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Engineering colleges began to feel slighted because doctors, lawyers, and business executives were viewed as
having more prestige and professional status than their engineering graduates.[1] Intellectual elites viewed
engineering colleges as trade schools, and graduate engineers were said to be nothing more than mechanics or
glorified shop hands. In response, engineering schools began to drop courses that lacked academic rigor or had
the slightest blue-collar aura.
The launch of Sputnik in 1957 again changed the perception of design engineering. The perceived loss of world
leadership in air and space technology by the people of the United States set the stage for a considerable
renewal of prestige to the engineering discipline. After more than a decade into the Cold War, the public realized
science and engineering could play a key role in keeping the Communists at bay. The government unloaded
almost limitless supplies of money on high-tech defense industries, and engineering became the career of choice.
High salaries and generous perks were lavished on engineers and scientists.
Unfortunately, Sputnik also accelerated the movement to delete courses on manufacturing and shop practice
from the curricula of top schools. The idea was to portray engineers as being more scientist than mechanic. The
rocket scientist working on the space program became the image to which most engineers aspired.
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Machine Design - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Design
This attitude had a lot to do with framing the editorial policies of Machine Design through the 1960s. The
policies were in tune with what was happening in the largest and most-sophisticated corporations, especially the
aircraft and automotive industries, where design engineering and manufacturing engineering were increasingly
treated as separate entities having no common interest. Reflecting this, articles selected for Machine Design
were carefully tailored not to have too much of a manufacturing orientation.
Starting in the late 1960s, another shift in American perception was brought about by the growing awareness of
overseas manufacturing facilities returning a lower cost product with higher quality. While lower labor rates
played a key role in the lower costs, they could not justify the higher reliability of offshore products over those
domestically produced. It was soon discovered that those shops with higher quality production realized design
and manufacturing engineering were closely intertwined. Machine Design articles started to reflect this trend.
For example, it's believed to be the first industrial trade magazine to run a comprehensive article explaining
numerical control machining and how it relates to design engineering.
Machine Design's coverage of manufacturing positioned it well when concurrent engineering became the trendy
idea in industry. Major corporations suddenly discovered that design and manufacturing were interrelated, and it
became vogue to tear down the walls between design and manufacturing engineers.
In the 1970s, finite-element analysis broke on the industrial scene. Computer-aided design was evolving, and by
the 1980s, it was also having a profound impact on design procedures. Computer-aided manufacturing evolved
separately, but by 1990 CAD and CAM had merged. In the field of electrical and electronic technology, relay
controls were giving way to digital electronics and the microprocessor that led to combining a number of design
disciplines into the technologies of mechatronics and motion control.
For over 80 years, Machine Design had predicted and led the industrial community spotting trends and
fundamental changes in manufacturing operations. Providing an ongoing series of technological overviews
interspersed with in-depth tutorials, it kept readers abreast of technologies that were transforming product
design. It does this with an editorial staff of degreed engineers possessing industrial experience and obligated to
create lucid and interesting articles supported by the intelligent use of graphics.
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Machine Design - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Design
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