Hitting the Brakes

Ann Johnson is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina.

“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

• Preface ixAcknowledgments xv1. Design and the Knowledge Community 12. A Genealogy of Knowledge Communities and Their Artifacts 233. The British Road Research Laboratory: Constructing the Questions 374. The Track and the Lab: Brake Testing from Dynamometers to Simulations 635. From Things Back to Ideas: Constructing Theories of Vehicle Dynamics 856. Learning from Failure: Antilock Systems Emerge in the United States 1037. Eines ist sicher! Successful Antilock Systems in West Germany 1178. Public Proprietary Knowledge? Knowledge Communities between the Public and Private Sectors 137Epilogue. ABS and Risk Compensation 157Notes 167Bibliography 187Index 201