether physical, sensual, emotional, or intellectual?

One of the potentially most powerful problem-solving techniques available to engineers is reverse engineering.