Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor
Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 6, The Viable Governor, p. 142.
p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)
Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor
Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 6, The Viable Governor, p. 142.
“In Newcomen's engine, the piston is kept tight by water”
James Watt (1736–1819) British engineer
"Notes on Professor Robison's Dissertation on Steam-engines" (1769)
Context: In Newcomen's engine, the piston is kept tight by water, which could not be applicable in this new method; as, if any of it entered into a partially-exhausted and hot cylinder, it would boil, and prevent the production of a vacuum, and would also cool the cylinder by its evaporation during the descent of the piston. I proposed to remedy this defect by employing wax, tallow, or other grease, to lubricate and keep the piston tight. It next occurred to me, that the mouth of the cylinder being open, the air which entered to act on the piston would cool the cylinder, and condense some steam on again filling it. I therefore proposed to put an air-tight cover upon the cylinder, with a hole and stuffing-box for the piston-rod to slide through, and to admit steam above the piston to act upon it, instead of the atmosphere.... There still remained another source of the destruction of steam, the cooling of the cylinder by the external air, which would produce an internal condensation whenever steam entered it, and which would be repeated every stroke; this I proposed to remedy by an external cylinder, containing steam, surrounded by another of wood, or of some other substance which would conduct heat slowly.
Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author
Heresy Number Three
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist
Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 18, Information is Physical, The cost of forgetting, p. 154
“Modern liberalism: a heartless steam engine.”
Samuel Wilberforce (1805–1873) Bishop in the Church of England
Quoted in Arthur Burns, "Wilberforce, Samuel (1805–1873)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
“The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age.”
Lewis Mumford book Technics and Civilization
Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 1, sct. 2
“Private Capitalism makes a steam engine; State Capitalism makes pyramids.”
Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker
As quoted in “Frank Chodorov: Champion of Liberty,” Aaron Steelman, FEE, (Foundation for Economic Education), (December 1, 1996) https://fee.org/articles/frank-chodorov-champion-of-liberty/
“Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers.”
Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman
Vol. I, ch. 9
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)
Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator
29.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996
William McFee (1881–1966) American writer
"A Six-hour Shift : The Log of a Transport Engineer" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CXIX, No. 4 (April 1917), p. 449