The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.
Simon NewcombI was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.
Simon NewcombThe time was not yet ripe for the growth of mathematical science among us, and any development that might have taken place in that direction was rudely stopped by the civil war.
Simon NewcombConstruction of an aerial vehicle which can carry even a single man . . . requires the discovery of some new metal or force. Even with such a discovery, we could not expect one to do more than carry its owner.
Simon Newcomb