Alexander
YAKOVLEV
Aircraft created by his design bureau have set 86 world records
There are many knowledgeable people, but few specialists
As a little boy, I paid ever more attention to equipment of all kinds. For example, I could stand for hours watching knife-grinders at work. These men stalked Moscow streets carrying a primitive grinder and shouting shrilly: “Grinding knives and scissors, sharpening razors!” *
For as long as I remember, I also dreamt of becoming an engineer. I ruthlessly broke my toys – steam engines, carriages, trams, wind-up automobiles – driven by an insurmountable desire to look inside and learn how they were designed. It was my passion to turn, screw and unscrew. My childish longings were aimed at obtaining screw-drivers, pliers and pincers. Turning a hand drill for me was ultimate bliss.
A designer should also be a dreamer. It is dreams that give birth to new ideas, new design concepts, and implementation methods.
Airfield work was full of romance for me.
Technological progress has no limit: Some tasks are addressed only to put forward new and even more complicated ones.
Some people think that talent is a gift whereby a God-blessed person can, effortlessly and intuitively, make discoveries and inventions, design new equipment, and, in a word, work wonders. However, in reality, talent is not only an innate ability to engage in this or that activity, it is primarily work, work, and once again work multiplied by patience.
No awards can compare with the feeling of satisfaction you experience on board an airborne plane which is entirely, to the last little bolt, your own creation.
I am a native of Moscow. I love my city, my Moscow, a city of wide asphalted streets, a city of the world’s best metro system and huge stadiums, the granite-clad beautiful Moskva River with wonderful bridges spanning it, a city with architectural ensembles, the new university building on the Lenin Hills, and many other things.
* Based on pronouncements by this section’s focal point.
