MIT Sketchpad and CAD/FEA evolution

We're starting to transition out of that in the last 20 years. We can now put enough into a computer program — not just the geometry and the stresses. The first CAD program was developed in mechanical engineering here at MIT in like 1969, Sketchpad. It was very crude, but you could input geometry, lengthen something or shrink something. If you were a mechanical engineer 50 years ago, you'd have to take drafting courses — pen and pencil, little rulers. Sketchpad came along, and we could put geometry into the computer. In the 70s, there were finite element analysis programs, and you could put stresses into that geometry. Of course we had to learn to be compatible with the CAD program and the finite element analysis.