Electrical Engineers

"Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people — they're just, they're just literally lying."

"We have always been the leader in security and in encryption. Our systems are far more secure and encrypted than anyone else, including Apple. They're catching up, which is great."

"Playing catch-up with the competition can only ever help you make incremental gains. It will never help you create something new."

"By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded."

"Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working so hard to distribute Android phones globally that whether you like [Android 4.0] or not … you will want to develop for that platform, and perhaps even first."

"I fundamentally believe that disinformation becomes so easy to generate, because complexity overwhelms knowledge, that it's in people's interests, if you will, over the next decade, to build disinformation-generating systems. This is true for corporations, for marketing, for governments, and so forth." (Eric Schmidt in dialogue with Julian Assange, June 2011 c.f When Google Met Wikileaks, p. 174)"

"Ultimately, in the Internet, openness has always won. I cannot imagine that the current competitive environment would reverse that."

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."

"Technology will move faster than governments, so don't legislate before you understand the consequences..."

"When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do. Well, that’s a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once. We should know what you meant. You should look for information. We should get it exactly right and we should give it to you in your language and we should never be wrong. That’s our challenge."

"We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth. But, as was mentioned to me not long since, "There is a time coming when all things shall be found out." I am not so sanguine myself, believing that the well in which Truth is said to reside is really a bottomless pit."

"Waves from moving sources: Adagio. Andante. Allegro moderato."

"However absurd it may seem, I do in all seriousness hereby declare that I am animated mainly by philanthropic motives. I desire to do good to my fellow creatures, even to the Cui bonos."

"General circuit theory, the theory of transmission lines and wave propagation, vector analysis, even the four famous Maxwell's equations—all had flowed from the pen of this amazing man."

"Mathematics is of two kinds, Rigorous and Physical. The former is Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical inquiries. Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the mechanism of digestion?"

"My own introduction to quaternionics took place in quite a different manner. Maxwell exhibited his main results in quaternionic form in his treatise. I went to Prof Tait's treatise to get information, and to learn how to work them. I had the same difficulties as the deceased youth, but by skipping them, was able to see that quaternionics could be employed consistently in vectorial work. But on proceeding to apply quaternionics to the development of electrical theory, I found it very inconvenient. Quaternionics was in its vectorial aspects antiphysical and unnatural, and did not harmonise with common scalar mathematics. So I dropped out the quaternion altogether, and kept to pure scalar and vectors, using a very simple vectorial algebra in my papers from 1883 onward. The paper at the beginning of vol. 2 of my Electrical Papers may be taken as a developed specimen; the earlier work is principally concerned with the vector differentiator ∇ and its applications, and physical interpretations of the various operations. Up to 1888 I imagined that I was the only one doing vectorial work on positive physical principles; but then I received a copy of Prof. Gibbs's Vector Analysis (unpublished, 1881-4)."

"More than a third part of a century ago, in the library of an ancient town, a youth might have been seen tasting the sweets of knowledge to see how he liked them. He was of somewhat unprepossessing appearance, carrying on his brow the heavy scowl that the "mostly-fools" consider to mark a scoundrel. In his father's house were not many books, so it was like a journey into strange lands to go book-tasting. Some books were poison; theology and metaphysics in particular they were shut up with a bang. But scientific works were better; there was some sense in seeking the laws of God by observation and experiment, and by reasoning founded thereon. Some very big books bearing stupendous names, such as Newton, Laplace, and so on, attracted his attention. On examination, he concluded that he could understand them if he tried, though the limited capacity of his head made their study undesirable. But what was Quaternions? An extraordinary name! Three books; two very big volumes called Elements, and a smaller fat one called Lectures. What could quaternions be? He took those books home and tried to find out. He succeeded after some trouble, but found some of the properties of vectors professedly proved were wholly incomprehensible. How could the square of a vector be negative? And Hamilton was so positive about it. After the deepest research, the youth gave it up, and returned the books. He then died, and was never seen again. He had begun the study of Quaternions too soon."

"... the present time is the age of communication ... communication engineering began with Gauss, Wheatstone, and the first telegraphers. It received its first reasonably scientific treatment at the hands of Lord Kelvin, after the failure of the first transatlantic cable in the middle of the last century, and from the eighties on, it was perhaps Heaviside who did the most to bring into a modern shape."

"Electric and magnetic forces. May they live for ever, and never be forgot, if only to remind us that the science of electromagnetics, in spite of the abstract nature of its theory, involving quantities whose nature is entirely unknown at the present, is really and truly founded on the observations of real Newtonian forces, electric and magnetic respectively."

"The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, “Do try to be like other people. Don’t frown.” And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap; and then he was eaten up by lions. Reader, if young, take warning by his sad life and death. For though it may be an honour to be different from other people, if Carlyle’s dictum about the 30 million be still true, yet other people do not like it. So, if you are different, you had better hide it, and pretend to be solemn and wooden-headed. Until you make your fortune. For most wooden-headed people worship money; and, really, I do not see what else they can do. In particular, if you are going to write a book, remember the wooden-headed. So be rigorous; that will cover a multitude of sins. And do not frown."

"I've reached the age where young people frequently ask for my advice. All I can really say is that electronics is a fascinating field that I continue to find fulfilling. The field is still growing rapidly, and the opportunities that are ahead are at least as great as they were when I graduated from college. My advice is to get involved and get started."

"If you really look at it, I was trying to sell a dream … There was very little I could put in concrete to tell these people it was really real."

"The microphone-amplifier-loudspeaker combination is having an enormous effect on our civilization. Not all of it is good! Consider to what heights of impudence and tyranny, and to what depths of moral depravity, has radio broadcasting and the loudspeaker attained in that recent monstrosity, Transit Radio, Inc. Almost incredible is the loathsome fact that already in 21 cities bus riders must listen to never-ending, blatant advertising and unwelcome jitterbug and bop music."

"The actual poetry of this engineering triumph was first brought stunningly upon me in 1915 when I sat in an audience in San Francisco and heard the breaking of the surf upon the far Atlantic shore."

"So I repeat that while theoretically and technically television may be feasible, yet commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility; a development of which we need not waste little time in dreaming."

"Unwittingly then had I discovered an Invisible Empire of the Air, intangible, yet solid as granite, whose structure shall persist while man inhabits the planet."

"The children of the white families in town were not permitted to associate with me, because my father was committing the then unpardonable crime, in Southern eyes, of educating negroes."

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances."

"I foresee great refinements in the field of short-pulse microwave signaling, whereby several simultaneous programs may occupy the same channel, in sequence, with incredibly swift electronic communication; vastly important developments in microwave technique, whereby present clumsy connecting leads between wall or floor sockets and electric devices like toasters and vacuum sweepers may become unnecessary; gigantic magnetrons and klystrons, or their successors, will generate megawatts in microwaves; living rooms and their occupants will be heated by high-frequency waves from walls or ceilings; short waves will be generally used in the kitchen for roasting and baking, almost instantaneously"

"… as the world rapidly becomes a civilization of machines, the masters of machines will increasingly be the ones in control of the world."

"Shouldn’t I join the ranks of philosophers and merely make unsubstantiated claims about the wonders of human consciousness? Shouldn’t I stop trying to do some science and keep my head down? Indeed not."

"I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a ‘philosopher’ simply do not have a day job to go to."

"When comparing human memory and computer memory it is clear that the human version has two distinct disadvantages. Firstly, as indeed I have experienced myself, due to aging, human memory can exhibit very poor short term recall."

"There can be no absolute reality, there can be no absolute truth."

"I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change."

"A person's brain and body do not have to be in the same place."

"There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions."

"Money is a stupid measure of achievement, but unfortunately it is the only universal measure we have."

"At the People's College in Fort Scott, Kansas, my mother met Arthur Le Sueur, who with Helen Keller, Eugene Debs, and Charles Steinmetz had founded the greatest workers' school in the country. Thousands of farmers and hillbilly men, miners, and other workers took correspondence courses in workers' law and workers' English and workers' history."

"He doesn't believe a trumpet and a megaphone are part of a scientist's equipment."

"In this country all a man need to do is to attain a little eminence and immediately he begins to talk. … But the American people are willing to listen to any one who has attained prominence. The main fact is that we've heard a man's name a great many times; that makes us ready to accept whatever he says."

"When it comes to scientific matters the ready talkers simply run riot. There are a lot of pseudo-scientists who with a little technical jargon to spatter through their talk are always getting in the limelight by making startling predictions of what the future has in store, using as their text the most recent discovery or invention."

"We don't know the why of anything. On that matter we are no further advanced than was the cavedweller. The scientist is contented if he can contribute something toward the knowledge of what is and how it is."

"In a mathematical sense, space is manifoldness, or combination of numbers. Physical space is known as the 3-dimension system. There is the 4-dimension system, there is the 10-dimension system."

"Scientific theories need reconstruction every now and then. If they didn't need reconstruction they would be facts, not theories."

"I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove static from our AM radio. I didn't think he'd start a revolution—start up a whole damn new industry to compete with RCA."

"Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words."

"The world, I think, will wait a long time for Nikola Tesla's equal in achievement and imagination."

"Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians' calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books and publications."