I have been told by different people on separate occasions that the first patent on linear motors was filed by the Mayor of Pittsburgh in 1890, and t… - Eric Laithwaite

A plain steel rod does remarkably well because steel... is a conductor of electricity, as well as of magnetism. This tubular motor is not the most efficient of linear induction machines. ...This amazing force of induction ...appears as almost artificial gravity under our control. Now, as an engineer I must try and put this force to good use, and when I do I must be sure that I'm getting the very best out of my machine. Now one of the advantageous of arrangements appears to be to use two flat machines face to face, forming the outside of a sandwich, with the aluminum sheet as the filling. Now this motor is really a most potent device, but still pretty useless... So if we want continuous motion, we must turn this machine over. Let [it] now be the moving part, and let it sit on a fixed rail and run along that... I'm going to raise the voltage slowly and the motor will climb this very steep incline. ...[I]t doesn't need wheels to grip the rail. There are virtually no moving parts, and the motor is capable of developing a very large force. Taking off. I can control the motor for very low speeds, or stop it when it's moving very fast. When used on the horizontal and made in a much larger size, such a machine is capable of developing a very high acceleration. At the Motor Industry Research Association laboratories at , the linear motor is being used to crash test all kinds of vehicles. ...The linear motor to do this job is very small, It's only about three times as big as our model which climbed the rail. ...Red lights flash, and once the final button is pressed, the forces of induction take over.

I'm like a child who's been brought up inside an institution and has never seen the outside world, the sea, or trees in a wood... Coming here was like being taken out of that box and put into the marvelous real world that there is, and I've simply been standing and gazing in wonder at all of the things that there are in the universe. And I'd just like to live to be 200, because one lifetime isn't enough. ...Of course I shall never retire, I mean when, I'm 65 I hope they'll make me Professor Emeritus, but I also hope that they'll let me go on working. ...I'm writing a book on engineering and biology and the last chapter is called "Gazing Wonder", and that's how I can sum it up.

An engineer is first and foremost a scientist. ...an applied scientist ...whose ultimate objective is the profitable manufacture of articles... Academic engineers may argue that they are as concerned with profitable concepts... To this extent they run alongside the pure scientist... with at least half an eye on the profits and with problems many orders of magnitude greater in complexity... In such a no-man's land he is hand-in-hand with his medical colleague, who faced with a malignant disease must let the patient die or try something.