Engineers
There are lots of jokes about engineers:
How can you tell when an Engineer enters a room,
the level of Charisma drops thirty percent.
But if it wasn't for Engineers, we would still be living in caves, hunting with sticks and cooking our meals over an open fire. (actually doesn't sound that bad. Hmmmm....)
Here is one person's list of the
Top Ten Engineers in history:
Top Ten Engineers of All Time
Engineers are the people who have built our world. Everything we use today was at one point nothing but an idea in someone’s head, that was successfully designed and built. So who are the best engineers throughout history?
10. Nicolaus Otto
Nicolaus Otto developed the four-stroke or Otto-cycle engine and the first internal combustion engine, where fuel is burned directly in the piston chamber. The Otto-cycle is still used in the internal combustion engines that run all of our cars today. Despite developing the engine, it was Otto’s peers such as Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz who first apply it to locomotion, forever changing how people move around the world.
9. Alan Turing
Alan Turing developed the binary architecture now used in all computers, as well as much of the theory behind computers. He is regarded as the father of computer science. The computer you’re currently using would not exist without his contributions to the field. He also broke the German Enigma code during WWII, without which victory would have been far more difficult, if not impossible. After the war he made many other contributions to code making and breaking. While he never really built anything physical, his enormous influence in computer science earned him a place in the top ten.
8. Mikhail Kalashnikov
While much of Kalashnikov’s AK-47 was borrowed from other guns, his simplification of their designs to make a nearly flawlessly functioning rifle was his genius. The gun is cheap to manufacture, easy to use, and hard to break. It’s hard to argue with success, after 57 years the AK-47 is still in production, and there are dozens of different varieties from shotguns to sniper rifles and the familiar assault rifle. It is arguably one of the best guns in history, and definitely one of the most influential. After all, what other gun has African children named for it?
Seven more plus a couple also-rans. A good collection and something that would be really hard to pick.
Posted by DaveH at September 7, 2006 9:25 PM