I am getting EC&M magazine again in the hard copy and every other page is a full page Arlington Innovation ad telling you how many seconds this widget saves you per cable connector (or whatever). Is this really about saving seconds or is this "Any idiot can do the job with this"?
Is this just more dumbing down of the trade, at least the "labor" part of repetitive tasks. I saw guys who are not even close to electricians doing roughs. It looks like people are paying extra in materials so they can pay the worker less because he is so easy to replace. (Like Henry Ford)

Greg:

On a 'lite' side, I count seconds when in indulging in food!! HaHa!

To your point, yes, the proliferation of 'new and improved' products for our trade, and others can be overwhelming. Some of the items are IMHO, great, some are 'gadgets, and some are just another item in the supply chain.

A recent experience along this note; tenant fit-out, office space, 15 story bldg; 1/3 area of 1 floor. Owner specs out framing to be 2x3 metal studs, and the ECs that have worked in the building know that, and run circuits accordingly. A new EC takes this job, and runs the MC thru the stud keyways; (300.4) issues, and the "never failed for this b4";

I red tag it, tell him nail plates required, and leave. When he called me on phone, I suggested he look for the Caddy nail plates that just clip on to the face of the stud that are a real time saver. Now thats a GOOD widget!!

He was a very happy guy on re-inspection.

I agree there are some pretty handy things out there. I do think new products tend to be stripping away the skills necessary to do the work.

Greg,
I too have seen these "time-saving" apps.
Normally they are provided by people that have no idea how an electrical business runs.
Take for instance, over here, I have access to so many apps on my phone that will make my life so much easier, a lot of them have trackers built in,
I don't like that and I agree with what you say about this dumbing down people in the trade ("Let the apps think for me").
It's old-school people like us that never needed this before-hand, so why do people need this now?

It was a chance chat I had with an Inspector who does apprentice night classes here and she said that most of these kids wouldn't make it in the real world, without their phones.
The phone is your brain these days, that is really sad.

Trumpy
I hear you.
I used to teach Fault Current Calcs as a CE subject, and to apprentices at the local VoTech. I used the Bussmann methods, along with books and worksheets that they were kind enough to provide.

Now, there is an app!! Heck, why would you do it with a pencil and calculator, when you can do it on your phone?

Yes, the app is also Bussmann, and it's free.

Stay safe, and have a pleasant holiday.

I worry about the day when if a guy loses his phone, he becomes a useless fool, unable to do anything. Technology is great but you still need to understand what the numbers mean and be able to do a quick back of a doughnut box calculation that is in the ballpark. It is like people who can do the ohm's law math on their phone but they are still confused about why there is a red light on their ground bus bar.

I had an instructor decades ago that banned all calculators in class

further, he 'gave it to us' , should we answer in 'the ballpark'

~S~

Sparky,
I was quite "lucky" in that I missed out on having a calculator at high school, because they were so darned expensive to own at the time.

Your calculator back then was a pad of blank paper that you did your equations on, with a pencil and an eraser as I recall, I used the eraser, a LOT!

That held me in good stead for when I sat my Registration Theory Exams, where if you didn't show all of your calculations and the method as to how you came up with your answer, you failed that particular question, which a lot of candidates did, having been taught to use a calculator.

Don't get me wrong, I am no mathmetician (sp?) by anyone's stretch of the imagination, I am however able to work out most stuff in my head or on a sheet of paper if need be, a lot of that comes down to experience with reactive components, power factor and the like.
I have met "qualified" electricians here that can't work out basic Ohms law calculations without reaching for their phones.

I don't remember being allowed to use a calculator in High School, not sure if I even had one. I taught myself how to use a slide rule at some point, but couldn't use that in class either.

They let me use a slide rule ... am I dating myself

I remember a heavy emphasis on being able to show work. There's so much dependence on technology today that 'thinking' may soon be a lost art.

Once we got into high school math your "work" was more about the formulas you used or the thought process than the actual arithmetic. With a slide rule it is hard to get much under +/- 10% tho. At least with the cheap one I had and you still had to get the decimal point in the right place. That was usually the weak part in my process. When I got in the Navy school, (65) they were still pencil and paper. I never used a slide rule again. A few years later a 4 banger calculator was under $100 and I got one. (~72)

I never had or used a slide rule. Calculators were not allowed thru high school/trade school (64)

Basically, pencil and paper, and quite a lot in my head. That set off a few teachers, as I had the answers, but could not show the work. They showed me how to show the work!!

Today, I use the adding machine on my desk occasionally, but most of the time I do it manually. I like numbers!!

Greg,
You're definitely one up on me.
I tried to work out how to use a slide rule, it made no sense at all.
This was obviously back before we had things like the Internet to learn such things and I'd never really given it a second thought since.

Wasn't the slide rule the "be-all and have all" for the young engineers of the day, often worn as a fashion statement?
I can't think who would do that, but there you go, I asked the question.

John,
One thing needs to be said here, New Zealand back then, was a closed-minded place, we didn't get calculators in schools until 1987?, if you wanted to buy one off the shelf, they were a luxury item and taxed as one.

I dispute that you couldn't get closer than five or ten percent. Although it was necessary to interpolate between the marked graduations, 1 to 5 percent should be attainable.
However the need to place the decimal point by mental arithmetic opened up the possibility for major miscalculations.
At engineering college we used to refer to them as "guessing sticks".
I still have mine, and showed it to my teenage granddaughter who was totally bewildered by the principle.
Personally I was OK with straightforward arithmetic but when it came to logarithms my brain went into overload. - Also with calculus buts that's another story.
It never actually mattered though, because lots of engineering jobs demand organisational and communication skills rather than mathematical ones.
They don't tell you that at college.

That's also true in management processes. Project management software!! Put lies in and get lies out.
Shortly before I retired I had an argument with a project manager when I ended up saying " I don't care what your computer game says, If you haven't ordered the materials yet you don't want the workpeople next month".
Needless to say there was no happy outcome, the project was snafu and I was just glad retirement was close.

Geoff, I bet you had a better slide rule than I did. They could get quite fancy. Mine was a pretty rudimentary thing with a few scales and not the best printing but it would still do most of the stuff in High School. I don't think I had all of the trig stuff that a better slide rule had. (sine, cosine etc)
Once I saw my first scientific calculator, it was clear things would never be the same. I saw guys doing stuff that we were doing on a mainframe in Fortran and it was in the palm of his hand (but cost as much as my car). Then they were a couple hundred bucks and they were everywhere. I paid about 30 for the one I have a number of years ago. If you look at the Windows calculator select view and select the scientific option you have a real nice one.

Call me dumb or whatever, but I didn't know that this existed until quite recently and I mean like last year!
I accidentally found out that the iPhone also has a scientific calculator, if you tilt the phone horizontally when the Calculator app is open, it gives you a few extra functions.
I suspect that I'm also the last person to know this as well.

I never used the windows calculator until I got a keyboard that had the calculator key. It popped up by accident one day and I decided it was cool. Then I found the other functions, again by accident.

Trumpy:

No, you are not the last one. After reading the above comments, I opened calc in my phone!!

Surprise when the grandkids ask...."you didn't know that"

John,

You're not the last one either. I should pay more attention...

I just found out my work laptop/tablet is Windows 7, and the office PCs are updated to Windows 10.

Bless the IT Dept, that I just emailed for help for the laptop/tablet

Bill,
Did you also know that when you open the "weather" app on your iPad and hold it over your head when it's raining, it turns into a compact, yet high tech umbrella?

Now you're playin with me Mike !!


My grandkids sometimes can't believe what I don't know. But I'm sure I know a lot of things they need to learn.

Bill

To be honest, Bill,
I've given up on anything Apple, my personal and work phones are now Samsung.
Hopefully not the ones that go on fire, but we'll see.
Problem with the iPhones I had, was that after an update, the batteries wouldn't fully charge or they would discharge far too quickly.
And the phones I have now, connect to my PC so much easier.