“The universities and the factories were as far apart as the gymnasium and the monastery. ...[T]his watershed inhibited linear motor development for the industrialist would make a linear machine, basing his designs on conventional rotary machine practice, find it to have an efficiency of 20 per cent and a of 0.1, and abandon it for the rest of his career. The reason for the low values of these, in part still fashionable quantities, was not only the lack of theoretical ability but the low speed and small size of applications...”
“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