“An engineer is first and foremost a scientist. ...an applied scientist ...whose ultimate objective is the profitable manufacture of articles... Academic engineers may argue that they are as concerned with profitable concepts... To this extent they run alongside the pure scientist... with at least half an eye on the profits and with problems many orders of magnitude greater in complexity... In such a no-man's land he is hand-in-hand with his medical colleague, who faced with a malignant disease must let the patient die or try something.”
EL
More by Eric Laithwaite

“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

“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 amazi...”

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