Self cited in: Henry R. Towne in Foreword to the 1911 editions of: F.W. Taylor Shop management; a paper read before the American society of mechanical engineers New York. 1903/1911.
Industrial Engineering, 1905
Context: The dollar is the final term in almost every equation which arises in the practice of engineering in any or all of its branches, except qualifiedly as to military and naval engineering, where in some cases cost may be ignored. In other words, the true function of the engineer is, or should be, not only to determine how physical problems may be solved, but also how they may be solved most economically. For example, a railroad may have to be carried over a gorge or arroyo. Obviously it does not need an engineer to point out that this may be done by filling the chasm with earth, but only a bridge engineer is competent to determine whether it is cheaper to do this or to bridge it, and to design the bridge which will safely and most cheaply serve, the cost of which should be compared with that of an earth fill. Therefore the engineer is, by the nature of his vocation an economist. His function is not only to design, but also so to design as to ensure the best economical result. He who designs an unsafe structure or an inoperative machine is a bad engineer; he who designs them so that they are safe and operative, but needlessly expensive, is a poor engineer, and, it may be remarked, usually earns poor pay; he who designs good work, which can be executed at a fair cost, is a sound and usually a successful engineer; he who does the best work at the lowest cost sooner or later stands at the top of his profession, and usually has the reward which this implies.
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988)
Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 13
BBC interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/11/20/john_cleese_die_another_day_interview.shtml on Die Another Day (20 November 2002)]
Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856)
Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 18, Information is Physical, The cost of forgetting, p. 154
Source: "The Engineer as an Economist," 1886, p. 428; Lead paragraph
Self cited in: Henry R. Towne in Foreword to the 1911 editions of: F.W. Taylor Shop management; a paper read before the American society of mechanical engineers New York. 1903/1911.
Context: The monogram of our national initials, which is the symbol for our monetary unit, the dollar, is almost as frequently conjoined to the figures of an engineer's calculations as are the symbols indicating feet, minutes, pounds, or gallons. The final issue of his work, in probably a majority of cases, resolves itself into a question of dollars and cents, of relative or absolute values. This statement, while true in regard to the work of all engineers, applies particularly to that of the mechanical engineer, for the reason that his functions, more frequently than in the case of others, include the executive duties of organizing and superintending the operations of industrial establishments, and of directing the labor of the artisans whose organized efforts yield the fruition of his work.
The Emperor's Old Clothes
Context: [About Algol 60 subset implementation] [E]very occurrence of every subscript of every subscripted variable was on every occasion checked at run time against both the upper and the lower declared bounds of the array. Many years later we asked our customers whether they wished us to provide an option to switch off these checks in the interests of efficiency on production runs. Unanimously, they urged us not to - they already knew how frequently subscript errors occur on production runs where failure to detect them could be disastrous. I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language designers and users have not learned this lesson. In any respectable branch of engineering, failure to observe such elementary precautions would have long been against the law.
Barry W. Boehm (1981) Software engineering economics. Abstract.
