Quotations: On Engineering Process

From Science Besieged

You will say I am always conjuring up awful difficulties & consequences--my answer to this is it is an important part of the duty of an engineer.

--Robert Stephenson, engineer of the Britannia Bridge, to Edwin Clark, resident engineer of the project to build the bridge over the Firth of Forth [Scotland] c. 1880; quoted in Henry Petroski, Success Through Failure : The Paradox of Design (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2006) p. 153; Petroski quoted from: James Sutherland, "Iron Railway Bridges," in Robert Stephenson--The Eminent Engineer, ed. Michael R. Bailey (Aldershot, Hants. : Ashgate, 2003), p. 331.