how do engineers create new machines that couldn’t be done before? How do they discover or come up with new technologies?
In: 2
Short answer: Countless hours of relentless study.
They also build on each other’s work.
It took a bunch of hard work and genius for the steam engine to be invented, but once it existed a bunch of people created machines powered by a steam engine.
When electricity was discovered, people started working on ways to harness it’s power. Once they figured that out, they started working on ways to store it (batteries), and generate it. With electricity, computers became possible. With computers, more complex math became possible. With more complex math, better computers became possible. It keeps going.
It’s the same as a child learning math. They first need to learn to count before they can add, and they keep building on the skills.
Typically; a new physical phenomena is described, or the manufacturing technologies for a given device or machine or whatever is made small enough, cheap enough, or ubiquitous enough to be applied in a new way.
So someone somewhere invents a better wheel, and then everyone else either uses that better wheel or uses the ideas that went into creating that better wheel to create other things.
For a more concrete example; the idea of engine control units is really old, particularly with old mechanical computation systems from the ’40s, but it didn’t really catch on until the ’70s when microprocessors became a thing, and thus a relatively small computational system that you could put in a car became economically and technologically feasible. From there, all sorts of new engine and emissions control technologies were added on, because now you could have a computer controlling all of it.
One factor is technologies are interdependent.
Horse riding wasn’t invented before horse breeding because riding a horse that is pony size into a battle was just ridiculous. And horse breeding was slown down by the low horse request of the era.
Wheelbarrows are pretty simple, but if you have no roads, they are useless. And to make a road you need road tech and so on, and a reason to make a road.
Civil drones are a very recent thing, not because sticking 4 fans to a light body was any difficult. Battery weight, electric motor digital control, and optical gyroscope weren’t there before. In year 2000 the same drone electronics would have been a good 5 kg in weight and 50k or more dollars worth. And good luck fly that with a lead battery. If you tried that back then you would have been described as a lunatic.
So the main duty of an engineer that invents something is basically do 2+2 when finally there are enough tech bits to make a concept work. He concept itself may be there and proved failed for a long time.
There are countless failed invention that re-emerged once the accessory tech bits were ready. Take DaVinci works, he basically wrote an enciclopedia of things that couldn’t ever work at that time but they were all pretty good ideas.
One factor is technologies are interdependent.
Horse riding wasn’t invented before horse breeding because riding a horse that is pony size into a battle was just ridiculous. And horse breeding was slown down by the low horse request of the era.
Wheelbarrows are pretty simple, but if you have no roads, they are useless. And to make a road you need road tech and so on, and a reason to make a road.
Civil drones are a very recent thing, not because sticking 4 fans to a light body was any difficult. Battery weight, electric motor digital control, and optical gyroscope weren’t there before. In year 2000 the same drone electronics would have been a good 5 kg in weight and 50k or more dollars worth. And good luck fly that with a lead battery. If you tried that back then you would have been described as a lunatic.
So the main duty of an engineer that invents something is basically do 2+2 when finally there are enough tech bits to make a concept work. He concept itself may be there and proved failed for a long time.
There are countless failed invention that re-emerged once the accessory tech bits were ready. Take DaVinci works, he basically wrote an enciclopedia of things that couldn’t ever work at that time but they were all pretty good ideas.
The short answer- We really don’t.
What seems like a giant leap is actually a collection of a lot of small steps by many different people taken towards a common goal.
99% of the work is the integration of many different ideas, not the ideas themselves. We don’t “come up” with new technology as much as we assemble it out of the amalgamation of small ideas we and the team we work with have picked up along the way.
Every once in a while you get a cool “A Ha!” moment, but those are a small cherry on top of a big Sundae.
Most of the cutting edge ideas come from academia and R&D. Our job is mostly to put them to good use.
The short answer- We really don’t.
What seems like a giant leap is actually a collection of a lot of small steps by many different people taken towards a common goal.
99% of the work is the integration of many different ideas, not the ideas themselves. We don’t “come up” with new technology as much as we assemble it out of the amalgamation of small ideas we and the team we work with have picked up along the way.
Every once in a while you get a cool “A Ha!” moment, but those are a small cherry on top of a big Sundae.
Most of the cutting edge ideas come from academia and R&D. Our job is mostly to put them to good use.
Typically; a new physical phenomena is described, or the manufacturing technologies for a given device or machine or whatever is made small enough, cheap enough, or ubiquitous enough to be applied in a new way.
So someone somewhere invents a better wheel, and then everyone else either uses that better wheel or uses the ideas that went into creating that better wheel to create other things.
For a more concrete example; the idea of engine control units is really old, particularly with old mechanical computation systems from the ’40s, but it didn’t really catch on until the ’70s when microprocessors became a thing, and thus a relatively small computational system that you could put in a car became economically and technologically feasible. From there, all sorts of new engine and emissions control technologies were added on, because now you could have a computer controlling all of it.
Typically; a new physical phenomena is described, or the manufacturing technologies for a given device or machine or whatever is made small enough, cheap enough, or ubiquitous enough to be applied in a new way.
So someone somewhere invents a better wheel, and then everyone else either uses that better wheel or uses the ideas that went into creating that better wheel to create other things.
For a more concrete example; the idea of engine control units is really old, particularly with old mechanical computation systems from the ’40s, but it didn’t really catch on until the ’70s when microprocessors became a thing, and thus a relatively small computational system that you could put in a car became economically and technologically feasible. From there, all sorts of new engine and emissions control technologies were added on, because now you could have a computer controlling all of it.
Latest Answers