Ten Technology Disasters

Ant writes "What do a 17th-century Swedish warship, an opulent Chicago theater and a Kansas City hotel "skyway" have in common? All met catastrophic ends and they have important lessons to teach today's innovators."

Comments

What about Banqiao and Shimantan dams

[btempleton]

A story that claims to be reporting on the greatest tech disasters, in particular the lesser known ones, and it fails to mention Banqiao and Shimantan in 1975?

I mean, not only was this the greatest technological disaster in human history with 80,000 to 230,000 dead depending on whose numbers you believe, but it also is sufficiently unknown that the author of an article on disasters doesn't appear to know of it!

Re:What about Banqiao and Shimantan dams

[nels_tomlinson]

A story that claims to be reporting on the greatest tech disasters, in particular the lesser known ones, and it fails to mention Banqiao and Shimantan in 1975?

Since the original post mentioned this as if we should be familiar with it, here're the details: A big dam in China failed, in large part because the Communist ideologues over-ruled the hydrologists. Many thousands died, but of course that's all right because the houses of the Party cadre were built on high ground. Click on that link for the fine print.

RISKS - assesment community

[DaveWood]

No discussion of the topic could be complete without mentioning RISKS. The RISKS Digest has been discussing risk factors associated with technology and engineering (and to some extent generally) on the internet since 1986.

Every engineer should spend time reading there. Any _good_ engineer should subscribe.

-David

Re:Well, I read it, and I can't see any patterns..

[Registered Coward v2]

So does anybody know of a good reference work out there which actually has some worthwhile analysis on stuff like this? Didn't Feynmann write something up after Challenger?


Yes, it appeared as an appendix to the Roger's Report. He also discussed it in his autobigraphy either "Surely your joking..." or "What do you care...", I can't remember which. The appendix is a good read, and can be found here:
http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-re port.ht ml
or any of a number of other googleable links.

Forget Ye Not the Therac-25

[ewhac]

Even if you never get near embedded systems of this type, you can't call yourself a responsible software engineer until you read and learn from An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents.

Executive Summary: Company introduces next-generation radiation therapy machine, replacing hardware-based overdosage safety interlocks with software-based mechanisms. Software fails. People are killed.

Schwab

Navy's Dead ship

[reflexreaction]

An article on the NT problem is available here.

From the article

The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.

And a little bit later in the article

"If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes," he wrote in the June U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine. "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure."

GO ARMY!!!!!!!

Re:Carry through is important!

[K8Fan]

I live near KC and I remember when the skywalks collapsed. As the story unfolded after the tragedy, it became readily apparent that everyone just assumed everyone else was doing what they thought they should be doing or that their shortcuts were fine with everyone else. :-( Communication and checking up on how things are actually progressing versus the plans can be a real matter of life or death.

I lived in KC at the time, and I recall that there were more screw-ups than this short summery mentioned. The metal fabricator also changed the design of the beams. As designed, they were to be made of two "U" shaped channels welded together with a seam on the left and right sides of the beam. They didn't have those bits in stock, so they used two shallower "U" shaped pieces and welded them together at the top and bottom of the beam...and then drilled the holes for the threaded rod right through the welds!

Everyone involved was criminally culpable...and (to my knowledge) went to prison.

Also, on a side note, the local KC TV news organizations try hard to prevent people from getting to their archives of what happened.

A good friend of mine was the first emergency physician on the scene at the Hyatt and performed the triage. He was recently interviewed by the BBC for a documentary about the Hyatt. They supplied footage to the BBC, but no...they don't have any reason to supply footage to random people.

Re:Carry through is important!

[K8Fan]

Teach me to actually re-read the thing when I preview it. What I meant to say was:

Everyone involved was criminally culpable...and (to my knowledge) *NOBODY* went to prison.

Tacoma Narrows/Millennium Bridge Disasters

[lperdue]

In 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed" because insufficient stiffening allowed the wind to create oscillations that destroyed it.

Fast forward 61 years to London and the Millennium Bridge near-disaster where insufficient stiffening ... well, you get the picture.

Point is, a list such as this one is valuable ONLY if we remember and learn from it. Those who forget history are doomed ...