Engineers on the Silver Screen and the Little Screen......... 2

[lacajun]

http://www.nspe.org/PEmagazine/11/pe_0811_Screen.html

Auditions anyone? Don't forget your pocket protector, slide rule, and horn rimmed glasses to "look" the part. If this flies, the messaging will be interesting to see.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[MikeMech]

Of course, the Star Trek engineers of every series. owg, I still remember Scotty drinking some sort of alien robot under the table to help free the Enterprise (Mudd's Women?), and getting into a bar fight with Klingons to defend the ship's honor (Trouble with Tribbles).

Also Kaylee from Firefly.

Reed Richards? For a scientist, he sure can cobble together impressive equipment in a hurry.

Buckaroo Banzai comes to mind as well: scientist, test pilot, neurosurgeon, rock star.

Nevil Shute has a book, The Trustee from the Toolroom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustee_from_the_Toolroom,

that I'd love to see made into a movie. While not strictly an engineer, the main character uses his technical knowledge to schmooze his way halfway around the world on a mission to recover diamonds for his recently orphaned niece.

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Bottom line - I guess cutting people up (surgeons) or saving them from the gallows is just not as sexy as building a bridge or skyscraper..

Oh well - I love what I do and if I don't do it right I will end up meeting the two people mentioned above.

 

[cranky108]

I think one of the second string on Myth busters is an electrical engineer. Also was listed in dream jobs in Spectrum. I just can't spell his name.

 

[jmw]

I thought we already mentioned No Highway in the Sky...
Oh, maybe that was in the reading list thread .....

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ewh]

I mentioned this one in an earlier thread, but liked it enough to mention it again - Transatlantic Tunnel (1935).

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[Debaser]

Having thought about this I could see a TV series in the vein of a 'makeover' show, with a team of highway/traffic engineers (and possibly a landscape architect...cough) brought in by a community (or even just a street of neighbours) to either improve safety or just the quality of the amenity.

The show would of course need to be filmed like those build your own home programmes, ie over several years, with the presenter interviewing the residents and the professionals on each visit.

"So...no progress from six months ago...when you hadn't progressed anywhere from the six months before that...Slow process this civil engineering lark, isn't it?"

 

[cranky108]

Would you do better with something like "build it bigger" hosted by say an engineer?

Or a better title "Build a Utility".

 

[drawoh]

Debaser,

There actually are some possibilities here. There was the Troubleshooter program on the BBC, although I don't think the guy was an engineer. There is a good parody of the program up on YouTube. His visit to Morgan Motor Company was close to a parody. Buying a Morgan is not a rational decision. Morgan occupies a weird market niche, and it is hard to discuss them rationally.

Would it be professional and ethical to have an engineering program on TV equivalent to Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay? Ginia Bellafante is quoted on Wikipedia saying that "the thrill of watching Mr. Ramsay is in witnessing someone so at peace with his own arrogance." Bar Rescue with John Taffer is similar.

Product Design for Manufacture and Assembly by Boothroyd, Dewhurst and Knight provides a lot of design case histories. This might make for interesting TV. I have idea what Boothroyd, Dewhurst and Knight are like in person. Would you be willing to have them call you an idiot on prime time TV?

JHG

 

[SnTMan]

Well, yeah, if the money's right

 

[TXStructural]

Independence Day - Jeff Goldblum's character is an engineer, who reprograms the alien vessel on the fly. And isn't he also an engineer in The Fly?

I like the idea of an Engineering Office Nightmares, where the pedantic engineer constantly faces deadlines, his arch nemesis, The Architect, and his constant foil, the contractor. Shop drawing drama, and the true-to-life CAD guy who breaks keyboards and mice from beating them when the principal backchecks the mark-ups from the third iteration of backchecks (a real character from my past.) Or the CAD guy who simply was too dumb or too inept to do the simplest of tasks involving anything but drawing a line on paper.

 

[owg]

on the fly....in The Fly. Very nice juxtaposition.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[stanweld]

How about "Carbine Williams" again starring Jimmy Stewart (as I recall).

 

[Debaser]

I like the idea of an Engineering Office Nightmares, where the pedantic engineer constantly faces deadlines, his arch nemesis, The Architect, and his constant foil, the contractor.

Surely the Contractor is the recurring comic relief?

Every time you issue drawings they say "Why I've built more o'these* than you've had hot dinners" (*where 'these' is anything and everything), before calling you three days later asking how you are going to get them out of their mess.




(Ducks and covers ;-) )

 

[Debaser]

Completely agree about our nemesis though.

I think that, when they graduate, architecture students should be made to wear top hats instead of mortar boards and given stick-on moustaches to go with the capes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Villainc.svg

 

[SnTMan]

Debaser, I've not heard that expressions before, love it.