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John B. Jervis
(14 Dec 1795 - 12 Jan 1885)
American civil engineer who became the nation's leading consulting engineer of his time. In the period (1830-60) before the Civil War, he worked on several significant canal projects, railroads and water-supply systems.
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Science Quotes by John B. Jervis (3 quotes)
A true engineer, first of all, considers his duties as a trust and directs his whole energies to discharge the trust with all the solemnity of a judge on a bench. He is so immersed in his profession that he has no other sources of amusement, and is therefore always on his post.
— John B. Jervis
From Jervis Memoirs, Beach Transcript, Jervis Library, Rome, New York. As quoted and cited on asce.org webpage of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
No engineer can go upon a new work and not find something peculiar, that will demand his careful reflection, and the deliberate consideration of any advice that he may receive; and nothing so fully reveals his incapacity as a pretentious assumption of knowledge, claiming to understand everything.
— John B. Jervis
In Railway Property: A Treatise on the Construction and Management of Railways (1866), 247.
The operating management, providing as it does for the care of near thirty thousand miles of railway, is far more important than that for construction in which there is comparatively little doing.
— John B. Jervis
In Railway Property: A Treatise on the Construction and Management of Railways (1866), iii.
See also:
- 14 Dec - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Jervis's birth.
- John Bloomfield Jervis - Obituary (1885) from Proceedings of American Society of Civil Engineers.
- Reminiscences of John B. Jervis: Engineer of the Old Croton, by John Bloomfield Jervis and Neal FitzSimons (ed.). - book suggestion.
- John B. Jervis: An American Engineering Pioneer, by F. Daniel Larkin. - book suggestion.
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) -- 
