Many thanks for the link to "Der Letze seines Standes".

I know that BBC iPlayer is difficult to get work outside the UK but does this link work outside Germany?

**LINK**

It´s about a guy repairing tower/church clocks based in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Wiki has a list of some of the series (in German). some are available on YouTube and some direct from http://www.br.de (but as I said I´m not sure if you can get the latter outside DE). The locations range from Berlin to northern Italy and Vienna..

The series came from Bayern Alpha, now ARD-Alpha a documentary channel set up by Bavarian TV

BBC made several programmes in the Handmade series – no music, no voiceover, part of their "Slow TV" movement. The ones I still have on my digi-corder are on chair making, knife making and glass. Not available on i-Player but on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ice3crrwtqo&list=PLks5KymylUJgm-LhvWwHp9ahePg_2xKG8

I think this is the difference in attitude towards engineering between UK and Germany.

I grew up in Birmingham in the 50s. Not everybody was an 'Engineer' of course but an awful lot of people, my relatives included, worked in industry and had some sort of empathy with it.

Thanks to successive governments, financial services became the god.

My observation of the antics of a lot of todays generation (not all of course) can be put down to a complete lack of understanding of anything remotely technical or practical, other than the latest Apps on their facebox..

A bit late in the day, but better late than never, (never quite understood the logic of 'too little too late&#39 the last few years has seen the realisation that we don't have engineers any more.

Bill D.

I'm going to suggest a different picture. In the past far too many British firms featured obsolete tooling and production methods, over-staffing, low productivity, reliance on vanishing local raw materials, overpaid workers, incompetent management, uncompetitive and outdated products, unacceptable damage to the environment (as in Aberfan), spanish practices, institutionalised petty theft, demarcation disputes, horse-play, high accident rates, subsidies, poor customer relationships and a die-hard refusal to accept anything new like the metric system.

However, now that all the unprofitable ventures have gone what's left is hot stuff. British engineering is world class and making a solid living. It's done it by shifting to things like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, design, project management, and telecomms etc. Engineering changes the world and then engineering has to adapt again. Although low profit manufacturing and heavy engineering has mostly been outsourced, it's very wrong to suggest that 'we don't have engineers any more'.

Speaking of today's generation I was chatting to my nephew today. He's 23. He was telling me what he's doing at work with 5G. High-technology – no screwdrivers, tape measures, lathes, welders, oil or heavy lifting involved. Like the steam engine, electricity, and wireless 5G is expected to be transformational. No-one knows how much value it will deliver, but think trillions. Much more profitable than, say, Shipbuilding ever was.

The past was a wonderful place but it's daft to want to recreate it. The future is different. Youngsters always build on foundations provided by granddad, but they'd be very unwise to copy his methods. Their skills and interests are focussed on what happens next. You have to judge them by today's needs, not the standards of yesteryear.

Dave

Dave

Well said Dave.

I agree documentaries now in the UK are poor, over dubbed with music so you can't hear what's being said. Trouble is the average person has the attention span less that an goldfish so the producers adds in rubbish and all they are interested in is viewer numbers. I blame the cop out degrees of media studies that were all the rage over the last few years. Was James Burke any better though?

Having just retired from 45 years in engineering (electronic comms) I was exasperated by the lack of vision and forward planning that the senior management showed in the last few years with no youngsters taken on in the last 5 years. When the exodus of 60 to 65 year olds happen they started to panic.

Gripe over

Hugh

Some good points made in this topic, but, to cut to the chase, there are no good detail technical programmes because of the dire quality of TV in the UK. Producers are closely pressed to make progs that appeal to a younger audience and that audince is perceived as being completely turned off by anything technical or requiring thought in a technical sense.

Mr Blair said we would have 200 channels…which has been a complete disaster due to there already being probs with filling up the orignal 3, so a complete "dumbing down" happened TV producers would defend themselves by insisting that they must chase a young audience who have been brought up to look down their noses at anything to do with 'making' or crafts and hands on technology etc.

Back in the 60's and 70's it was often claimed that TV had killed off books and reading and that there would soon be no more new titles. The same was suggested for the future of magazines. however, if you go to any branch of WH Smiths you can now see magazines on every cubject many of them crafts/making/technical, so the market is clearly there still it's just the out of touch attitude of TV executives and producers who have their own problems staying relevant to their business……much of their business now being taken over by the incredible growth of YouTube….a lost opportuntity if there ever was one!

.

Allegedly … somewhat less than the time it takes to do a circuit of the bowl:

Ergo, it is not aware that it is imprisoned.

MichaelG.

A die hard refusal to accept any thing new like the metric system? I was taught the metric system whilst at school in the sixties. I have used it all trough my engineering career as have most if not all of my contemporaries. The BA screw system is metric based. I don't remember a single instance of any professional engineer refusing to use it.

Old issues of Model Engineer from before the first world war contain designs using metric dimensions. Many, many, questions have been asked about cutting metric threads with imperial lead screws in books ,magazines and engineering works all through the twentieth century. In locomotive works engines have been executed in metric dimensions. I.C engines, especially motor bikes have always had metric pistons and been expressed as so many c.c. from the very early twentieth century.

Much of this before the ISO standards were put in place. The main obstacle to the adoption of the metric system generally, came from the usual place……… POLITICIANS, not engineers.

I think this is the difference in attitude towards engineering between UK and Germany.

Pretty much the reason. It's POLICY.

The 1980s saw unprecedented levels of de-skilling in the UK and this culture permeated throughout the entire government system

If you go into a new museum the place is dedicated to foreign cultures and the amazing engineering displays that used to abound have all but vanished

It's a top down cultural thing and engineering is at the back of the queue

I have doubts that many politicians want to go back to the general working population having too many skills which meant ordinary people had too much power

Far easier to use cheap overseas skilled labour