Now and Then
It was a full 30 years ago that my Design Director stealthily crept up behind me as I configured a spreadsheet with Lotus 1-2-3. He smacked me hard across the back of my head, then bellowed to the entire office to take note that; "Computers have no place in engineering". Moreover nobody should be wasting their time or his money by trying to show otherwise. The end of Lotus 1-2-3 My director maintained that the best way to design something was the same way that it had always been done. He did not subscribe to trendy notions that innovating new and better methods was a central tenet of engineering. What left an impression on me greater than the bruise from his oversized signet ring was the fact that I had just transferred in from the Channel Tunnel project where computers were already being used by many engineers. Circa 1989: Tunnel Boring Machine inching through a subterranean cavern. Piloted by laser and computer. Ironically it was only two years earl...