Everything has the potential to be used as a hammer and the founding core of any engineer’s life is in improving the arc of impact, or just working out a way to stop people from trying to use the thing as a hammer to begin with. It’s an application of weighted intent alleviated with the graces of gravity, it’s the milled, and finely adjusted measurement device that really wasn’t supposed to be swung in anger but the heft of its quality had often been the first thing that came to hand after the bloody cut still wasn’t at ninety degrees. Precision and line drawings are no match for blunt force, and the fizz of an implement hurled across the workshop gave punctuation to the string of swear words that followed unbound by conversational syntax; these creative applications of use are an eventuality that every engineer should consider and should be encouraged to take part in–at least for their own sanity.
The problem solving process is a simple one: ever wonder how the first axe handle got made? Innocent question, but with an engineer’s way of thinking it all becomes unstuck: a complete axe = a handle (wood) + a head (stone) this all makes perfect sense until you’re looking for something to cut down a branch for the handle.
Some become blocked by the appearance of a problem, so completely thrown by a step that can’t be skipped around that the process becomes a blur and every action around it is now a pit-trap pertaining to further obstacles; A metric log-jam of mental interconnectedness that is drafted up in imperial. Others, the dangerous, curious few, are inclined to take the problem apart, often losing half the screws in their attempts to just understand how the damn thing operates. The engineer is always blamed in these moments of failure, their equations never foreseeing the cutting of costs, their over-planning not expecting the under-planning of application, A myriad of hands all attempting to use a process as a different function.
The truly great engineer sees process as a speed-bump lining the road to a breakthrough; the end goal is a mobius-like blur that, while its shape exists as formless, the intention is one of improvement. What is a knot of yarn but an incorrectly tangled scarf? Was this coffee mug supposed to be water soluble or is that a better way to ensure that the cup is not left on a bench to be forgotten? Problems like these are adjacent solutions of a state changing into an often more fragmented one.
An idea begins like a mallee tea party, a white page of mocking emptiness that becomes locked in a stasis of time as life around it accelerates, its captive sits alone not realising the time travel that they are currently undertaking. So too in think tanks, time does then slow, a group of similarly unfocused minds all attempting to explain the same intent.
To plan is dangerous, to not plan even moreso. A ream of A3 paper lurks unthreatening while at rest in its quire, but when placed upon a drafting table the neat rectangle of white takes on a haunting visage of daunting potential that the looming call of discarded landfill sings to tired hands, still trying to work gold from clay. Half-sketches are left as waste and then later found as worrying details, in the search of an idea buried.
Those who would rather err on the side of caution choose not to umm on the side of the idiots and these considered few read the manual when a problem appears. They are the all too rare operators who look to these books in search of answers that weren’t apparent after a cursory look. A garbled mess of post head-scratch musings, the wondering of is that right? that befalls to these books carrying their words in their do-s and don’t-s all scrawled out in dot form. No fear can be captured quite like finding the French instructions to be singular, no joy greater than finding an overlooked switch. Of course welding glasses should be listed in that friendly kind of mandatory way, but the boffins now sitting in the medical room all seem to have the burden of obscured hindsight, even when asked if they had glanced up at the big red sign. Injury should be the first concern for any engineer, not only should the safety of the operator be taken into account but it should be a lingering memory that if misfortune appears, the aforementioned operator will often seek out the engineer and malady becomes repercussive. A second consideration should then fall to misintention, no matter the guard or enclosure, both fingers and water will always find a way to grasp at spinning blade or live busbar. Well drawn hands can push past a well plotted tolerance and with the help of an apprentice, who attacks every problem with enthusiasm alone, there is always something to break.
But what is the point of a humble engineer?
Are they simply clever sods stuck in the loop of creating for creating’s sake? Hardly, no design is put to paper for pointless gain. At schools the pencils of students etch onto graph paper while the saws lay dormant on the walls. What many of the budding woodworkers see to be boring, one or two seem to understand, they see the object through the scratch of graphite and they wonder…
‘I wonder if this can be used as a hammer?’
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 