"The background of the image is Leonardo’s notebooks. This historical example of an engineering notebook, that we now see as a very precious sort of artefact, captured his ideas, his designs, his thoughts about how the world might work, and so on.”
“Turns out there’s this big chunk of something called engineering that people actually haven’t spent that much time thinking about, by and large. So engineering for me is an opportunity to rediscover all the history that I already know and re-imagine it in light of things like engineering practices, engineering knowledge, engineering societies, all of the various kinds of engineers.” Explore more >>
“The viaduct is an 18th century thing that can trace its origins back to Roman times. So viaducts as a technology were shaping society thousands of years before we coined ‘engineer’ as a word. So engineering’s kind of always been around human activity, human endeavour. And the way that we shape our socio-technical systems to create value, whatever value is.” Explore more >>
“I could have used all sorts of images. Engineering is the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Hoover Dam, Durham Cathedral, things like that. Or integrated circuits.” Explore more >>
“In engineering notebooks every page is signed by two people: signed by the person who did the work and signed by their supervisor, telling you perhaps all kinds of things. Taking responsibility for your work, or taking ownership for your work, or the types of oversight systems that are in place.”
“I guess on one other level it represents where I sit now, which is policy at quite a high level. I no longer get to do that very nitty-gritty ‘let’s do stuff.' You know, 'a contaminated site, let’s clean it up, let’s design the technology that we need.’ So I don’t get dirty like that. I sort of sit right at the very top, which is good as well but sometimes not good at all.” Explore more >>
“What actually touches on the comments about the Apollo missions, the ‘Earthrise’ picture, is one of the reasons that I like this. It put me in mind of the concept of ‘the overview effect’ The effect of having that image of the Earth sort of capture the fragility of life on Earth and how small Earth was in relation to the rest of the universe. That, for me, captures a lot of what I think about in engineering.” Explore more >>
“If you buy one of these things, you will be told how much wind-power you need for it to start flying. You will also be told what is the maximum wind-power you should be trying to sail it. There are boundaries known and it is understood and can be put together and it behaves as it should, as long as you know to do the right thing.” Explore more >>
“If documentation really is such a central part to engineering practice, then actually notebooks and things like that are just as much of a record of what engineering is about and what engineering does as are the kind of artefacts that we see out there.”
“Turns out there’s this big chunk of something called engineering that people actually haven’t spent that much time thinking about, by and large. So engineering for me is an opportunity to rediscover all the history that I already know and re-imagine it in light of things like engineering practices, engineering knowledge, engineering societies, all of the various kinds of engineers.” Explore more >>
“If you buy one of these things, you will be told how much wind-power you need for it to start flying. You will also be told what is the maximum wind-power you should be trying to sail it. There are boundaries known and it is understood and can be put together and it behaves as it should, as long as you know to do the right thing.” Explore more >>
“I quite like it because this is from the 1870s, I think, and you can see that this guy is, it feels like quite a modern photo. The way it’s set up, it’s kind of stylised, and this way of demonstrating power, demonstrating mastery. If we look at the guy, you can’t see it very well, but he looks in command.” Explore more >>