Year of Engineering

The year of Engineering is drawing to a close and sent me it's Christmas wishes.

Sadly, Engineers are abysmally poor at publicising the benefits that Engineers have brought, and continue to bring, to Society.

I have voiced this complaint to members, and Section Leaders of the I Mech E, but no apparent effect.

We may be good Engineers, but useless at Marketing or self promotion.

Probably too busy inventing things or problem solving.

A Merry Christmas to all our readers!

Howard

Brilliant swarf tree !!

Must be worth a £25 voucher from here:- **LINK**

Brilliant, I could have used that as a cover!

May I use it for my Christmas Tweet?

Neil

Qualified engineers are a highly intelligent but too reserved species which is why they are not rated as highly as doctors or lawyers by society. Everybody uses engineered equipment The misuse of the title "Engineer" is another reason for lack of appreciation by the average person. We need to greatly promote knowledge of the skills and mathematical abilities of people entitled to call themselves "engineer". Colin

Hi. Neil. Can't claim it as my own, lifted it from the Machinist Museum face book page.

How about the engineers who pioneered the mechanical generation of electricity, and pioneered the computer, so you could read these forum pages?

Everything you used today to cook with, sit on, travel in, the heating appliances in your home, anything you read, are the direct products of the work of engineers and artisans.

(more than one, sorry)

I recently ordered an appliance from a well known on-line retailer ??.com. The sales person tried to sell the extended warranty by saying an engineer would carry out any repair. Needless to say she was politely told to look up the definition of engineer and not to call technicians engineers.

It is reckoned that the provision of clean water and the safe disposal of sewage has done more to extend the average human life span than all the medical advances put together. Done of course by mechanical and civil engineers, but do we get any thanks?

Try telling you car insurance company you are a Chartered Engineer, they've never heard of us.

I always wanted to be an Engineer. My boyhood heroes were Engineers like IKB, W. O. Bentley, R.J. Mitchell. It really does irritate me when Technicians are described as "Engineers".

Merry Christmas everybody!!

cheers

Bill

So you wouldn't give Joseph Bazagette any appreciation? He may not have invented sanitation, but he improved the quality of life for millions.

How about Phillipe de Girard?

Neil

Even a model engineer would appreciate this song from down-under, It's a Christmas favourite where I live **LINK**

* Danny M *

Joseph Bazagette according to wikipedia was recommended for the job by another brilliant engineer - Brunel .

Where do we really draw the line on the term " Engineer " ? Do we go back to the time of Archimedes, Da Vinci or the Egyptians that buit the pyramids , maybe the Aztecs ? What about the Romans ? If memory serves me correctly they set up the first sewer system In England .

The core of all Engineering is math , you cannot have one without the other .

The question is not "What have Engineers ever done for us " but rather what would life be like without them !

My wife refers to me as her Household Technical Consultant. As a member of IET, IEEE and ETA, I feel qualified to mend anything with materials at hand. Glue, duct tape and WD-40... Yesterday I attached magnetic catches to the kitchen door, and, at her request, stood near the computer to make it work properly. It's true! Five times now, when it wouldn't load her e-mails, I looked over her shoulder as she tried again, and Hosannah! It worked! Even if it's a loose floorboard resting on a cable, it does work. then also, lightbulb replacement service, painter, car dashboard function diviner, setter-up of electrical devices, tv remote operator, (out of six) battery stockist, furniture repairer....

I usually threaten my pc with a 5 lb hammer - works for me !

As I am listening to a Bach violin concerto I consider those who developed the piano, violin, organ etc to their current state to be great engineers......

Hi Phil, technicians should not always be considered not to be an engineer. I am an engineer in my day job, but I do also have a technician status as well.

Regards Nick.

Yes, but you challenged Duncan to evidence the "benefits that Engineers have brought, and continue to bring, to Society." not to list great inventor-engineers!

And I did mean the tin can!

Neil

The root of the word Engineer is the latin Ingenium, which means cleverness.There is a huge amount of pomposity in this thread, and I want to deflate some of it. On the engineer/technician debate, if either group were suddenly removed from society, those that the "engineers" sneer at as "mere technicians" would be by far the first to be missed. They are people who keep the fabric of society well maintained and running smoothly. As to the claim that the core of engineering is the maths, there is some truth to this, but the math used to be be done with a calculator (remember slide rules, I do!) and a book of formulas, or today a computer running software that literally does it all for you. That this approach has gained ubiquity is witnessed by some of the piss poor "down to a price" engineering that the technicians are supposed to keep running. Was Trevithick a great mathmatician? No, but he was a great blacksmith, and if you look back at the industrial revolution, all of the great inventions and leaps forward were made by apprentice trained artisans, not university trained "engineers" Indeed some of the early textile machines were designed and built by clergymen, using the local blacksmiths to do the engineering.. It is easy to become a member of many organisations with well respected acronyms, but the truth is, to be a member, it is only neccasary to be losely connected to a field, and also to give them a fee, in short, a member is someone who asked to join an organisation, and paid to do so, whilst a "fellow" is someone who the organisation asked to join and doesnt pay for the privelidge. Bazalgette was given a problem to solve, and the solution did not come from mathematics, it came from cleverness, he needed a way to intercept thousands of drains, and several rivers, which ran under London and drained into the thames, and his solution was to build the embankments, each with an interceptor sewer underneath it, and pumping stations to eject the "stink" further downstream. The mathmaticians on that job (or computers, as they were called)would have been many hundreds, and employed like clerks to work out the strengths and capacities of the underlying structure required to fulfill this task. The genius was in finding and implementing the solution, not doing the maths! All sorts of different people are clever in all sorts of different ways, and together we make society work, and keep it working. In my Electrical Engineering field, I was trained at technical college, not university, struggled with the maths untill I realised it was "cookbook maths", and went on to qualify. I worked with many university trained engineers who came to us generally in batches of five, two were gone in the first six mpnths, and at the end of two years, which is the generally accepted time to get university graduates up to speed (of use to their employer) only one or two remained and they were the ones who were intelligent enough to ask someone a question when they didnt know something. Todays students see engineering at Uni as "too difficult"

I like to be surrounded by clever people, it makes for an interesting and creative life, unfortunately I have met too many "engineers" who were only good at taking the credit for the work of others in a department that they were supposed to be leading! So don't tell me what your qualifications are, show me what you can do, and I will start to respect your abilities, and remember "Every day is a school day"!