I was seven years old when I stood next to an engineer. He was sitting on the right side of the cab of a wood-burning steam locomotive hauling fresh-cut pine logs in Louisiana. That looked like a nice job, though the heat was a bit much in August. The next year, we went to a different lumber mill and I got to climb around the retired locos.
I soon was into Dad's tool chest and recall using a star drill to make a hole through the basement wall. I was ten when I got a bench jigsaw, twelve when I got a wood lathe and drill press. I quickly found that a wood lathe can turn brass. Thirteen when I got my first metal lathe and started turning steel. I started collecting and repairing antique clocks and firearms. Somewhere in the next few years, I found out what the other kind of engineers do and went to a good school which included opportunities to see and operate real grownup industrial machine tools and take plant tours along with the book work. In my spare time, I learned to weld, repair watches and make investment cast jewelry.
At twenty-three, I got a job testing truck parts, which included watching other guys using tools and machines while I directed, planned the operations and use of the equipment and wrote up the results. I soon noticed that many of the other young engineers had no experience in using tools or machines and seemed to know nothing of manufacturing processes. I wondered how they ever got the idea of going to engineering school. I took every opportunity to go across the road to the truck plant. I could walk through the forge shop, heat treat shop, axle and transmission machining and assembly department and see entire trucks built from parts to driving off the line. I watched and learned. I saved my money and bought more and better machines and taught myself to use them. Another definition of engineer is one who builds engines. I have done that, but I never did get to drive a locomotive.
I still wonder how engineers that don't use hand tools or run machine tools can be expected to design products that must be made with machine tools. By the time I retired, the new engineers were well-versed in CAD, but many still seemed to have no idea how those colored lines on the screen got to become truck parts. I got comfortable with using computers over the years, but managed to escape the need to learn CAD and never did work at a drafting board.
Larry