“A plain steel rod does remarkably well because steel... is a conductor of electricity, as well as of magnetism. This tubular motor is not the most efficient of linear induction machines. ...This amazing force of induction ...appears as almost artificial gravity under our control. Now, as an engineer I must try and put this force to good use, and when I do I must be sure that I'm getting the very best out of my machine. Now one of the advantageous of arrangements appears to be to use two flat machines face to face, forming the outside of a sandwich, with the aluminum sheet as the filling. Now this motor is really a most potent device, but still pretty useless... So if we want continuous motion, we must turn this machine over. Let [it] now be the moving part, and let it sit on a fixed rail and run along that... I'm going to raise the voltage slowly and the motor will climb this very steep incline. ...[I]t doesn't need wheels to grip the rail. There are virtually no moving parts, and the motor is capable of developing a very large force. Taking off. I can control the motor for very low speeds, or stop it when it's moving very fast. When used on the horizontal and made in a much larger size, such a machine is capable of developing a very high acceleration. At the Motor Industry Research Association laboratories at , the linear motor is being used to crash test all kinds of vehicles. ...The linear motor to do this job is very small, It's only about three times as big as our model which climbed the rail. ...Red lights flash, and once the final button is pressed, the forces of induction take over.”
“I'm like a child who's been brought up inside an institution and has never seen the outside world, the sea, or trees in a wood... Coming here was like being taken out of that box and put into the marv...”
Eric Laithwaite
“There are all kinds of people thinking about all kinds of things all of the time. That sentence sums up what I would describe as the ultimate deterrent to oppose the urge to invent. It is the feeling ...”
Eric Laithwaite
“Isaac Newton was right when he declared "If I can see further than others it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants." And you start counting up Newton's giants... Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Ar...”
Eric Laithwaite
“I make most of my inventions when I'm talking to other people. ...I drag them from their interest into mine, and then they thank me when they leave, and I feel as if I should pay them a fee, because I...”
Eric Laithwaite
“When you discover something or observe something for the first time, you... wonder how that works, and then you make one, and you look at it, and you decide you'd better find out how it works. ...[Y]o...”
Eric Laithwaite