Who do you recognize as an inspirational engineer?

Like DAB, I'm going to go fictional.  My chief inspiration was Cyrus Smith (or Cyrus Harding in some translations), the engineer in Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1874).  In the book, five Northern prisoners of war escape from the South in a balloon during the then-recent USA Civil War.  They land on an island in the South Seas, and it's the encyclopedic knowledge of Cyrus Smith that makes the difference between starvation and a pretty comfortable island adventure.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

 

With the knowledge of the brilliant engineer Smith, the five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerin, iron, a simple electric telegraph, a home on a stony cliffside called "Granite House", and even a seaworthy ship. They also manage to figure out their geographical location.

The wonderful thing about JV's epic is that he describes how all these things were made using only those objects brought with them (including a still-working pocket-watch to determine longitude) and two serviceable watch crystals used to make a magnifying glass to start a fire.  It's a tome, but I read it in about 2 days as a young teenager.

Tesla is IMO without doubt the most brilliant electrical scientist ever, but I don't group him with engineers.  I had a friend at IBM who as a Yugoslavian was a big Tesla fan.  He told me how when Tesla was a student, a professor told the class that all motors had commutators.  Tesla raised his hand and asked the prof why couldn't there be a motor without a commutator?  The professor sneered at Tesla and said something like: "Well, I can see you'll never amount to anything, young man."

Later that day Tesla was walking in a park with a friend talking about Goethe -- something about circles in circles.  Suddenly the idea of the induction motor popped into his head, he made some sketches in the sand with a stick, and the rest is history.  I don't know the name of the prof.

By the way, I'd really like those stickers! 

Like DAB, I'm going to go fictional.  My chief inspiration was Cyrus Smith (or Cyrus Harding in some translations), the engineer in Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1874).  In the book, five Northern prisoners of war escape from the South in a balloon during the then-recent USA Civil War.  They land on an island in the South Seas, and it's the encyclopedic knowledge of Cyrus Smith that makes the difference between starvation and a pretty comfortable island adventure.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

 

With the knowledge of the brilliant engineer Smith, the five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerin, iron, a simple electric telegraph, a home on a stony cliffside called "Granite House", and even a seaworthy ship. They also manage to figure out their geographical location.

The wonderful thing about JV's epic is that he describes how all these things were made using only those objects brought with them (including a still-working pocket-watch to determine longitude) and two serviceable watch crystals used to make a magnifying glass to start a fire.  It's a tome, but I read it in about 2 days as a young teenager.

Tesla is IMO without doubt the most brilliant electrical scientist ever, but I don't group him with engineers.  I had a friend at IBM who as a Yugoslavian was a big Tesla fan.  He told me how when Tesla was a student, a professor told the class that all motors had commutators.  Tesla raised his hand and asked the prof why couldn't there be a motor without a commutator?  The professor sneered at Tesla and said something like: "Well, I can see you'll never amount to anything, young man."

Later that day Tesla was walking in a park with a friend talking about Goethe -- something about circles in circles.  Suddenly the idea of the induction motor popped into his head, he made some sketches in the sand with a stick, and the rest is history.  I don't know the name of the prof.

By the way, I'd really like those stickers!