Drives Blog

Maybe we are not so humble - as horrified by the limelight

Who was it that said,

• "Managers don't make mistakes; circumstances change instead.
• Doctors can bury their mistakes.
• If an engineer makes a mistake, it's there for people to point at."

?

Does anyone fancy Pripyat for a holiday this year? Peace and tranquility away from it all? Do send a postcard...

It is very quite this time of the year...

I don't know who said that but most of those disasters were the result of a political decision (by feel) that overrode an engineer stating "That is cheaper and faster but its not what I specified or recommend..."

"Why aren't engineers praised for their successes? Why don't engineers get Nobel Prizes? Maybe it's because they're always working in somebody else's shadow."

Scientists get Nobel prizes for scientific discovery. Engineers are simply technicians that implement that science and turn it into a tangible artifact.

There is nothing wrong with being a technician nor is there being a scientist as long as you love what you do.

A scientist (when he makes a discovery) says: "This is what happens if I do thus and such",

An engineer says:"Since that works, I can use that idea to make a new item"

A politician or administrator says:"What the h-ll is that?"

Engineers are born, not made-like a genius.

True that, you either have the knack or you don't.

There is no glamour in our profession, no drama. It's easy for the media to write stories about a lawyer getting a client off death row or about a doctor saving the life of a patient thought to be doomed.

Very few people, other than electrical engineers, know just how brilliant Steve Wozniak was when he was designing computers for Apple. The simplicity, elegance and efficiency of his circuits is breathtaking. But only to other engineers.

For the most part well engineered products just work, the user never gives a second thought to how they work. Until something goes wrong. (Think of how many products you use daily that have an engineer behind them. So not getting noticed is actually a good thing, I suppose.)

The sense of satisfaction I get from engineering an elegant, reliable, cost effective solution to a customer's problem is enough for me. I don't need no stinking limelight.

<...There is no glamour in our profession, no drama....>

While undoubtedly true for the 21st century, things were rather different in the 19th.

Oh, yes. One more thing. Warfare tends to throw Engineers into the spotlight....

Also the 17th and 18th. And you are absolutely correct about warfare driving engineering innovations. Fourier, whose transform is a fundamental tool of electrical engineering, developed the mathematics in order to keep Napoleon's cannons from melting. The original application was to model heat flow. He also discovered the greenhouse effect.

<There is no glamour in our profession, no drama.>

Depends on the definition - I can't tell you how many times some TWA* has told me (us) that if we cannot pull the broken schedule back to the left the four horsemen will ride, the plant will shut the doors, the customer will show up at our home and shoot our dog.

Not good drama - but drama

No disrespect to those required to wear ties to work, it doesn't actually refer to ALL wearing a tie.

Yes, there are exceptions. The most notable one that comes to mind is Apollo 13.

TWA=PHB ?

There was also the ever prolific Nikolai Tesla who was a Mech+Elec engineer and a genius who contributed just too much to science and engineering, only for him to be underrated and dismissed. The only story that circulated concerning his accomplishement in popular science was that he discovered electromagnetism and polarity by mistake!!!

So much for a man whose discoveries literary catapulted the world into the industrial revolution.