"Reverse Engineering" is the term used to describe the process of taking an existing product and determining how it was design. Typically, the motivation is to clone the product for subsequent sale as one's own design. Some minor changes are often made to improve certain aspects of the design. hgmjr
Hi, One of the more impressive examples of reverse engineering was the TU-4 bomber. A US B-29 had to land in Russia during WWII. The Russians sent the crew back, but kept the aircraft. They took it apart and made an exact copy of it as the TU-4. Considering that the Russians could not make standardized vacuum tubes until the 1960's that was quite an achievement. They were metric, and made the measurements before the inch and meter were given an exact equivalence. They did the same with a British jet engine to make the MiG-15.
And on the subject of russians and vacuum tubes. They still use them in a lot of their military planes and equipment where as the rest of the world have semiconductors. The smart russians will still be flying if there is a big EM pulse. This won't affect tubes. All the other aircraft will fall out of the sky.
