Instruments of problematic accuracy

I have been enjoying the discussion attempting to define an engineer and thought you might like the following. It’s a bit tongue in cheek and something I picked up at the start of my engineering apprenticeship in 1959.

An engineer is one who passes as an exacting expert on the strength of being able to turn out with prolific fortitude and supreme confidence, strings of incomprehensible formulae, calculated with micrometric precision, from extremely vague assumptions, which are based on debatable figures, acquired from inconclusive tests and incomplete experiments, carried out with instruments of problematic accuracy by persons of doubtful reliability, with the particular purpose of confusing all those not of the fraternity.

This of course was before computers and electronic calculators and the age of that glorious aid – the slide rule, otherwise known as ‘The Guessing Stick’. Happy days.