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Lost engineering skills

I was recently discussing energy strategy, and it was pointed out that reopening deep coal mines in the UK is easier said than done because the skills and body of knowledge relating to coal mining have now been practically lost. It's all there in books, but the number of people in the UK below retirement age who still possess such skills and knowledge are very few in number, so experienced people will have to be brought in from foreign countries in order to resurrect British deep coal mining.

This made me wonder what other engineering skills have largely been lost in the UK - or even worldwide - over the past few decades?

Are there any endangered niches where no formal training and education still exists, so anybody who wants to learn such skills has to do so via self study or workshop dabbling unless they personally know somebody with the skills?

Are there any areas of engineering where skills and knowledge are being lost because it's too risky (from a career perspective) for young people to devote too much time to learning them?

Parents
  • This happens all the time. In the 1970s my great uncle (a train driver all his life)was brought out of retirement to move a steam train the length of the country to get it to the railway museum, he has been dead for about 40 years now, and  I'm quite  sure all the mechanics from that era are also now long gone.

    In plumbing the ability to make decent wiped joints has gone, and in electricity and electronics all sorts of stuff has gone.

    It is not normally a problem - as the delta mask CRT has followed the horn gramophone into the scrap heap, the knowledge on how to set one up remains for a while as a fading memory, and then is lost. I can design valve amplifiers, but there won't be many much younger than my age group who can, and discrete analogue design of any kind is not a strong topic these days but then no one needs it -  as designs move onto silicon and nothing can be repaired economically, we do not need so many people who actually understand it.

    You do get strange inversions -  have been told that due to interest in re-enactments, there are at least as many if not more makers of chain mail now than there were when it was actually needed ;-)

    Mike

  • It has been joked that real plumbers (yes, plumber is a Latin term for a worker of lead) are virtually extinct because lead pipework is rarely used nowadays, and what remains is being replaced - mostly with plastic.

    A delta mask CRT is an electronic Rubik's cube. The people who knew how to set one up were TV factory workers and repairmen more so than electronic engineers. There are still a few vintage TV enthusiasts who know how to set one up in less time than it takes to solve a Rubik's cube, but I'm doubtful that younger people will take an interest in wood cabinet TVs from the 1960s and 70s although there is a small but thriving market for good quality 4:3 CRT TVs from the 1980s and 90s for retro gaming.

    Designing sophisticated circuits around discrete transistors is something that a large number of electronic engineers were adept at in the 1960s and 70s, but it's definitely one of the most prominent lost engineering skills of the past few decades. There is still demand for such skills designing linear and mixed signal ICs. Do many universities in the UK teach this subject effectively?

    These strange inversions are intriguing. I once watched a documentary about flint knapping, where modern day attempts to make replicas of ancient high quality flint tools took so much skill and practice that the conclusion was a toolmaker must have been a full time job. I also read about an engineer who designed and manufactured balance bikes for young children only using materials and techniques available centuries ago, and concluded that they could theoretically have existed in the Roman times and earlier, even if they were just a plaything for children rather than a serious form of transport.

Reply
  • It has been joked that real plumbers (yes, plumber is a Latin term for a worker of lead) are virtually extinct because lead pipework is rarely used nowadays, and what remains is being replaced - mostly with plastic.

    A delta mask CRT is an electronic Rubik's cube. The people who knew how to set one up were TV factory workers and repairmen more so than electronic engineers. There are still a few vintage TV enthusiasts who know how to set one up in less time than it takes to solve a Rubik's cube, but I'm doubtful that younger people will take an interest in wood cabinet TVs from the 1960s and 70s although there is a small but thriving market for good quality 4:3 CRT TVs from the 1980s and 90s for retro gaming.

    Designing sophisticated circuits around discrete transistors is something that a large number of electronic engineers were adept at in the 1960s and 70s, but it's definitely one of the most prominent lost engineering skills of the past few decades. There is still demand for such skills designing linear and mixed signal ICs. Do many universities in the UK teach this subject effectively?

    These strange inversions are intriguing. I once watched a documentary about flint knapping, where modern day attempts to make replicas of ancient high quality flint tools took so much skill and practice that the conclusion was a toolmaker must have been a full time job. I also read about an engineer who designed and manufactured balance bikes for young children only using materials and techniques available centuries ago, and concluded that they could theoretically have existed in the Roman times and earlier, even if they were just a plaything for children rather than a serious form of transport.

Children
  • I'm doubtful that younger people will take an interest in wood cabinet TVs from the 1960s and 70s

    One of these days I must show my granddaughters their great-great grandmother's old telly, which sits in the attic. I don't see why it shouldn't still work - it was working when it was inherited.

    In olden days there were television repair men/women who would come round and fix televisions (or take them back to their workshop). Nowadays if you are lucky, somebody might replace a board.