[dsfyu404ed]

But reservoirs pretty much never burst unless relief valves fail or oil gets into them.

(inb4 a bunch of hand wringing about rusty compressor tanks, those just leak and are generally harmless)

[dublin]

This is what the ASME was formed for - to create standards for safe pressure vessels. At the time it was founded, there was just over one steam boiler explosion a week in the US...

[walshemj]

Exactly the lecturer was making the point about how those lessons had been learned - and it was in thermo dynamics class so we where doing a lot of work on steam tables and the like