2004/09/19
In this BBC news article there is a nice little anecdote at the end, I quote:
"Another row started in 1836 with an attack on a young upstart railway engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, by Dionysus Lardner, who refused to believe a steamship could carry enough fuel to travel from Bristol to New York. The dispute continued into the 1837 meeting, but by the following year Brunel had won the argument. The Great Western took 15 days to cross the Atlantic to New York, with 25% of her coal unused. "
It would be great if we had those kinds of gauntlet throwing, with a public test to see if the results are achieved. The problem is that the tough problems are not really spectator sports, and by their nature also difficult to verify. Ah for the good old days of steam and pistons, and things that went bang in the night.
