engineers

[bsa-bill]

yet say nuffink about the Essex Haitch

I may have bored you all with this before but my pet hate is the Westminster (or maybe it's Eton) "tu" instead of "to", pops up just about every time a politician is interviewed.
I once heard an engineer use it too (phew)

[Rex]

What about the Agatha Christie posh style 'An otel' for 'A hotel'?

Apparently that is now grammatically correct in certain circumstances, but I ain't gotta clue as to which or why.

[groily]

The 'H' must be silent  . . . as in Harlot maybe in the old adage??

[Triton Thrasher]

but I am 'trying', 😉

Your son is trying: very.

[BSA_54A10]

People conflate Engineers & Mechanics, Not the same skill set
We are just used to worshiping the motorcycle engineers of old who were also motorcyclist & motorcycle mechanics.
Engineers design
Mechanics fix ,
or in the terms of some mechanics I know
Engineers design & mechanics fix the engineers designs
Engineering works were places where a apparently non existant person, the machinist of various types turned the engineers drawing into specificly shaped pieces of metal.
However now days every one who puts a hand on a machine is now an engineer
MEchanics have become technicians
and softwear coders have become architects

All abut blowing your own horn and trying to justify getting more money for doing the exact same thing you have been doing for the last 20 years .

[Triton Thrasher]

And mild-mannered reporters are super-heroes.

[bsa-bill]

And mild-mannered reporters are super-heroes.

And reporters that have the balls to ask the right questions are ---- thin on the ground

[RDfella]

Rather like the comment I read recently regarding Charlie Watts 'we knew he was ill, but not that ill' the same applies to my good friend George. A few weeks ago when I visited, I didn't think he'd make the end of the year. Well, he only just made September.
As alluded to in my opening words on this thread, I not only loose a good friend of 50+ yrs standing but, possibly more importantly, his ability and knowledge. For those familiar with the tome, he was like a walking version of the Machinery Handbook. I often sought his views / advice when attempting a new project -eg a new design of LSD I was developing some years back. But who do I turn to now?
Because the world of machinery has changed, today's designs / problems are mainly electronic, whereas decades ago these issues were mechanical. As a result there is less demand for competent engineers - witness the number of machine shop closures over the last three or four decades. People like George are just not being replaced, so who do we turn to when we need someone to design / modify / fix old stuff?
There will be a vast number of similarly competent engineers around the world, but I don't know them and I can hardly just knock on their door and say 'what do you reckon on this?' I also relied on him for access to machinery I don't have, eg cylindrical and surface grinders, slotting machine, pantographs etc etc.
 His funeral is next Wednesday. I will miss him, as will many others.

[Joolstacho]

Yes, recently us Velo people lost an incredible tome of knowledge, and a wonderful bloke along with it.
Norm Trigg, author of 'Norm's Technicalities' passed away in July, and we'll really miss Norm's quiet humour and incredible depth of knowledge about bikes in general and Velocettes in particular.

[Rex]

Certainly one helpful book if you run a Velo.

[sean]

i know loads with degrees but no common sense, car sales people who know  nothing about cars but can tell you lots about the gadgets,  and retired engineers who had no interest in engineering once they had left work, the fella next door has a degree in engineering and works at a gear cutting firm. he's about 38 years old and can't even reverse his car!!! he has no hobbies at all, even the tiny shed he keeps the lawn mower in is falling to pieces ,---  funny old game isn't it

when I bought my new truck I asked the salesman where the trans dipstick was he points the the engine oil  one..... asked if there was a towing package with a trans cooler he had to go look up the spec didnt know where the cooler would be located .

[fido]

I've not read the whole of this thread so my comments are in reply to the original post. My background is in manufacturing but I left school at 16 and initially did my further education whilst working. I went to a local technical college and initially did City & Guilds Mechanical Engineering. That took 4 years and then I did a further 2 years of Production Engineering. I was working at the Clarkson Tools milling cutter factory as a metallurgy technician. My boss then offered me the chance to do a degree course and I chose Materials Technology. My engineering qualifications were adequate to get me on the course but I struggled in the first year because I didn't have A level maths or physics. A lot of the other students were very good at maths and in the exams they would look for questions that could mainly be completed by doing maths. They probably got good degrees but didn't really learn much. I was trying to avoid the maths type questions so I had to make up for that by having a better knowledge of the technological stuff.  I can well imagine some of my fellow students getting jobs in industry and being pretty clueless about running a heat treatment department or whatever.

[BSA_54A10]

Probably so Fido
But the aim of a degree is not to produce a production line technician. that is what certificates & diplomas are there for
The aim of a degree is to produce a person with sufficinet background knowledge to look at a problem and find a solution that best fits the situation while taking into account all of the possible pitfalls of taking that course of action
I worked a full time night shift for the final 6 years of my 4 year degree ( went part time in 2nd year ) .
After graduating I then enrolled in a Masters in Materials Science as the school of metallurgy had been adsorbed by the School of Mining and geometallurgy was not where my interests lay.
While there I also did 4 diploma courses and taught certificate & diploma students .
Chalk & cheese between the courses and the type of graduates they were trying to produce.
It is those "number crunchers" who developed the Covid vaccines in record times
It is the diploma holders who worked out how to make them economically & quickly
It is the certificate  holders who built the machines & ran them .

The problem now days is management who are by & large accountants & economist who did an MBA extension to their degree do not understand what technical staff actually do so put the applicant with the highest qualifications into every job so if they fail then it is not the fault of the selection panel because we put a "super graduate" into the job when in reality they would have been better elevating some one from the shop floor.
If I put a graduate to run a heat treatment I would expect them to do the production scheduling to meet Just in time manufacturing at the least cost, to evaluate the equipment used and do future planning , automation & computer controls.
I would not expect them to be lowering fork blades into a pot of molten salt .
I would expect them to look at new products and work out how the longer blades could be treated in order to get the tips hard enough to avoid rolling but soft enough not to break when the forkie tip lifts 10 ton on a 4 ton blade.
One of my bosses checked ingot segregation by cutting an ingot in sections then getting the chemists to do miro analysis left to right, top to bottom & front to back .
I did the same with calculus then worked out how to modify both the ingot molds & cooling to get a more uniform ingot .
Lots of maths in that one in the days before computers

I did not need a degree to jockey the emmission spectrogtraph but I did need one to do a lot of calculatng to convert the atomic volume percentages to weight percentages then calibrate the machine , to know which spectrual lines to use in what situations and in particular which lines to use when doing an analysis of a new alloy and what sections of a line could be trusted over what concentration levels .

[RDfella]

The aim of a degree is to produce a person with sufficinet background knowledge to look at a problem and find a solution that best fits the situation while taking into account all of the possible pitfalls of taking that course of action

Exactly, but sadly it rarely does because those teaching have little or no experience of what they're teaching. For example, when I first attended a mechanical engineering course, the tutor was demonstrating how to use a horizontal mill. I recall advising him not to proceed, but he carried on, so I indicated to the other students where on the wall opposite I thought the job would hit. I was only a couple of feet out. The tutor had no idea you can't climb mill with a standard machine (the first cutter tooth will take up the backlash in the leadscrew). When later attending Farnborough tech college I had a similar experience. Fortunately the tutor was amiable and aware of his limits, so he used to open class and then wander off leaving me as workshop foreman (prior to these events I'd already spent time in the toolroom of a local engineering firm, so was familiar with workshop machinery).
The same applied more recently when my son was at uni studying mechanical engineering. As I have previously stated, he used to call me almost daily, with 'how do you do #### dad?' To which I'd reply 'I'm paying for you to be taught' and he'd respond 'yes, but they don't know'. Some of the things he had been 'taught' were so wrong it was patently obvious the teachers were clueless. The tutors had never actually done the jobs they were teaching the students, so the latter came away totally unequipped for the work which their degree supposedly guaranteed them capable of. Bit like a £20 note I suppose - appears to guarantee a lot, but in reality is just a piece of paper.
The crux of the matter is that telling someone how to do something a dozen times is no way as effective as getting that person to do the job once themselves. You can't beat experience. And yet increasingly paperwork is everything when applying for a job. Is this because those interviewing aren't themselves sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to pick the best candidate, relying instead on someone else's judgement (certificate-issuing authority). Bit like those glowing CV's - written by a firm desperate to get rid of their employee.

[Rex]

What uni course requires the students to get their hands dirty in a workshop?