Interesting passage. I'm old enough to have taken mechanical drafting in college, and also remember "radio shops" :)

Another great book from the same era is the 1952 Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Some amazing predictions regarding machines and society - Conflicts between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. And of course his prediction that an actor would become the president of the US in 1985. His prediction was off by only 4 years.

Ed