You're correct. It was amazing what they did with paper, pencils and sliderules. What is also amazing is how quickly they could take an idea and then have it in the air.
I'm going to throw out a personal opinion here that I hope does not offend anyone, so here goes.
I honestly believe our engineers have lost the edge. They depend to much on computers and not enough on their minds. Yes, I'm an old geezer, but when I first started at Boeing 30 years ago, we had to think things through and visualize what we were doing in our minds. Now days we have some great computer jockeys, but they cannot design worth a shit. Their designs are filled with errors and in some cases they do not even match the engineering.
Okay, rant over.
Great link Billy.:rock: