19th-century Engineer Quotes

Henry Ford

Alfred Nobel

Charles Babbage

Douglas MacArthur

George B. McClellan

Vannevar Bush

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Progress is not made by pulling off a series of stunts. Each step has to be regulated. A man cannot expect to progress without thinking.

Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition — in having to put forth the best within you.

Henry J. Kaiser

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

Edwin Howard Armstrong

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

Charles Babbage

To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish a framework on which the spirit may rise.

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

John Howard Dellinger

Staff standards are not theological abstractions, but scientific approximations, and are evolved for the use of the line, the sole justification of the standards being that they will make line work more efficient. Staff standards being for the benefit of the line and often entrusted to line officials, must be put in the form of permanent instructions so that all may understand what is being aimed at, and deviations by the line be noted and reprimanded.

Harrington Emerson

There are men of a certain type of mind who are never wearied with gibing at mathematics, at mathematicians, and at mathematical methods of inquiry. It goes almost without saying that these men have themselves little mathematical bent.

Oliver Heaviside

In many cases, a jig borer is a "jig eliminator." In other words, such a machine may be used instead of a jig either when the quantity of work is not large enough to warrant making a jig or when there is insufficient time for jig making.

Franklin D. Jones

The scientist merely explores that which exists, while the engineer creates what has never existed before.

Theodore von Kármán

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.

Otto Lilienthal

The hated system of land tenure, so contributory to general unrest in Asia, has been abolished. Every farmer is now accorded the right and dignity of ownership of the land he long has tilled.

Douglas MacArthur

Each new discovery leaves in the brains of men seeds which make it possible for an ever-increasing number of minds of new generations to embrace even greater scientific concepts.

Earth, thou grain of sand on the shore of the Universe of God; thou Bethlehem, amongst the princely cities of the heavens; thou art, and remainest, the Loved One amongst ten thousand suns and worlds, the Chosen of God! Thee will He again visit, and then thou wilt prepare a throne for Him, as thou gavest Him a manger cradle; in His radiant glory wilt thou rejoice, as thou didst once drink His blood and tears, and mourn His death! On thee has the Lord a great work to complete.

Wilhelm von Pressel

A party of astronomers went measuring of the earth, And forty million meters they took to be its girth; Five hundred million inches, though, go through from pole to pole; So lets stick to inches, feet, and yards, and the good old three-foot rule.

William John Macquorn Rankine

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

Henry Martyn Robert

We never had any use for Taylor nor 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. It is sad to contemplate that men of the technical ability of the names mentioned in this paragraph were so lame in their thinking and social outlook that they missed the boat so completely. Who in hell wants to be efficient with a shovel, and what sense would there be even if you succeeded? They should have had their heads opened with a shovel, it might have been more effective.

Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire. Those who fail will die.

Mathematics is merely a shorthand method of recording physical intuition and physical reasoning, but it should not be a formalism leading from nowhere to nowhere, as it is likely to be made by one who does not realize its purpose as a tool.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error he is liable to give up some truth with it, and in accepting the arguments of the other man he is sure to get some error with it.

The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increased by proper study is, in most cases, so great as to be almost incredible.

Advancement of the human factor in industry... varies so much that unless we use measurement and abide by the results, there is no possibility of repeating the process accurately and efficiently at will, or of predicting and controlling the future conditions that assure that advancement.

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr.

The measurement of the angles was made by Mr. J. E. Hilgard, whose zeal and the ability with which he has discharged these duties deserve notice here, as they have received it in the reports of the chief of his party.

Julius Erasmus Hilgard

Some differences of opinion exist in the Board of Directors, in regard to the discipline that has been pursued in the superintendence of the operations of the road. [It was his understanding that] a respectable number of them entertain views... somewhat at variance with my own.

Daniel McCallum

The writer feels that management is also destined to become more of an art, and that many of the, elements which are now believed to be outside the field of exact knowledge will soon be standardized tabulated, accepted, and used, as are now many of the elements of engineering.

Frederick Winslow Taylor