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Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
annaleen@wandering.shop ("Annalee Newitz 🍜") wrote:
You may not remember this poll I did back in November, but you voted for me to tell the tale of an obscure futurist with good ideas. At last, the article you voted for is outside the paywall! It's my latest for New Scientist, about low-key civil engineering legend John "Bud" Wilbur. In 1952, he predicted that we could avert nuclear war with good infrastructure. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26435192-400-the-forgotten-civil-engineer-with-a-vision-we-could-all-learn-from/
Attachments:
- This is a headline for the story from New Scientist magazine. It reads: "The forgotten civil engineer with a vision we could all learn from. John "Bud" Benson Wilbur isn't often remembered today, but his ideas about what the distant-future world of 1977 would look like are inspirational, says Annalee Newitz." Below the text is a black-and-white photo of Wilbur, when he was a young man. He is a white man with slicked-back pale hair, sitting on a stool and looking at a large computing machine that he invented. Called a simultaneous calculator, it is a wall-mounted apparatus resembling a set of long, low bookshelves filled with tilting metal plates on pulley systems. According to the MIT Museum, "The calculator has 13,000 parts, including more than 600 feet of steel tape and nearly 1,000 ballbearing pulleys." (remote)
- This a text card, with black-on-white text. It reads: You have probably never heard of John “Bud” Benson Wilbur, but he is a low-key civil engineering legend. In the mid-20th century, he was chair of the civil and sanitary engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He built some major bridges in Massachusetts and helped prototype the first wind power systems in Vermont. But I first encountered his work in a silly-but-serious essay from 1952 ... he claimed he and his colleagues had invented a crystal ball for seeing the future. (By Annalee Newitz, in New Scientist magazine) (remote)
