Empire and D are in the news

[Walter Bright]

On 10/20/2021 3:47 PM, max haughton wrote:
> I mentioned this anecdote to a friend of mine who is aiming to work in 
> aerospace, he didn't actually believe me. Totally unimaginable today with all 
> these finite element solvers available that run really fast on commodity 
> hardware, although I think the art/intuition of sitting down and actually doing 
> the maths on some mechanical component might be going the way of the dodo.

In the flight controls group, I was probably the first engineer to use a 
computer. I wrote my own programs to do things like matrix inversions.

The rest used calculators, and a method of using mechanical drafting tools to do 
calculations, which I had no idea how to do.

The 757 was the last airplane to have a full size wooden mockup built. The 
mockup was to check clearances so that two assemblies didn't occupy the same 
space. Internal space is awfully tight on a jet, and everything has to fit in 
somewhere.

Computerized drafting was coming, but it wasn't good enough at the time. Pen and 
ink had its last stand with the 757.