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Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

Simon Newcomb

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Simon Newcomb
Age: 74 †
Born: 1835
Born: March 12
Died: 1909
Died: July 11
Astronomer
Economist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Teacher
University Teacher
province of Nova Scotia
Space
Predictions
Insignificant
Airplane
Utterly
Flight
Machines
Air
Unpractical
Impossible
Heavier

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Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.
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Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope. . . . The example of the bird does not prove that man can fly. Imagine the proud possessor of the aeroplane darting through the air at a speed of several hundred feet per second. It is the speed alone that sustains him. How is he ever going to stop?
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I finally reached the conclusion that mathematics was the study I was best fitted to follow, though I did not clearly see in what way I should turn the subject to account.
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I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.
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Quite likely the twentieth century is destined to see the natural forces which will enable us to fly from continent to continent with a speed far exceeding that of a bird.
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Construction of an aerial vehicle which can carry even a single man . . . requires the discovery of some new metal or force. Even with such a discovery, we could not expect one to do more than carry its owner.
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When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck.
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James Edward Oliver might have been one of the great mathematicians of his time had he not been absolutely wanting in the power of continuous work.
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So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution.
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Ten decimal places of π are sufficient to give the circumference of the earth to a fraction of an inch, and thirty decimal places would give the circumference of the visible universe to a quantity imperceptible to the most powerful microscope.
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If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.
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In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate.
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Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.
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The time was not yet ripe for the growth of mathematical science among us, and any development that might have taken place in that direction was rudely stopped by the civil war.
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As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest.
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