Hitting the Brakes

“Hitting the Brakes is an important and enjoyable book. Cars are fascinating, and the opportunity to see how a significant safety system, antilock brakes, became part of them should interest anyone curious to learn how the cars we drive came to be as they are. But this book is more than an enjoyable history. It fundamentally rethinks how we understand engineering and the knowledge that engineers create. It will challenge philosophers to better understand knowledge and historians to better understand the development of knowledge. Hitting the Brakes is at once a social history of engineering communities, a philosophical thesis about engineering knowledge, and a great story.”—Davis Baird, author of Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments

“Hitting the Brakes pays equal attention to the social and technical dimensions of engineering practice, showing how members of knowledge communities worked across national and institutional boundaries seeking to improve the braking performance of the postwar automobile. Ann Johnson describes how researchers and practitioners confronted this multidimensional problem and negotiated their way toward the development of a road-worthy antilock braking system. Her analysis challenges the idea that a corporation’s claim on proprietary information severely limits transnational innovation; so too the idea that engineers are ‘hired guns.’ Her epilogue prompts further questions about the notion of technological progress.”—Louis L. Bucciarelli, author of Designing Engineers

“In Hitting the Brakes, Ann Johnson provides a very engaging description of the engineering design and development process in the context of a compelling case study. She takes us from conception to the commercialization of a sophisticated braking system that many automobile drivers take for granted.”—Henry Petroski, author of The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems