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John Timbs
(17 Aug 1801 - 6 Mar 1875)
English antiquarian who wrote over 150 works on a wide field of subjects, such as biographies, inventions, history and travel. Many of his books continued to be republished years after his death.
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Science Quotes by John Timbs (1 quote)
The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust; and the flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most elementary form, embodies a novel and gigantic idea, without an analogue in nature, and without a prototype in experience
— John Timbs
Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts (1860), 145.
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) -- 
