Trace the roots of just about any useful device or capability derived from electronic technology and you will find yourself wading in research and development dipping back generations, even centuries.

But in construction offices and on job sites, the electronic devices that really started to shake things up began to proliferate in the early 1970s. Most were enabled by the invention of microprocessor chips and by the creation of data-handling products that brought the big-time computing capabilities previously available only to the biggest corporations and institutions down to a scale that let even small businesses create, reuse, manipulate and store digital data.

Many innovations that emerged have evaporated like hailstones on a hot day. But some remain in widespread use decades after introduction and continue to evolve into ever more useful tools.

Curious to identify qualities that help some technologies succeed spectacularly, and hoping to draw lessons for evaluating technologies to come, ENR editors in May surveyed readers and interviewed industry leaders and visionaries to ask them for ideas about technology survivors and their view of the future.

In one Web poll, 26% of 371 voters said CAD has had the most impact on the industry, followed by personal computers at 18% and the Internet and mobile communications at 13%. But asked in another survey to rank a list of tools in one-to-ten order, with one reflecting greatest impact, Web-based project management was first at 6.5, followed by fax machines at 6.2, laser-based tools and electronic calculators at 6.1, engineering analysis software at 5.9, database tools at 5.4, mobile communications at 5.1, the Internet at 4.2 and CAD at 3.9. Like the rest of the revolution, the results are mixed.

Ric Jackson, managing director of FIATECH, an industry consortium that helps press new, market-ready technologies into use, says the tools that took hold worked because they filled a need that was real and understood or the usefulness became apparent as soon as the product came out even if the need was not understood at the time. Winning technology is typically easy to use, cost-competitive and very reliable, he says.