#inventions

What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them! ↗

— Henrik Ibsen

#bringing #business #capitalism #educated #generation

When things get too complicated, it sometimes makes sense to stop and wonder: Have I asked the right question? ↗

— Enrico Bombieri

#inventions #math #perspective #science #science

Did you ever think about the creation of the flame-thrower? Someone, somewhere, at some time must have been sitting on his porch, and said, thoughtfully, 'I want to set him on fire.' gesturing to his neighbor. His friend who sat beside him and happened to be handy with tools said, 'I can do that.' Thus, we have a flame thrower. ↗

— John Larson

#humor #inventions #humor

By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead. ↗

— Damon Knight

#inventions #science-fiction #sounds #vibrations #experience

But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities. ↗

— Alfred Marshall

#commodities #increased #inventions #labour #man

There's such a thing as theater discipline. One player doesn't appropriate another's inventions. ↗

— Ethel Merman

#appropriate #discipline #inventions #player #such

Community colleges are one of America's great social inventions a gateway to the future for first time students looking for an affordable college education, and for mid-career students looking to get ahead in the workplace. ↗

— Barbara Mikulski

#ahead #america #college #college education #colleges

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#any #being #day #human #human being

The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of one's own, in one's relation to the tool, the material and the colors. ↗

— Emil Nolde

#art #artist #chain #colors #continuous

[...] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#inventions #technology #transport #age