There's a strong possibility that the government might opt for a nuclear strategy as the "least worst" option

The nuclear power industry has shown in the past few weeks that it's not lost its touch when it comes to PR and setting the media agenda. Nuclear power is very much back on the list of political hot topics, and there's a strong possibility that the government might opt for a nuclear strategy as the "least worst" option for our country's future. The main battles then will be to convince the public of how much nuclear power generation technology has developed since the plants built nearly half a century ago.

But the main issues in energy supply today aren't the same as they once were. Cleaner, greener power generation is way up the list of priorities now, and the nuclear industry obviously has a case with its own unique strengths and weaknesses. What about reliability of supply, however? Reading about the recent rumblings in the Russian gas industry illustrated to many people how dependent we are on the whims of foreign politicians when it comes to the very continuity of our energy supply. And if ever there was a potential target for terrorist attack which could decimate the economies of the western world, it must be the energy supply chain.

There is a way to reduce our dependence on vulnerable, centralised power generation, of course, and that's decentralised power generation. A recent DTI report suggested we could meet up to 40% of our electricity needs from 'microgeneration' by 2050 - that's using technologies from roof-mounted windmills to fuel cells, in individual homes and buildings.

That will mean a lot of government financial support in the way of incentives to householders and industry, and a major investment in R+D. It'll also need a lot of education aimed at the wider public to convince them that there's a problem and that they can be part of the solution. There's also a fantastic opportunity for real engineering innovation to produce the products which can transform 'microgeneration' from a nice green idea to a practical reality.

There must be some good engineering-related blogs going on

Blogs were, I suppose, the biggest thing on the internet in 2005, with millions of people worldwide taking the opportunity to publish their thoughts to the world. Or more likely, to their Mums. To read much of the discussion on the trend, you'd think that nobody had ever written diaries, opinion pieces or whatever online before the blogging services made it so much easier.

One thing blogging has done, however, has enabled some very interesting writers to emerge. Few engineers consider themselves to be good writers, but as a magazine editor for many years, I was always amazed at how often I got into a discussion with interesting engineers, asked them if they'd write down what they'd just been telling me, and got a really good article as a result. Now, nobody needs to meet people like me in order to publish their thoughts - they just get online and do it, with services such as Blogger or TypePad.

Some of the best blogs are ones which people write anonymously about their day-to-day working experiences. PC Copperfield's "The Policeman's Blog" is one, "Random Acts Of Reality" by a member of the London Ambulance Service is another. Both have rightly received wide publicity and are great to follow. But there must be some good engineering-related ones going on - I just need to find them. Pointers please!

Perhaps we should start an Engineeringtalk blog, where readers can get anything they like off their chests. Engineering-related, of course. Any interest?

A Novel Approach to Explaining How Aircraft Are Able to Fly

So there I am, thinking: "as we've all got that run-up-to-Christmas, end-of-term feeling, wouldn't it be nice to write something amusing in the newsletter this week?" And would you believe it, in comes the perfect email from a reader, who we shall call Bob R (mainly because that's his name). I'm instantly hooked, because the email reveals exactly how the lift required for an aircraft to take off is furnished by the passengers pulling up on their seat armrests. Brilliant.

Now, before I go any further, I'm normally very reticent to pass on "funnies" which get sent round by email, because nine times out of ten we've all seen them before. However, this item, "A Novel Approach to Explaining How Aircraft Are Able to Fly", was new to me, and I hope it's one you haven't seen either. I can't date it, although I found a couple of fairly obscure newsgroup references to it on the web from a few years back. And I can't find an author, but if you know where it came from, please tell me.

As it systematically offends most European nations in a most stereotypical way, I've put it on my website rather than Engineeringtalk's! Without further ado then, off you go to:
http://www.chrisrand.com/aircraft.html
(and it's perfectly safe for office viewing, by the way)

Space news junkies haven't known which way to turn this week

Space news junkies haven't known which way to turn this week, what with news that NASA plans to explore Pluto and beyond, and even the UK is going to be investing seriously in the next European mission to Mars. The current Mars Express has just provided the first concrete evidence of significant amounts of water under the surface of the planet, and would you believe it, those plucky NASA rovers there are still going strong. You want a great piece of engineering? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Spirit" and "Opportunity".

These vehicles were due to operate for six months. Both have now operated through a full Martian year - that's 687 of your puny days, Earthman. Both keep finding new variations of rock in areas they are exploring on opposite sides of Mars. The delighted team behind the mission are even able to undertake what they call some "bonus science" such as watching the a meteor shower as Mars passed through the debris trail left by a passage of Halley's comet.

Sure, they're not racing around like golf buggies - Spirit has managed around three and a half miles in all that time, and Opportunity just over four. Cautious doesn't begin to describe it. But it's worth going back to the wonderful Internet Archive to see what the hopes and dreams of the NASA team were this time two years ago.

And, as ever, up-to-date stuff is at: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/

Product designers should be concentrating on getting the name back more from artists than from social planners

It's been quite amusing in 2005 to see wider media coverage about "design" and what it is. A new initiative from the UK's Design Council this week to "improve national life through design" provoked one national newspaper to explain that there's a whole new wave of design out there which deals with services and business models, and this is causing "shock to the design world".

This attitude, however, comes from people who think that design is about catwalks and posters, and there are rather a lot of those folks out there, many in positions of influence, academic or otherwise. They would take it as read that designing anything has to start with a charcoal sketch. You and I, on the other hand, probably get just a tiny bit irritated if the public's idea of a designer is not someone who actually thinks about how the product is going to be made, or maintained, or even how it will operate. We might politely say: "I think you're referring to a stylist, or an artist, not a designer".

So I suspect many engineering designers will feel more in common with some of these "new designers" working on intangible things such as services and business models, than they do with clothes stylists or graphic artists. I've always considered working out production flows through a plant to be as much of a true design challenge as work involving mechanics. According to the same newspaper report, the new Master of the Faculty for Royal Designers for Industry criticised these "new designers" by saying it is "very worrying that the term designer is so abused. Can we please have our name back?" I'd agree. But I think product designers should be concentrating on getting the name back more from artists than from social planners.

Too many people believe that a fast decision keeps the pressure off

A survey published by the Chartered Management Institute conducted over the past few weeks found that three in ten senior managers in the engineering industry have taken a decision "against their better judgement" in the past six months. Of those, 20% claimed undue pressure from colleagues affected the way they made decisions and 12% suggested they lack the time to consider problems carefully. A further 12% blamed poor decisions on bureaucracy.

It could be worse, I suppose: seven out of ten presumably have not taken a single decision against their better judgement, but even so, having to make any decisions you don't agree with is never going to result in much self-motivation, is it? The survey also found that engineering industry managers prefer to make decisions based on rational analysis (surprise!) with only 14% admitting to relying on "gut feelings". The Chartered Management Institute reminds us to think about the effects on colleagues or team members before making our minds up; that doesn't mean opting for the easy way out, but consider an issue from the point of view of what will work best for others involved.

Also, they say, too many people believe that a fast decision keeps the pressure off. Instead, if we allow ourselves time to assess all the options, we're more likely to reach a conclusion based on clear, considered arguments. And we should always remember to communicate our decisions: people are unlikely to know why we want things done a certain way unless we tell them.

Basic management stuff? Maybe. But I think many of us can't be reminded of this often enough. More on the subject: http://www.engineeringtalk.com/information/cmi-editorial.html

The world can live without media studies - but it cannot live without engineering

Sir Joseph Whitworth was one Britain's greatest mechanical engineers, famous for the standard screw thread named after him, some revolutionary machine tools and his hexagonally rifled guns. A legacy to encourage and support engineering apprentices includes an awards scheme dating back to 1868, with the aim of bringing science/engineering and industry closer together. Awards of three and a half thousand pounds are given to apprentices who are studying engineering degrees, but earlier this year only a handful applied, forcing the IMechE and the Whitworth Society to extend the deadline in a bid to encourage more applicants. The good news is that the awards were announced this week, with 12 new Whitworth Scholars and 9 Whitworth Award Holders, and of course we congratulate them all.

IMechE President Andrew Ives told BBC radio that the institution would be working more closely with schools in a bid to encourage more children to go into engineering. He said: "The world can live without media studies - but it cannot live without engineering".

The Whitworth Society President, Steve Beck, became a Scholar in 1988. He said the award must continue to be as inspirational as it was to him when he applied. "I felt becoming a scholar would be an excellent benchmark and a real test of my abilities. Given the small number of awards for the whole UK, I saw it as a real challenge and a great honour to achieve the award. What we now have to realise is that while we do need to get more young people into engineering, fewer companies are offering apprenticeships. Part of our task is to make sure people know about the award and we will be exploring routes to do that".

I'm sure we can all contribute more to getting young people into engineering.

The Whitworth Society: http://www.engineeringtalk.com/information/whitworth-editorial.html

With a plain text email, I can read it at my desk without others thinking I'm not working

"Please don't change the format of Engineeringtalk", wrote one reader in our survey last week. Because of the 'plain text' format, "as it looks like any other email, I can read it at my desk without others thinking I'm not working".

I have to admit, I'd not thought of that one. Nor had I considered the situation of the reader who wrote that "it's all very well downloading and browsing through multi-megabyte PDF files with the facilities at my office, but I'm a contract engineer and I'm more often away using other people's computers. I can't subscribe to regular emails unless I know they're going to be of manageable small size".

A more frequently-expressed comment (in fact, something hundreds of you said in various ways) was that you see Engineeringtalk as a kind 'executive summary' of what's going on - a few headlines to scan through, and you know if there's anything new you should be aware of this week. "Photos are very nice, and sometimes useful", wrote one reader, "but I haven't got time to see them all chugging past on my screen as I scroll down just to see if there's something of interest to me in an issue".

Anyway, very many thanks to the hundreds of you who completed our questionnaire. Don't think the comments above represent an overwhelming majority; there's certainly a large number of you who feel that a more graphical presentation would make Engineeringtalk an even better resource, so the message to us is that if we change things, it should be as an additional alternative to the existing format, not a replacement. In fact, at the other extreme to the above, 1 in 7 of you said that not only would you prefer a 'magazine-style' format, but that you'd also prefer the 'magazine' to be emailed to you directly, even if it was several megabytes in size!

Amongst the other questions, one set of results which we'll be bringing to the attention of all the suppliers we deal with is that when you request information from them, the vast majority of you would like something back quickly, by email. Most suppliers do this, but there are still too many who just send out printed material in the post without any email correspondence.

I'm with the newspaper correspondent this week who suggested the clocks change *every* weekend

With the clocks going back last weekend here in the UK, we've had the annual debate about whether it's all worth it. I'm with the newspaper correspondent this week who suggested we move to "Greenwich Generous Time", whereby the clocks change *every* weekend, going back by an hour on Saturday night to give us all an extra hour in bed, then moving forward again at 9am on Monday morning. Nice.

More seriously, the main argument against changing the clocks is the sheer cost of the exercise in man-hours (and mistakes). That I understand, but one aspect I've never seen added to that calculation is the cost of designing equipment to enable the time to be adjusted by everyday users in the first place. Sure, it might only be an extra button, or a few extra lines of control code, but it must add up. In many cases, for industrial equipment using real-time clocks, changing between UTC and summer time twice a year is the only reason for having to provide a time-adjustment facility to everyday operators, otherwise it could simply be a scheduled maintenance feature, which wouldn't involve the same complexity of user interface, or the cost.

Thanks to the many hundreds of you who completed our survey last week - I've met my part of the deal, and the Asia Earthquake Appeal will soon be in possession of my entire loose change collection (which turned out to be alarmingly valuable). I'll summarise what you've told us in next week's newsletter.

So, as an engineer, is "ethics" important to you?

So, as an engineer, is "ethics" important to you? The Royal Academy of Engineering thinks it should be. "Engineers have a profound impact on the world in which we live. To ensure that this impact is always directed towards the public good, it is essential that we operate with a real commitment to honesty and integrity," says Lord Broers FREng FRS, President of the RAEng. "We can only be proud of our profession if we behave, and are seen to behave, ethically."

In practice, I'm sure few engineers will have the ethics of what they're doing uppermost in their thoughts on a Thursday afternoon. But if the subject can be given more priority when we first study engineering, it must be a good thing. The RAEng, the Engineering Council (UK) and other professional engineering institutions have just launched a "Statement of Ethical Principles" for professional engineers, along with a 'curriculum map' for the teaching of ethics in undergraduate courses.

The 'statement' is worthy enough, built around the four fundamental principles of accuracy and veracity, honesty and integrity, respect for life, law and the public good, and responsible leadership. But think it's the educational aspect which has the best chance of making an impact. The 'curriculum map' is full of the almost obligatory 21st century mumbo-jumbo (a 'pedagogic focus' is what, exactly?) but if you skip past all the tortuous prose there's a good framework (oh no, they've got me at it too now) for teaching institutions to consider.

Anyway, see what you think. http://www.engineeringtalk.com/information/raeng-editorial.html

The next generation will be even more familiar with the word "taikonaut"

We grew up accepting the words "cosmonaut" and "astronaut" to describe the same thing, and it may be that the next generation will be even more familiar with the word "taikonaut", after China's second manned space mission launched successfully this week. The Chinese space programme is ambitious, but pedestrian in comparison to the US-Soviet "space race" of the sixties. Two years have gone by between the first taikonaut going into space and the current two-man spacecraft, and there's no sign that the next steps will come any faster.

But why should they? There's no "race" this time. Russia has a competent but relatively unspectacular space programme in progress, which does not seem to have plans for anything as ambitious as sending cosmonauts to the moon. The US does have some big targets, but the programme is in some disarray, and it's unlikely any astronauts will be setting foot on the moon again much before the end of the next decade.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have the ambition, the confidence and the technological capability to get to the moon much sooner. A space walk is planned for two years' time, followed eventually by a Chinese space station and a permanent base on the moon. I'm not someone who likes to ascribe specific characteristics to entire nations, but as an observer from a country which has only ever been involved in space exploration as an enthusiastic partner, it's fascinating to watch the different approaches of China, Russia and the US, and the differing results. Latest news at http://www.spacedaily.com/

Update: Successful prototype test of Japan's National Experimental Supersonic Transport aircraft - http://www.engineeringtalk.com/information/japan-sst-editorial.html

When JCB decided to investigate the tractor market, the company asked the question "what is a tractor actually used for?"

JCB announced a major order from the US army this week for 500 "high speed diggers". The 12-tonne High Mobility Engineer Excavators (HMEEs) have a top speed of 57 miles per hour, can lift more than two tonnes and dig to a depth of almost four metres. What makes this particularly interesting to me is that it's another spinoff from a great piece of market-research-led design a few years ago. The company's "Fastrac" tractor (from which the HMEEs are derived) is now a familiar sight on Britain's roads - and it's the word "roads" which is the key to the design's success.

When JCB decided to investigate the tractor market, the company asked the question "what is a tractor actually used for?" The answer, after some research, was not what you see in every primary school child's picture books - ploughing. The majority of a tractor's working hours turned out to be spent pulling trailers, particularly on public roads. Yet few were primarily designed for this purpose; they had the power, but rarely the speed. The Fastrac was designed with this in mind.

The rest of course is history, but it's a wonderful example of how sometimes the best designs come about by remembering to ask what the users are going to want to do with the product. The electronics and telecoms industries seem to be pursuing a policy of developing every product idea that comes out of each brainstorming meeting, and seeing what sticks, quietly retiring the failures. But in most markets, designers don't have that luxury. It'd be fun though, wouldn't it?

We're not only welcoming electricians from Germany, we're positively reliant on them

This week there have plenty of bemused commentaries on the subject of UK industry having to import people with technical skills from continental Europe and beyond, in much the same way as the medical profession has been required to do so for many years. Headed by a number of major construction projects, there are increasing UK demands for technicians and engineers, which have coincided with the steady drop in the number of suitably qualified young people being produced by our own education system and employers.

Retired bankers in Surrey will be spluttering over their morning tea and Daily Telegraph to read that we're not only welcoming electricians from Germany or railway engineers from India, we're positively reliant on them. Unfortunately it was their greed-is-good culture of the eighties and nineties which created the problem, giving no encouragement to employers who wished to train apprentices. I find it amusing that the people who complain loudest about government interference with the way companies work are usually the people with the political mindset which also objects to us being reliant on other countries' talents. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. German companies are required to train apprentices, which is why we have to pay to bring those skilled people here. Meanwhile, our young generation queues up for an audition on the X-Factor.

Tibet: more ambitious than the moon?

Right, firstly, the "NASA going back to the moon" story. Let's skirt around the politics and assume it really is going to happen. Does anyone else feel, like me, slightly disappointed that more than forty years on, the best idea out there is a bigger better version of what was done before: "Apollo 2.0", as it were?

The real advances in space engineering since Apollo have been in satellite launching, reducing the cost of getting small payloads into orbit. By building the whole thing on the ground, NASA will need the biggest launcher ever, which is a nice bit of flag-waving, but doesn't take advantage of enough of the developments which have taken place since Apollo. Why not build it in orbit, and use what we've learned in the meantime?

Back on earth, it's worth reading about an incredible civil engineering achievement which is currently under way: the railway from China to Tibet. A wonderful piece of journalism rightly given six pages in The Guardian newspaper this week (see link below) quotes the travel write Paul Theroux, who once wrote that the Kunlun mountain range is a guarantee that a railway will never get to Lhasa: "That is probably a good thing. I thought I liked railways until I saw Tibet, and then I realised that I liked wilderness much more."

But next month, three years ahead of schedule, Chinese engineers will complete that line to Lhasa. Commercial services are scheduled to begin within two years. The political and environmental implications are enormous, and what this project says about Chinese engineering is equally fascinating. You'll need an undisturbed coffee break for this one.

Our little email newsletter for engineers

It's a wonderful feeling to know that our little email newsletter for engineers has grown to be one of the largest design engineering publications in the world. However, to ensure we continue, free of charge, we need to carry on growing, and we do ask for your help in this respect from time to time. If every one of you reading this could get a few colleagues to join our circulation, it'd give the numbers a big enough boost to keep the accountants happy for another year - and I hope you'd be doing your colleagues a favour too.
So please help. If you could pass on a note about Engineeringtalk to departmental colleagues, fellow members of local institution branches/chapters, and anyone else who you think would find this newsletter useful, we'd be really grateful.

The Japanese are testing their "Scaled Experimental Supersonic Transport" next month

I've written before about the embarrassment of having to explain to my four-year-old that we used to be able to fly from London to New York fast enough to "arrive before we left", but that his Dad's generation mucked it all up and you can't do that any more. Men landed on the moon before we even had colour TV to watch it on, but, er, we can't do that any more either. Somewhere along the way we decided that art needed no justification other than progressing the achievement of the human species, but science ...well, that had to pay for itself, preferably by next Tuesday.
So I'm delighted that my son may be able to fly supersonic after all when he goes off on his university gap year in 2019 (we'll conveniently forget the fact that neither he nor his Dad will be able to afford it). The Japanese are testing their "Scaled Experimental Supersonic Transport" next month over the Australian outback, the first step towards building a new passenger aircraft which would make even Concorde look pedestrian. The engine has already been tested to Mach 5.5, and the unmanned plane they're testing will be launched by booster rocket and flown at Mach 2.2 before parachuting back to earth. I'm not holding my breath that this'll eventually lead to a commercial product, but we must all surely wish the Japanese team well. You never know, perhaps my son's current career plan, which (naturally) is "to be an astronaut and go to the moon" may be back on the agenda one day too

At least most of your suppliers have probably got rid of the "skip intro movies" from their websites

Looking back over several years' worth of these editor's columns is, as you'd imagine, quite entertaining. But not in a "wasn't technology quaint?" way. No, more frustratingly, it's completely the opposite: most of the things which I was appealing for five years ago on behalf of customers still haven't been done today.
Sure, at least most of your suppliers have probably got rid of the "skip intro movies" from their websites. But other than that, most manufacturers' internet activity probably consists of a website which is a company brochure/catalogue and, er, that's it.
Where's the stuff which would be really helpful to have on a website, like manuals, eDrawings, interactive selection applications, certificates, and other stuff you don't want to have to ring up the company to find out if it exists? Unbelievably in 2006, how few of your suppliers have an email technical bulletin with which they keep you up-to-date? How many have an RSS feed for technical updates which you can plug into? This is all simple stuff, the absence of which might have been explainable five years ago, but not now.
In almost every case, they aren't serving their customers properly online (or taking advantage of the wider market available) because somebody senior just has no idea what's going on out there. At these companies, online customer support, not to mention online sales and marketing, is being treated as just another item which has to be squeezed into the marketing budget somewhere, like it's an extra brochure to be printed. In 2005, this is nothing short of astonishing.
What's happened is the equivalent of a huge new retail park having been built out of town. Every shopper goes there now, and not just the local ones - people are travelling vast distances to visit it. It's heaving with people, all the time. Not only is shopping at this new retail park easier than back in the village, but the retailers there have the facilities to serve their customers better, with more stock on display, and decent in-store advice and facilities. No wonder 90% of shoppers only go to this one vast site now. In their new stores, the smaller retailers look much more professional, and the bigger retailers come across as impressively as their customers expect.
Back in the villages, the bored shop staff tell the shop owners that it might be a good idea to stop imagining the customers are going to come back, and to stop wasting resources on all sorts of sales initiatives which haven't worked for years. Perhaps they should spend these savings on a proper unit at the retail park. "Nonsense", says the shop owner, "that's not the way it happened in my day. Anyway, we're at the retail park. I paid the chap round the corner to make a poster to put up there, telling shoppers that we're still here! Tell you what, let's pay some kids to go and put a few leaflets through people's doors."
But nobody was at home.

A growing trend to "bring the web to users" signals a fundamental change in the way we're using the web

The launch this week of Google Desktop 2 (and if you use a Windows PC but don't have it yet, I thoroughly recommend it) is part of a growing trend to "bring the web to users". And this trend signals a fundamental change in the way we're using the web. Let me explain what I mean.

First there was email. It "pushed" information to people. In many ways, it's more important than ever. However, it's actually been overtaken by the "pull" side of the internet - the web - where people choose which information they want to see.

But that's the two options covered, right? Well, no. A couple of years ago, along came RSS. This "pushes" web content of interest to us as readers (with the crucial advantage over email that we choose which web sites we want to have "pushed" to us). No longer do you have to go to websites to see if they've updated - a constantly-updated alert on your desktop shows you what's changed on your monitored sites.

Until recently, I've been sceptical about whether this technology would get widespread acceptance. It was all a bit geeky, to be honest. But I'm beginning to change my mind. Software such as the Google Desktop and Google's personalised homepage make so easy to put these "RSS feeds" on a PC that people might just actually do it.

One demonstration of how RSS might change the way we use the web can be seen by looking at what many Apple Mac users are already doing (I'm one of those people!). All decent websites have RSS feeds now, and I monitor about a dozen of them. You add them just like adding bookmarks or favourites. When I fired up my Mac this morning, the browser showed that all my monitored feeds had about 100 new articles between them. I opened a few, and here's what I saw.

As you can see, all the latest news at a glance. Most interestingly of all, it's presented in a consistent format. RSS was originally just for snappy headlines and short descriptions, but many sites now have complete multi-page articles, with photos, in their feeds. At Engineeringtalk, we've provided over three thousand such feeds, updated daily, so you can monitor news in particular product categories, or from individual manufacturers.

Whilst the RSS readers available under Windows are somewhat less elegant than the facilities built into the Mac OS, expect to see some major progressions over the next year. Like me, you may well find yourself looking at RSS feeds more than the conventional web on a daily basis. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get the ball-by-ball cricket commentary set up.

Why have engineering courses always mysteriously required so many more hours of study?

Here in the UK it's been A-Level results day, when tens of thousands of our best and brightest find out if they've got the grades they need to go on to university. As usual, conservative commentators will be full of "it-wasn't-like-that-in-my-day" stuff, claiming that standards are falling and the qualifications aren't worth the paper they're written on any more; however, we should remember that this sniping from the sidelines has always been around.

I really don't know what sort of sad thrill these people get out of denigrating the efforts of the young people coming through (and their teachers), but they were doing it when I got my A-Levels some 25 years ago, and they'll be doing it in 25 years' time. It seems to me that the kids I know who were hoping to get, say, B and C grades today, are about the same academic standard as the kids who got B and C grades when I was at school. Whatever other changes have happened, that's good enough for me.

One of the few aspects of education which hasn't improved, as far as I can see, is at university level, and that's the continuing disparity between different subjects in terms of commitment required. Engineering courses have always suffered from this, mysteriously requiring three or four times the number of hours of study as certain other courses - and the students choosing their future careers know this. With most of them now being forced to juggle study with part-time jobs, who can blame them for leaning towards courses where the demands, in terms of study time, aren't so high?

I'm not suggesting that engineering courses at university should be "dumbed down" to the lowest common denominator. But the playing field does need to be levelled if the UK engineering sector is to get a fairer share of the best our education system has to offer.

Cool technology, but really it's only streamlining the design process

A few weeks ago, I asked the question: "Where else is there to go for CAD technology?" and most of the suggestions seem to involve better ways of transferring ideas and visualisations from the mind to the screen. Whilst the latest generation of 3D solid modelling CAD is awesome to work with once the product has been defined, it still has to be created using a mish-mash of adding blocks and extruding lines.

However, this week I read of one interesting area of research into making this easier, and I'm sure there are many more going on behind closed doors. At NRC-IMTI in Canada, they're working on improving the way in which hand sketches on a tablet PC can be converted into CAD data. The idea is to allow a sketch drawn directly on the tablet PC's screen with a digital pencil to be intelligently cleaned-up to reflect the designer's true 2D intent. Roughly straight lines are transformed into truly straight ones, and corners are created even if the lines don't exactly intersect. Questions would try to piece together the designer's 3D intent too.

This is cool technology, but really it's only streamlining the design process, taking out the intermediate stage of entering a beermat sketch into a CAD system. This is a stage which might be a nuisance, but it isn't one which is a fundamental problem in the design process. I'm still looking for that revolutionary idea which will change the way we work.

When I studied engineering at university in the 1980s, "Designing for Quality" was a hot topic

The headline in this year's "Which?" report on car reliability was the ascent to the top category of Ford, joining the various Japanese brands which have been camped there for years. It can't be a coincidence that Ford's reliability has coincided with a period where its design in general has been held in such high regard. All of its mainstream models, such as the class-leading Focus, have been major hits with motoring journalists and the public alike. But it would seem the good design was not limited to the driving experience.

When I studied engineering at university in the 1980s, "Designing for Quality" was a hot topic, alongside "Designing for Manufacture". I don't hear as much about those topics today; perhaps that's just because they've been so assimilated into the engineering culture, but I'm not so sure. It's more likely that the consultants have found other things to move on to. Yet outside the Far East, the need to cut manufacturing costs is more critical than ever. Design has a crucial role to play here.

Whilst the popular perception is that quality is a manufacturing issue, we know that in practice, it stems from design and engineering. Get the design process right, and exemplary product quality should be as much of a result as good product performance.

If Engineeringtalk was a magazine, it would typically be 300-400 pages long

I don't often discuss in this slot what's in the rest of the newsletter, preferring to leave that to speak for itself. I know that many of you read right through the whole publication, judging from the large number of "clickthroughs" that even the items several screen-scrolls down get!

However, I would like to draw attention to some of the excellent technical background articles we receive each week. They always have their own section, and although they're overwhelmed by the number of "product news" items in the newsletter and on the website, we still publish more of these great backgrounders in a month than any "paper engineering magazine" I know.

In fact, if all the news and articles in Engineeringtalk were published in paper format on a monthly basis, the magazine would typically be 300-400 pages long and have more words that the last Harry Potter book (although I doubt the sales or media interest would be quite the same). Of that, up to 50 pages would be extensive technical background articles.

Doohan understood from the outset that a fictional ship's engineer would be taken more seriously if he was at least vaguely Scottish

I've often referred to how disappointing it is that the only "engineers" the public can name are car mechanics on TV soap operas, but let's make an exception. Yes, tributes need to be paid to the fictional Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise, following the death yesterday of actor James Doohan. "Scotty" may have been representative of the old school ship's engineer, but it seems the character inspired sufficient numbers of students to take up engineering that Doohan was awarded a real-life honorary doctorate from an American engineering school, and that can only be a good thing (I know, don't get me going on the subject of why most honorary academic titles are awarded...).

Although a Canadian, Doohan understood from the outset that a fictional ship's engineer would be taken more seriously if he was at least vaguely Scottish, which is why he adopted the accent and the name. Scotland is perhaps even more famous for its inventors than its engineers (such as Telford and Stevenson), but it did always seem right, somehow. It also seems allowable that every newspaper today should have the right to wheel out the "Beam me up, Scotty" catchphrase which, like "Play it again, Sam", was never actually said on film.

Doohan may have departed, but thanks to the magic of fiction, Scotty will forever be out there somewhere in the shuttlecraft which Captain Picard gave him. I'm sure he's managed to do great things with the old impulse drive.

I have to say I'd be a bit stumped to predict what the CAD system of 2020 or 2030 will be like

I've been writing about CAD software since the days when everything came on a five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy. I remember a press conference in a pub introducing AutoCAD Release 9, the successor to 2.6, at a point when that product had begun to dominate the booming PC-based CAD market. And if you were there, you'd never forget the chaos which followed UK developer PAFEC's decision to respond by giving its own PC-DOGS product away for free.
This was an age where 30Mb hard drives had just begun to appear on PCs, but the DOS operating system couldn't cope with more than 20Mb, so you had to format the drive into two partitions. Nice. CAD was not only the most interesting subject for us engineering journalists to write about, it was everything. The CAD companies took over the UK's design engineering exhibition (DES), pushing the component manufacturers to the periphery, and when the software companies wound down their marketing in the 90s, the show never recovered.
However primitive those early programs were, however, I still doubt that today's solid modelling applications would have surprised us back then. Stunning as some of them are, I suspect they're exactly what we'd have expected to see, 15 to 20 years on. I'm sure there are some old articles I can dig out where some of us had a go at predicting what CAD systems in 2000 or 2010 would be like, and I'm sure they won't be far off the mark - except I'm sure they'd have predicted a stereolithography machine on every desktop by now. Sadly, whilst the technology's here, the market isn't.
But I have to say I'd be a bit stumped to predict what the CAD system of 2020 or 2030 will be like. Where else is there to go? 3D holograms, I guess. Intelligent virtual designers which require just some parameters to come up with optimal or alternative designs? I'll have to organise a pub conference with some readers and discuss it sometime.

The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly threw out the proposed so-called "software patent directive"

The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly threw out the proposed so-called "software patent directive", a move which could be good or bad news (depending on how you look at it) for any of you whose products involve software, whether it's machinery, control systems or whatever. Whilst it would seem to be a victory for anti-patent campaigners, it's also being claimed as a good thing by the pro-patent lobby, led by many large multinationals. This is mainly because the original bill had been watered-down by so many amendments that it was seen as no more than a "bad compromise".
That may well be true. But whilst it can be argued that this is not a victory for those who oppose patenting ideas rather than inventions, they've more reason to celebrate than the big corporations. And it's always heartwarming when expensive political lobbying and scaremongering fails to create oppressive legislation from which the main winners will be the legal profession.
Despite claims to the contrary by major corporations, it seems to me that they're the only ones who benefit from software patenting. Certainly those rejecting the concept put forward the most cogent arguments. According to TheRegister, campaigner Florian Muller says: "Next time around, let's honestly discuss the pros and cons of pure software patents, and then we can get a great directive that won't die a dishonourable death like this".
Of course, all this just means the situation is unresolved. Despite the questionable legal basis, the European Patent Office has already granted thousands of software patents, most of them almost ridiculously unenforceable (electronic shopping carts, paying by credit card over the net, JPEGs, MP3s, the list goes on). The patent system is no longer just a way of encouraging and protecting invention. It's now a massive industry which mainly deals with incremental "developments", rather than serious inventions, and is unaffordable to individuals (the average cost of a European patent is tens of thousands of Euros).
Sadly, I can't ever see it being overhauled. But at least for now, we haven't taken another step towards a US-style system with its "patent trolls", companies which don't make anything but just go around acquiring patented ideas and then setting their lawyers on unwitting transgressors.
Both sides of the divide:
http://www.patents4innovation.org
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com

Google is producing astonishing stuff at an even more astonishing rate

Last week I wrote about the underexploited development resource which every manufacturer has in the form of its customers. Many development projects which might have been a success never actually become real products because of flawed research or simply bad management calls. However, another approach is to just throw everything out there, not worry about failures, and see what sticks. It's expensive, but will uncover the unexpected gems.
This seems to be whats going on at Google, which is producing astonishing stuff at an even more astonishing rate. I've looked at some of its recent ideas and thought "that's clever, but perhaps not for me", but others have been jaw-droppingly useful as far as I'm concerned. The point is, the company is giving them all a go in the real world.
Take the GMail email service, for example. It brings together the best bits of different approaches to email, adds search and storage facilities never offered before, and has instantly become indispensable to the way I work. Google Desktop Search is another free application which I've quickly become dependent on; in fact, I can't imagine now not having results from my own hard drive integrated into standard Google search results pages.
Google Maps is a really nice implementation of online street mapping on its own, but combined with the Google database it's a really powerful and useful tool ("show me a map of pneumatics distributors in Bedford" - instant results). But it's Google Earth which has really blown me away. Some people might look at it and say "great technology, but how useful is it?" I'd suggest it's exactly the sort of application which the public will find unthought-of uses for. You have to see it for yourselves, but the ability to fly around the entire planet, photographically, instantly, is just the coolest thing you'll see on your PC screen this year. Or probably any other year, to be honest. And the more I think about it, the more I can think of engineering and scientific applications for it too.
Gmail
Google Desktop Search
Google Maps UK
Google Earth

There seems to be increasing academic interest in the process of collective invention

There seems to be increasing academic interest in the process of collective invention, a concept which has been largely facilitated by the communications revolution of the past ten years. Traditionally, technological change has been considered to be the preserve of individual inventors, whether they're true individuals or single corporations.
Now, however, consumers are increasingly developing their own products, adapting commercially-available technology for their real needs rather than accepting the designer's stated purpose. The entire patent system, which has supposedly driven innovation for so long, depends on the inventor saying what the design is for. But mountain biking, kitesurfing and text messaging are all examples of users creating their own products or applications.
This isn't new: just Google "the case of the Cornish Pumping Engine" to see what I mean. But it's certainly a renewed spirit, and something which manufacturers are failing to exploit. Consumers don't particularly want to develop their own products - it's just necessary in a world where the success of a company is often measured in how well it controls its market.
How many of your suppliers even run online forums where you can give feedback or make suggestions? Outside the software sector, I suspect almost none. If you can't get the product you want, it's easy to turn to an alternative supplier who might have gone down that path, but it'd have been better to have pointed your existing supplier in that direction some time before. Far too many manufacturers say they "listen to the market" and are "customer driven" when they're nothing of the sort. They just mean that before committing to production, they ask customers for a reaction to their latest design. Big deal. Why not allow R+D to interact with the customers from the start?

No prizes for guessing the star of the Paris Air Show this week

No prizes for guessing the star of the Paris Air Show this week. According to a BBC report, even onlookers at Boeing's chalets on the side of the runway were awestruck at the giant Airbus A380. Whilst its economics are questionable, its wow-factor most certainly is not. Watch the display flight at the BBC website (link top right).
Despite its focus on longer range, mid-size aircraft, Boeing is hedging its bets and has announced a new version of the 747, so it's not giving up that sector. At the same time, the order book for the new 787 looks healthy, and the rival from Airbus, the A350, is lagging behind, despite some impressive orders this week. I just hope the inevitable foot being placed in the door by the legal community, as ever, doesn't delay any of these aircraft. I want to see them for myself.

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link: is engineering newsworthy at last?

I was so pleased to see a decent article in the mainstream press recently about the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, that astonishing project going on in London at the moment. I was even more pleased to see another ...and another. The cover story on the Sunday Times colour supplement. A whole special issue of The Guardian's G2. Where will it end? Is engineering newsworthy at last?
I'm assuming the project has got itself a PR operation going. Good for them. This is a feat of engineering which is breathtaking in its scope, and everyone should know about it. Read the two paragraphs below from the Sunday Times piece. Get this story into schools now!

"[technical director] Mike Glover started out as an actuary, then decided 'something was missing in my life'. At such moments most people become religious, read self-help books or try to contact dead relatives, but Glover did a degree in engineering, since when he has 'never had a boring day'. "It's not just design, it's a venture, it's soup to nuts... I find that hard to get across to people."
It is a repeated refrain - engineering is a great, wonderful heroic activity and everyone should do it. I understand their feelings. These days, architects steal the glory and engineers are seen as the poor grunts in bad suits and hard hats. Barlow, Telford and Brunel are big names from another age; modern engineers are nobodies.
"We need," muses Isabel Coman, a 31-year-old senior engineer at St Pancras, "a television series like ER about engineers. Everyone is so proud of this. It will be here in 100 years' time."
Read the full article

Everyone wins if manufacturers structure their websites in a sensible way which users would want

I spent yesterday at a conference which was discussing how to get more traffic to websites through the search engines, but for me it was as much with a web user's hat on as a website operator's. The good news is that to defeat the increasing number of websites out there full of machine- generated rubbish, which I'm sure we've all seen (and quickly left), the main search engines are concentrating on identifying the characteristics of websites which are designed for real people to use.
So in answer to the question from website owners "how do I get my site to appeal to the search engines?", the universal answer now seems to be "design and write it for your users". Sounds straightforward, but when you look at the contrived structure and mangled language of many websites over the years, you'll know they were designed more with an eye to what the writer thought the search engines wanted.
What does this mean for us as people who use the web to source suppliers or get support information (which is just about everyone now)? Long term, nothing but good news. The message to manufacturers is that everyone wins if they structure their websites in a sensible way which users would want; if they get rid of the "roadblocks" like introductory movies; and (most of all) if they put more and more content on their sites. The manufacturers who will win the online information war are those who put on display everything they have to offer, in as much detail as they can. And that includes articles, case studies, hints and tips ...everything that as customers, we might find interesting. It's also a great chance for smaller, more go-ahead manufacturers to score over the corporate giants with "not the way we do things here" attitudes or tortuous approval processes where too many people are allowed to say no.

Engineeringtalk's improved "Request Free Details from the supplier" service

Our "Request Free Details from the supplier" service has been one of the biggest success stories of this newsletter, consistently receiving over 1,000 requests a week. It allows you to make an information request to a manufacturer without having to rummage around a manufacturer's website looking for contact details or an enquiry form. More importantly, because your request gets forwarded to the manufacturer in a nice consistent format, it tends to get dealt with (unlike when you phone up and some overworked telephonist ends up jotting down your details on a Post-It note).
This week we're completing the introduction of our new improved service. You'll only now need to identify yourself the first time you use the system. After that, it's just a single click on any of the "Request Free Details from the supplier" links below, and your request is sent to the manufacturer. Click ...request made. That's all there is to it. I don't think our IT guys could have made it any simpler.
One more thing: I have to apologise if occasionally one of the items in the Engineeringtalk newsletter doesn't have a "Request Free Details from the supplier" link, but in the end, it's down to the individual manufacturer whether or not they offer you one. We do make a small charge to the manufacturers for running the service for them, and some would rather spend their money on other things. You can always follow the link through to the Engineeringtalk website and from there to the manufacturer's own website ...and find their contact details from there. Best of luck.
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