Overengineering: How much is too much?

摘要

Veterans Day 2007 brought to mind a story my father once told me. He was in the US Army's 8th Engineering Corps Division. His unit saw fierce fighting in Hiirtgen Forest during World War II. He told me that Germany's battlefield telephone lines used sheathed-wire pairs in clamshell enclosures. A small lever energized a machined, cam-operated mechanism that smoothly slid the connector halves into engagement. Allied soldiers had standing orders to shoot through the engineered connectors and to cut the cable with their bayonets.