He was also refinery operator at Gulf Refining in Philadelphia shortly before in 1938 starting as construction and maintenance engineer at DuPont.
[2] He later recalled that it was more or less his job "to map where projectiles, including body parts, landed following accidental explosions at the plants so as to understand better what had happened and how to improve both processes and equipment.
From 1942 to 1946 Ferguson served as ordnance officer in the United States Navy in World War II.
[1] After the war in 1946 Ferguson started his academic career as assistant professor at the Iowa State College, teaching mechanical engineering.
Ferguson's 1977 paper in Science, entitled "The mind's eye: Nonverbal thought in technology", is credited for clarifying the role of visual reasoning in the thinking process.
[5] In this article he reasoned that "Thinking with pictures is an essential strand in the intellectual history of technological development.
"[6] He concludes his article with the following statement: In his work claims Ferguson that visual reasoning is a widely used tool used in creating technological artefacts.
According to Ivins, the "importance of being able exactly to repeat pictorial statements is undoubtedly greater for science, technology, and general information than it is for art.
"[9] Nowadays modern projects, Ferguson argued, can require up to thousands of different drawings and charts.