Portugal, it is recalled, has a special place in the minds of educators who know of its geographical explorations and navigational achievements in the 15/16th centuries and which followed on from the fall of Constantinople. The consequences for trade and in science are referred to. The 200th birthday of Charles Babbage, computer pioneer, will soon be celebrated and some facts of his life broadly relevant to engineering are surveyed. The outlook for forming-processes education, it is suggested, should be discussed and some observations on the decline in polytechnic/university experimental work are made. The fewness of experimental plasticity laboratories is bemoaned and the greater employment of force-field methods of analysis is urged for simple teaching purposes. The remarkable new book, The Tula Weapons Factory, offers new historical light on the early manufacture of interchangeable parts, in the 17–19th centuries.