Engineers

"The technocrats made a believable case for a kind of technological utopia, but their asking price was too high. The idea of political democracy still represented a stronger ideal than technological elitism. In the end, critics believed that the socially desirable goals that technology made possible could be achieved without the sacrifice of existing institutions and values and without incurring the apocalypse that technocracy predicted."

"Technocracy originated in the winter of 1918-19 when Howard Scott formed a group of scientists, engineers, and economists that became known as the Technical Alliance--a research organization. Howard Scott was chief engineer of this group. The Alliance lasted about fourteen years. Its membership embraced many of America's top scientists and engineers, including such personalities as: Frederick Ackerman, architect; , statistician; Thorstein Veblen, economist; L. K. Comstock, electrical engineer, and Charles Steinmetz. It conducted what became known as the famous 'Energy Survey of North America.' Out of the survey, and under the guiding genius of Howard Scott, there emerged a completely new way of looking at life and human affairs. The social assets and liabilities (in a physical sense) of North America were laid bare for the first time. The social trends and tendencies were analyzed scientifically and for the first time in history a continental area (North America) had a glimpse of its future, or at least of the broad alternatives."

"The technological concepts of Technocracy are completely beyond any of the political and social philosophies, from Adam Smith, Ricardo, Proudhon, Bakunin, Karl Marx, Lenin and various other promulgators of rightist and leftist political philosophies."

"We never had any use for Taylor or any of the efficiency or scientific management crowd. They never realized that human toil was the last thing in the world you had to be efficient about; the only way to be really efficient is to eliminate it entirely, and this would have been heresy to any of the Taylor, Gant, Barth, Cook efficiency crowd."

"A number of engineers became so-called disciples of Frederick W. Taylor, even though he had passed on to his reward in 1915. A considerable number of engineers took up the so-called scientific management of Frederick Taylor and further embroidered it and publicized themselves as efficiency engineers and management consultants. Henry L. Gantt had been Taylor's assistant at the Midvale Steel and the Bethlehem Steel Company. Gant, , Leffingwell, Emerson, H. K. Hathaway, , and were among the many prominent advocates of Taylor's efficiency system with some variations."

"When Commodore acquired Amiga in 1984, the legion of Amiga loyalists thought the world would beat a path to the better-mousetrap door. It didn't happen. The Amiga languished."

"1. There is at present in the material world a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical energy, without more than an equivalent of dissipation, is impossible in inanimate material processes, and is probably never effected by means of organized matter, either endowed with vegetable life or subjected to the will of an animated creature. 3. Within a finite period of time past, the earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come the earth must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been, or are to be performed, which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on at present in the material world are subject."

"Thomson was a mathematical prodigy. At age 16, he mastered ’s ' and wrote and published a defense of it. Fourier’s theory allowed one to determine the distribution of heat in a body on the sole assumption that heat flow is proportional to temperature gradient. The approach was macroscopic, geometrical, and nonhypothetical, and Thomson took to it easily. During his undergraduate years at , he traveled to Paris and met the mathematical savants—in particular, mathematician Joseph Liouville and experimental physicist , who both considered Michael Faraday’s curved lines of force outré. At Liouville’s urging, Thomson produced for the ' a demonstration that the lines of force, whether electric or magnetic, followed from inverse square laws. The relevant mathematics was a near cousin to that for heat flow, but the insight was new and would be seminal in the thinking that led James Clerk Maxwell to electromagnetic field theory."

"If materialism cannot consistently escape the conclusion of a finite state, which William Thomson has traced out for it, then materialism is thereby refuted."

"According to Sir W. Thomson's theory of Vortex Atoms, the substance of which the molecule consists is a uniformly dense plenum, the properties of which are those of a perfect fluid, the molecule itself being nothing but a certain motion impressed on a portion of this fluid, and this motion is shewn, by a theorem due to Helmholtz, to be as indestructible as we believe a portion of matter to be."

"The man of true Physical instincts, endowed with the great faculty of scientific imagination, possessed for example by Lord Kelvin in a very remarkable degree, is for ever imagining models which shall enable him by their working to represent and depict the course of actual physical processes. The possibility and consistency of such models require Mathematical Analysis for their investigation."

"He was one of the few scientists to be knighted, and the only one in the nineteenth century to be raised to the peerage. These honors, however, were not in recognition of his scientific work but his genius as an engineer in solving the major technical problems of laying the first Atlantic cable and his entrepreneurial success as an instrument designer and manufacturer for the new electrical industries and the Navy. With his success with the Atlantic cable Kelvin became a symbol of science to the general public."

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

"The beauty and clearness of the dynamical theory, which asserts heat and light to be modes of motion, is at present obscured by two clouds. I. The first came into existence with the undulatory theory of light, and was dealt with by Fresnel and Dr. Thomas Young; it involved the question, how could the earth move through an elastic solid, such as essentially is the luminiferous ether? II. The second is the Maxwell–Boltzmann doctrine regarding the partition of energy."

"If the water flow down by a gradual natural channel, its potential energy is gradually converted into heat by fluid friction, according to an admirable discovery made by Mr Joule of Manchester above twelve years ago, which has led to the greatest reform that physical science has experienced since the days of Newton. From that discovery, it may be concluded with certainty that heat is not matter, but some kind of motion among the particles of matter; a conclusion established, it is true, by Sir Humphrey Davy and Count Rumford at the end of last century, but ignored by even the highest scientific men during a period of more than forty years."

"It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects. [Footnote: ] If this axiom be denied for all temperatures, it would have to be admitted that a self-acting machine might be set to work and produce mechanical effect by cooling the sea or earth, with no limit but the total loss of heat from the earth and sea, or in reality, from the whole material world."

"Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science, and is at present second to none in the beauty of its mathematics."

"Every boy... should be able by the age of 12 to write his own language with accuracy and some elegance; he should have a reading knowledge of French, and be able to translate Latin and easy Greek authors, and have some acquaintance with German. Having learned thus the meaning of words... a boy should study Logic, so as to be able to apply his words sensibly."

"To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness."

"Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than any man up to his time."

"It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms."

"I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of sound speculation in dynamical science."

"Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense."

"Mathematics is the only true metaphysics."

"Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but 'vector' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature."

"I am afraid I am not in the flight for “aerial navigation”. I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society."

"Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way."

"There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon the practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application; and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind."

"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."

"εὕρηκα [heúrēka]"

"Tragically for all of us, he [Archimedes] was cut down by a Roman soldier because he refused to stop working. … If Archimedes hadn't been killed before his time, what could have he achieved? The industrial revolution could have happened two thousand years earlier. He might have kick-started the modern age."

"According to legend, nothing could get between him [Archimedes] and his work, and sometimes he would even forget to eat. Ideas would come to him at any moment, and he would scribble them on any available surface. Famously, he was in the bath when he discovered the laws of buoyancy, leading him to run naked through the streets shouting "Eureka!" … Eureka means "I have found it," and it could be argued that Archimedes found out more than anyone else before or since."

"Archimedes was a brilliant inventor and a mathematician. He says to the people around him, "Don't just live in the lap of the gods. Don't be dominated by Mother Nature. You, as a man, can take control of your own destiny.""

"Archimedes was the earliest thinker to develop the apparatus of an infinite series with a finite limit ...starting on the conceptual path toward calculus. Of the giants on whose shoulders Isaac Newton would eventually perch, Archimedes was the first."

"Using his masterful understanding of mechanics, equilibrium, and the principles of the lever, he weighed in his mind solids or figures whose volumes or areas he was attempting to find against ones he already knew. After determining in this way the answer...he found it much easier to prove geometrically... Consequently The Method starts with a number of statements on centers of gravity and only then proceeds to the geometrical propositions and their proofs. ...[He] essentially introduced the concept of a thought experiment into rigorous research. ...[He] freed mathematics from the somewhat artificial chains that Euclid and Plato had put on it. ...He did not hesitate to explore and exploit the connections between the abstract mathematical objects (the Platonic forms) and physical reality (actual solids and flat objects) to advance his mathematics."

"Almost all modern translations of Archimedes’ works stem from a single Greek manuscript that was copied from an earlier original at Constantinople in the ninth or tenth century, was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century, and eventually disappeared without a trace in the sixteenth century."

"In Euclidean geometry the infinitely small was rejected and in the classical treatises of Archimedes we have the finest example of mathematical rigour in antiquity. Notwithstanding, in the discovery method we find him manipulating line and surface indivisibles skilfully, imaginatively and non-rigorously"

"The estimations, which occur in the summing of infinite series and in limiting operations, the "epsilontics", as the calculation with an arbitrarily small ε is sometimes called, were for Archimedes an open book. In this respect, his thinking is entirely modern."

"To conceive of a parabolic segment or of a triangle as the sum of infinitely many line segments, is closely akin to the idea of Leibniz, who thought of the integral \int y~dx as the sum of infinitely many terms y~dx. But, in contrast to Leibniz, Archimedes is fully aware that this conception is... incorrect and that the derivation should be supplemented by a rigorous proof."

"Modern mathematics was born with Archimedes and died with him for all of two thousand years. It came to life again with Descartes and Newton."

"There is here, as in all great Greek mathematical masterpieces, no hint as to the kind of analysis by which the results were first arrived at; for it is clear that they were not discovered by the steps which led up to them in the finished treatise. If the geometrical treatises had stood alone, Archimedes might seem, as Wallis said, "as it were of set purpose to have covered up the traces of his investigations, as if he has grudged posterity the secret of his method of inquiry, while he wished to extort from them assent to his results.""

"The treatises are, without exception, monuments of mathematical exposition; the gradual revelation of the plan of attack, the masterly ordering of the propositions, the stern elimination of everything not immediately relevant to the purpose, the finish of the whole, are so impressive in their perfection as to create a feeling akin to awe in the mind of the reader."

"In these days an infinite number of chemical tests would be available. But then Archimedes had to think... afresh. The solution flashed upon him as he lay in his bath. He jumped up and ran through the streets to the palace, shouting Eureka! Eureka! (I have found it! ...) This day... ought to be celebrated as the birthday of mathematical physics; the science came of age when Newton sat in his orchard. Archimedes... had made a great discovery. He saw that a body when immersed in water is pressed upwards by the surrounding water with a resultant force equal to the weight of the water it displaces. ...Hence if W lb. be the [known] weight of the crown, as weighed in air, and w lb. be the [unknown] weight of the water which it displaces when completely immersed, W - w [from which (knowing W) the weight w of the equal volume of water can be derived,] would be the extra upward force necessary to sustain the crown as it hung in the water. [Alternatively, the weight of water, equaling the volume of the crown, and overflowing a tub, could be weighed directly.] Now, this upward force can easily be obtained by weighing the body as it hangs in the water [Fig. 3]...But \frac{w}{W} ...is the same for any lump of metal of the same material: it is now called the ... Archimedes had only to take a lump of indisputably pure gold and find its specific gravity by the same process. ...[N]ot only is it the first precise example of the application of mathematical ideas to physics, but also... a perfect and simple example of what must be the method and spirit of the science for all time. The discovery of the theory of specific gravity marks a genius of the first rank."

"Some of the later Greeks, such as Archimedes, had just views on the elementary phenomena of and optics. Indeed, Archimedes, who combined a genius for mathematics with physical insight, must rank with Newton, who lived nearly two thousand years later, as one of the founders of mathematical physics."

"Archimedes originally solved the problem of finding the solid content of a sphere before that of finding its surface, and he inferred the result of the latter problem from that of the former. ...another illustration of the fact that the order of propositions in the treatises of the Greek geometers as finally elaborated does not necessarily follow the order of discovery."

"Abstract enquiries into the most puzzling problems did not arise in the brain of Archimedes as a spontaneous and hitherto untouched subject, but rather as a reflection of prior enquiries in the same direction and by men separated from his days by as long a period — and far longer — than the one which separates you from the great Syracusian."

"Archimedes said, “Give to me a fulcrum on which to plant my lever, and I will move the world.” And I say, give to woman the ballot, the political fulcrum, on which to plant her moral lever, and she will lift the world into a nobler purer atmosphere."

"When Jove looked down and saw the heavens figured in a sphere of glass he laughed and said to the other gods: "Has the power of mortal effort gone so far? Is my handiwork now mimicked in a fragile globe? An old man of Syracuse has imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods. Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses of the stars and actuates the lifelike mass with definite motions. A false zodiac runs through a year of its own, and a toy moon waxes and wanes month by month. Now bold invention rejoices to make its own heaven revolve and sets the stars in motion by human wit. Why should I take umbrage at harmless and his mock thunder? Here the feeble hand of man has proved Nature's rival.""

"When... the Romans assaulted the walls in two places at once, fear and consternation stupefied the Syracusans.... But when Archimedes began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all sorts of missile weapons... that came down with incredible noise and violence... they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all their ranks and files. ...huge poles thrust out from the walls, over the ships, sunk some by the great weights... from on high... others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand or beak like a crane's... and... plunged them to the bottom of the sea; or else the ships, drawn by engines within, and whirled about, were dashed against steep rocks... under the walls, with great destruction of the soldiers... aboard them. A ship was frequently lifted up to a great height in the air... and was rolled to and fro... until the mariners were all thrown out, when at length it was dashed against the rocks, or let fall. At the engine [called Sambuca] that Marcellus brought upon the bridge of ships... while it was as yet approaching the wall, there was discharged a... rock of ten talents [600-700 lb. total] weight, then a second and a third, which, striking upon it with immense force and a noise like thunder, broke all its foundation to pieces... and completely dislodged it from the bridge. So Marcellus... drew off his ships to a safer distance, and sounded a retreat... They then took a resolution of coming up under the walls... in the night; thinking that as Archimedes used ropes stretched at length in playing his engines, the soldiers would now be under the shot, and the darts would... fly over their heads... But he... had... framed... engines accommodated to any distance, and shorter weapons; and... with engines of a shorter range, unexpected blows were inflicted on the assailants. Thus... instantly a shower of darts and other missile weapons was again cast upon them. And when stones came tumbling down... upon their heads, and... the whole wall shot out arrows at them, they retired. ...as they were going off, arrows and darts of a longer range inflicted a great slaughter among them, and their ships were driven one against another; while they themselves were not able to retaliate... For Archimedes had provided and fixed most of his engines immediately under the wall; whence the Romans, seeing that indefinite mischief overwhelmed them from no visible means, began to think they were fighting with the gods."

"Shall we not make an end to this fighting against this geometrical Briareus who uses our ships like cups to ladle water from the sea, drives off our sambuca ignominiously with cudgel-blows, and by the multitude of missiles that he hurls at us all at once outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?"