Engineers Week 2022

A look back at Engineers Week 2022

We like to take Engineers Week to offer a more personal look at our engineering team. They’re always working hard behind the scenes, developing, testing and improving our electro-pneumatic control devices.

And without a doubt, they are an interesting group with a lot of different experiences. In past Engineers Weeks, we’ve asked them about why they became engineers and to offer their best advice for young or early career engineers. This year, we changed direction a bit and asked them to identify their favorite feat of engineering. The only prompt they received was that it didn’t have to be related to their work at Proportion-Air.

Their answers didn’t disappoint, and we learned a lot about some engineering achievements that may not be on everyone’s radar. Check them out on our social channels (their names are linked to the LinkedIn post for their feat) to see their explanations their own words. We’ve provided a resource within each of their topics so you can explore a little more.

Tim Gatlin – Vought F4U Corsair

The F4U Corsair served US efforts as a fighter-bomber aircraft chiefly during World War II and the Korean War.

James Frazier – RepRap Project

The entire premise of RepRap was to create a 3D printer that could self-replicate, be low cost and available to anyone. It’s been extremely successful.

Nathan Simon – Automobiles

A world without automobiles isn’t one that Nathan wants to live in.

Dave Harvey – Rocketdyne F1 engine system

The fact that this hasn’t been reproduced is possibly Dave’s favorite aspect of this feat. He also added that the engineers who developed the Rocketdyne F1 used slide rules in the engineering process.

Michael Yates – Arecibo Observatory

Definitely one of the more obscure answers we received, but the Arecibo Observatory, especially its giant telescope, provided data for decades on other planets, asteroids and comets while listening for radio waves from outside our galaxy.

Andrew Acol – Airplanes

Andrew gave a nod to the Wright Brothers in his reply. Many engineers and scientists laid the groundwork for the brothers to take that first successful flight.

Donnie Rice – Concorde Jet

If you’ve ever been on an international flight for what felt like a lifetime and realized you were only halfway there, supersonic speed sounds pretty appealing.

Jon Lister – Air Conditioning

While some of the responses take a little digging to understand the correlation to daily life, appreciating the feat that is air conditioning is something that many of us share.

Bob Leonard – Antikythera Mechanism

Another submission that was not as familiar as cars or planes, the Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient Greek astronomical calculator.