VOICES FROM THE PAST

This year Canadian Consulting Engineer is celebrating its half-century.

The first issue of the magazine was in June 1959, published by the Hugh C. MacLean company (later Southam) under the guidance of Carson Morrison as editor. Morrison was a principal of the Toronto consulting engineering firm Morrison Hershfield, which still occupies offices in the same Toronto area as the magazine’s.

We’ll be publishing a Special 50th Anniversary Issue in June-July, but watch every issue for “Voices from the Past.”

From CCE, July-August 1959:

“Design Revolution has already begun: the Electronic Computer and its practical use in engineering,” by A. M. Lount.

“There have been few engineering tools that have developed as rapidly as the electronic computer and there are few which are likely to have a greater impact on the future practice of engineering. This impact is only now beginning to be felt and one of the early portends of the future is the urgency attending the work of the newly-formed committee on Electronic Computation formed by the American Society of Civil Engineers… “If the present trend continues, within 10 years most routine design will be carried entirely by computer. To Canadian engineers who have not yet witnessed what has been occurring in this field south of the border, only one word of advice — find out before it is too late!

“An examination of recent technical literature from both the U. S. and the U. K. reveals that more and more advanced engineering relies on computer methods, i. e. slope stability computations, space frames, elasto-plastic dynamic analysis, etc.

Design studies carried out on the computer can be more thorough, and economies can be achieved that would not be possible without such thoroughness.”