Engineering progress — 1962

Under the spur of the race into space and the persisting cold war, engineering developments during the past year continued to unfold at an ever quickening rate. Breakthroughs are imminent in a number of fields: energy conversion (an MHD device, shown on the cover of this issue, recently developed 1.3 million watts); the laser, whose development has given a glimpse of vast communication highways previously unseen and also promises to revolutionize the metal-processing industry within a few years; and the superconductivity phenomenon, whose boundary of potential applications steadily expands. In addition, such disciplines as bionics and medical electronics are growing in stature and in autonomy.