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  • Author Author: Stuartsjones
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Who do you recognize as an inspirational engineer?

Stuartsjones

Today is Nikola Tesla's birthday and many rightly recognize him as one of the greatest, most influential engineers of all time. However, we want to know who do you personally recognize as the greatest? Were you inspired by a well known figure in engineering, or was it somebody far lesser known that inspires you and continues to do so?

 

Let us know in the comments below before Wednesday July 16th and we will pick the ten best comments to receive a pack containing these limited edition Nikola Tesla stickers that we have made especially to celebrate the great man's birthday. You can also get hold of these stickers at this year's EMF camp near Bletchley Park, England which element14 are supporting.

 

For more on Tesla, read "The Shocking Truth about Nikola Tesla" and also "Tesla's idea of transmitting wireless energy is still going strong".

 

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  • Limor from Adafruit, Dave Jones, Ben Heck (but as you sponsor him that's probably a given) Chris Boden from the geek group, The Hack a Day team, - way too many to name really.

  • Reginald Aubrey Fessenden - one of the least known, most influential inventors of all time. He persevered with his theory that continuous waves could be modulated to send voice over radio, despite disbelief and ridicule by his contemporaries, to eventually send the first voice over radio. That perseverance is a great inspiration ... and look how many voice radios are in use today. He had hundreds of patents, invented sonar, seismology and tracer bullets but his most notable achievements are perhaps: the first audio transmission by radio (1900), the first two-way transatlantic radio transmission (1906), and the first radio broadcast of entertainment and music (1906).

    He was a Canadian, but I went through my entire educational career in Canada without ever hearing or seeing his name.

    Reginald Fessenden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • 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!  image

  • In the original Mission Impossible series, they had a brilliant engineer played by Greg Morris.

    Every week I would watch as he built up gizmos to solve the caper of the week.  He always portrayed a calm and knowledgeable engineer who made things work.

     

    After that, who wasn't inspired by Scotty on the original Star Trek series played by James Doohan.

    Whatever the problem, Scotty came to the rescue.

     

    Once I got into engineering I found many different ranges of engineers, but I always tried to live up to my TV screen idols.

    If you get good skills and have the personality to succeed, then you too can become the engineering model for the next generation.

     

    DAB

  • True inspiration comes from yourself. Tesla was a great inventor and engineer, but history often emphasizes his accomplishments and not his downfalls. He was an excellent engineer, but that was one of the few things he was good at. I am inspired (at whatever level) by those who go against what society believes to attempt to accomplish what they think will work, regardless of implications. This could be you, Tesla, or anyone who sees a fault and solution in society. I believe people should find inspiration by ideas and not people. Well, that's all I have to say on the topic.