I am guessing you did GCSEs. When I was at school you did GCE O Levels or CSEs (which were more practical). In History I was in a borderline class where they weren't sure which exam we would take. About six months before the exam dates they decided I was good enough to do the GCE. I then spent six months not doing much in class while all the CSE kids did their coursework and then got a Grade A. I'll admit I was lucky with the exam, having to write about Robert Stephenson, when I was a rail enthusiast back then.
It's was a lot easier to understand then. Unless you have children now, you can't understand what goes on these dayz.
Google has the answer https://vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=132808 A rival to Binatone back then. As I said both were the types of brands you would see in Woolworths. My sister got given an "Internet" radio (that was it's brand name) as a present back in the early 1970s. That was the sort of thing 15 year olds got as a present back then.
Longman. Very interesting read. Co-Op certainly brings a bell. I think I got it sometime in the sixties. Have to try and look it up and see if I can spot it.
That other program sounds like the many programs I've seen during my school years... each one seemingly one-less step from juvenile hall!
When I was in school, we had all sorts of "alphabet" arrangements in way of educational programs. From the DLC (Developmental Learning Center) to AEP (Alternative Education Program) BD (Behavioral Development) and APE (Alternative Placement Education) for the "problem" students, and LD (Learning Development) for the "slow" students... along with the classic SPED (Special Education) program, where they basically lumped all of the above into a single classroom. Didn't matter if you were a slacker, "slow", had emotional problems--such as rage issues or bi-polar disorder--or were just a degenerate in general, they had a place for you! BTW: You ever seen a 4th-grade student hauled-off in handcuffs, fighting the whole way, after destroying a classroom?
Had that in my senior year of high-school. Mind you, I was already in a program where you studied at a different location, but were accredited at your old school. And it wasn't an elective at the new location, so.... We also had a Career Training Center education available for students that sought tradesman skills and shown a steady stream of good grades in years recently prior to applying to attend. That's where I got my first year of Auto Service Training outside of the school, and a year of Auto Body Repair. The latter because friend was going to attend, and talked me into joining him... and then he didn't make the "cut".
They likely use CAD software and which one depends on where they want to work. There's many different types, from 2D to 3D softwares to plan out and make (in many cases directly usable) blueprints of your stuff for (automated) cutters. I'm not familiar with the 2D ones, but have a very very rough idea of the 3D ones, for example there's AutoCAD by Autodesk, which seems to be among the more popular ones (no wonder, it's Autodesk..). Never used it, probably similar workflow to Autodesk's 3DS Max and Maya and its free competitor Blender but just with a focus on technical accuracy rather than being pure 3D modeling software. The three softwares I listed aren't that well suited for accurate workflows as the amount of information, like scales, is limited on screen for visual clarity when you're working. I mean, you probably could if you enabled quad-view with top front side and perspective view, but there's very likely a reason why people made own software for that... There's alot of software out there, so corporation A might use AutoCAD, while B might use Autodesk Revit (which seems more tailored towards architecture) and C using CATIA. The general workflow should be the same for most with key bindings, shortcuts and UI (and maybe some missing or additional features) being the main differences, similar to how 3D modeling software has the same workflow just with different keybinds, shortcuts and UI depending on software. As with everything there's also free CAD software available like FreeCAD or OpenSCAD. Don't know if it's the same with CAD software but I assume the commercial ones are industry standard and likely even more so preferred to freeware than with regular 3D software. With regular 3D software freeware is more on the rise, with Blender currently making its way into studios. The technical aspect of 2D and 3D isn't my area of expertise, so can't say much more about that unfortunately. Hope it was some insight at least. Note: 3D work is a pretty unspectacular click, shortcut use and vertex/edge/face welding kind of work - and eventually some modifiers (functions) to affect the mesh (the wireframe model). I can see the fun with it, but it gets repetitive pretty quick and I'd honestly compare it to regular office work, less entertaining than actually physically drawing lines with a ruler. In my opinion the exception is sculpting in programs like ZBrush or Blender's sculpting mode. That's pretty enjoyable, close to what 3D drawing/virtual sculpting would or should be like... but as I said, I'm not on the technical side of things there, more of "entertainment" as a specialty, so I'm mildly biased, heh.
The software our mechanical engineers uses is https://www.ptc.com/en/products/cad/creo Being an electronics engineer I use software from https://www.mentor.com/uk/ The decision as to what software to use is made at company level, unlike the 1980s when it seemed every department had to have an incompatible CAD system. I actually believe that was true. If a department had wanted one already available on site their request would have been turned down. That was when CAD ran on dedicated hardware costing as much as a house from companies like Daisy or Computervision. Back to Benkson radios, back in the 1990s I spent a lot of time working in an room that was equipped with about eight Sun Workstations that you had to book time on. They had about 600MBytes of memory when most PCs had 32MBytes. In the corner on the window sill was a medium size Benkson Radio usually tuned to Radio 1. I would guess it was late 1970s or early 1980s as it had FM and a mains input. Eventually, as the number of engineers dropped I ended up with a Sun Ultra 60 workstation and a Sun 21" colour monitor on my desk alongside my PC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_60. Today my home PC and the one at work are more or less the same specification, while the mechanical engineer runs Creo on a high end laptop.
Some of my friends did 3D modelling at university, they mainly used 3DS Max & Maya. I still have a copy of 3DS Max, i have not used it in a while. It’s fun to use, a very capable & powerful program. When i worked at a big advertising agency, they had Silicon Graphics workstations (SGI) for modelling & simulations.
Sun and Silicon Graphics were the two big workstation manufacturers with Silicon Graphics being the ones you needed for 3D. The last thing my Father worked on was an vacuum tank for a particle accelerator at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. I have a VHS tape of a 3D walkthrough of how the thing works. The funny thing is the graphics are about as good as you would get from a Playstation 1 yet they were obviously very proud of it listing what Silicon Graphics workstation had been used to produce it. Fun fact. The Nintendo64 graphics hardware was designed by Silicon Graphics so if you have one what you really have is a cut-down cost reduced Silicon Graphics workstation.
You have to have a look at what was available at the time, so them being proud of what SGI can do was amazing for the time. Yes i did know the Nintendo64 GPU was designed by SGI.
All this talk of computer graphics made me think of Apparently the release of the single had to be delayed to allow time for the cutting edge video to be finished.
Ah i remember that very well. Whenever i think of animation / graphics / music the one that stands out most in my mind is a-ha - take on me
I absolutely loved that video, but it was Rotoscoped not GCI. https://ew.com/article/2015/10/26/a-ha-video-take-on-me/
If your interested in the amount of hardware needed in the 1980s to do graphics like that, this is well worth watching.
