Difference between revisions of "Utter bilge"
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* '''2010-09-16''' [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727771.700-zeros-to-heroes-the-man-who-learned-to-fly.html Zeros to heroes: The man who learned to fly]: "During the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists and the public all believed that it was not only impossible to fly using an artificial wing, but an act of folly to suggest that you could. This did not discourage the English gentleman scientist George Cayley, even though his contemporaries - including his own son - were embarrassed by his efforts." | * '''2010-09-16''' [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727771.700-zeros-to-heroes-the-man-who-learned-to-fly.html Zeros to heroes: The man who learned to fly]: "During the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists and the public all believed that it was not only impossible to fly using an artificial wing, but an act of folly to suggest that you could. This did not discourage the English gentleman scientist George Cayley, even though his contemporaries - including his own son - were embarrassed by his efforts." | ||
* '''2010-09-16''' [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727771.600-zeros-to-heroes-the-tragic-fate-of-a-genetic-pioneer.html Zeros to heroes: The tragic fate of a genetic pioneer]: this one's a little complicated. In 1926, Paul Kammerer makes observations which appear to support Lamarckianism. Kammerer was prominently condemned as a fraud (reason not stated), and killed himself six weeks later. In 1971 Arthur Koestler argues that Kammerer's experiments may have been tampered with for political reasons. In 2009, Alex Vargas reexamines Kammerer's work and pronounces it not fraudulent at all, but actually consistent with the then-undiscovered field of epigenetics. | |||
Revision as of 19:59, 19 September 2010
About
The late SF author G. Harry Stine had a collection of quotes about how this or that technology now commonly in use would never work or never be useful. [1][2] It was called the "utter bilge" file after one of the quotes, "Space travel is utter bilge."
I've never seen all the quotes in one place, especially not online (excepting informal collections sometimes circulated in email and newsgroups), so I'm going to start collecting those I come across until I have enough of them to be worth moving to Issuepedia.
Quotes
"Space travel is utter bilge." — astronomer Sir Richard Wooley (also given as Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley [3]), 1956 [4]
"Very interesting, Whittle my dear boy, but it will never work". — said to the future Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the modern aircraft jet engine, by his supervisor at Manchester University, upon viewing Whittle's original jet engine design [5]
Links
- 2010-09-16 Zeros to heroes: The man who learned to fly: "During the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists and the public all believed that it was not only impossible to fly using an artificial wing, but an act of folly to suggest that you could. This did not discourage the English gentleman scientist George Cayley, even though his contemporaries - including his own son - were embarrassed by his efforts."
- 2010-09-16 Zeros to heroes: The tragic fate of a genetic pioneer: this one's a little complicated. In 1926, Paul Kammerer makes observations which appear to support Lamarckianism. Kammerer was prominently condemned as a fraud (reason not stated), and killed himself six weeks later. In 1971 Arthur Koestler argues that Kammerer's experiments may have been tampered with for political reasons. In 2009, Alex Vargas reexamines Kammerer's work and pronounces it not fraudulent at all, but actually consistent with the then-undiscovered field of epigenetics.