Some things never change. From the legendary industrial designer Raymond Loewy's impeccably fantastic and cheeky 1951 autobiography Never Leave Well Enough Alo

Some things never change. From the legendary industrial designer Raymond Loewy's impeccably fantastic and cheeky 1951 autobiography Never Leave Well Enough Alone: > Why were products and things so ungainly? To understand this, one must realize the industrial revolution had displaced the craftsman, and that engineers were really mechanics. > The first mechanical products were put together by men of ingenuity and resourcefulness. The prime objective was to make the contraption work. Will it work? was the question. > No one gave a thought to cost and far less to appearance. Products were "engineered as you go" and they betrayed this technique by their haphazard, disorderly look. > By the end of the [19th] century, machines and products were more numerous, more complex, and engineers had been trained. > Trained in everything except aesthetics. > So when mass production appeared on the scene, the country became flooded with products, usually of good quality but clumsily put together ...