Long-gone UK-based engineering magazines: was it something I said?

Between 1986 and 1999, I wrote for a dozen or more UK-based engineering magazines in one capacity or another. Many of them are now long gone, usually either closed, merged into others and quietly retired, or only maintained now on a website (remember "Engineering Materials and Design", "What's new in Design", or the UK's "Design Engineering" magazines?). Was it something I said?
Being sent out free, one of their main problems was the difficulty (and huge expense) of maintaining a good circulation. If you moved job, the chances are that the magazine would still be sent to your old desk, and might continue to be so for years, perhaps being read by someone else, perhaps being quietly binned. As time went on, the advertisers who funded these magazines developed their own up-to-date customer and prospect lists, and today many produce their own superb quality magazines. To take just one example, SKF's "Evolution" is published in print four times per year in eleven languages - show me an independent trade magazine which does that.
The reason I'm reflecting on this, as Engineeringtalk reaches its 250th issue, is that things are so different with electronic distribution. It's hard work to bring a publication like this to the attention of new readers (we might have a circulation of just under 50,000, but we've hardly scratched the surface of our potential worldwide readership). The difference compared to conventional magazine publishing, however, is the fluidity of that readership. People often assume that once we've got you as a reader, we hang on to you tenaciously. Far from it. We publish a one-click "unsubscribe" link at the top (yes, the *top*) of each issue, and we honour that. In addition, when people leave a job (or their email address becomes redundant), our issues "bounce back" and (unlike postal distribution) we know, instantly, and can remove that name. Last week, for example, 450 people joined our circulation and 200 left. That happens every week. And it's a good thing.
The result is that an incredibly high proportion of these newsletters get read, and I'm well aware that we're now producing information for a massively larger audience than was ever the case on the magazines where I began. Fortunately, the business model seems quite sound, and I look forward to still being here for a 500th edition.

The A380 represents something special

No prizes for guessing the major engineering news of the week: the rolling out of the Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial airliner. Whilst not the massive leap forward in size over existing airliners that the Boeing 747 was on its introduction, the A380 still represents something special.
Political and business controversy exists over the subsidies given to the manufacturer by European governments, but why not? There's undoubtedly a political aspect to this whole project too. At a time when much of the world's attitude to the USA is ambivalent at best, here comes Europe attempting to say: "we can do the biggest and best too, you know". If governments see the A380 as having a political (and wider commercial) role, they should contribute towards it.
Of course, as anyone who's been involved in aircraft design knows, nothing is as simple as the politicians would like it to be. No plane can be built today without components from all over the world, and the A380 is no exception. It will have parts from manufacturers across the USA, as well as from at least one Boeing subsidiary (in Australia!). So perhaps we should have a little less flag-waving, and a little more respect paid to the efforts of the thousands of engineers worldwide who have been, and continue to be, contributing to this fabulous project.

Engineeringtalk: a home for longer, in-depth technical articles too

As we enter our sixth calendar year of publishing Engineeringtalk, I'd like to highlight one area of coverage with which we're not traditionally associated: longer, in-depth technical articles. You might think that old-fashioned trade magazines are still the place to find the best selection of these, but as it happens, we've always published far more each month than any paper-based engineering magazine that I know of. It's just that we also publish about ten times the number of product news items found in a paper magazine each month, so it's not surprising that the other material can be overlooked.
I'd like that to change, so I'll be highlighting technical articles here on a regular basis in future, so there's less chance of you missing them. For example, this week alone, we have articles on whether to repair or replace an electric motor, the impact of piezoceramics on the security industry, and picking your perfect hydraulic motor .and that's just a small selection. You'll find them about a third of the way down the newsletter.
May I also remind all the many, many companies which contribute product news to us that we're always on the lookout for good technical articles, especially of the "how-to" type! You might wish to generate something original for us to demonstrate your company's authority in its area of technology, or you might have some good articles prepared for other uses which deserve a wider audience. Whatever the case, we'd like to see them!