They Used To Last 50 Years
When I went to the first semester of engineering school at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, there was a class called Engineering Professional Development 160: Introduction to Engineering.<p>One of the early class sessions was a lecture from a guy at a power tool company, making some kind of jigsaw or handheld cutting tool.<p>He explicitly told us, paraphrasing, &quot;You don&#x27;t want to make your product too reliable, because people won&#x27;t buy more of them, and you won&#x27;t make as much money&quot;. I was horrified, literally looked around at my classmates to see how horrified they would be, none of them were. I ended up majoring in philosophy.<p>Of course this site is dedicated to the idea he expressed, so I am not looking for agreement here, just relaying what I consider an interesting historical fact.