How does an inventor set about designing a piece of machinery to make a particular product? Are they any basic principles to guide him? Glegg believes that there are and, in his short book, draws on his own wide-ranging experience as an inventor, consulting engineer, company director and university lecturer, to define them. Most books on engineering design are concerned with either mathematical analysis or some individual technique related to a narrow field. This book is neither: it defines the general laws which underlie all creative design, from the philosophy and psychology of inventiveness to the point at which an invention is commercially exploited. It thus cuts across the frontiers of specialised studies and specialised industries. Glegg finds engineering fun and feels that learning about it need not be dull. His book, with many illustrations from the battleground of industry, is both entertaining and profitable reading for engineering designers of the future and for those in general management responsible for design departments.
