Inaugural address. Electrical manufacture¿today and tomorrow

Engineers differ from pure scientists in being concerned with products which have to be made. Manufacturing processes are therefore of vital importance to the electrical engineer, for they determine the practicability and economic possibilities of his designs. During the last ten years, manufacturing processes have begun to undergo fundamental changes, owing very largely to electronic developments. Numerical control will eventually alter our machine shops. Computers will handle all the vast quantity of paperwork, costing and accounting. Semiconductors are becoming of increasing importance, and the processes by which they are made are developing rapidly in sophistication. Electrical-engineering graduates who enter factory life, however, can make contributions in other areas than these, for, with the changes which are bound to come, the application of their intellectual approach to the multifarious problems they will meet can make a real contribution to our future. It is a contribution which the IEE should encourage.