Eugene S. Ferguson

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1916 and raised in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, Eugene S. Ferguson trained as a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Institute of Technology. Before moving into academic life, he worked in a range of industrial jobs, including roles at Western Electric, Gulf Refining, and DuPont, and he also served as an ordnance officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

That practical experience shaped the rest of his career. Ferguson went on to study engineering history, taught at Iowa State, and later became professor of history at the University of Delaware, where he was also connected with the Hagley Museum and Library. He was a founding member of the Society for the History of Technology and later served as its president.

He is especially remembered for arguing that engineering is not just calculation but also imagination, judgment, and visual thinking. His 1977 essay on nonverbal thought in technology and his 1992 book Engineering and the Mind’s Eye made that case in an accessible, memorable way, and they remain his most widely recognized works.