engineers-from-germany

"The rattling of the relays of the Z4 was the only interesting thing to be experienced in Zurich's night life!"

"After the war Zuse constructed the Z4 computer, which became the world’s first commercially used computer. Zuse is also credited with writing the first programming language for his computers: Plankalkül, meaning calculus for programs. As an engineer by trade, Zuse was mainly focused on building a working machine that could perform calculations. He was not at all concerned with the theory of computation, which at that time was explored by renowned mathematicians in the academic world like Schönfinkel, Church, Post, Kleene, and Turing. Because of this, Zuse was not an established name in the academic community as a theoretical computer scientist. It is known however, that Turing and Zuse were familiar with each other’s work (Zenil, 2012). Although Zuse has always been more characterized as an engineer than a theorist. This is perhaps one of the reasons why his main work on computation in physics has been relatively unnoticed in the academic community for so long."

"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."

"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 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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"Röntgen has familiarized us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest waves with which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the material universe is built up; and there is no reason to suppose that we have here reached the limit of frequency."

"Röntgen was an experimental physicist of the old school and built most of his own equipment. ...It was Rontgen's custom, when beginning new investigations, to repeat important experiments made previously by others in the same field. Since he was repeating Hertz' and Lenard's experiments with cathode rays, he used an armamentarium employed by those workers... he extended his experiments to include a Hittorf-Crookes' tube... when he discovered the new rays. The whole room was darkened... Röntgen suddenly saw a few brightly fluorescent crystals which lay on the table at some distance from the tube."

"The lesson of the laboratory was eloquent. Compared, for instance, with the elaborate, expensive, and complete apparatus of, say, the University of London, or any of the great American Universities, it was bare and unassuming to a degree. It mutely said that in the great march of science it is the genius of the man, and not the perfection of the appliances, that breaks new territory in the great territory of the unknown. ...the discoverer himself had done so much with so little."

"Röntgen retained the characteristic of a strikingly modest and reticent man. Throughout his life he retained his love of nature and outdoor occupations. Many vacations were spent at his summer home at Weilheim, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, where he entertained his friends and went on many expeditions into the mountains. He was a great mountaineer and more than once got into dangerous situations. Amiable and courteous by nature, he was always understanding the views and difficulties of others. He was always shy of having an assistant, and preferred to work alone. Much of the apparatus he used was built by himself with great ingenuity and experimental skill."

"We shall see what we shall see. We have the start now; the developments will follow in time."

"I am not a prophet, and I am opposed to prophesying. I am pursuing my investigations, and as fast as my results are verified I shall make them public."

"Having discovered the existence of a new kind of rays, I of course began to investigate what they would do. … It soon appeared from tests that the rays had penetrative power to a degree hitherto unknown. They penetrated paper, wood, and cloth with ease; and the thickness of the substance made no perceptible difference, within reasonable limits. … The rays passed through all the metals tested, with a facility varying, roughly speaking, with the density of the metal. These phenomena I have discussed carefully in my report to the Würzburg society, and you will find all the technical results therein stated."

"I was working with a Crookes tube covered by a shield of black cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on the bench there. I had been passing a current through the tube, and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper. … The effect was one which could only be produced, in ordinary parlance, by the passage of light. No light could come from the tube, because the shield which covered it was impervious to any light known, even that of the electric arc. … I did not think; I investigated. I assumed that the effect must have come from the tube, since its character indicated that it could come from nowhere else. I tested it. In a few minutes there was no doubt about it. Rays were coming from the tube which had a luminescent effect upon the paper. I tried it successfully at greater and greater distances, even at two metres. It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new, something unrecorded."

"For decades engineers have stood accused that their buildings do not have any cultural value. We have attempted to liberate engineering of this accusation. As National Socialists we are dedicated to working with boldness, but also with love of the Volk and our landscape in mind. These roads do not serve transportation alone, they also bind our Fatherland. In these highways our engineering will reflect the National Socialist movement."

"We do not build speedways, but roads which correspond to the character of the German landscape."

"The external appearance of any construction projects that are created during the time of the National Socialist Reich must take on the sensibility of our time. Factories are the workplaces of our National Socialist racial comrades. Streets and highways carry the name of the Führer. Settlements today are not isolated communities, but rather parts of greater city-construction plans. Every work site must be properly located within its neighborhood and surrounding setting (i.e., the natural world)."

"I could not imagine that we should make much of an effort to preserve remainders of natural beauty in conquered Poland."

"The car is not a rabbit or a deer that jumps around in sweeping lines, but it is a man-made work of technology in need of an appropriate roadway. Rather, the car resembles a dragon fly or any other jumping animal that moves shorter distances in straight lines and then changes its direction at different points."

"The purpose of the Reichsautobahnen is to become the roads of Adolf Hitler."

"The German landscape is something unique that we cannot disturb and have no right to destroy. The more densely populated our 'living space' becomes with settlements, the greater our hunger will grow for unspoilt nature. The ever increasing spiritual damage caused by life within the big city will make this hunger practically uncontrollable... when we build here on this the landscape of our homeland we must be clear that we will protect its beauty; and in places where this beauty has already disappeared, we will reconstruct it."

"The maintenance of equilibrium in forward flight is a matter of practice, and can only be learned by repeated personal experiment."

"The supporting powers of time air and of the wind depend on the shape of the surfaces used, and the best forms can only be evolved by free flight through the air."

"The contrivances which are necessary to counteract the wind effects can only be understood by actual practice in the wind."

"I, too, have made it a lifelong task of mine to add a cultural element to my work, which should result in uniting countries and reconciling their people. Our experience of today's civilisation suffers from the fact that it only happens on the surface of the earth. We have invented barricades between our countries, custom regulations and constraints and complicated traffic laws and these are only possible because we are not in control of the 'kingdom of the air', and not as 'free as a bird'. Numerous technicians in every state are doing their utmost to achieve the dream of free, unlimited flight and it is precisely here where changes can be made which would have a radical effect on our whole way of life. The borders between countries would lose their significance, because they could not be closed off from each other. Linguistic differences would disappear, as human mobility increased. National defence would cease to devour the best resources of nations as it would become impossible in itself. And the necessity of resolving disagreements among nations in some other way than by bloody battles would, in its turn, lead us to eternal peace. We are getting closer to this goal. When we will reach it, I do not know."

"All flight is based upon producing air pressure, all flight energy consists in overcoming air pressure."

"Artificial flight may be defined as that form of aviation in which a man flies at will in any direction by means of an apparatus attached to his body, the use of which requires personal skill. Artificial flight by a single individual is the proper beginning for all species of artificial flight, as the necessary conditions can most easily be fulfilled when man flies individually."

"The increasing size of the apparatus makes the construction more difficult in securing lightness in the machine; therefore the building of small apparatus is to be recommended."

"The difficulty of rising into the air increases rapidly with the size of the apparatus. The uplifting of a single person, therefore, is more easily attained than that of a large flying machine loaded with several persons."

"The sailing flight of birds is the only form of flight which is carried on for some length of time without the expenditure of power."

"Gradual development of flight should begin with the simplest apparatus and movements, and without time complication of dynamic means."

"Of all the men who attacked the flying problem in the 19th century, Otto Lilienthal was easily the most important. … It is true that attempts at gliding had been made hundreds of years before him, and that in the nineteenth century, Cayley, Spencer, Wenham, Mouillard, and many others were reported to have made feeble attempts to glide, but their failures were so complete that nothing of value resulted."

"Particular honour belongs to those who believed in the possibility of mechanical flight when all the world was against them; not the visionaries because they hoped for it merely, but those who by sheer force of intellect perceived the means by which it could be accomplished and directed their experiments along the right path. … The name of Lilienthal is now among the most honoured, but curiously his own countrymen were the last to recognize the value of his work."

"To design a flying machine is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything."

"Actual practice in individual flight presents the best prospects for developing our capacity until it leads to perfected free flight."

"By practice and experience a man can (if the wind be of the right strength) imitate the complete sailing flight of birds by availing himself of the slight upward trend of some winds, by performing circling sweeps, and by allowing the air to carry him."

"Experience alone can teach us the best forms of construction for sailing apparatus in order that they may be of sufficient strength, very light, and most easily managed."