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Engineering & Science Notable Tech Quote Archive #25
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 The number
of statements uttered verbally and/or in print is uncountable. Some are more noteworthy
than others either because of sheer brilliance, good humor, or utter inanity. We
all hope our own remembered words, if any, fall into one of the first two categories
rather than the third. I do a lot of reading and find many notable quotes to use
that fit the theme of RF Cafe; they fall into all three categories. I always try
to verify quotes from original sources or at least from printed books like
The Experts Speak, of which I own a hard copy. Enjoy.
Notable Tech Quote Archive
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 "So here we have pi squared, which an engineer
would call 10." -
Frank
King, cartoonist, creator of Gasoline Alley (Source: Wikipedia). That statement was
made by Walt Wallet (the main character) to his tech-inclined nephew
Skeezix (cowboy slang for a motherless calf). Over the years, Gasoline
Alley included many episodes with Skeezix dabbling in electronics - usually not very
successfully.3/3/2014 - "Let's face it: Engineering companies
in general have more men than women. Google has tried really hard to recruit women. On
the other hand, we have a standard. Google tries to recruit the best engineers." -
Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president in charge of product management
and engineering at YouTube (Source: Forbes)
2/24/2014
- "The worst thing in the world that can
happen to you if you're an engineer that has given life to something is for someone to
rip it off and put their name on it." -
Tim
Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. (Source: Wikipedia)
2/17/2014
- "Never trust atoms. They make up
everything." - Anon
2/10/2014
- "The path to the CEO's office should not be
through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs
to be through engineering and design." -
Elon
Musk, CEO and chief product architect, Tesla Motors and SpaceX (engineering degree
from U. of Penn., business degree from Wharton) (Source:
revengeoftheelectriccar.com)
2/3/2014
 "Do not blame Caesar, blame
the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced
in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions and
laughed delightedly at his licentiousness and thought it very superior of him to acquire
vast amounts of gold illicitly. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum
of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more
money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.'
Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man." - Cicero, as quoted
by the Honorable Millard F. Caldwell in
Cicero's Prognosis
1/27/2014 - "It is inconceivable that inanimate
Matter should, without the Mediation of something else, which is not material, operate
upon, and affect other matter without mutual Contact…That Gravity should be innate, inherent
and essential to Matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance thro' a
Vacuum, without the Mediation of any thing else, by and through which their Action and
Force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity that I believe
no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall
into it. Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws;
but whether this Agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the Consideration of
my readers." - Sir Isaac Newton, letter to Richard Bently, c. 1692
1/20/2014
- The barman says, "We don't serve faster-than-light
particles here." A tachyon enters a bar. - Anon. Ok, so it's not really a quote,
but put it on the cover of your next presentation for a good laugh.
1/13/2014
- "Long live the amateur, long live
wireless!" - Opening sentence in opening article in first edition of Hugo Gernsback's
new
The Electrical Experimenter magazine (May 1913). Gernsback was
an indefatigable pioneer electrical and electronics inventor, publisher of many electronics
magazines, and founder of the Wireless Association of America.
1/6/2014
- "Scientific knowledge is an enabling
power to do either good or bad - but it does not carry instructions on how to use it."
Theoretical physicist
Richard Feynman in The Value of Science
12/30/2013
- Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer
than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." -
Douglas Hofstadter
(hat tip to Gary S.)
12/23/2013
- "[W]hat do you think you get more radiation
from, leaning up against an atomic reactor or your wife? ... I don't want to alarm you,
but all human beings have radioactive potassium in their blood - and that includes your
wife. This reactor may have more radioactivity, but much greater shielding. If you compare
the two for radiation, you get just a bit more from Dresden III than from your wife."
-
Dr. Edward Teller ("father of the hydrogen bomb") at Atomic Energy
Commission hearing concerning Dresden III reactor in Illinois.
12/16/2013
- "The facts and knowledge learned in any course will become obsolete well before you
retire. The ability to think critically is a skill that will last a lifetime." -
Kenneth C. Young, University of Arizona, in December 2013 Scientific
American
12/9/2013
- "Twitter is the only place where you're thrilled when a complete stranger starts
following you." - Anon
12/2/2013
- "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" - title of
article by theoretical physicist and mathematician
Eugene Wigner.
11/25/2013
- "If the U.S. Post Office goes away, TSA agents will be the only government employees
handling packages." - Anon (heard it on the radio)
- "I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer -- born
under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body
diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow." -
Neil Armstrong
(I had forgotten about free-body diagrams in Statics class!)
11/18/2013
- "Right now, there are about a thousand
satellites operating in space. Of those, just two were designed to be serviced in
orbit: the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station." -
Benjamin Reed, PM of NASA's Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office,
regarding work in progress to built automated robotic satellite service platforms for
repair and refueling satellites not originally designed to be serviced.
11/11/2013
- "Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them." "I'm not
a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience." - R. Buckminster Fuller
11/4/2013
- "Dual-band." - Response (referring to AM/FM)
given by Ham radio operator when asked by policeman in Virginia what type of radio he
had installed in his car (hat tip to RF Cafe visitor KA).
Virginia DOT
requires that "A vehicle displaying Call Letter License Plates is subject to inspection
by DMV or any police officer to determine if the operator and the vehicle comply with
the requirements." You must "Have operational transmitting and receiving equipment permanently
installed in your vehicle." The specific wording requires Tx AND Rx equipment (AM/FM
radio is Rx only and therefore might not qualify), but that could just be bureaucratic
ineptness. Now thieves on the prowl for
mobile
rigs know exactly which vehicles to target for a guaranteed payoff. BTW, I also learned
while researching details on the aforementioned that VA DOT charges a special $64 registration
fee on electric-only vehicles (see above link), probably to compensate for not paying
gasoline taxes for road access. That's like the requirement for all-electric vehicles
to install
noise generators so pedestrians can hear them coming (pathetic that
Delphi feels the need to mention their device is "environmentally friendly").
10/28/2013
- "In the mid-'90s, when downsizing was the dominant trend in business, Dilbert
took off." -
Scott Addams
10/21/2013
- "If something can't be explained off the back of an envelope, its rubbish." -
Richard Branson, Virgin CEO
10/14/2013
 "...I
have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only
in zeal and hard work; and I still think there is an eminently important difference."
-
Charles Darwin, letter citing R. Pearson (1914-1930) in The Life,
Letters and Labours of Francis Galton,
TodayInScience 10/7/2013 - "I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work." - Ashton Kutcher re
never having had a job below him, at the 2013 Teen Choice Awards (see video).
9/30/2013
- "Keynesian economics is the theory that when consumers don't spend sufficiently,
in the opinion of the government, then the government should seize their money and spend
it for them." - Steve Forbes
9/23/2013
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