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William Seward Burroughs
(28 Jan 1855 - 15 Sep 1898)
American inventor who produced the first practical adding machine, providing bank clerks with the ability to add numbers accurately, and print out the results. He died only a few years after establishing the successful company, which by merger became Unisys in the 1980s.
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Science Quotes by William Seward Burroughs (4 quotes)
A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what’s going on.
— William Seward Burroughs
Cited as in Friends magazine, by Jonathon Green, The Cynic’s Lexicon: A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984), 36. Possibly this refers to issue No. 9 (10 Jul 1970). Webmaster has been unable to access a copy to verify.
I refer to experiments that did not uh pan out as we had expected. Science, pure science. You learn to take what comes in this business.
— William Seward Burroughs
In William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholtz (ed.) and Ira Silverberg (ed.), 'Institute of Advanced Sexual Studies: Academic Bulletin No. 18', Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader (2007), 294.
Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
— William Seward Burroughs
From essay, 'Civilian Defense', collected in The Adding Machine (1985, 2013), 105.
Too many scientists seem to be ignorant of the most rudimentary spiritual concepts. And they tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.
— William Seward Burroughs
From essay, Immortality (1976). Collected in William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholtz (ed.) and Ira Silverberg (ed.), Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader (2007), 348.
See also:
- 28 Jan - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Burroughs's birth.
- The Burroughs Adding Machine Company: extract from The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922.
- Burrough's adding machine patent - event description for 21 Aug 1888.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
