My grandfather was a civil engineer for Maricopa County in Arizona (USA, dry desert, last contiguous state to join the union 1912 I believe) from 195[4-9] to like 1998 about. When I started working on advanced algebra while we we driving out to go fishing he told me that they used to have the 2 interns from ASU (AZ state univ.) find a different palo verde tree and go calculate the log that they would use for the bend of a curve for the new road, by hand. If they had different answers they'd both have to go back and redo it. I was astonished because I was just always taught to just push the log button on the calculator. Pretty crazy how things had changed even in curriculum.
Thanks for the shared article