Ulysses, Scylla and Charybdis - and the story of reliability

Abstract

The story of reliability is like the story of other technical and scientific disciplines. High and low points, good ideas and mistakes, sincere enthusiasm and fatigue, rigorous approaches and fads; we find these not only in art, culture and politics, but also in the world of engineering. It's always the same story, ever since the Tower of Babel: we are driven by ambition and pride. Many works of literature have lived for centuries and millennia: Homer, Dante Alighieri, Shakespeare and many others have spoken to us in a universal way. Their stories seem fresh and modem, because humankind is always the same, unable to understand and learn from errors. So we can always find similarities, for example between the Odyssey and the story of our field. Illusions, monsters, storms, errors and hope woven together.