DEANO DESIGNS
Dugald Cameron
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Concorde
The purpose of Dugald's talk was to inform us about the purpose of PDE and the importance of bridging the gap between creativity and engineering. He did this by talking about all the great design engineering innovations that were used in the making of the legendary, Concorde.
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Concorde
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I am going to be brutally honest here. I don't think that Concorde was a great design. Now, let me just clarify, it was an incredible innovation and achieved something that many thought was impossible but the actual application was really poor. I mean I never got to experience one up close but my mum saw and heard one when she was a kid. She always said it was incredible, but incredibly loud:
Just listen to that racket. Imagine living there and having to deal with that noise everyday. So I guess its not that it is a bad design. It's just that people couldn't live with it.
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Dugald then talked about the tragedy of the Concorde crash at Charles do Gaulle. He said that a lot of people blamed the pilot because it was an easy out for them but that when a plane crashes it tends to be multiple reason for it and in this case it was exactly that. A combination of an overweight plane and a design oversight that led to the engine exploding from runway fragments flying into the fuel tank and breaking the fuselage:
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It's a really interesting point that Dugald makes and can be applied to design as a whole. As humans we often try to blame one design feature for the failure of something but in most cases it is multiple things going wrong. A perfect storm is probably a more accurate way of describing it.
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"Civilisation is an Engineering Manifestation" - Dugald Cameron
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What a quote! I think it is bang on! Engineering does encompass all in my opinion. That's why you get so many people that don't actually understand what engineers, it's because it is everywhere and therefore hard to comprehend its importance. Industrial infrastructure, healthcare, transport, and an infinite amount of other examples. They all impact society and I think thats what Dugald was trying to get across. He was incredibly passionate about this point and you could tell this through the way he spoke. It was a great oportunity to hear someone with experience and understanding of the world in two completely different eras.