Engineering Quotes

“Can we survive technology?”
― John von Neumann

“ideologues of every stripe, as well as folks with interests economic, political, or personal, can interpret data and statistics to suit their own purposes...”
― Peter Benchley, Shark Trouble

“Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral”
― Melvin Kranzberg

“There is a frequent tendency in the presentation of mechaincs to use problems mainly as a vehicle to illustrate theory rather than to develop theory for the purpose of solving problems. When the first view is allowed to predominate, problems tend to become overly idealized and unrelated to engineering with the result that the exercise becomes dull, academic, and uninteresting. This approach deprives the students of valuable experience in formulating problems and thus of discovering the need for and meaning of theory. The second view provides by far the stronger motive for learning theory and leads to a better balance between theory and application. The crucial role played by interest and purpose in providing the strongest possible motive for learning cannot be overemphasized." Glenn Kraige, from Merriam & Kraige's Dynamics text, 7th Edition.”
― Glenn Kraige

“Failure analysis is as easy as Monday-morning quarterbacking' design is more akin to coaching. However, the design engineer must do better than any coach, for he is expected to win every game he plays. That is a tough assignment when one mistake can often mean a loss. And when defeat occurs, all one can hope is to analyze the game films and learn from the mistakes so that they are less likely to be repeated the next time out.”
― Henry Petroski, To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

“In modern society, it is not enough to be an engineer, a doctor, a chemist, a biologist, or a physicist, you must be all of them to understand why human health is failing on such a massive scale.”
― Steven Magee

“What we usually consider are impossible are simply engineering problems ... there's no law of physics preventing them”
― Michio Kaku

“There is much which we must leave, whether we like it or not, to the un-"scientific' narrative method of the professional historian.”
― Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

“Engineers are all too often unsung heroes; if we are ever, in truth, to travel between stars, it will be thanks to their aspirations and imagination... for they are the bridge builders.”
― Janine Ellen Young, The Bridge

“The world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better... with hands... with tools... with horse sense and science and engineering.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer

“The backbone of the electrical grid is largely massive numbers of steam driven engines that turn electrical generators.”
― Steven Magee

“Progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― Julian Guthrie, How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight

“I have learned over the years that many formally educated corrosion professionals are either engineers or chemists by training. While those two groups represent the largest two categories of backgrounds in the oilfield corrosion control industry, they are in the minority.”
― Robert Heidersbach, Metallurgy and Corrosion Control in Oil and Gas Production

“If you're going to go out, go out in a blaze of glory.”
― Guy Martin, Guy Martin: My Autobiography

“Pornography wants to suck you up.
Once you got sucked up… you are going to be manipulated by social engineering.”
― Deyth Banger

“I have seen ideas that work on paper not work in the field. But I have never seen an idea that does not work on paper work in the field.”
― Sean Shannon Murphy, Oil and Gas Survival Guide

“Evolution optimizes strongly for energy efficiency because of limited food supply, not for ease of construction or understanding by human engineers.”
― Max Tegmark

“America is inching towards the metric system”
― In US Engineering Circles

“Designing Structures is an art and this needs to be transparent, as designs come and go but creativity stays there”
― Er. Tabish Rasool

“George Morrow summed it up much more elegantly than I," Godbout said in a 1984 interview. "He said 'I have the best of both worlds. I enjoy what I'm doing, have immense fun at it and I get paid to boot'. I couldn't concur more.”
― Bill Godbout

“Structure Design must be safe and sound such that the exterior looks will magnetise the cameras from every nook and corner”
― Er. Tabish Rasool

“The progressive stack is basically a measure of how much you aren’t like, say, James Watt, the developer of the modern steam engine, the key invention of the Industrial Revolution. Watt was white, male, Protestant, straight, rich, mechanically skilled, and a scientific genius, so you’d better not be.”
― Steve Sailer

“Bad design with good materials may give you the designed fatigue life, but a good design with bad materials will never give you the designed fatigue life.”
― Kartik Srinivas, Dynamic Properties of Polymer Materials and their Measurements

“As we look around the world, especially in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, the west coast of Italy, Peru, and Bolivia, there are stone structures and the remains of others which don't easily fit into the standard picture of history. The pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Puma Punku in Bolivia, and the great megalithic wall of Sachsayhuaman in Peru are but three examples of astonishingly well-made stone works which modern engineers, stone masons, and other experts puzzle over. Conventional academics in general date these structures well within the standard timeline of so-called civilization. The generally prescribed creation date of the three pyramids of Giza is about 2500 BC, Puma Punku is alleged to have been constructed around 600 AD, and Sachsayhuaman approximately 1200 to 1400 AD. However, what intrigues engineers, architects, stone masons, and other professionals is the extreme precision of the work, often in very hard stone, which many archaeologists insist was usually achieved using bronze and or copper chisels, wooden measuring devices, and stone hammers.”
― Brien Foerster, Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History

“One also finds, even to this day, some amazing works such as the aforementioned Sachsayhuaman and the Coricancha in Cusco, where no mortar of any kind was used. It was stone-on-stone, with astonishing accuracy of fit. In the Inca toolkit, as found in the archaeological record, only copper and bronze chisels have been found, along with wooden measuring instruments and stone pounders or hammers. Conventional archaeologists contend that such tools were responsible for the refined workmanship seen in Cusco and other 'Inca' areas. However, the stone used - granite, andesite, and basalt - are harder than the majority of the tools used, and thus could not have been responsible for the work. The same is true of Tiwanaku and the connected site of Puma Punku. Massive megalithic blocks with sculpted surfaces are found at these locations, made of local sandstone, which would be difficult to shape with bronze chisels and stone hammers. However, the real enigmas are the even harder andesite and basalt stones, cut and shaped with such precision that modern engineers, stone masons, and other professionals question how such work could have been achieved without at least 20th century technology.”
― Brien Foerster, Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History

“Rudolph Gantenbrink's important discovery [of a door with metallic handles found with a robot inside a shaft in the Great Pyramid] has forced many Egyptologists to finally accept that their theories are flawed. This is an interesting development. Academic mores normally dictate that when a theory contains flaws, or unsubstantiated data that supports critical elements on which the theory is built, the entire theory must either be thrown out or revised. Instead of the tomb theory being dismissed, however, Gantenbrink himself was dismissed from the project. He discovered the "door" on March 22, 1993. A week later, he was told to pack up his robot and leave Egypt. Gantenbrink has the technology to go beyond the so-called door but, presumably because of political reasons, has been refused permission to resume his research in Egypt. Gantenbrink, with an engineer's typical pragmatism, stated, 'I take an absolute neutral position. It is a scientific process, and there is no need whatsoever to answer questions with speculation when these questions could be answered much more easily by continuing the research. Yet because of a stupid feud between what I call believers and non-believers, I am condemned as someone who is speculating. But I am not. I am just stating the facts. We have a device [ultrasonic] that would discover if there is a cavity behind the slab. It is nonsensical to make theories when we have the tools to discover the facts.”
― Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt

“Current theories regarding the function and construction of the pyramid fall short. A credible theory would have to explain the following conditions found inside the Great Pyramid:
-The selection of granite as the building material for the King's Chamber. It is evident that in choosing granite, the builders took upon themselves an extremely difficult task.
-The presence of four superfluous chambers above the King's Chamber.
-The characteristics of the giant granite monoliths that were used to separate these so-called "construction chambers."
-The presence of exuviae, or the cast-off shells of insects, that coated the chamber above the King's Chamber, turning those who entered black.
-The violent disturbance in the King's Chamber that expanded its walls and cracked the beams in its ceiling but left the rest of the Great Pyramid seemingly undisturbed.
-The fact that the guardians were able to detect the disturbance inside the King's Chamber, when there was little or no exterior evidence of it.
-The reason the guardians thought it necessary to smear the cracks in the ceiling of the King's Chamber with cement.
-The fact that two shafts connect the King's Chamber to the outside.
-The design logic for these two shafts—their function, dimensions, features, and so forth.”
― Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt

“I looked more closely at what I considered to be the most significant information regarding the Great Pyramid, which was the accuracy with which it was built. It soon became obvious to me that the researchers on both sides of the issue were sympathetic to the craftspeople involved in building the pyramids. But the researchers were not craftspeople themselves, and they did not have the perspective gained through years of experience working with their hands and with machinery. Having that experience myself, I have some very strong opinions regarding the level of manufacturing expertise practiced by the ancient Egyptians. They were not primitive by any means, and their craftsmanship and precision would be an extreme challenge to duplicate today.”
― Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt

“if we were to build a Great Pyramid today, we would need a lot of patience. In preparation for his book "5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster", Richard Noone asked Merle Booker, technical director of the Indiana Limestone Institute of America, to prepare a time study of what it would take to quarry, fabricate, and ship enough limestone to duplicate the Great Pyramid. Using the most modern quarrying equipment available for cutting, lifting, and transporting the stone, Booker estimated that the present-day Indiana limestone industry would need to triple its output, and it would take the entire industry, which as I have said includes thirty-three quarries, twenty-seven years to fill the order for 131,467,940 cubic feet of stone.
These estimates were based on the assumption that production would proceed without problems. Then we would be faced with the task of putting the limestone blocks in place. The level of accuracy in the base of the Great Pyramid is astounding, and is not demanded, or even expected, by building codes today. Civil engineer Roland Dove, of Roland P. Dove & Associates, explained that .02 inch per foot variance was acceptable in modern building foundations. When I informed him of the minute variation in the foundation of the Great Pyramid, he expressed disbelief and agreed with me that in this particular phase of construction, the builders of the pyramid exhibited a state of the art that would be considered advanced by modern standards.”
― Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt

“The quantity of stone that had to be quarried, hauled, and hoisted into place in the Great Pyramid becomes even more impressive when it is compared with other civil engineering feats, whether real or imagined. It has been stated that it contains more stone than that used in all the churches, cathedrals, and chapels built in England since the time of Christ. Thirty Empire State Buildings could be built with the estimated 2,300,000 stones. A wall three-feet high and one-foot thick could be built across the United States and back using the amount of masonry contained in the Great Pyramid.”
― Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt