Engineer Quotes - page 4
Rate of change is this mathematics known as Calculus. ... Now I hope you understand this, because I've never been able to make head nor tail of it. It must be some sort of a Black Magic operation, started out by the Luce cult - some immoral people who are operating up in New York City, Rockefeller Plaza - been thoroughly condemned by the whole society. Anyway, their rate-of-change theory - I've never seen any use for that mathematics, by the way - I love that mathematics, because it - I asked an engineer, one time, who was in his 6th year of engineering, if he'd ever used Calculus, and he told me yeah, once, once I did, he said. When did you use it? And he said I used it once. Let me see, what did you use it on? Oh yeah. Something on the rate-of-change of steam particles in boilers. And then we went out and tested it and found the answer was wrong.
L. Ron Hubbard
Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa.
Hermann Hesse
Scientific investigation is rapidly putting at our disposal vast amounts of knowledge concerning materials and forces, which it is the business of the engineer to utilize for the benefit of the community. Well-designed plants and efficiency labor-saving devices, to be seen on every hand, bear testimony that he is doing at least a portion of his work well. When, however, it comes to the operation of these plants and the utilization of these labor-saving devices, the lack of co-operation between employer and employee, and the inefficient utilization of labor, very much impair their efficiency. 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.
Henry Gantt