Engineers

dno, spot on.
Never met so many "express" tradesman as I have lately. Taught by fools and know everything........in theory.
Apparently in Sydney if you have cut a lump of sandstone with an angle grinder instantly makes you a Master Stonemason.

Suppose the thread is about engineers. Started as a joke about potholed roads (probably as much to do with the builders as the engineers)

I know they are all over educated dills who think they know everything and they must be jealous of the blokes sitting with a beer in one hand and a fag in the other using their knowledge and skills to tell them how they stuffed up designing airliners, supertankers, high rise buildings, 40km tunnels and even truck engines and ball-point pens.

Much of the criticism comes from people who expect an engineer to know everything about a tradesman's job while they know nothing about his. We need both thinkers and doers. A thinker can get away with employing people who have the skills and knowledge to fill the gaps in the doing department.

A doer must not only have the skills to fill those gaps he must be a thinker within his small area of responsibility. This is where the argument falls down and everyone of us has had work done by so-called tradesmen be they builders, mechanics, painters, plumbers or plant operators that was incompetent crap.

Unfortunately bad tradesmen are much more common than bad engineers and I think the criticism is sadly tainted by a kind of class distinction. There is honour in all work, we all make mistakes. It is entertaining to have a go at an engineer who failed to realise the machine could not fit through the door but we should give him credit for designing a hugely complex and technical device that will continue to pump water to the whole town for 50 years.

The contractor could say "Well, we will sit on our arses on penalty time until you come up with a solution to your stuff-up" or "Can you come down and I will get my leading hand and crane operator to help work out a plan between us. You calculate how much of the wall we can remove safely and we will tell you how far the crane can reach safely"

Attitude.

Never met a dumb one.
Iol

Back in the middle ages, there were no such thing as engineers and architects or even the term builder.
They were Master Stonemasons, Master Carpenters who designed and built the cathedrals, bridges viaducts etc.

This sorta of brings us back to the original captions. They weren't around.

Rockwiz

The Master Masons and builders certainly built the structures but there have always (going back to the Egyptians) been engineers who designed the work. As today, they may not have been able to use a chisel or saw but they had the mathematical and geometric education to design fabulous structures. Arches, domed cupolas , and magnificent bridges all came about because some engineer worked out the angles, strengths and distributed load sharing long before the masons cut their first stone.

If you look at the Architects from 1100 to about 1500 you will see they often were called Masons, Master Masons, Mason-Builders and Mason-Architects. Reading about the well known ones you quickly see the blokes who designed and managed the project never wielded a hammer and chisel in their lives and were members or friends of the nobility or often clerical scholars. The word mason is the same as builder today. It can refer to a bloke in a Hilux ute who renovates kitchens or the Chairman of the Board of a huge multi-national construction company

The Roman Army Engineers built some of the most fabulous works in history, quite apart from their roads. Bridges, viaducts and buildings stand to this day. The Engineer units were of such importance they were called Imuni (from which our word immune comes) which meant they could not be called to act as infantry unless in dire emergency.

Every Legion had their Engineer units. They could call on the Infantry to supply labourers and semi-skilled workers. The non-commissioned and junior officers were called Fabri (artisans and craftsmen). To reach this rank they had to be qualified either as an apprentice in civil life or attendance - up to 5 years - at an Army Engineering trade school,

The commanders and senior officers were called Architecti. These people were what would be called university trained today and highly qualified in maths and construction science. They are the people who went on site and surveyed, designed and supervised the work of the Fabri and their construction teams. The Architecti also were experts at logistics without which the Fabri would be standing around waiting for their next stone or indeed next feed.

So we have two names that originated with the Romans:

Architecti = Architect. Later very blurringly divided into Architect, a designer of structures and Engineer a designer of "engines" (catapults, draw bridges etc) and all things mechanical. Both these professions cross over into each other's fields even today. The word Engineer comes from "gene" someone who invents things, also the words ingenious and ingenuity.

And of course Fabri = Fabricator, the physical builders.

The Egyptians had a similar engineer/craftsman/worker structure thousands of years before the Romans. The first recorded engineer/architect was Imhotep who designed and built the Step Pyramid in Saqqarah, Egypt in 2550BC

While we are at it the Ancient Greek word for engineer or designer of engines was Mekhanopoios or as we say Mechanic.

Lang

After that eloquent narration I have no problem putting my hand up as a Mechanic (retired)
Cheers Steve

That's very interesting Lang. I've often spoken of using Italian specialists to commission their installations and I'd hold their passports.
Their profession was Mechanic. Not at all what we call a mechanic, these blokes had skills in every facet of engineering.
They were welder/boilermakers, fitter/turners/brick layer masons, carpenters, electricians and computer system technicians.
There wasn't anything they couldn't do and they were extremely frustrated working in our environment.
One thing that impressed me was no matter how exactly we set up this machining centre/vertical lathe, it machined a poofteenth out. They just altered the software to balance out the error and she was fixed. Could be checked and altered anytime in future too as these machines were supposed to be in air conditioned workshops so uneven temperatures weren't normally a problem.

Then we had some Russians to commission their gear gasher. What a difference, their technology was ancient but robust and it did the job. I had no idea what their qualifications were as they had no English at all and the interpreter was flat out answering our technical questions.
Then one of them broke a file.......he went white and was on the verge of tears. His mates were no help but I finally got the reason. Back home if he broke a tool he was off work until some designated time when he would be permitted to return to work. Poor bugger thought he was going to be deported. I took him to the tool room and gave him a box of files, his eyes were like saucers, Aladdin's Dave.

Master Freemasom (Bankermason/Stonemason carvers) set their own geometry standards and certainly didn't have some bloke work their angles out for them building flying buttresses, fan vaulting, traceries etc.
I think you better tell that little story to the 5 Master Masons I trained under in the NSW Public Works dept.

Architects and engineers keep rewriting their own history.

Here's the gear gasher in operation. It took a fair time to set up a wheel and mark out the proposed cut.
One morning the young bloke setting one up asked the machine shop foreman did he want one large tooth or two small ones as it didn't quite close.

I get the impression that gear is several metres across.....

Jarrod.