As an engineer, I would not support the suggested widespread promotion of engineer heroes through highly publicized awards, etc... It's not that I don't think that many engineers are more deserving than many non-engineers who are held up as heroes.

My objection is due to the fact that political correctness has overrun all medium and large sized US engineering organizations. So, based on experience and observation, I would expect any hero promotion would be a popularity contest of political correctness and not strictly about technical achievement.

At most modern engineering firms, a small number of highly motivated, talented engineers carry on their shoulders a much larger group of mediocre or incompetent "engineers", as well as the rest of the organization.

A true engineer gets his/her primary job satisfaction when their newly designed product solves a challenging problem, works successfully, and goes into production to be put into use. We are builders. The good paycheck is a strong 2nd.

Engineers are sapped of job satisfaction when projects are canceled before completion based on politics and not technical reasons. We are disheartened by rampant political correctness run amok, which has no technical bearing on the work we are trying to do. We are further discouraged by truckloads of bureaucratic paperwork and nonsensical requirements that add no value to the technical work we are doing.

If you stripped away the political correctness and other non-value added crap, the real American engineers could be unleashed to accomplish 2 to 4 times more useful things...

I think of Gary Boone, the inventor of the micro-controller for Texas Instruments who died relatively obscure and without great wealth from his groundbreaking technology. Ultimately I see the lapse of great inventors/engineers stopping during periods of anti-patent sentiment. Lots of it coming from the crony corporations. and, most of the great recognized engineers were independent inventors. It is in the interest of larrge corporations to keep their engineers from seeing the advantages of working for themselves. So, I think that plays a huge role. IF you think about Jobs and Gates, both who created new industries in their garage, we had come off of a bad period in patent protection into a strong protection period. They got patents, and those portfolios were hugely important to the major success of their businesses, fame and influence. Of course both engineers, once achieving most of their goals, lobbied hard for weaker patent laws. Ironic.
I was sort of disturbed by the portionof the article discussing virtue. it was a back assedward look at the concept. That in order to be heroic you are not allowed to self-promote. Also the idea that people get into engineering to solve world problems as a heroic virtue. I would say they enjoy knowing how the world/things work and they like it is based in science and objectivity and the sense of efficacy they get from that. Also, people like value for their production. While engineers are reasonably well paid for their production, they are not highly paid (unless they go into business for themselves). There are many majors that are easier to achieve degrees in and pay more.
"Pendulum of Justice" was written in part with the goal of promoting engineer/inventors as heroes. There will be more in "Trails of Injustice," .book II of the Hank Rangar THriller series
good post

I wonder if it's that these engineers like Vannevar Bush just don't want publicity. As the article says, we know the ones who built large businesses, but maybe that's b/c building a business involves being known to investors, employees, etc. Maybe these people are like Roark. They have no desire to be Pete Keating, widely known and respected as a great man. They're happy toiling in obscurity. Some young man comes who was bordering on suicidal, and the work changes his life; and that payment was worth more to Roark than being on the cover of the Banner.

I agree with the tenor of the article that it would be good to have more engineering heroes, as I imagined we had in the Apollo era before I was born.

An engineering genius helped me on a project today. He loves making stuff work. Unless it's all a brilliant act, being famous or rich or what people think of his appearance isn't even on his radar. It's almost as if the notion were like someone asking me wouldn't I go crazy for the chance to hang out with the sexiest man in South America. It's just not something I ever considered being interested in, but I bet many people on earth do. That's how some engineers view fame and wealth.

The current Science/Technology/Engineering heroes of today are celebrated continuously in the newspaper/magazine articles of their achievements. Additionally, it's good business for their companies to highlight them
You can go into the Sci/Tech section of any major library and find many books of all the heroes. For example, all the African-American Sci/The/Eng heroes starting from before the American revolution. One example is James Forten, a sailmaker, who invented in Phila., Pa before the Revolution.
I've used all these resources in my Sci//Tech K-12 classes.

Harry M