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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index S > Sir Joseph Wilson Swan Quotes

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Sir Joseph Wilson Swan
(31 Oct 1828 - 27 May 1914)

English physicist, chemist and inventor.


Science Quotes by Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (3 quotes)

An inventor is an opportunist, one who takes occasion by the hand; who, having seen where some want exists, successfully applies the right means to attain the desired end. The means may be largely, or even wholly, something already known, or there may be a certain originality or discovery in the means employed. But in every case the inventor uses the work of others. If I may use a metaphor, I should liken him to the man who essays the conquest of some virgin alp. At the outset he uses the beaten track, and, as he progresses in the ascent, he uses the steps made by those who have preceded him, whenever they lead in the right direction; and it is only after the last footprints have died out that he takes ice-axe in hand and cuts the remaining steps, few or many, that lift him to the crowning height which is his goal.
— Sir Joseph Wilson Swan
In Kenneth Raydon Swan, Sir Joseph Swan (1946), 44.
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It was found after many troublesome experiments that when the vacuum within the lamp globe was good, and the contact between the carbon and the conductor which supported it sufficient, there was no blackening of the globes, and no appreciable wasting away of the carbons. Thus was swept away a pernicious error, which, like a misleading finger post proclaiming “No road this way,” tended to bar progress along a good thoroughfare. It only remained to perfect the details of the lamp, to find the best material from which to form the carbon, and to fix this material in the lamp in the best manner. These points, I think, I have now satisfactorily settled, and you see the result in the lamp before me on the table.
— Sir Joseph Wilson Swan
In Lecture (20 Oct 1880) at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, as quoted in United States Courts of Appeals Reports: Cases Adjudged in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals (1894), Vol. 11, 419-420.
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The days of my youth extend backward to the dark ages, for I was born when the rush-light, the tallow-dip or the solitary blaze of the hearth were common means of indoor lighting, and an infrequent glass bowl, raised 8 or 10 feet on a wooden post, and containing a cup full of evil-smelling train-oil with a crude cotton wick stuck in it, served to make the darkness visible out of doors. In the chambers of the great, the wax candle or, exceptionally, a multiplicity of them, relieved the gloom on state occasions, but as a rule, the common people, wanting the inducement of indoor brightness such as we enjoy, went to bed soon after sunset.
— Sir Joseph Wilson Swan
Reminiscence written by Swan “in his old age”, as quoted in Kenneth Raydon Swan, Sir Joseph Swan (1946), 1-2.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Bed (25)  |  Biography (254)  |  Birth (154)  |  Blaze (14)  |  Brightness (12)  |  Candle (32)  |  Common (447)  |  Crude (32)  |  Dark (145)  |  Dark Ages (10)  |  Darkness (72)  |  Door (94)  |  Evil (122)  |  Extend (129)  |  Glass (94)  |  Gloom (11)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hearth (3)  |  Indoor (2)  |  Light (635)  |  Lighting (5)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Multiplicity (14)  |  Occasion (87)  |  Oil (67)  |  People (1031)  |  Rule (307)  |  Soon (187)  |  State (505)  |  Sunset (27)  |  Tallow (2)  |  Train (118)  |  Visible (87)  |  Wax (13)  |  Wick (4)  |  Youth (109)


See also:
  • 31 Oct - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Swan's birth.
  • Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, F.R.S.: inventor and scientist, by Mary E. Swan, Kenneth Raydon Swan. - book suggestion.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
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