Safety cut rope axe man In the first nuclear reactor, constructed by Enrico Fermi in 1942 under the bleachers of the University of Chicago football stadium, the control rods were held up by a manila rope. A man with an axe was told to cut the rope if the reactor got out of hand. This "safety cut rope axe man" is supposedly the origin of the term SCRAM for an emergency shutdown procedure. Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape wordsacronymsenergy
The evolution of devices All the first antecedents of man's devices were given him by Nature. Every one of his devices is traceable back to something in nature which suggested the first remote and primitive beginnings of its evolution. And every feature in art that man's mind conceived is conceived by a mind that has evolved as a part of nature: that grew out of nature. The evolution of devices is as much a natural process as the evolution of organisms. David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design The Evolution of Useful Things creativity