I just read an article in EDN that listed the 5 greatest engineers of all time:
1: Nicola Tesla
2: The Wright Brothers
3: Achimedes
4: Leonardo da Vinci
5: Thomas Edison
Everyone on this list is certainly in the top dozen or so, but I disagree with the ranking a little. Edison was less an engineer than an inventor. His approach was far less systematic than his best contemporaries and relied heavily on brute force and large teams, and his rank certainly grows due to his gift for self-promotion. But he was unquestionably a brilliant inventor.
The Wright Brothers also deserve a high ranking, and they are the contemporaries of Edison that show how flawed Edison's methods were. They were attacking a very hard problem and their highly systematic approach made their solutions remarkably effective: e.g.: the propellers of the original Wright Flyer were within a few % of the best that can be done with modern computational fluid dynamics. They'd built wind tunnels and did lots of systematic experiments...and they got it right. The materials they were working with: wood, fabric, primitive, very inefficient engines, made the problem very much harder than it would be today.
I'd rank Archimedes at the top of the list. He was very much a mathematician and scientist as well as engineer. His greatest achievement was not known until very recently: he'd worked out enough of the calculus to solve some problems that wouldn't be solvable again until the time of Leibniz and Newton. His solution was not quite complete, but he'd recognized the concept of the infinitesimal and infinite series. Once he figured out a practical nomenclature for it (which he didn't) the rest would have been pretty obvious. He'd worked out amazing geared mechanisms, probably including the Antikythera mechanism--again, ahead of any subsequent inventor until the time of Newton. Had his discoveries been better understood by his Roman conquerors, world history would have taken a very different path. He himself probably would not have gotten much farther than he did (he was 75 when he was murdered), but his students would probably have been able to do a real structural stress analysis. Within a century or so, bridges and buildings would have been very different.
I'd add Isambard Kingdom Brunel to the list. He's responsible for the adoption of the screw propeller, by devising a simple challenge that produced a result that was completely obvious to non-engineers. He designed many of the railways and locomotives of England. Like Edison, he was a self-promoter, but also like Edison, he was a real genius.
Edwin Armstrong pretty much invented radio. He wasn't first--Hertz and Marconi beat him--but their devices were crude and very inefficient and basically impractical. Armstrong understood the necessary electronic circuits to make it work well, far in advance of anyone of his time. Like Tesla, the Wrights, and Archimedes, he got his results by thinking hard and experimenting, and understanding what he was trying to do. He had the bad luck to run afoul of RCA's David Sarnoff, who stole most of his life's work and drove him to suicide.
Like Brunel, James Watt didn't really invent anything, but he recognized what he'd seen and took it very much further. His most important contribution was to make the steam engine practical, which was the transformative development that enabled the industrial revolution. He also did important engineering of canals, especially canal locks, making it possible for boats to traverse elevation changes.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile or the assembly line, but he figured out how to make them practical and economical. Perhaps his most important recognition was that by paying his workers well, he improved their morale and thereby their effectiveness, and forced other employers to pay their workers well too. This resulted in everybody, including Ford, having a better life.
The digital computer has a lot of inventors, but Alan Turing is probably the most important. He was more a mathematician than engineer, but he definitely was an engineer. He too was driven to suicide.
Robert Noyce didn't invent the transistor (he started out working for Bill Shockley, who did), but his team invented lithographed planar transistors, which took them from costing a hundreds of dollars each, to a few cents. They also invented the integrated circuit, the microprocessor and a zillion other things along the way. Noyce didn't do all of it, but he was very much the inspirational leader, and they give him credit for most of it.
Newton, Einstein, Faraday, Szilard and several other scientists contributed as much to technology as most of these guys, and were probably more brilliant than all but Tesla, Leonardo and Archimedes. But they weren't engineers.
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update 4 July 2013
Doug Englebart died July 2 and he may deserve to be on this list. In the early '60s, he understood that computer networking had the potential of radically changing the way we interact with each other and information, and spent the remainder his life making this better in every way he could think of The computer mouse was merely his most famous invention. The researchers at Xerox PARC (which invented the windowing user interface and the ethernet) were strongly inspired by his vision.
27 June 2013
25 June 2013
Whistleblowers vs National Security
The argument is that purported whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning have harmed national security. They may have. But by punishing them as traitors, we have harmed the country worse.
We need whistleblowers. People with power tend to do things to enhance their power, to maintain their power, to take advantage of their power. Some of these things are inevitable and unavoidable, but many of these things are bad, and need to be stopped. Fear and self-interest are the root of nearly all evil and when given the privacy of national security, those that would take advantage of the darkness can hide with impunity. There's a tradeoff: some secrecy is necessary. Some people get involved in the security business specifically so they can steal secrets for profit or to give the advantage to our enemies, and these people need to be punished. But we need to recognize when the secrets are hiding wrongdoing of people that purport to be on our side. Mostly this is handled by the management of the security organization itself. But when those in power become abusers themselves, the only mechanism we have is the whistleblower.
As has been pointed out frequently, there's a tradeoff between privacy, freedom and safety. Safety without freedom is not worth much. If a cop is allowed to beat up or even kill people who are innocent or have committed minor, non-threatening infractions, if a helicopter gunship is allowed to mow down cameramen and rescue workers with impunity, if anyone is allowed to listen to our phone and internet conversations without a warrant, then we have left privacy and freedom behind and are into the realm of the tyrant. The whistleblower is our primary window into the national security machine. We need to protect whistleblowers, even when, especially when, they are threatening the powerful. This is so important that I think it's acceptable to slightly reduce national security in return.
What I've seen of the releases of Snowden and Manning do not credibly harm national security at all. The reporters that they are working with have shown exceptional restraint. What they harm is a few individuals who did embarrassing and occasionally criminal things. Perhaps the worst is a few foreign dignitaries who were so embarrassed by the exposure of their misbehavior that it harms the diplomatic relationship. It's unfortunate, but they really did do the embarrassing thing. If knowledge of the mass collection of phone records is a surprise to any would-be terrorist, they apparently don't quite understand how their phone bill works.
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Chinese sources have been claiming that Snowden said he took the Booz-Allen-Hamilton job for the specific purpose of collecting NSA secrets so he could leak them. This doesn't fit his previous behavior very well, including 5 years working directly for NSA and CIA, but it does make him seem more like a spy, which they may have thought would give them an advantage over him. Snowden and Manning were clearly a little naive about the very powerful dragon they'd poked, and that dragon bit them hard.
We need whistleblowers. People with power tend to do things to enhance their power, to maintain their power, to take advantage of their power. Some of these things are inevitable and unavoidable, but many of these things are bad, and need to be stopped. Fear and self-interest are the root of nearly all evil and when given the privacy of national security, those that would take advantage of the darkness can hide with impunity. There's a tradeoff: some secrecy is necessary. Some people get involved in the security business specifically so they can steal secrets for profit or to give the advantage to our enemies, and these people need to be punished. But we need to recognize when the secrets are hiding wrongdoing of people that purport to be on our side. Mostly this is handled by the management of the security organization itself. But when those in power become abusers themselves, the only mechanism we have is the whistleblower.
As has been pointed out frequently, there's a tradeoff between privacy, freedom and safety. Safety without freedom is not worth much. If a cop is allowed to beat up or even kill people who are innocent or have committed minor, non-threatening infractions, if a helicopter gunship is allowed to mow down cameramen and rescue workers with impunity, if anyone is allowed to listen to our phone and internet conversations without a warrant, then we have left privacy and freedom behind and are into the realm of the tyrant. The whistleblower is our primary window into the national security machine. We need to protect whistleblowers, even when, especially when, they are threatening the powerful. This is so important that I think it's acceptable to slightly reduce national security in return.
What I've seen of the releases of Snowden and Manning do not credibly harm national security at all. The reporters that they are working with have shown exceptional restraint. What they harm is a few individuals who did embarrassing and occasionally criminal things. Perhaps the worst is a few foreign dignitaries who were so embarrassed by the exposure of their misbehavior that it harms the diplomatic relationship. It's unfortunate, but they really did do the embarrassing thing. If knowledge of the mass collection of phone records is a surprise to any would-be terrorist, they apparently don't quite understand how their phone bill works.
-----
Chinese sources have been claiming that Snowden said he took the Booz-Allen-Hamilton job for the specific purpose of collecting NSA secrets so he could leak them. This doesn't fit his previous behavior very well, including 5 years working directly for NSA and CIA, but it does make him seem more like a spy, which they may have thought would give them an advantage over him. Snowden and Manning were clearly a little naive about the very powerful dragon they'd poked, and that dragon bit them hard.
11 June 2013
Partisan Tricks and the Presidential Election
The recent revelations about Nixon undermining the Peace Talks with VietNam got me thinking about really scummy behavior on the part of political partisans. Several of these rise to the level of gallows-worthy high treason.
1964: Goldwater's jingoism and anti-New-Deal rhetoric didn't get support from many people. But the ambiguous nature of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, just a few weeks before the election, raised support for Goldwater's aggressive, "bomb them back to the stone age" rhetoric on VietNam, and Johnson felt he had little choice but escalate. Johnson won the election in a landslide.
1968: The VietNam war, which Johnson had been forced against his will to get involved in, seemed to be winding to a close and peace talks had been organized in Paris. But Nixon succeeded in undermining them, by promising South Viet Nam a better deal, and they walked away. Five years later, they settled for exactly the same deal as Johnson had worked out with the North, but with 22,000 more Americans and perhaps a hundred thousand more Vietnamese dead. Johnson was prepared to use this against Nixon, but when it appeared that Nixon was going to lose anyway, he chose to avoid the strife that would have inevitably resulted, and he could bring the South back to the table afterwards. Nixon won the election by the closest margin we'd see until Bush v Gore in 2000.
1972: Watergate.
1980: Members of Reagan's staff met with the hostagetakers in Iran and encouraged them to defer releasing the hostages until after the election. They did and the hostages were released 2 hours before the inaguration. Reagan's campaign was about Carter's fecklessness, largely based on the hostage situation--which the Reagan campaign had exacerbated. This may have been the most consequential election in US history. It was a very close election.
1988: Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who was furloughed from a Massachusetts prison during Dukakis's term as governor, committed several armed robberies and a rape. The furlough program had been started by a Republican governor and expanded by another Republican governor to deal with Reagainite budget cutting, and was ended by Dukakis. Nevertheless, Bush used it heavily against Dukakis and won.
2000: Even though the supreme court had ruled it illegal, Republican operatives engaged in caging, in which fradulent evidence is presented that voters have moved. Republicans disenfranchised at least ten thousand mostly democratic voters in Florida. The "butterfly ballot" in Broward county was designed by a republican operative who had switched parties two years before the election, and switched back shortly afterward. at least 5000 people voted for Buchanan who meant to vote for Gore. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and recounts were blocked by the partisan supreme court. By electoral college, this is the closest election in history, although Gore won the popular vote. This is probably the second most consequential election, because it allowed Bush to cement and enlarge the damage caused by Reagan. Bush's administration was likely the most corrupt in history and was certainly one of the more incompetent.
2004: numerous cases of caging and ballot box stuffing. One Ohio precinct in a college community, which always votes strongly democrat, had more Bush votes than it had registered voters. Ohio was close: 20 such precincts could swing the election.
1964: Goldwater's jingoism and anti-New-Deal rhetoric didn't get support from many people. But the ambiguous nature of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, just a few weeks before the election, raised support for Goldwater's aggressive, "bomb them back to the stone age" rhetoric on VietNam, and Johnson felt he had little choice but escalate. Johnson won the election in a landslide.
1968: The VietNam war, which Johnson had been forced against his will to get involved in, seemed to be winding to a close and peace talks had been organized in Paris. But Nixon succeeded in undermining them, by promising South Viet Nam a better deal, and they walked away. Five years later, they settled for exactly the same deal as Johnson had worked out with the North, but with 22,000 more Americans and perhaps a hundred thousand more Vietnamese dead. Johnson was prepared to use this against Nixon, but when it appeared that Nixon was going to lose anyway, he chose to avoid the strife that would have inevitably resulted, and he could bring the South back to the table afterwards. Nixon won the election by the closest margin we'd see until Bush v Gore in 2000.
1972: Watergate.
1980: Members of Reagan's staff met with the hostagetakers in Iran and encouraged them to defer releasing the hostages until after the election. They did and the hostages were released 2 hours before the inaguration. Reagan's campaign was about Carter's fecklessness, largely based on the hostage situation--which the Reagan campaign had exacerbated. This may have been the most consequential election in US history. It was a very close election.
1988: Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who was furloughed from a Massachusetts prison during Dukakis's term as governor, committed several armed robberies and a rape. The furlough program had been started by a Republican governor and expanded by another Republican governor to deal with Reagainite budget cutting, and was ended by Dukakis. Nevertheless, Bush used it heavily against Dukakis and won.
2000: Even though the supreme court had ruled it illegal, Republican operatives engaged in caging, in which fradulent evidence is presented that voters have moved. Republicans disenfranchised at least ten thousand mostly democratic voters in Florida. The "butterfly ballot" in Broward county was designed by a republican operative who had switched parties two years before the election, and switched back shortly afterward. at least 5000 people voted for Buchanan who meant to vote for Gore. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and recounts were blocked by the partisan supreme court. By electoral college, this is the closest election in history, although Gore won the popular vote. This is probably the second most consequential election, because it allowed Bush to cement and enlarge the damage caused by Reagan. Bush's administration was likely the most corrupt in history and was certainly one of the more incompetent.
2004: numerous cases of caging and ballot box stuffing. One Ohio precinct in a college community, which always votes strongly democrat, had more Bush votes than it had registered voters. Ohio was close: 20 such precincts could swing the election.
Vinyl and Steam
There's an article in yesterday's Times about vinyl records making a comeback. The article doesn't quite get around to saying it, but the reason is romance. There's an analogy with steam.
From the 1830s to the 1950s, the way to move heavy loads over land was by steam locomotive powered train. Steam locomotives were noisy, dangerous, dirty, took a lot of skill and attention to operate well, and spent almost half their useful lives in the shop being worked on. But they were the best thing that had been invented and there were a lot of impressive developments over that century+ that made them better and better. It was a completely revolutionary technology, the Diesel-Electric Hybrid, that finally replaced them in the early '50s. They were cleaner, much lower maintenance and labor, could be partially automated, much more efficient. The fans of the romance of railroads hated them. Steam locomotives seemed like almost a living thing, with real personality. Most of the works were on the outside, with bucking, hissing, roaring, chuffing emissions of steam and smoke. "Diesels" as they came to be called, were boring in comparison. Everything was on the inside and the noises and gasses they emitted were fewer and less interesting.
At about the same time steam locomotives were being replaced by diesel, earlier shellac phonograph records that spun at 78 RPM were being replaced by 33 1/3rd RPM LP records made of Poly Vinyl Chloride, aka Vinyl. My dad was an audio enthusiast at this time and built a series of systems, mostly from kits. The transistor had been invented, but they weren't cheap enough for this application yet, so these mostly used vacuum tubes. Consequently I was a bit of an audio enthusiast, too. Vinyl records seemed fragile and awkward though. It didn't take much abuse to introduce a permanent pop or click or wow or static into the media. When the CD first became available, I immediately became a big enthusiast. They were more expensive, but they were smaller, much easier to handle, had sound as perfect as the recording engineer could produce, and were almost indestructible. Several of my audiophile friends did A-B comparisons. With a brand new record on top quality equipment, nobody could tell the difference. But once the vinyl had been played a few times, it was easy to tell them apart. Better equipment preserved them for longer, but even the best couldn't keep a record pristine for more than a dozen plays or so.
Bottom line: if you prefer the sound of vinyl, it's either because you like static and scratches, or because you can't hear or don't care about the difference, and prefer the romance. Romance is a legitimate reason to like something. The same is true of tube amplifiers. You can do an accurate simulation of any tube's response curve with a relatively simple transistor circuit...or software. But doing so adds distortion. If you like tube amps, it's because there's something other than the fidelity that you like. It could be the warm, soft clipping. But far more likely it's the romance.
A railroad that tried to use steam locomotives as their primary motive power today would be uncompetitive. The labor costs are enormously higher. They have some desirable operating properties (very high starting torque, for example). But they are romantic. So many keep a few around, in a museum, or as tourist rides. I like industrial history, and I especially like steam locomotives, so I frequent these. I have no love for vinyl, but I understand the urge. It's the same urge that's behind steampunk and a host of other nostalgic cravings. It makes no practical sense. But it's romantic.
From the 1830s to the 1950s, the way to move heavy loads over land was by steam locomotive powered train. Steam locomotives were noisy, dangerous, dirty, took a lot of skill and attention to operate well, and spent almost half their useful lives in the shop being worked on. But they were the best thing that had been invented and there were a lot of impressive developments over that century+ that made them better and better. It was a completely revolutionary technology, the Diesel-Electric Hybrid, that finally replaced them in the early '50s. They were cleaner, much lower maintenance and labor, could be partially automated, much more efficient. The fans of the romance of railroads hated them. Steam locomotives seemed like almost a living thing, with real personality. Most of the works were on the outside, with bucking, hissing, roaring, chuffing emissions of steam and smoke. "Diesels" as they came to be called, were boring in comparison. Everything was on the inside and the noises and gasses they emitted were fewer and less interesting.
At about the same time steam locomotives were being replaced by diesel, earlier shellac phonograph records that spun at 78 RPM were being replaced by 33 1/3rd RPM LP records made of Poly Vinyl Chloride, aka Vinyl. My dad was an audio enthusiast at this time and built a series of systems, mostly from kits. The transistor had been invented, but they weren't cheap enough for this application yet, so these mostly used vacuum tubes. Consequently I was a bit of an audio enthusiast, too. Vinyl records seemed fragile and awkward though. It didn't take much abuse to introduce a permanent pop or click or wow or static into the media. When the CD first became available, I immediately became a big enthusiast. They were more expensive, but they were smaller, much easier to handle, had sound as perfect as the recording engineer could produce, and were almost indestructible. Several of my audiophile friends did A-B comparisons. With a brand new record on top quality equipment, nobody could tell the difference. But once the vinyl had been played a few times, it was easy to tell them apart. Better equipment preserved them for longer, but even the best couldn't keep a record pristine for more than a dozen plays or so.
Bottom line: if you prefer the sound of vinyl, it's either because you like static and scratches, or because you can't hear or don't care about the difference, and prefer the romance. Romance is a legitimate reason to like something. The same is true of tube amplifiers. You can do an accurate simulation of any tube's response curve with a relatively simple transistor circuit...or software. But doing so adds distortion. If you like tube amps, it's because there's something other than the fidelity that you like. It could be the warm, soft clipping. But far more likely it's the romance.
A railroad that tried to use steam locomotives as their primary motive power today would be uncompetitive. The labor costs are enormously higher. They have some desirable operating properties (very high starting torque, for example). But they are romantic. So many keep a few around, in a museum, or as tourist rides. I like industrial history, and I especially like steam locomotives, so I frequent these. I have no love for vinyl, but I understand the urge. It's the same urge that's behind steampunk and a host of other nostalgic cravings. It makes no practical sense. But it's romantic.
10 June 2013
Saving vs Investing and Job Creation
Everyone knows that saving your money instead of spending it right away is a good thing for your personal finances. And everyone knows that investing is helpful for the economy at large, and can be for the investor if it goes well. The folks in the saving and investing business have done their best to try to conflate these two things, and they indeed are related. But they really aren't the same thing.
50 years ago, one type of bank, a Savings and Loan, took deposits from customers and gave them interest--usually about 5%. They also made small loans, mostly home mortgages. These also charged around 5% interest. The interest rates didn't really need to balance out over the short term; what needed to balance were debits (demands from depositors, new loans, taxes, wages and so forth) and credits (mostly payments from borrowers). If the interest the S&L was paying was much over the interest they were receiving for long, they'd probably have a shortfall. But they can make the balance work by getting more deposits, and paying higher interest rates would help with that. Bank inspectors would make sure the the accounting was all correct and that the bank kept a large enough reserve, as there is a huge temptation to fraudulently cut it too close to the edge, and a small, unexpected demand could trigger a bank run and the need for FDIC intervention.
Deposits with an S&L are investment of a sort, which has consequences on job creation. Home loans promote construction, and all the folks involved get jobs: carpenters, painters, roofers, plumbers, electricians, insurers, appliance businesses, etc. Sales of new homes do a lot of job creation. Sales of used homes do less: there's little construction, although there probably are appliance people, painters, movers and others to be paid. It also creates a downstream market for new homes.
Stocks and bonds are the same sort of thing: they promote the creation of new businesses (nominally, an Initial Public Offering). But the subsequent market is handled differently. New businesses are much riskier. Individual "borrowers" are singled out and "depositors" select which ones they wish to invest in. Return is a function of how well the business goes. There are ways to pool these things, called "Mutual Funds". Investing in the stock market is not really "saving", although a diversified portfolio over a long period amounts to the same thing. There's also a similarity as far as jobs created: IPOs create a lot of jobs, and commercial bonds often do too, but the day to day trading of these things creates no jobs, except for the brokers. The main job creation from day to day trading is that it's a downstream market for the IPOs.
When choosing where to put your savings, it's important to recognize the difference between investing in job creation, and simply pushing money around. Unless you're actually buying initial offerings of stocks or bonds, you're doing the latter.
50 years ago, one type of bank, a Savings and Loan, took deposits from customers and gave them interest--usually about 5%. They also made small loans, mostly home mortgages. These also charged around 5% interest. The interest rates didn't really need to balance out over the short term; what needed to balance were debits (demands from depositors, new loans, taxes, wages and so forth) and credits (mostly payments from borrowers). If the interest the S&L was paying was much over the interest they were receiving for long, they'd probably have a shortfall. But they can make the balance work by getting more deposits, and paying higher interest rates would help with that. Bank inspectors would make sure the the accounting was all correct and that the bank kept a large enough reserve, as there is a huge temptation to fraudulently cut it too close to the edge, and a small, unexpected demand could trigger a bank run and the need for FDIC intervention.
Deposits with an S&L are investment of a sort, which has consequences on job creation. Home loans promote construction, and all the folks involved get jobs: carpenters, painters, roofers, plumbers, electricians, insurers, appliance businesses, etc. Sales of new homes do a lot of job creation. Sales of used homes do less: there's little construction, although there probably are appliance people, painters, movers and others to be paid. It also creates a downstream market for new homes.
Stocks and bonds are the same sort of thing: they promote the creation of new businesses (nominally, an Initial Public Offering). But the subsequent market is handled differently. New businesses are much riskier. Individual "borrowers" are singled out and "depositors" select which ones they wish to invest in. Return is a function of how well the business goes. There are ways to pool these things, called "Mutual Funds". Investing in the stock market is not really "saving", although a diversified portfolio over a long period amounts to the same thing. There's also a similarity as far as jobs created: IPOs create a lot of jobs, and commercial bonds often do too, but the day to day trading of these things creates no jobs, except for the brokers. The main job creation from day to day trading is that it's a downstream market for the IPOs.
When choosing where to put your savings, it's important to recognize the difference between investing in job creation, and simply pushing money around. Unless you're actually buying initial offerings of stocks or bonds, you're doing the latter.
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