[INES Announce] Join us this Friday Feb 27 at 11am ET: Gregory Dreicer at the Engineering Studies Working Group

[Ryan Hearty]

Dear INES members,

Please join our Engineering Studies working group<https://www.chstm.org/group/engineering-studies> at CHSTM this at 11am ET this Friday, 27 February 2026, for a discussion with Gregory Dreicer, author of the recently published American Bridge: Reinventing Building, Making History<https://gregorydreicer.com/#/americanbridge/> (MIT Press, 2026).

We will start our discussion with a short presentation from the author:

Wood, Iron, and History: How Stories Have Shaped Materials and Structures—and Stopped Us from Learning About the Reinvention of Construction
What do the evolutionary metaphors and nationalistic passions that have long ruled history tell us about the design of our environments? How do they determine what we celebrate and who we forget? In this presentation, Gregory Dreicer explores how builders reinvented construction during the 19th century, creating the strategies of mass construction essential to industrialization and nation building . . . and why most of us don’t know about this transformative moment. Inspired by bridges called “American,” technologists designed the long-span beam, truss, and high-rise frame. Asking a simple question—“What is a wooden bridge?” and developing an evidence-based response—challenged predominant tales we share about our pasts and futures.

See you then!

Best wishes,
Ryan and Ellan

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Ryan Hearty, Ph.D.<https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ryan-hearty/>
Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University

Ellan F. Spero, Ph.D.<https://web.mit.edu/efs8/www/>
Instructor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Co-Founder and Professor of the Practice, Station1

on behalf of the Engineering Studies<https://www.chstm.org/group/engineering-studies> working group at the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine<https://www.chstm.org/> in Philadelphia
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