Engineering Quotes
1. When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.
2. But remember this, Japanese boy… airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.
3. When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece.
4. Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.
5. Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.
6. All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.
7. We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always been that way. Even those history books enamored of the voyages of Christopher Columbus do not tell much about the builders of the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria or about the principle of the caravel. These spacecraft their designers builders navigators and controllers are examples of what science and engineering set free for well-defined peaceful purposes can accomplish. Those scientists and engineers should be role models for an America seeking excellence and international competitiveness. They should be on our stamps.
8. The fewer moving parts, the better.” “Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering.
9. To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants—a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in any collective sense.
10. Manufacturing is more than just putting parts together. It’s coming up with ideas, testing principles and perfecting the engineering, as well as final assembly.
11. Stephenson had large wrought-iron boiler plates available and he also had the courage of his calculations… The idea found its best-known expression in the Menai railway bridge opened in 1850. Stephenson’s beams, which weighed 1,500 tons each, were built beside the Straits and were floated into position between the towers on rafts across a swirling tide. They were raised rather over a hundred feet up the towers by successive lifts with primitive hydraulic jacks. All this was not done without both apprehension and adventure; they were giants on the earth in those days.
12. It is hardly surprising that the malodorous field of garbology has not attained the popularity of rocket science, oil exploration, or brain surgery.
13. Automation is cost cutting by tightening the corners and not cutting them.
14. In engineering, the joints are the most crucial. They have to be both firm and flexible, exactly like the joints in our body.
15. As in real life, complex engineering designs demand a pragmatic approach.
16. The technosphere is described here as if neither history nor social or political dynamics mattered. It does not take into account collective agency or political, economic, and social structures, let alone the evolution of knowledge with its powerful impact on shaping technological systems. Has human technology now reached a stage (or will it any time soon) at which it attains the autonomy of an organism with its own agency – an autopoietic structure reproducing its own organization? Such generalizations tend to overlook some essential features of human interaction with the global environment.
For instance, while the biosphere has proven its resilience over the course of at least 3.5 billion years of evolution, the technosphere may turn out to be a rather fragile scaffolding for human existence. While it is quite conceivable that the sum total of the unintended consequences of our actions has developed its own dynamics, even in the age of the Anthropocene escape routes may still be left to us – an observation, however, that does not imply, vice versa, that there will be a guarantee for the existence of an escape route. It rather appears that the dynamics underlying the Anthropocene might well enhance both the challenges with which we are confronted and our opportunities to react to them, leaving the question open as to whether the latter will always be sufficient to match the former. Is it possible, for instance, that geoengineering can intervene in the planetary system to the point that a new state of the planetary system would be reached in which high carbon dioxide concentration, radioactive pollution, and other unintended consequences of industrialization are no longer challenging problems but can be safely kept under control by novel technologies? Given the fact that macro-scale interventions in the Earth system are beyond anything that human engineering has achieved so far, and given the fact that there are still important gaps in our knowledge about our planetary system, we are certainly on the safer side to prioritize, at least for the time being and to the extent that it is possible at all, the preservation of our existing Earth system and damage control.
17. In the next three years, the value of data will increase, making it even more valuable than it is today. The more efficiently you store your data, the more benefits your business will see.
18. Almost every religion believe that God lives in the sky. For system design engineer, God stay in Ground.
19. We can’t get the future we wanted if we fail to take advantage of the STEM education, we must open students all over the world to it, in order for us to get the future we can all be proud of.
20. No investment in STEM education is too big or small, we must invest in it always, our investment in it will pave way for future growth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
21. Research and development is very important in the growth and success of mankind, no nation or people becomes great without these two, and the STEM education is here to assist us.
22. In order for us to sustain growth and stability, there is need for us to embrace and promote the STEM education, STEM education is a gateway to improved economy, and also an avenue for technological advancement.
23. STEM education is very important to mankind just like the water we drink and the air we breathe in, we need it to produce more critical thinkers, problem solvers, innovators, and the world best economy drivers.
24. Children these days are very intelligent and brilliant, they are enthusiastic in nature. We need to grow their knowledge, understanding, and curiosity using the STEM education.
25. There is something to be said about designing and building the machine of your dreams.
26. There is something to be said about designing the machine of your dreams.
27. Modern architects and engineers are still trying to understand how the ancient Greeks were able to build the Parthenon in ten years when the restoration of the monument has continued for more than three decades and is still not complete. What they have learned and shared along this arduous path of rediscovery is that the Greeks were highly skilled at building visual compensations into their structures. Columns were crafted and positioned to compensate for how the eye interprets what it sees at a distance. Subtle variances in the surface of platforms, columns, and colonnades provide the appearance of geometric proportion, whereas if they had worked from the perspective of a flat datum surface, the brain would interpret the results as being slightly skewed.
28. While infrasonic vibrations at around 6 hertz may influence the brain and produce various effects in humans, it seems that there must be other types of energy, or other frequencies, to explain phenomena that were noted to have occurred at the Great Pyramid more than one hundred years ago. Sir William Siemens, an Anglo-German engineer, metallurgist, and inventor, experienced a strange energy phenomenon at the Great Pyramid when an Arab guide called his attention to the fact that, while standing on the summit of the pyramid with hands outstretched, he could hear a sharp ringing noise. Raising his index finger, Siemens felt a prickling sensation.
Later on, while drinking out of a wine bottle he had brought along, he experienced a slight electric shock. Feeling that some further observations were in order, Siemens then wrapped a moistened newspaper around the bottle, converting it into a Leyden jar. After he held it above his head for a while, this improvised Leyden jar became charged with electricity to such an extent that sparks began to fly. Reportedly, Siemens’ Arab guides were not too happy with their tourist’s experiment and accused him of practicing witchcraft. Peter Tompkins wrote, “One of the guides tried to seize Siemens’ companion, but Siemens lowered the bottle towards him and gave the Arab such a jolt that he was knocked senseless to the ground. Recovering, the guide scrambled to his feet and took off down the Pyramid, crying loudly.
29. The knowledge needed to evaluate certain of these ancient artifacts was not available until very recently. Even today there may be numerous articles that we will not understand until we further develop our own technology. We cannot fathom technology that is unknown to us, and we seldom consider things that seem impossible to us. Petrie, though knowledgeable in engineering and surveying, could not be expected to know anything about ultrasonic machining; hence his amazement at the machining abilities of the ancient Egyptians. Even if he had been aware of this technology, the intellectual climate of his time may have precluded his considering the possibility that these methods were known to the ancient Egyptians. Quite simply, the greatest barrier to our understanding may not necessarily be knowledge. It may be attitude.
30. What we have been taught is that the ancient Egyptians were in posession of only simple hand tools, and that the only metals available to the Egyptians of the fourth dynasty, when the Giza Pyramids were built, were copper, gold, and silver. What is inferred, therefore, is that absent the tools made from these materials, the simple abrasive experiments actually demonstrate the stone-working methods of ancient Egypt. We are told that the ancient Egyptians had not yet developed the knowledge to extract the raw materials necessary to produce iron and steel. It has been suggested that they may have used meteoric iron, because they found it lying on the ground, but they did not mine the ore and smelt it in a foundry. Support for this view is the lack of evidence that they used tools made of any material other than copper, stone, and wood. Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Although sophisticated tools made of iron or steel may not yet have been discovered in the archaeological record, what has been found is not adequate enough to explain how the artifacts were created.
31. The precision in these artifacts is irrefutable. Even if we ignore the question of how they were produced, we are still faced with the question of why such precision was needed. Revelation of new data invariably raises new questions. In this case it is understandable for skeptics to ask, “Where are the machines?” But machines are tools, and the question should be applied universally and can be asked of anyone who believes other methods may have been used. The truth is that no tools have been found to explain any theory on how the pyramids were built or the granite boxes were cut. More than eighty pyramids have been discovered in Egypt, and the tools that built them have never been found. Even if we accepted the notion that copper tools are capable of producing these incredible artifacts, the few copper implements that have been uncovered do not represent the number of such tools that would have been used if every stonemason who is supposed to have worked on the pyramids at just the Giza site owned one or two. In the Great Pyramid alone there are an estimated 2,300,000 blocks of stone, both limestone and granite, weighing between two-and-one-half tons and seventy tons each. That is a mountain of evidence, and there are no tools surviving to explain even this one pyramid’s creation.
32. Hope is not a strategy.
33. While my degree opened up doors for me, it ultimately gave me occupational diseases.
34. Doctors rarely fix their patients health issues. Instead, the patient gets put on a toxic cocktail of prescription drugs for the rest of their life that typically makes them sicker. In engineering, if you could not fix broken systems, you would likely be fired.
35. Electronics Engineering is hardware, timing diagrams, and algorithms.
36. Engineering is not about what you learn or practice;
Engineering is about what you imagine to learn and practise
37. An engineer is a machine for turning coffee into designs (apologies to Paul Erdős)
38. Engineering lights our living and medicine delights our living
39. In modern society, it is not enough to be an engineer, a doctor, a chemist, a biologist, or a physicist, you must be all of them to understand why human health is failing on such a massive scale.
40. There is much which we must leave, whether we like it or not, to the un-“scientific’ narrative method of the professional historian.
41. Failure analysis is as easy as Monday-morning quarterbacking’ design is more akin to coaching. However, the design engineer must do better than any coach, for he is expected to win every game he plays. That is a tough assignment when one mistake can often mean a loss. And when defeat occurs, all one can hope is to analyze the game films and learn from the mistakes so that they are less likely to be repeated the next time out.
42. What we usually consider are impossible are simply engineering problems … there’s no law of physics preventing them
43. Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral
44. ideologues of every stripe, as well as folks with interests economic, political, or personal, can interpret data and statistics to suit their own purposes…
45. Engineers are all too often unsung heroes; if we are ever, in truth, to travel between stars, it will be thanks to their aspirations and imagination… for they are the bridge builders.
46. I have seen ideas that work on paper not work in the field. But I have never seen an idea that does not work on paper work in the field.
47. Evolution optimizes strongly for energy efficiency because of limited food supply, not for ease of construction or understanding by human engineers.
48. If you’re going to go out, go out in a blaze of glory.
49. America is inching towards the metric system
50. Designing Structures is an art and this needs to be transparent, as designs come and go but creativity stays there
51. I have learned over the years that many formally educated corrosion professionals are either engineers or chemists by training. While those two groups represent the largest two categories of backgrounds in the oilfield corrosion control industry, they are in the minority.
52. George Morrow summed it up much more elegantly than I,” Godbout said in a 1984 interview. “He said ‘I have the best of both worlds. I enjoy what I’m doing, have immense fun at it and I get paid to boot’. I couldn’t concur more.
53. The world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better… with hands… with tools… with horse sense and science and engineering.
54. Structure Design must be safe and sound such that the exterior looks will magnetise the cameras from every nook and corner
55. The progressive stack is basically a measure of how much you aren’t like, say, James Watt, the developer of the modern steam engine, the key invention of the Industrial Revolution. Watt was white, male, Protestant, straight, rich, mechanically skilled, and a scientific genius, so you’d better not be.
56. Bad design with good materials may give you the designed fatigue life, but a good design with bad materials will never give you the designed fatigue life.
57. As we look around the world, especially in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, the west coast of Italy, Peru, and Bolivia, there are stone structures and the remains of others which don’t easily fit into the standard picture of history. The pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Puma Punku in Bolivia, and the great megalithic wall of Sachsayhuaman in Peru are but three examples of astonishingly well-made stone works which modern engineers, stone masons, and other experts puzzle over. Conventional academics in general date these structures well within the standard timeline of so-called civilization. The generally prescribed creation date of the three pyramids of Giza is about 2500 BC, Puma Punku is alleged to have been constructed around 600 AD, and Sachsayhuaman approximately 1200 to 1400 AD. However, what intrigues engineers, architects, stone masons, and other professionals is the extreme precision of the work, often in very hard stone, which many archaeologists insist was usually achieved using bronze and or copper chisels, wooden measuring devices, and stone hammers.
58. One also finds, even to this day, some amazing works such as the aforementioned Sachsayhuaman and the Coricancha in Cusco, where no mortar of any kind was used. It was stone-on-stone, with astonishing accuracy of fit. In the Inca toolkit, as found in the archaeological record, only copper and bronze chisels have been found, along with wooden measuring instruments and stone pounders or hammers. Conventional archaeologists contend that such tools were responsible for the refined workmanship seen in Cusco and other ‘Inca’ areas. However, the stone used – granite, andesite, and basalt – are harder than the majority of the tools used, and thus could not have been responsible for the work. The same is true of Tiwanaku and the connected site of Puma Punku. Massive megalithic blocks with sculpted surfaces are found at these locations, made of local sandstone, which would be difficult to shape with bronze chisels and stone hammers. However, the real enigmas are the even harder andesite and basalt stones, cut and shaped with such precision that modern engineers, stone masons, and other professionals question how such work could have been achieved without at least 20th century technology.
59. Rudolph Gantenbrink’s important discovery [of a door with metallic handles found with a robot inside a shaft in the Great Pyramid] has forced many Egyptologists to finally accept that their theories are flawed. This is an interesting development. Academic mores normally dictate that when a theory contains flaws, or unsubstantiated data that supports critical elements on which the theory is built, the entire theory must either be thrown out or revised. Instead of the tomb theory being dismissed, however, Gantenbrink himself was dismissed from the project. He discovered the “door” on March 22, 1993. A week later, he was told to pack up his robot and leave Egypt. Gantenbrink has the technology to go beyond the so-called door but, presumably because of political reasons, has been refused permission to resume his research in Egypt. Gantenbrink, with an engineer’s typical pragmatism, stated, ‘I take an absolute neutral position. It is a scientific process, and there is no need whatsoever to answer questions with speculation when these questions could be answered much more easily by continuing the research. Yet because of a stupid feud between what I call believers and non-believers, I am condemned as someone who is speculating. But I am not. I am just stating the facts. We have a device [ultrasonic] that would discover if there is a cavity behind the slab. It is nonsensical to make theories when we have the tools to discover the facts.
60. I looked more closely at what I considered to be the most significant information regarding the Great Pyramid, which was the accuracy with which it was built. It soon became obvious to me that the researchers on both sides of the issue were sympathetic to the craftspeople involved in building the pyramids. But the researchers were not craftspeople themselves, and they did not have the perspective gained through years of experience working with their hands and with machinery. Having that experience myself, I have some very strong opinions regarding the level of manufacturing expertise practiced by the ancient Egyptians. They were not primitive by any means, and their craftsmanship and precision would be an extreme challenge to duplicate today.
