19th-century Mechanical Engineer Quotes

Charles Babbage

Frederick Winslow Taylor

James Nasmyth

Ralph Flanders

Robert Henry Thurston

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

Charles Babbage

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

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

Students are here not for service or for culture, but for the selfish end of preparing for salary to come. Constantly I hear them asking, 'If I change over to your course, what kind of a job will it help me to get when I graduate?' Students are weighing every subject they take on the scales of jobs to come.

In course of time the Brothers Cowper removed the manufacture of their printing machines from London, to Manchester. There they found skilled and energetic workmen, ready to carry their plans into effect.

Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest.

Robert Henry Thurston

There is an engineering approach to (our) problems. The engineer has an objective. He studies and analyzes the materials with which he has to deal. He acquaints himself with the natural forces which he cannot change, which are more powerful than he is, but to which he must adapt himself so that he may make use of them.