Engineering eye

News, rumours and gossip from the world of engineering

Hovering about: SR.N5 has been acknowledged for its role in history

Ah, fond reminiscences as this season of mist descends on Eye Towers and glorious summer becomes but a memory. To think, for example, of school trips between the young Eye’s home on the south coast and Calais: the sluggish waters, squawks of gulls, watching schoolchildren vomit if the passage was rough. Best of all was the hovercraft, and the pleasure of noisy trips upon it. So Eye was delighted to see this distinctly British innovation honoured by the IMechE’s Engineering Heritage scheme, which has recognised that the Saunders-Roe Nautical 5 hovercraft deserves to take its place with the Vulcan bomber and Jaguar E-Type. The first production hovercraft was built 50 years ago and saw service mainly in the military and coastguard. It’s great to see SR.N5 acknowledged for its role in marine engineering history. But the Eye wonders which innovations launched over the past few years will be as fondly remembered in 50 years’ time. Any suggestions?

The Eye was disappointed to see baking champ and space satellite engineer Rob booted out of The Great British Bake Off after a tense five weeks. Rob came unstuck in biscuit week, when judge Mary Berry deemed his Dalek-shaped showstopper “clumsy” and was unimpressed by his edible glue. Or maybe Berry was angered that an engineer could honour an extraterrestrial race of mutants that had such a fundamental design flaw - daleks were famous for their fear-inducing nature, until they had to climb a flight of stairs. Whatever the reason, Rob was well and truly “eggsterminated” and booted off the show.

And finally, a touch of schadenfreude is perhaps the only appropriate response to the iPhone owners who took the plunge of downloading its new operating system, only to fall for a spoof internet ad that claimed such a move would waterproof their beloved devices. “Update to iOS 7 and become waterproof… In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone’s power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry”, the ad promised. Cue outrage from those who had given their phones a soaking in response to the joke and found the claim sorely lacking in reality. Big and hard the techno-anarchists who come up with such pranks are probably not, but they managed to outsmart several iPhone owners.