Why do we never have great documentaries in the Uk that go into detail

A die hard refusal to accept any thing new like the metric system? I was taught the metric system whilst at school in the sixties. I have used it all trough my engineering career as have most if not all of my contemporaries. The BA screw system is metric based. I don't remember a single instance of any professional engineer refusing to use it.

Old issues of Model Engineer from before the first world war contain designs using metric dimensions. Many, many, questions have been asked about cutting metric threads with imperial lead screws in books ,magazines and engineering works all through the twentieth century. In locomotive works engines have been executed in metric dimensions. I.C engines, especially motor bikes have always had metric pistons and been expressed as so many c.c. from the very early twentieth century.

Much of this before the ISO standards were put in place. The main obstacle to the adoption of the metric system generally, came from the usual place......... POLITICIANS, not engineers.

That was a most enjoyable half hour, thanks Mark. Even more so as Mrs C's profession is in languages, so gained more approval than the normal barrage of Mr Pete etc from Youtube!

From the rest of the discussion on programs in the UK, TV is very sparse of good in depth content and the lack of OU programs now seems to have reduced it further. Horizon and QED when I was growing up I enjoyed, though struggle to know if my knowledge has increased or the program now gives less detail. I do think (hope?) that those making the decisions for TV companies will see people leaving the standard broadcast channels for youtube specialist channels and hopefully start to commission more in depth programs.

I think this is the difference in attitude towards engineering between UK and Germany.

Pretty much the reason. It's POLICY.

The 1980s saw unprecedented levels of de-skilling in the UK and this culture permeated throughout the entire government system

If you go into a new museum the place is dedicated to foreign cultures and the amazing engineering displays that used to abound have all but vanished

It's a top down cultural thing and engineering is at the back of the queue

I have doubts that many politicians want to go back to the general working population having too many skills which meant ordinary people had too much power

Far easier to use cheap overseas skilled labour

Me too, and Michael_w makes exactly the same point. But I think we're talking about different sorts of 'engineer'. Those coming from the scientific and mathematical side, probably with some form of higher education, have been 'metric' for at least a century.

I think the problem is with the kind of engineer who was trained on the job, perhaps starting as an apprentice. Their main influence will have been the methods of the company they worked for and - most particularly - the attitudes of the older practical men who trained them, plus the attitudes of managers brought up in the same environment. You know, school leaver arrives in new job talking centimetres and is immediately told that all real work is done in inches.

There's an element of propaganda too, the idea that Imperial is best because British is best. Wrong! Imperial and Metric are only systems of measurement, never intended to be icons of National pride. A true engineer would go for the system with the fewest disadvantages. Taking a holistic view, it's obvious which one that is.

My local emporia still stocks metal in mostly imperial sizes. I asked why: it's because most customers round here order Imperial rather than Metric. I guess that's because many businesses won't change until they absolutely have to. If it was good enough in 1887, it's good enough now. (And perhaps it is.)

Dave

I often wonder where those films went.

There's a lot of old stuff on the netty from when engineering was at the forefront of our culture (instead of Immigration and Gay rights), mainly from the 1940s and 1950s

The British Film Institute

British Transport Films

Youtube abounds with good stuff

It's out there, but you gotta hunt for it

A single thread dedicated to online stuff in here, like for Motorbikes and Aircraft might be a good idea

The 'TalkingPictures' channel sometimes shows technical films. One I watched on packaging and labelling for the US military circa 1945 was fascinating. 'If you don't label every layer of the packaging, soldiers will open it to find out what's inside and then the contents are ruined'.

Another was an early 1930's training film for car salesmen which featured a good look at the manufacturing processes. I learned that customers buying a new car in 1930 were required to wear plus-fours and a hat. Also that women have to sit in the back.

Dave

I think the UK answer to this lies in a current TV show on BBC titled W1 A.

Like 'Yes Minister' only based on the BBC. Disconcertingly close to the truth.

TV is driven by ratings and what ever TV land considers important to them and therefore must be important to the viewer. And they don't care about engineering YAR.

It also reflects their own attention span.

And need for jeopardy etc.

Depends on how hard and where you look.

I watch mostly Freeview, with a splodge of Netflix: Lot's of WW2 and post war weapons programmes. Titanic. Pyramid building. Tornado. Royal Scot, Panama Canal (new works). Superships, How It's Made, Impossible Engineering, Scrap Kings, Extreme Engineering, Abandoned Engineering, Forged from Fire, Wheeler Dealers, and Railroad Alaska. Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here, Mythbusters, Worst Jobs in History, Aircrash Investigation...

The big problem I have is finding programmes. With 200 channels pumping out all manner of stuff, it's far to easy to miss the good programmes.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 01/10/2017 18:22:26

It's mostly all on Quest Dave

One of the most popular evenings at our club is the old films night. We know a man who is a film enthusiast, that is film not video or CD, who collects old films from the '40s and 50s often bits of newsreel or company advertising. He puts together a programme with engineering content and local interest so people recognise the equipment, company names, and places from their youth. Nobody has yet shouted out 'hey that's me' but it might happen one day.

It's often a good idea to record TV stuff nowadays, and watch it later

On some channels 3 hours of viewing will have you staring at up to one hour of adverts kinda thing

Blimey that's up there with some of the best conspiracy theories I've come across.

Cock-up theories always win hands-down for me. It seems much more likely that our parliament is full of PPE graduates (and Classics graduates if you extend it to BoJo) who found science a turn-off at school and are too ill-informed to realize that science and engineering are more beneficial to the economy than services.

I hesitate to raise the "B" word but suffice it to provide this link to the work of the European Commission that has been fostering R&D in the EU for many years and on which a lot of our Companies and Universities have been funded by in no small part until now... **LINK**

...but don't worry those PPE and Classics graduates will have all of the sovereignty that some of us voted for soon.

In the TV arena the public begrudge the license fee (thanks Rupert and friends) and so we get cheap celebrity television with high ratings to show value for money. None of our youngsters therefore see anything on the TV to get them interested in engineering or science and so the smarter ones read PPE or Classics or choose the City and the cycle is complete.

Jon

Hmm, here's a quote from this year's 'Engineer' which reports the average UK engineering salary to be £48,000, my bold:

Despite general dissatisfaction amongst respondents with the levels of remuneration offered across industry (just 35 per cent are happy with their pay) engineering salaries would appear to compare favourably with most other sectors. The average salary in the financial services sector is currently £47,109, whilst bankers earn only slightly more on average (£50,080).

Bear in mind that Britons today are richer than at any time in the past. Manufacturing isn't a particularly lucrative way of making money. We, in common with most other developed nations, live in a post-Industrial economy. High-end engineering is vital but far from the whole story. Don't forget there are more ways of killing a Dragon than strangling it!

Dave

But surely if nobody is making anything, then all those other jobs would be pretty hard to justify? Making and Gathering things is what you would call a kind of "prime resource" activities from which, many others may follow. But you can't do away with it and still expect the same result.

I suspect the answer is that we do make things, if not more with more subtlety and less quantity than we did in the past.

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 02/10/2017 14:59:18

As a follow-up to my gripe about PPE graduates in the Cabinet, here's a quick run down of the first degrees of Mrs May's current rogues...

• Theresa May – Geography
• Damian Green – PPE
• Philip Hammond – PPE
• Boris Johnson – Classics
• Amber Rudd – History
• David Davis - Molecular Science/Computer Science (1971)
• Michael Fallon – Classics & Ancient History
• Liam Fox – Medicine
• David Liddington – History
• Baroness Evans – Social and Political Sciences
• Jeremy Hunt – PPE
• Justine Greening – Business Economics and Accounting
• Chris Grayling - History
• Karen Bradley - Mathematics
• Michael Gove - English
• David Gauke - Law
• Sajid Javid - Economics and Politics
• James Brokenshire - Law
• Alun Cairns - ??? + MBA
• David Mundell - Law
• Patrick McLoughlin – Agriculture.
• Greg Clark - Economics
• Priti Patel - Economics, Sociology and Social Anthropology

So, apart from David Davis who studied Molecular Science/Computer Science dual honours, graduating in 1971 (pre-Intel 8080 and probably even PDP-11), there's no one with a scientific background except perhaps Liam Fox - a medic. Certainly no one with an engineering background.

I should single out Patrick McLoughlin who did agriculture and apparently spent a year or two down a coal mine. So, he's perhaps a tad more practical than the rest of his peers but still no engineer.

Jon

Those of us with a proper engineering qualification would not ever dream of running for Parliament. The May set is a fair cross section.

What about the "other lot" none of them can add up for a start.

...but isn't it bad news?

Angela Merkel by contrast has a PhD in Quantum Chemistry and spent some time as a Research Scientist.

You're probably right about the other lot - Tony B's cabinet was just as bad - It's certainly not a recent phenomenon.

Jon

Edited By Jon Gibbs on 02/10/2017 17:12:01

Not really, there are lots of things that people need and want that aren't knocked out in a factory. Manufactured goods are often cheap compared with the services that go with them. Toothpaste is cheap, Dentists are expensive. It costs more to fit a pacemaker than to buy one. And so on.

Now that basic needs have been satisfied, quite a lot of manufacturing is about wish fulfilment. Much of what's made today has temporary appeal. Not a lot of call for flat irons or Walkmen any more. Technology often starts being very expensive (like TVs) and ends up being dirt cheap as soon as demand falls. In order to keep demand going, it's necessary to keep the product fresh so that people will want to buy again. As it's much harder to keep products moving than it is to make them, sales people are better paid than production workers. On the engineering side, design is an earner, machine maintenance is an overhead.

In the west employees are usually the heaviest cost carried by an employer. As manufacture is internationally very competitive it makes a lot of sense to reduce manufacturing costs by having it made abroad where labour is cheaper. It's not simply a question of increasing profits, it may be the only way for a company to survive. Quite often the people displaced when their jobs disappear move to more profitable jobs. It doesn't matter if that's in banking or hairdressing.

At the moment the sun is shining on the Far East. It won't last. China is following the same trajectory as all other manufacturing nations - rapid growth that can't be sustained. They are already having to compete with the growing list of countries where labour is cheaper than it is in China. Even more threatening is what's developing in the West; robotics, Artificial Intelligence, advanced 3D production methods and the rising price of fossil fuels are all likely to make it more cost effective to manufacture close to the customer. If China fails in due course to transition to a post-Industrial economy, they'll end up living in an industrial wasteland. Think Tyneside, Sheffield and Detroit just after the fire went out.

I fully expect China to end up with a Model Engineer Forum like this one by 2067. It will be full of elderly Chinamen complaining bitterly about the poor quality of modern tools and the rubbish being imported from abroad...

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 02/10/2017 18:12:22