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Who said: “I was going to record talking... the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb',... and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”
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Thumbnail of Charles Proteus Steinmetz (source)
Charles Proteus Steinmetz
(9 Apr 1865 - 26 Oct 1923)

German-American electrical engineer and inventor who founded the General Electric laboratory and worked on the theory of alternating-current circuitry. His more than 200 patented inventions that brought electricity into the modern era, included improvements on generators and motors. Originally named Karl August Rudolf, he was forced to leave Germany in 1888 because of his Socialist activities and fled via Switzerland to America.


Charles Proteus Steinmetz
“There are no foolish questions”

Illustrated Quote - Medium (500 x 250 px)

“There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.”
— Charles Proteus Steinmetz
American Magazine (May 1923).

More Charles Proteus Steinmetz quotes on science >>

This quote seems to have been passed along without a clear citation. In its May 1923 issue, the American Magazine article by Frank Crane began with:

DR. CHARLES STEINMETZ, the engineering genius, said the other day that there are no foolish questions, and that no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.

Note that, in this source, it was presented in narrative fashion, without quotation marks.


See also:

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.
Carl Sagan Thumbnail Carl Sagan: 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) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

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