You have probably never heard of John “Bud” Benson Wilbur, but he is a low-key civil engineering legend. In the mid-20th century, he was chair of the civil and sanitary engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He built some major bridges in Massachusetts and helped prototype the first wind power systems in Vermont. But I first encountered his work in a silly-but-serious essay called “Whither civil engineering?”, published in the March 1952 issue of The Technology Review. In it, Wilbur claimed he and his colleagues had invented a crystal ball…
