In the morning, we travelled to Eaton, which is located just outside of Prague. It was pretty cool to learn how Eaton started in the automotive trucking industry and made its way to today serving many industries with their electrical components. Eaton as a whole is very important in many ways today as it is very common to see mechanical components get replaced by electronic versions. I have seen this in airplanes, many commercial airplanes you fly today or a fighter jets for the military use some kind a fly by wire system where the inputs by the pilot are changed to electrical signals and then sent to each respective control surface. Before, planes used mechanical control systems which were heavier and had more moving parts which increased maintenance times.
After Eaton we made our way back to Prague for a tour of an old Soviet Cold War bunker. Almost all of the stuff there were original from when the bunker was used. It was amazing to see how many rooms were packed down there. For example one room was used to perform surgery, another contained a listening device for phones calls coming in and out of the hotel above. Most notable and important for me was the air filtration system. It was amazing to see how such a system was able to be put in the bunker. It also included a hand crank that was spun when the power went out but air still needed to be recirculated. It is important to remember things like this because each day everyone is learning and having that chance to look back at what others have done you are able to see the effect it had, its benefits and issues. Having more data and history on a certain topic can help you find better solutions.
Swanson School of Engineering 