I believe this is one of those differences between American and British
English; one of the British meanings of "engineer" is pretty close to
what Americans call a "machinist." Just as Americans use "engineer" for
the guy who runs a locomotive. Different dialects.

Even in America engineering used to be a lot more hands-on. I had an
intro to computer programming class back in the late seventies where the
teacher complained that the engineering department at U.C. Berkeley had
lost its connection to reality. When he went through, and it can't have
been that many years before because he wasn't even middle-aged, they had
a class in "Dynamite." That's all it was, a whole term on dynamite, and
they went out and blew things up. Real things with real dynamite. Can't
get much more hands-on than that, at least not with explosives.

Tom Conroy Berkeley


Cliff Rohrabacher=A0 wrote:

On 1/8/2013 4:14 AM, paul womack wrote:
> Modern engineers use ~ ~ ~

Small but salient correction: The engineers don't use the tools. The
tradesman=A0 selects which tools to use to accomplish=A0 any given
operation and it is the tradesman who uses the tools.=A0 The engineer
generates and applies the specifications to the drawing.
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