Control Engineering

Peter Welander

Reader responds on skills
October 15, 2007

After my list posting on the topic of the breeding grounds for engineers, Carl Henning adds his thoughts:

"I’m also a card carrying member of the baby boom generation (birth year unspecified).  I grew up with an erector set, a chemistry set, the formula for gun powder from the Encyclopedia Britannica, a microscope, Dad’s model trains, and U-control model airplanes.

"I have one son whose hobby is model languages.  One of his 14-year old twin sons is programming adventure games on his PC using web-centric languages.  His 11-year old brother is a member of the robotics club at school.  I helped another grandson (10) program his Lego Mindstorms.  He was already very adept at the mechanical portion.

"I had an interesting conversation at ISA with some of the folks from National Instruments about their role in providing the software for the Mindstorms.  They provided additional information about starting a local robotics club .  (Have no fear; we also talked about Profibus and Profinet, too.)

"Reminded me of a story I’d heard and Google provided the full text:  One day a young man wanted to match his wits with a wise old philosopher. He said, 'I'll take a bird in my hands and ask the old man if the bird is dead or alive. If he says the bird is dead, I'll open my hands and the bird will fly away. If he says the bird is alive, I will squeeze my hands together and crush it to death.'

"And so he went to the top of the mountain where the wise old philosopher lived. 'Old man,' he said, 'I hold a bird in my hands. Tell me, is it alive or is it dead?' And for a long moment the wise old philosopher looked deep into the eyes of the young man and then said, 'That, my son, is up to you.'

"My conclusion: Tomorrow’s skills will be learned from today’s toys.  We can help.  It’s up to us."

Thanks, Carl. I used to make gunpowder too. My receipe came from World Book. Back then, you could buy sodium nitrate and sulfur at the local drug store. I doubt you can any more. Still, apparently there are more interesting toys out there than I realized. Any other ideas?

Posted by Peter Welander on October 15, 2007 | Comments (0)