Posted on 11/20/2011 7:35:30 AM PST by decimon
The million pound Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, announced on Thursday at the Science Museum in London, is a global award which aims to, "to identify and celebrate an outstanding advance in engineering that has created significant benefit to humanity".
It's part of a long tradition of using prizes to reward and encourage innovation.
Speaking at the launch alongside Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Labour leader Ed Miliband, Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out how previous prizes helped create new technologies.
The Prime Minister mentioned the Longitude prize offered in the 1700s for a system for reliably measuring longitude at sea, essential to marine navigation. The prize was eventually awarded to clockmaker John Harrison.
Peter Diamandis, the founder of the influential X Prize, also believes challenges like the Longitude prize can encourage innovation.
The Ansari X Prize offered a $10m (£6m) award for the first team to build a private spaceship that could launch three people to one hundred kilometres altitude and then repeat the feat within two weeks.
The prize was won in 2004 by the SpaceShipOne vehicle, incorporating technology that is now used by Virgin Galactic.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
An additional way to reward communists?
The Nobel prize in anything isn’t worth anything anymore. It’s meaningless. Ever since Arafat, Carter, Gore and Obamalamadingdong it’s a joke.
The odds are very high that this award will become politicized just like it’s bretheren. Expect awards to the the likes of The Global Warming is Real Detection System developed with funding provided by the Michael Moore Fund to Save Civilization.
Does the engineering feat have to actually work?
Or can it be just another theoretical, feel-good idea?
That’s the peace prize which was somehow tacked on to the Swedish-given primarily science-based Nobel Prize. Also its a bunch of Norwegians that make that decision. I don’t know if they can use any of Alfred’s Nobel’s trust money for it. I would hope not.
To me it’s all tied together. The Nobel Peace Prize is no longer worth anything.
Well it only shares the name its a completely separate award process. I don’t understand how the Swedes tolerate that.
The science prizes still seem to be worth something.
This award should be head and shoulders above the Nobel peace price. The Nobles for the hard sciences are very good also.
The other Nobles are awarded by progressives to other progressives for advancing the progressive agenda. They do serve to identify those who should be closely watched, other than that they are garbage.
They did get Mother Theresa’s Noble correct
Nobel Prizes are not what they once were as evidenced by the Nobel Peace Prize being doled out to hucksters (e.g. Obama), flimflam artists( e.g. Al Gore) and downright frauds (e.g. Rigoberta Menchu).
Please postpone all thoughts of denigrating the honored field of Engineering by equating it with Nobel’s. There is no peace without engineers.
It's ruined as an award that demonstrates any serious merit. They have destroyed the Noble Brand
Reminds me of the old joke:
What is the difference between a Mechanical Engineer and a Civil Engineer?
Mechanical Engineers build weapons.
Civil Engineers build targets.
Regards,
GtG ('67 BSME)
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