• Question: Who inspired you to become an engineer and if different who is your engineering hero?

    Asked by setc1623 to Al, Emma, Ivanka, James, Omar on 15 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by aminajesslin, branflakes123, meganl56, mylo9.
    • Photo: Al Bartlett

      Al Bartlett answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Hello setc1623

      I don’t think anyone really inspired me to become an engineer – it happened because i enjoyed learning about how things work and why things do what they do.

      As for an engineering hero – I think Brunel (Isambard Kingdom Brunel) was a brilliant engineer – he managed to think of engineering solutions to projects that were believed impossible. have a look at this wikipedia page all about him:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel

    • Photo: James Vokes

      James Vokes answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I don’t think I was “inspired” by anyone. It was more like I just wanted to know more about certain subjects and so I tried hard to find out more about them. I soon found out though that the subjects I was interested in were under a huge “banner” called Engineering.

    • Photo: Ivanka Brown

      Ivanka Brown answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I’m not sure that I was inspired, but when I did my work experience in an engineering consultancy office at 16 years old. I was impressed by how nice the people were, how helpful and how much they could achieve. I continue to work with people who are genuinely interested in helping society – hence civil engineers.

    • Photo: Omar Mustufvi

      Omar Mustufvi answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I was more interested in scientists when I was younger such as the story of Tesla and Edison and I used to like reading books by Richard Feynman (I really recommend ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’ and ‘What Do You Care What Other People Think?’) so I think I was inspired by them.

      But later on I did become interested in engineers and in particular the development of automaton in the 19th century and then the rise of modern engineers like Henry Ford, Dyson and Brunel. I’ve realised from reading their stories that the best engineers are not only clever but very hard working and they rarely give up!

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