"Perhaps it was World War II which came to the rescue again when the ridiculous Professor became almost indistinguishable from the 'Back Room Boy'...It reminded me of a young lady who was quite accurately described as 'long and lanky' until she inherited half a million pounds and overnight became 'tall and stately'. The image of a Professor 'stumbling across ideas' was transformed into the Scientist making 'inspired guesses'. 'Men ahead of their time' became a common compliment to those whose ideas were so abstract that they could not be understood."
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Academics and industrialists, p. 108.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_Laithwaite
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Eric Laithwaite
Eric Roberts Laithwaite (14 June 1921 – 27 November 1997) was a British electrical engineer, known as the "Father of " for his development of the and maglev rail system. He and Fredrick Eastham designed a self-stable magnetic levitation system called (which incidentally appeared in the film The Spy Who Loved Me). Laithwaite derived an equation for "goodness", which parametrically described motor efficiency in general terms, and which he interpreted as implying that motor efficiency increases wit
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