Technology has changed over the past hundreds of years. The design for a car a hundred years ago is a lot different than today. Even looking at some designs from the past, for example the incadescent light bulb. Its not just a resistor that creates heat. Edison had to figure out what to make the resistor out of. The light bulb had to have low pressure with an inert glass, all the pieces had to attach together, etc.
So how does an engineer take hundreds or even thousands of years of accumlated knowledge and use it to make better and more efficient products. Edison was a genius. So then how do your surpass these geniuses?
How do engineers keep up with changing technology?
Human beings have an natural instinct to make things better, either accidentally or purposely. For example, if I were to invent the incandescent light bulb (which I obviously did not do), I would probably boast to the world about this invention. Since it was better than burning just a flame and soon would become cheap and reliable, it was standardized by many people in the developed world.
Several decades later, some other people were experimenting with putting an electrical charge through a vacuumed tube and observing the results. They would discover the basis of the florescent light bulb. After a few years of tinkering and introducing a phosphorus coating inside the lamp, it would be the standard tube lamp that we still use today. Nowadays, they discovered by twisting the tube into a spiral, they could compact it and fit it into a standard bulb socket. Then, because it was a better way of converting electricity into light with less energy and more efficiency, it was then mass produced and brought down to about $1 per bulb CAD. And that is how florescent light bulbs surpassed Edison's incandescent light bulb. And that is how many things were also improved upon.
