Edward Tenner, "Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences" (APS Press, 2025)

Jul 10, 2025

Edward Tenner, an independent writer and Distinguished Scholar at the Smithsonian, brings fascinating insights into technology and its unintended consequences. He discusses how lifeboats, introduced after the Titanic disaster, inadvertently led to another tragedy. Tenner explores the role of wild animals as investors and the historical significance of the tab as a visual metaphor. He also highlights Amish artisans' impact on technology and reflects on the effects of AI on creativity, urging a cautious approach to its integration in academia.

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ANECDOTE

Hindenburg's Smoking Lounge Paradox

The Hindenburg had a smoking lounge because half its wealthy passengers smoked and forbidding smoking would have hurt ticket sales.
The lounge had safety measures, but relied on stewards to prevent fire risks, showing human factors in technical safety.

INSIGHT

People Cause Tech Disasters

People issues often cause technical disasters more than engineering failures.
Machines are designed and programmed by people whose values and expectations influence outcomes.

INSIGHT

Attraction to Controlled Danger

People seek out controlled danger for thrill, like tourists visiting active volcanoes or eating slightly toxic fugu fish.
Danger adds excitement even when the activity itself isn't especially enjoyable or tasty.

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How did the addition of lifeboats after the Titanic shipwreck contribute to another tragedy in Chicago harbor three years later? How efficient are wild animals as investors, and how do dog breeds become national symbols? Why have scientific breakthroughs so often originated in the study of shadows? How did the file card prepare scholarship and commerce for the rise of electronic data processing, and why did the visual metaphor of the tab survive into today's graphic interfaces? Why have Amish artisans played an important role in manufacturing advanced technology? Why was United Shoe Machinery the Microsoft of the 1890s? Surprises like these, Edward Tenner believes, can help us deal with the technological issues that confront us now.

Since the 1980s, Edward Tenner has contributed essays on technology, design, and culture to leading magazines, newspapers, and professional journals, and has been interviewed on subjects ranging from medical ethics to typography. Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences (American Philosophical Society Press, 2025)--named for one of the paradoxes that can result from the inherent contradictions between consumer safety and product marketing--brings many of Tenner's essays together into one volume for the first time, accompanied by new introductions by the author on the theme of each work. As an independent historian and public speaker, Tenner has spent his career deploying concepts from economics, engineering, psychology, science, and sociology, to explore both the negative and positive surprises of human ingenuity.

Edward Tenner is an independent writer and Distinguished Scholar in the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and teaches the course Understanding Disasters at Princeton University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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