The other day I met a newly-retired microwave engineer. Soon we were comparing notes about our respective careers. Prompted by our exchange of war stories, his wife interrupted: “Why is there never a television show about engineers?”

We both knew this question has been raised often over the years. Her husband was quick to respond: “A show about engineers would be as interesting as watching paint dry.” I must say I’ve heard more optimistic similes, such as watching mold grow on bread, suggestive at least of some nominal action.

Pessimism notwithstanding, my new friend and I picked up on his wife’s challenge. We thought a TV series would be good. Our first idea was a show about nothing — but Jerry Seinfeld had already done that.

How about this, we thought: The Air Force puts out a request for proposal for a new, sophisticated missile guidance system (something to do with a neo-SDI project, perhaps). A large aerospace systems company assembles a crack engineering group to respond to the RFP. During the first few episodes, we get to meet the team members. We learn which of them graduated from MIT, and that another nearly flunked out while spending too much time playing video games in his dorm room at Stanford. (He will become the project leader.)

As the series progresses, the engineers try to confirm who their competitors are, and to imagine how each might be attacking the proposal. In the sixth episode, a new member joins the team. He previously worked for the company’s arch rival, known to be developing its own proposal. The plot thickens. Ethical issues arise.

Optimistic that they may win the competition, the company enlarges the project group and invests in supporting experiments. However, we are approaching the end of the TV season and need a cliff-hanger for the final episode. Here it is: In the midst of near-elation about the likelihood of winning the contract, a rumor surfaces that one or two members of the Air Force evaluation team may attempt to subvert the proposal. Will the team win or lose? Stay tuned; you’ll find out next Fall — unless the series is cancelled. Then the cast will need to find new jobs, just like the engineers.

If you don’t like that idea, here’s another. Donald Trump puts a group of young engineers to a series of tests, firing one after another until only one remains, who gets to keep his job — we hope. Or how about this: A detective series called Sam Sigma, Reliability Engineer. (We’ve got more, but you get the idea.)

Seriously, folks

Facetiousness aside, film and television writers have attempted to deal with the topic of engineering, with mixed results. The efforts, as reviewed by IEEE Spectrum several years ago, ranged from comic to “good try.” Among the characters analyzed in the Spectrum article were Scotty, chief engineer aboard the starship Enterprise; Dr. Brown, the mad inventor who built a time machine out of a DeLorean car in Back to the Future; MacGyver, not an engineer but who seemed to have engineering skills; and Gyro Gearloose, Walt Disney’s engineer/inventor. Most writers perceive engineers as out of the social mainstream and, understandably, they have little idea what we do. Viewers are enticed using characters who have direct contact with the public, like doctors and lawyers.

The National Academy of Engineering, in a 1986 survey, confirmed that the public perceived engineers as self-absorbed, rigid, and possessing poor social skills. One respondent said engineers were social misfits with whom he would not want to be trapped in an elevator because they were difficult to communicate with. Little wonder that entertainment writers steer clear of us except, perhaps, for comic relief.

To be fair, both Jimmy Stewart (No Highway to the Sky, 1951) and Jack Lemmon (The China Syndrome, 1980) portrayed serious, ethical engineers. But that was decades ago. A recent attempt at science fiction with a realistic portrayal of engineers is the film Primer, winner of an Alfred P. Sloan prize for helping advance science and technology. But the writer and director had a leg up — he was formerly a software engineer.

On the other hand, do we really care that the doctors, lawyers, and cops get all the prime-time attention? They capture the attention of the viewers in part because they deal with misdeeds by miscreants and other troubled souls. Dr. Sloan of Diagnosis Murder is seldom seen practicing medicine. Community General Hospital is the scene of weekly mayhem (daily in re-runs), much of it visited on unfortunate patients. Television characters must be placed in jeopardy to sustain audience interest. To the entertainment writer, bad news is good news. Accordingly, a TV series on engineers would have to focus on the foibles of engineers and the engineering failures that result. Do we really want that?

A more appropriate vehicle for the realistic portrayal of engineers and their work may be the television documentary. We find the beginnings of such programming on cable channels like The Discovery Channel and The History Channel. Even so, they are likely to involve subjects with an “angle” or subject matter that will excite an audience — like technological disasters or war technology — and dismiss or gloss over the engineering options and the personalities involved. Historians of technology might be encouraged to bring their knowledge to bear in helping write, review, or otherwise vet such documentaries and thus enhance both factual and emotional accuracy. Furthermore, they could encourage the production of documentaries that expose the technical difficulties and conflicting personalities involved in bringing to market well-known consumer products, like FM and color television.

Resources

For more on the public perception of engineers and engineering, see:

• Bell, T.E. and P. Janowski, “The Image Benders,” IEEE Spectrum, October 1988.

• Doble, J. and M. Komarnicki, Report on the Public Perception of Engineers, National Academy of Engineering, 1986.

• Davis, Lance A. and Robin D. Gibbin, Raising Public Awareness of Engineering, NAE, 2002.

 

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