I missed the Staff meeting, but the Memos showed that Tim Wescott
wrote on Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:41:06 -0700 in
rec.crafts.metalworking :
Christopher Tidy wrote:
Hi folks,

I apologise if the title is a bit of a mouthful. But I've been thinking
about this issue for some time, and would like to seek the opinion of
people here. You frequently hear people complain about the quality of
modern products and say things like "They don't make them like they used
to". But it has occurred to me that maybe older products look good today
because only the good products have stood the test of time, and the poor
products have been thrown away years ago. What do people think? Were
products better in general back in the fifties, say, or were there a
mixture of good and bad? I'd be interested to hear people's opinions, as
I'm not old enough to remember myself.

Best wishes,

Chris

Having experienced some antique furniture that was pure crap from the
day it was made.

Yes, I think a lot of it is just that what we see has been sorted by its
quality.

The cheap/bad stuff wore out years ago.

There is also the issue of "over engineering". My understanding
is that now adays we can get the numbers crunched closer to optimal,
and the result is that rated capacity tends to be closer to the actual
capacity than in "the old days". E.g. you could run something 120% of
'max' because of the "margin". Or rather you ran it at 80% of
theoretical capacity. Nowadays, you run stuff at 95% of theoretical
capacity, so you can only over load it by 4%.
There is a story that Henry Ford sent engineers out to the junk
yards to find out what ports were not broken on junked Model Ts. Turns
out that it was the king pins. So he figured they were "overbuilt"
and reduced their heft. Saved on production costs (fifty cents time 2
times N units per year= real money), but people are saying "they don't
make them like that anymore".

And as was noticed, companies build what they think they can sell.
If you've never had a real X, you don't know what you are missing.


pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
"I had just been through hell and must have looked like death warmed
over walking into the saloon, because when I asked the bartender
whether they served zombies he said, ‘Sure, what'll you have?'"
from I Hear America Swinging by Peter DeVries