[morzh]

I think great engineers simply move to architect / inventor activities and let good engineers to perfect and commercialise their results.
Because even the greatest of the design engineers will make...not necessarily mistakes, but decisions that in the long term will look like mistakes. I would not blame a guy who designed something 80 years ago. The radios simply are not required to last more than 20 years, even then they were not, and today a 5 year life span for most electronic is good enough. The only type of product I could think of that today would be required to last lobger is large appliances like washers, fridges, ranges. And they often do. One could still find 50-s fridges that possibly once were recharged in operation, and the single reason they were tossed was their style went out of fashion. I bought my apartment in 98, and it had all original equipment from 75 by White-Westinghouse, the wall air conditioners, the fridge, the double oven range, the dishwasher, the trash compactor. And it all worked.

These engineers didnot design for antique collectors. They design for general public, and their first and foremost goal was, is and will ever be (I'm one of them so I should know) to make comnercially successful product, which involves the compromise between usefulness, appeal, reliability and cost.

As an engineer I still design in electrolytic caps. I know full well they are officially a limited life span item. Best of them are rated 5000 hrs of operation at full specified current/temperatures.
Yes I choose good ones and try to design so they would last but I am constrained: say a power supply I designed for a telecom company to be deployed in India put ridiculously high requirements next to impossible to meet cost. I had to get really crafty, and this considering buying parts in hundfed of thousands at a time (total qty 2 mlns) directly from China. I am still not sure we were profitable but we met the $12 per board limit. I cannot design it to last forever at this cost.

An engineer is more than just a guy who know, say, electronics. He is a vuy who knows how to make a real product. Otherwise he still can be great at teaching or inventing, but this is not really engineering.