I think this is just a sign that the field is mature. You could take someone from the 1800s and show them today's machine shop, and they would basically know w

I think this is just a sign that the field is mature. You could take someone from the 1800s and show them today's machine shop, and they would basically know what the tools do -- lathes, mills, micrometers -- but we're making pretty complicated things with them today. It's just that "the past" came up with pretty good tools and we're still using them. In 1996, I'm not sure everyone was carrying around a super computer with a multi-day battery life that could shoot slow-motion 4k video and understand your speech. And yet, today we don't even think twice about that. Clearly something has happened in the past 25 years.