Quotes for All
Electricity is an example of a general purpose technology, like the steam engine before it. General purpose technologies drive most economic growth, because they unleash cascades of complementary innovations, like lightbulbs and, yes, factory redesign. Erik Brynjolfsson
Now comes the second machine age. Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power – the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environments-what the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power. Erik Brynjolfsson
Soon shall thy arm, unconquer’d steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear The flying chariot through the field of air. Erasmus Darwin
Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery’s being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880’s, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science … Read more
Private capitalism makes a steam engine; State capitalism makes pyramids. Frank Chodorov
Once the steam engine went away and we started moving into burning fossil fuels – not just burning them, but everything we do with oil – we’ve been experiencing [these problems] at an accelerated rate. The scary end-game scenario is getting closer and closer, about what we’re going to be able to do to sustain … Read more
There are many points in the history of an invention which the inventor himself is apt to overlook as trifling, but in which posterity never fail to take a deep interest. The progress of the human mind is never traced with such a lively interest as through the steps by which it perfects a great … Read more
I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a threshing rig steam engine and I loved the machinery. Clyde Tombaugh
True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men. To employ these rare minds on such work is like running a steam engine by burning diamonds. Charles Sanders Peirce
[I predict] the electricity generated by water power is the only thing that is going to keep future generations from freezing. Now we use coal whenever we produce electric power by steam engine, but there will be a time when there’ll be no more coal to use. That time is not in the very distant … Read more