[planck_tonne]

I also like reading about old engineering solutions.

The way I see it, though, that kind of thing still exists today: the "cheap modern memory card" probably contains many "exciting carefully engineered features". They got teams of people working full time to make these thing as fast, reliable, cheap, low-power as possible.

But the engineering feats are likely much more niche (and thus harder to understand). Not to mention, secret.

[amosjyng]

That's a great point. The flashy bits are in the manufacturing process rather than the final product.