My son-in-law is working on the B-52 repower at Rolls Royce.
I tell him: “Designed with slide rules, drawn on vellum with pencil, and manufactured by high school graduates running manually controlled machine tools.” And still going strong 70 years later.
“On Friday, Colonel Warden looked over the information and asked for a better design. Returning to the hotel, the Boeing team was joined by Bob Withington and Maynard Pennell, two top Boeing engineers who were in town on other business.[38]
By late Friday night, they had laid out what was essentially a new airplane. The new design (464-49) built upon the basic layout of the B-47 Stratojet with 35-degree swept wings, eight engines paired in four underwings pods, and bicycle landing gear with wingtip outrigger wheels.[39] A notable feature of the landing gear was the ability to pivot both fore and aft main landing gear up to 20° from the aircraft centerline to increase safety during crosswind landings (allowing the aircraft to “crab” or roll with a sideways slip angle down the runway).[40] After a trip to a hobby shop for supplies, Schairer set to work building a model. The rest of the team focused on weight and performance data. Wells, who was also a skilled artist, completed the aircraft drawings. On Sunday, a stenographer was hired to type a clean copy of the proposal. On Monday, Schairer presented Colonel Warden with a neatly bound 33-page proposal and a 14-inch (36 cm) scale model.[38] The aircraft was projected to exceed all design specifications.[41] “
LOL, doesn’t even sound like much use of slide-rules was involved...