When you can remember working from the original blue print drawings
When you can remember the smell of ammonia on the "new" system of printing drawings
When you can remember the dedicated print room which produced the drawings, (in strict order) the people who worked there and their names
When you can remember that you still have your original slide rule
When you still use your slide rule because you're more confident with it (you are still not sure about these hand held calculators - what happens if the battery dies!)
When you can remember using log tables for calculations
When you can remember how to use log tables and lay out the calculations in neat rows and columns
When you can remember your favorite books of tables with fraction to decimal conversions charts
When you still use those same conversion charts
When you have committed them to memory, but still use the chart as a check
When you can remember the first Engineering Office calculator being a valve set and needing a 10 minute warm up before it could be used
When you can remember that the (above) calculator could - add, subtract, multiply and divide and if you were very clever you could find a square root by multiple approximations
When you can remember charts with square and cube roots and all types of other useful data being readily available
When you can remember working in an Engineering office where ”everyone” smoked and the air was so thick with smoke that you could not see from one side of the office to the other
When you can remember that there where always pipe smokers in the office and you can still smell the aromas of the pipe and cigarette smoke
When you can remember using tools and implements which were marked with the last 2 digits of the year of manufacture and the whole year started with 18 eg 96 was 1896
When you can remember watching that rusty old piece of machinery being carted off to the scrap yard and remembering when it was new and just being installed
When you can remember using drawing boards with machines using the parallelogram counterweight systems that where never square
When you can remember Project Managing jobs without JSA's, Hazard Studies Work Method Statements or the like
When you can remember being able to climb a ladder without a "Work At Heights Permit"
When you can remember the crane dog man putting his foot in the hook and getting hoisted up by the crane and it was a perfectly acceptable practice
When you can remember an Erasing Shield not being a Star Wars Protective Device to Erase Missiles fired by the enemy
When you can remember - when that concrete slab (or similar) would be physically broken up, loaded and carted away by a team of workers in about a 5 day time span. Today the whole job takes 1 man with an excavator and truck about half a day
When you can remember rivets being the standard method of joining metal
When you can then remember stick welding being the “new way” to join metal
When you can remember your car having a starting handle and you can remember needing to use it
When you can remember your new car had a side valve engine
When you can remember de coking your 2 stroke motor cycle
When you can remember that the Drawing Numbering system has changed many times over the years and you are the only one left at the company who knows each system - intimately
When you can remember seeing a cad system for the very first time and thinking - "this will never catch on"
When you can remember marvelling at the very first fax machine you ever saw and now the young guys tell you that the fax is dead – nobody uses that old technology these days
When you can remember seeing your first mobile phone. It was the size of a large toolbox and weighed as much. Plus it had a very limited battery life and range
When you can remember taking grainy Polaroid pictures which could barely be understood and boasting of the technology. Whilst paying exorbitant prices for the film
When you can remember the teletext machines being "state of the art" for instant communication & you were under strict instruction to use the minimum words in your messages
When you can remember a hacksaw being the common method used to cut steel (and not an angle grinder) - and as a junior Engineer you practiced and practiced (until your arm felt as though it would drop off ) attempting to get that straight cut. Without breaking the blade
When you can remember using a cold chisel to cut a chamfer on steel and the pain of a misdirected hammer blow, - How many bruises and broken bones did this task produce ?
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