Reply #91: I forget the guy's name but

[truedelphi]

This one dean of mechanical engineering has gone on the record as saying how awful it is that we have lost the world of thirty years ago in terms of developing mechanical thinking.

A young person who used to live at a small family farm, and who didn't want to spend half the day driving in to town with Dad to find a part, would spend half the day inventing some appliance to allow them to continue to use a piece of broken machinery.

Now we have expressways that allow the farmer to go into town and get the equipment in only 45 minutes, rather than three hours.

And the internet will often help you locate a part and have it delivered to your door within 48 hours.

So because of these factors, many of the "tinkerers" are not being developed - the world is making it so easy for us that "tinkering" is falling by the wayside.