We have written a couple of well-received posts in the past about combating engineering’s image problem, engineering; a profession or a trade and also addressed why there are so few women in engineering – all subjects that are close to my heart. I recently read a wonderfully simple explanation that to ‘engineer’ literally means to “make things
Quality is a word that does not seem to be banded around as much as it used to be. In my experience the industry seems to go through cycles, or fads where certain initiatives come and go. I suspect that this is linked to economic climate more than anything else – in the ’80s quality initiatives were rolled-out across
There are thousands of examples of how nature has guided technological development throughout human history. No-one did more to pioneer this approach than the great Leonardo himself who used detailed studies of nature, anatomy and biology to invent incredible machines such as his “Mechanical Dragonfly”, “Great Kite”, “Flying Machine” or “Glider”. Although some 500 years have
So, the government has announced we will see driverless cars on British roads in the New Year. Four cities and towns – Bristol, Milton Keynes, Coventry and Greenwich in south London – are to be testing grounds for so called ‘autonomous vehicles’ from January 1 to enable innovators to gain a greater understanding of this
When I think back to when I started in engineering my first PC had 512k of RAM and no hard drive at all but two 360k floppy drives. Incredibly when the machine was built there was obviously no requirement envisaged for a hard drive. Shortly after I bought a 20Mb “hard card” and so started