“This is actually the prototype of the transistor they used in order to file the patent of the transistor. And it’s ugly. It’s absolutely non-standard. You can’t use it, or at least you can’t anymore.”
“A good engineering system is a system that you use every day and you don’t even realise that it’s been engineered. It is just doing what it has been built for in such an elegant and beautiful way that you don’t even realise that there is a lot of understanding, rigorous aspects put into the process to make it work.” Explore more >>
"When these were being used for experimentation, aeronautical engineering didn’t really exist; it was just getting going. So in a sense, it was in a similar state to what synthetic biology finds itself in now.” Explore more >>
“I use this image to illustrate this point, that there’s an element of dynamics here which is complicated, which is not obvious, and somehow it is designed.” Explore more >>
“It’s far from what people would generally consider engineering, but it works. It worked, and it changed the world. Now we have billions of those components and those elements actually run our lives.”
"This never delivered, at least not this particular project, fundamental understanding of thrust. But it worked. Maybe that’s the point. Does it do what it’s supposed to do? And who cares about fundamental understanding?” Explore more >>
"It has to deal with a lot of different inputs that are not drinkable, that come from living things, to create something that is robustly standardised.” Explore more >>
“There’s not a single blade of grass that hasn’t been affected by some sort of engineering activity. So humankind and engineers and the way that we interact with everything can be seen as sort of, forms of engineering.” Explore more >>
“Engineering is making things that work. At first, they don’t necessarily look like something that will be finalised and perfect and nice like planes. If you actually open up a plane, you would see lots of nasty and scary things, but this is how I think about engineering: dirty and working.”
“The idea was, ‘let’s find a propeller that has great thrust. We don’t really understand how these things work the way we should, but we need to deliver airplanes, so let’s try to find a great propeller.’ So, they just built a bunch of propellers with different shapes and tested them.” Explore more >>
“A good engineering system is a system that you use every day and you don’t even realise that it’s been engineered. It is just doing what it has been built for in such an elegant and beautiful way that you don’t even realise that there is a lot of understanding, rigorous aspects put into the process to make it work.” Explore more >>
“All of these tanks contain essentially homogenous mixtures that have been brought together from a bunch of varying sources. Modesto brings in grapes from all over California and outside of California to create something that consumers will recognise consistently as being the same wine.” Explore more >>