Motivated by the massive changes that have occurred in the intervening years between the two publications and how today's world seems so very different from the late 1980s, this year we are introducing a new page at the back of the magazine – This month 25 years ago. The clue is very obviously in the title. This page replaces our Last Word item, which has run for well over 10 years now.
Just as the centenary issue was a challenge in condensing 100 years into just a few pages, so one page can't capture everything published in what was then a two-issues-a-month magazine. But it will contain three, four or five nuggets that shine a light on how the production engineering world was, as viewed by Machinery, all those years ago. It also includes events of the day that month – political, technological, historical, sporting and more – to add a more general frame to the information drawn from the pages of Machinery.
When we looked ahead 25 years ago in the 75th anniversary issue, our predictions were hit and miss, as we extrapolated from what we knew. As I believe United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: There are known knowns; known unknowns; and unknown unknowns.
Sounds a bit silly, but the last one simply means there are things we don't know we don't know. I highlighted the same thing in the centenary issue, saying you can't extrapolate into the future about things you don't know.
The web was just such a case in point when Machinery's 75th anniversary issue was written in 1987. Sir Tim Berners-Lee was three years away from his successful application of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) over the Internet, which did exist, but was not a generally used capability in 1987. As for smartphone apps, well.
We will see how much the landscape has changed, as we travel through the years, reflecting on 25 years past. But this will not be done out of any longing for times past or with any overly romantic view of yesterday. Today is different, yes, and tomorrow will be different again. Currently, there is positive change taking place in UK manufacturing, with a move to high value manufacturing seemingly well underway and variously supported – and, more importantly, recognised – by government.
What the future will hold, as always, is ultimately unknown. But our new page will definitely be able to look back with authority. I hope you enjoy it. (See here)
First published, Machinery, January, 2013
