Technology

Every engineer in Canada walks out of school wearing a reminder that people died because someone got the math wrong. It’s called the Iron Ring, and if you look closely, you’ll see a plain metal band, with no engraving or school logo. It’s worn on the pinky of your working hand, and drags across every drafting, drawing, calculation, keyboard and surface one touches while working. While it is unobtrusive, it is intended to be a constant reminder of the human lives at risk with each decision.

The tradition goes back to 1925, when a mining professor named H.E.T. Haultain recruited Rudyard Kipling (!) to write an oath for graduating engineers. The ceremony is called the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. It sounds like something out of a Masonic lodge crossed with a trade school . The event is private and simple: make the obligation and receive the ring...

What’s a ritual without a good back-story? The tale behind this one is the Quebec Bridge collapse. Two collapses, actually… The first one on August 29, 1907, killed 75 of the 86 workers on the span when the south cantilever buckled into the St. Lawrence River. Thirty-three of the dead were Mohawk steelworkers from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. The Royal Commission found that consulting engineer Theodore Cooper had committed deadly errors in design and load calculations, and nobody on site had the authority or competence to stop work when the compression chords started visibly bending.