Lego Vs. Meccano & Engineering Knowledge

Anonymous In Indy writes "How much of our learning comes from the toys we play with? Nobel prize winner Sir Harry Kroto (Chemistry, 1996) feels that the falling popularity of Meccano and the rise of Lego is inextricably linked to "the demise of British engineering." "Meccano teaches engineering and architectural skills in a way that Lego doesn't. If we had more Meccano, we would have railways that worked. There would be more engineers with better basic understanding." The Sunday Telegraph has the complete story. (USAians note: Meccano = Erector Set."

Comments

Re:Well mate, here's a hint

[Tet]

If any infrastructure of national importance is outsourced to a private entity you're fucked! The moment this happens profits are more important then the public...

This is simply not true. There is nothing wrong with privatisation per se. The problem comes when you don't have sufficient guards against abuse. That essentially means a regulatory body with the power to act in the best interests of the consumer. Here in the UK, we did the privatisation bit, but forgot to give the regulators enough power to do anything useful. Hence the current mess with trains, phones and half a dozen other utilities. The regulators need to be able to do whatever it takes to protect the consumer, up to and including the financial ruin of the company running the service. Until that happens, things are only going to get worse :-(

Legos = Kids, Meccanos = Older Kids

[scotpurl]

Um, if you'd actually had kids, you'd realise that the point of Legos is to give small kids (the type who'd promptly eat all those little nuts and bolts) something that takes some motor skills, but not that many motor skills. It's one step up from building blocks. After Legos, you progress to Tinker Toys, then to Meccanos (called "Erector Sets" in the States).

The failure of the British Rail System is political in nature. Let's not shift the failings of politicians off onto engineers, and let's not get any more of that "you younger generations are causing the decline of civilisation" nonsense. The younger set didn't invent nukes, spread herpes and aids, or listen to Bryan Ferry.

Both had strong points, but...

[Kenneth]

on the whole, I liked Legos more. Why? Well, the erector set was far more challenging and interesting., but in order to join two simple objects, I had to dig through to find the parts, then sort through screws to find the proper length, then deal with my poor coordination to screw them together, crossthreading the nut onto the screw several times before I finally got it right. Then I could move on to the next one.

Although that IS very much how large engineering projects go, it is frustrating for younger people to have to deal with such things.

Legos do involve less thought, but trade that for quicker gratification. By the time I had joined a couple of parts with the erector set, I could have most of whatever I was building built out of legos.

Legos also made one think about structure. It is just in a much different way. Legos are inherently of inferior building structure (from the standpoint of structural integrity). You must there for think of how to build something strong enough that you can play with it afterward, while still making it look like what you want. This meant adding support blocks to various areas.

From the other posts here, I don't buy that the increase in the popularity of Legos is the cause of the decrease in quality of engineering in england. I would attribute it to other factors. I know nothing of the English education system, but if it is anything like the one here in the States, it must be getting pretty dismal.

I would wonder if the decrease in the quality of engineers and scientists in the U.S. matches the increase in schools allowing persecuition of anyone who would choose science, math or any other "geeky" subject over taking the minimum requirments, and goofing off the rest of the time.

The same applies to software

[Chairboy]

It seems that some of the points he makes could be applied towards programming as well. Lego is about putting components together using common interfaces, the Visual Basic way. Erector set is more about making those interfaces in the first place, the assembly way.

Have we reached a point in software development where instead of innovating genuinely new software, we just put together libraries other people have written and consider ourselves 'building on the shoulder of giants'?

Workers, throw down your common libaries, your DLLs, your open source! Innovate the way it was meant to happen, in PUTs and POPs! As your key to the revolution, please see the included copy of MASM. May the cpu tick be with you.

Well mate, here's a hint

[CaptainZapp]

Meccano teaches engineering and architectural skills in a way that Lego doesn't. If we had more Meccano, we would have railways that worked.

I take it the gentleman refers to the trainsystem in ol' Blighty and I agree that it doesn't really work well; however I don't really link that to the rising popularity of Lego and the decline of Meccano, but more to the following factors:

Miss Thatchers unprecedented privatisation blizzard, which essentially wrecked all British utilities, by guaranteeing end user prices beyond believe without the necessity to invest into maintenance.

I don't think it's really efficient to split a national train system into umpteen private companies, each one of them considering stockholder profit far more important then customer satisfaction, clean trains or even security. The safety record of the British rail system is probably the worst in Europe, which brings us to another issue:

Railtrack, the infamous privatized infrastructure company, with an abyssimal track record for just about everything. Now, please repeat loud and clear: If any infrastructure of national importance is outsourced to a private entity you're fucked! The moment this happens profits are more important then the public...

You see, the UK is living proove for this fact: Watersupply, train system, electricity is about the most expensive in Europe, but provides the most rotten service to their customers. Just ask a fireman about what they did to the water pressure in order to avoid fines for water leaked through the rotten pipe system and no! the fire brigades don't consider this to be funny.

So sir, the demise of the British rail system is not due to Lego or Meccano, but due to greed, buddy favors and quite likely corrupt politicians.

No need to thank me...

Don't blame Lego for Railtrack

[Elvis Maximus]

As I understand it, the problems with British railways have a lot less to do with engineering than with finance and administration. Maybe all those kids who grew/are growing up on Railway Tycoon will be better equipped to realize that half-assed privatization is not a good idea.

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Lego Dumbs It Down

[Yorrike]

When I was a lad (a mere 10 years ago), Lego came in lots of little pieces. I had to think of ways to make the overall shapes using lots of tiny parts so all of those parts made whatever I was building, work.

Nowadays, Lego comes in HUGE custom pieces. The sheer number of blocks you get in a Lego set these days is tiny compared to when I was 10. It involves a lot less thinking.

You could draw a parallel with Windows/Linux. Linux comes in lots of little pieces (in a big box of course), and to get your OS to work the way you want it to, you have to make sure all those pieces are compatable.

With Windows, you get huge custom pieces that can't be used for much else than the picture on the front of the box.

Modern Lego just dumbs the whole process down if you ask me.

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