john wiley & sons, wiley-vch and ernst & sohn – a

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Editorial

© Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin

only made it into literary history as aclassic of literature for the young, de-spite the fact that he is the progenitorof the historic novel in US literature.The rise of the publishing house acce-lerated from 1836, when John Wileywas joined by George Palmer Putnam(1814–1872) as junior partner. Oneyear later Dennis Hart Mahan (1802–1871), professor at West Point Mili-tary Academy, published his „Elemen-tary Treatise on Civil Engineering“,which was Wiley’s first civil engineer-ing publication, although engineeringliterature remained an exception atWiley & Putnam for the time being.The partnership between John Wileyand George Palmer Putnam, whichlasted until 1848, enriched early USliterary history enormously. In addi-tion to Cooper authors included Wa-shington Irving (1783–1859), Natha-niel Hawthorne (1804–1864), EdgarAllan Poe (1809–1849), Richard HenryDana (1815–1882), and Hermann Mel-ville (1819–1891). Poe’s collection „TheRaven and Other Poems“ (Fig. 2), pu-blished by Wiley & Putnam in 1846, isregarded as America’s first world classvolume of poetry. It was translated intoFrench by Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), Poe’s kindred spirit and pioneerof modern European literature.

In addition to famous early USwriters, Wiley & Putnam also publi-shed works from European writerssuch as Victor Hugo (1802–1885), HansChristian Andersen (1805–1875), Eli-zabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)and Charles Dickens (1812–1870).

The meteoric rise of the structural engineer

In 1849 John Wiley landed a majorpublishing hit: The monograph „The

Karl-Eugen Kurrer

John Wiley & Sons, Wiley-VCH and Ernst & Sohn – a successful civil and structural engineering literature family saga

200 years ago Charles Wiley (1782–1826) opened a print shop in Man-hattan, from which publishers JohnWiley & Sons, New York, emerged inseveral historic development stages.During the 19th century John Wiley(Fig. 1) shaped the fortunes of thepublishing house. In 1865 his sonCharles Wiley entered the business,followed 10 years later by William Hal-sted Wiley (1842–1925). Since then thecompany has been trading under thename of John Wiley & Sons. Todaythe listed family enterprise, based inHoboken (New York), is amongst thetop group of international sciencepublishing houses.

Ernst & Sohn, established in 1851as „Verlag für Architektur und techni-sche Wissenschaften“ (publishers forarchitecture and technical sciences)in Berlin, and renowned for the jour-nals „Bautechnik“, „Stahlbau“, „Beton-und Stahlbetonbau“, „Bauphysik“,„DIBt-Mitteilungen“ and „Mauerwerk“and a range of books, among them

the „Beton-Kalender“ (concrete hand-book) ‘flagship’ publication (establis-hed in 1906), has been part of theJohn Wiley & Sons publishing groupsince 1996: Referring back to the ‘fa-mily image’, we now know the „grand-child“ and the „grandmother“. The„mother“ of Ernst & Sohn is WILEY-VCH, based in Weinheim/Bergstraße,whose origins date back to VerlagChemie (VCH), founded by the che-mical industry in 1921. WILEY-VCH,Berlin, is the Berlin-based „sister“ ofErnst & Sohn, who specialises in phy-sics, and whose origins date back toAkademie-Verlag, the leading sciencepublishing house of the former GDR.The British „aunt“ is based in Chiche-ster, trades under the name of Wiley &Sons, Ltd., Chichester, and specialisesin engineering sciences publications.

In families grandchildren andgrandparents often get on very well,not just because of the presents, butmainly because of the stories grand-parents tell their grandchildren. Onthe occasion of Wiley’s 200th birth-day we’ll reverse the situation andgive a brief outline of the story fromthe perspective of the grandchild.

Wiley & Putnam: A publishing duo writes literary history

As early as 1821 Charles Wiley hadhis first publishing success with thebook „The Spy“ by James FenimoreCooper (1789–1851). In 1826 JohannWolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)read the original version of Cooper’s„The Pioneers“ (to German readersbetter known as „Lederstrumpf“), fol-lowed by all his other available no-vels. The wise man from Weimar wasconvinced by Cooper’s literary talent,although the author of „The Pioneers“

Fig. 1. The publishing patriarch JohnWiley (1808–1891)

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K.-E. Kurrer · John Wiley & Sons, Wiley-VCH and Ernst & Sohn – a successful civil and structural engineering literature family saga

© Ernst & Sohn

Seven Lamps of Architecture“ (Fig. 3)by the British social reformer and art& architecture historian John Ruskin(1819–1900) – published by Wiley – setstandards for architectural theory. Bythe end of the 19th century Wiley hadpublished several other books byRuskin.

In Germany the publishinghouse Wilhelm Ernst & Korn (todayErnst & Sohn), established in 1851 inBerlin, significantly influenced the ar-chitectural discourse with publicationsfrom the Schinkel school. Whilst theactivities of the Schinkel school re-mained limited to the sphere of pu-blic construction, Ruskin developedideas for counterbalancing the exces-ses of capitalism through a new wayof life, which became a reality in theform of the British Garden City move-ment established by Ebenezer Howard(1850–1928) around 1900 and wascreatively replicated in Germany byarchitects such as Hermann Muthe-sius (1861–1927), Richard Riemer-schmid (1868–1957), and Peter Behrens(1868–1940). The co-founder of the„German Werkbund“, Hermann Mu-thesius, spent some time working forthe „Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung“(construction management journal),published by Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn,and between 1898 and 1901 publishedseveral of his own works with Ernst& Sohn. While civil engineering dis-placed architecture among Wilhelm

Ernst & Sohn’s publications duringthe last third of the 19th century, JohnWiley & Sons concentrated on engi-neering literature, reflecting the spec-tacular industrial rise of the USA afterthe American civil war (1861–1865).This development period of Wiley wasshaped, both in terms of content andbusiness aspects, by William HalstedWiley a civil warveteran on the Unionside and civil engineering graduatefrom the renowned Rensselaer Poly-technic Institute. Before William Hal-sted Wiley’s aegis, John C. Trautwine(1810–1883) had published his legen-dary „Civil Engineer’s Pocketbook“with Wiley in 1872, of which no lessthan 17 editions were published by1894. „The major“ – a name often usedfor William Halsted Wiley – replacedTrautwine’s pocketbook with Mans-field Merriman’s (1848–1925) „TheAmerican Civil Engineer’s Pocket-Book“, published in 1911 (Fig. 4).Merriman taught civil engineering atLehigh University between 1878 and1888 and published important mono-graphs with Wiley, among them„Theory of Continuous Bridges“ (1876),„The Mechanics of Materials“ (1885)and in 1888 jointly with Henry S. Ja-coby the handbook „A Text Book onRoofs and Bridges“, which was reprin-ted several times within a short period.

The Austrian civil engineeringprofessor Josef Melan (1853–1941)and David B. Steinman (Fig. 5) pu-

blished important bridge engineeringworks with Wiley. In his book „Plainand Reinforced Concrete Arches“(1915) Melan provides an overview ofthe design he invented, which con-sists of steel arch ribs frictionallyconnected with concrete to form aconcrete arch with rigid reinforcement.According to an estimate by HenrySpangenberg (1879–1936), more than5,000 Melan bridges had been built inthe USA by 1924. Wilhelm Ernst &

Fig. 2. Title page of the collection „The Raven and Other Poems“ by Edgar Allan Poe

Fig. 3. Title page of John Ruskins „The Seven Lamps of Architecture“

Fig. 4. Wiley advertisement in „The Publisher’s Weekly“

Fig. 5. Bridge engineer and Wiley authorDavid B. Steinman (1886–1960)

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Sohn published several brochures de-scribing Melan’s bridge system. In 1913Melan’s original book entitled „Theo-rie der eisernen Bogenbrücken undder Hängebrücken“ was translated bySteinman and published as „Theoryof Arches and Suspension Bridges“.Steinman later published it – withWiley – in significantly expanded formunder his own name as a monographentitled „Suspension Bridges, TheirDesign, Construction and Erection“(1922). The second edition was pu-blished in 1929 under the title „APractical Treatise on Suspension Brid-ges“ and became the ‘bible’ of suspen-sion bridge construction during thefirst half of the 20th century. Stein-man oversaw the construction of morethan 400 bridges on five continents.Together with the Swiss bridge engi-neer Othmar Ammann (1879–1965),who became a US citizen in 1924,Steinman personifies the emancipa-tion of American bridge engineeringfrom European influences – in factduring the 1920s they both set stan-dards for the construction of long-span bridges.

Algorithmisation – rationalisation –scientification

Since the beginning of the 20th cen-tury American structural engineersalso set standards (in a double sense)for the construction of tall buildings:On the 1st of May 1931 the Americanpresident Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)officially opened the 381 m high Em-pire State Building (Fig. 6). During aconstruction time of only 19 months2,500 workers processed 60,000 t ofsteel and 10 million bricks. A criticalreport entitled „Bauliche Fragen beider Weiterentwicklung der ameri-kanischen Wolkenkratzer“ (structuralissues concerning the further develop-ment of American skyscrapers) waspublished in the October 1931 issueof „Der Stahlbau“. The author critici-sed the common calculation methodsfor high-rise buildings, stating that in„reality (…) the distribution dependson the moment of inertia ratio in thebeams and uprights, as clearly indicatedby any framework formula for simplecases“.

In 1930 the American structuralengineer Hardy Cross (1885–1959) pu-blished the iteration technique namedafter him in „Proceedings of the Ame-

rican Society of Civil Engineers“. Thetechnique enables fixed-end momentsof statically undetermined multistoreyframes to be determined easily, quicklyand efficiently. Two years later Crossand Newlin D. Morgan published thebook „Continuous Frames of Reinfor-ced Concrete“ at Wiley, in which thetechnique is applied to statically in-determinate continuous reinforcedconcrete beams. Cross’ ingenious me-thod not only replaced calculationmethods for high-rise buildings thathad been widely used until 1930, suchas the cantilever technique or the por-tal technique, it spread across the entiresphere of structural theory and wassoon also used in ship and aircraftconstruction. In parallel with the al-gorithmisation and rationalisation ofstructural calculations the main engi-neering disciplines started orientatingthemselves towards their commonscientific basis in the form of appliedmathematics and mechanics. The„Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathe-matik und Mechanik (ZAMM)“ (Jour-nal of Applied Mathematics and Me-chanics), founded in 1921 by the Ger-man mathematician Richard vonMises (1883–1953) and today publi-

shed by Wiley-VCH, Berlin, was pio-neering in this respect (Fig. 7).

Wiley also followed this trend to-wards the basic principles of the en-gineering disciplines, as indicated bythe publication of the „Proceedings ofthe Fifth International Congress forApplied Mechanics“ in 1938. The book„Basic Structures“ by Francis R. Shan-ley (1904–1968) and published by Wi-ley in 1944 is a good example of howbasic principles of structural mecha-nics were interpreted in new ways inaircraft engineering. Lightweight con-struction, inherent in aircraft engineer-ing and necessitated by steel quotasduring the war, accelerated the para-digm shift from elastic to plastic cal-culation methods with the aim of quan-tifying and utilising structural reser-ves reliably. Wiley paid tribute to thisdevelopment through four pre-emi-nent monographs:– John A. Van Den Broeke’s „Theoryof Limit Design“ (1948)– Alfred M. Freudenthal’s „The Ine-lastic Behaviour of Engineering Ma-terials and Structures“ (1950)– William Prager’s und Philip G.Hodge’s „The Theory of PerfectlyPlastic Solids“ (1951)— Harold M. Westergaard’s „Theoryof Elasticity and Plasticity“ (1952)

Computers revolutionise engineering

The momentous process of the intro-duction of computer-oriented techni-ques for structural/mechanical analy-sis of structural systems in construc-

Fig. 6. The Empire State Building at night, photographed in 1930 by Lewis Hine

Fig. 7. Cover of „Zeitschrift für Ange-wandte Mathematik und Mechanik(ZAMM)“

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© Ernst & Sohn

tion, aircraft and ship building as wellas mechanical engineering started justover 50 years ago. This developmentconverged towards the industrialisa-tion of structural/mechanical analy-sis, which can be regarded as a syn-thesis of rationalisation, algorithmisa-tion and scientification. It is thereforenot surprising that the German struc-tural engineer Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) developed ideas for automatingengineering calculations – particularlyfor statically indeterminate systems –as early as 1935 and six years latercreated the Z3, the first viable compu-ter. With the advent of the computer,numeric techniques took centre stagein the theory formation of engineeringsciences. The finite element method(FEM) developed in the mid 1950s inthe context of aircraft engineering –associated with names such as J. H.Argyris (1913–2004), M. J. Turner, R. W.Clough, H. C. Martin, L. J. Topp, R. G.Gallagher (1927–1997) and O. C. Zien-kiewicz – formed the logical core ofmodern numerical methods. It is worthnoting that most of the names comefrom a civil engineering background.In 1969 Zienkiewicz and Gallagherestablished the „International Journalfor Numerical Methods in Engineer-ing“ (Fig. 8), the first journal coveringcomputer-oriented numerical engi-neering techniques. This journal, pu-blished by Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chi-chester, on a weekly basis, became anoften-imitated model and had a pro-found influence on the world of engi-neering journals.

In 1965 O. C. Zienkiewicz andG. S. Holister published their book„Stress Analysis“ with John Wiley &Sons, NewYork, and it was Wiley edi-tor Zienkiewicz who extended FEMbeyond solid mechanics and publi-shed the first FEM textbook in 1967,although not with Wiley. In 1982(Fig. 9a) and 1990 (Fig. 9b) Ernst &Sohn published Rudolph Szilard’swell-known handbook „Finite Berech-nungsmethoden der Strukturmecha-nik“ (finite calculation methods forstructural mechanics). The two coversillustrate the basic idea of finite cal-culation methods. In 2004 the sameauthor published a 1,000-page volumeon the analysis of slab structures withJohn Wiley & Sons, Hoboken (Fig. 10).

The encyclopaedia is archiveand anticipation, concluded the phi-losopher Hans Jörg Sandkühler fromDenis Diderot’s (1713–1784) „Ency-lopédie“ article in „Encylopédie“, theoutstanding literary monument of theage of enlightenment published byDiderot and Jean Lerond d’Alembert(1717–1783) between 1751 and 1772.The encyclopaedia is not just the sumof catalogued knowledge, but alwaysalso a normative programme. One ex-ample is the three-volume „Encyclo-pedia of Computational Mechanics“(2004) by Erwin Stein, René de Borstand Thomas J. R. Hughes, publishedby Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester(Fig. 11). It represents the first over-view of this non-classic techno-scien-tific fundamental discipline that de-

veloped in the 1990s. In the prefacethe editors said the following abouttheir motives: „After nearly half acentury of developments in numeri-cal methods, the field of computatio-nal mechanics has become sufficientlymature to collect the achievementsand summarize the state-of-the-art ina comprehensive, authoritative majorreference work. This idea, first con-ceived in 1999, has resulted in the‘Encyclopedia of Computational Me-chanics’. It has been the intention ofthe editors and the publisher to pro-

Fig. 8. Cover of „International Journalfor Numerical Methods in Engineering“

Fig. 9. Covers of Rudolph Szilard’s two-volume monograph on structural mechanics;a) Vol. 1, b) Vol. 2

Fig. 10. Cover of Rudolph Szilard’s bookon slab theory

a) b)

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vide the community with a systema-tic, well-organized survey of establis-hed as well as recently developedcomputational methods, covering ap-plied and computational mathema-tics, computer science, the variousbranches of solid and fluid mecha-nics, and all the available discretiza-tion methods. Attention has also beenpaid to many engineering and otherapplications“. Unlike lexical publica-tions, the „Encyclopedia of Computa-tional Mechanics“ is therefore notsimply a linear catenation of positiveknowledge, it is a nonlinear networkof knowledge assets with anticipativecharacter.

However, the upheaval of the ma-thematical basis of engineering scien-ces induced by the computer was notyet completed. When it comes to struc-tural engineering sciences, over thelast few decades they did not limitthemselves to the physical behaviourof structures and natural systems, but,

design, organisation and managementof construction projects and the utili-sation of structures, they open up animportant new area that will occupyresearch and practice over a long pe-riod and change the face of civil en-gineering: The paradigm of the tech-nological in the shape of simulationof the design, calculation, construc-tion, manufacturing, assembly, utilisa-tion, conversion and disposal processthus enters the sphere of constructionon a big scale.

Together with you, dear readers,Ernst & Sohn (Berlin), Wiley-VCH(Weinheim) and John Wiley & Sonswill meet these challenges success-fully, in line with the publishing fami-ly’s generations-old tradition of con-veying the know-how required foryour work (Fig. 12).

Dr.-Ing. Karl-Eugen KurrerChief Editor of STAHLBAU

Fig. 11. Covers of the three-volume „Encyclopedia of Computational Mechanics“

Fig. 12. Cover of „Knowledge for Gene-rations“, published on the occasion ofJohn Wiley & Sons’ 200th birthday

according to Peter Jan Pahl, withcomputer-aided application of struc-tural mathematics (particularly graphtheory) for logical tasks relating to

john wiley & sons, wiley-vch and ernst & sohn – a

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