Jamie Hyneman
Jamie Hyneman
James Franklin "Jamie" Hyneman is an American special effects expert and was the co-host of the television series MythBusters alongside Adam Savage. He is also the owner of M5 Industries, the special effects workshop where MythBusters was filmed. He is known among Robot Wars devotees for his robot entry, Blendo, which, for a time, was deemed too dangerous for entry in the competition. He is one of the designers of the aerial robotic camera system Wavecam, used in sports and...
ProfessionReality Star
Date of Birth25 September 1956
CityMarshall, MI
succeed firsts ifs
If at first you don't succeed, C4
pushing process insight
We're constantly pushing these materials and processes to the extreme to see what will happen. It's an insight into things that you don't normally see.
squad guy pressure
We've found that the biggest thing as far as the danger is simply pressure.When we work with explosives, we've got bomb technicians there, bomb-squad guys who go into unknown situations all the time, and they've dealt with it safely.
axes two legs
One of the things I'm likely to start building in my shop is a vehicle wherein each wheel has basically a flight-simulator base as its suspension. It's known as a hexapod; it's basically a tripod but each leg is two pistons. So you have six axes of freedom on it. This will be something that can not only do what lowriders do, but shorten or extend its wheelbase and jump forwards, backwards, or from one side to the other. In an off-road situation it could be rolling at speed toward a ravine and then leap across it.
math engineering should-have
I didn't do the engineering, and I didn't do the math, because I thought I understood what was going on and I thought I made a good rig. But I was wrong. I should have done it.
creativity perfect adequate
Duct tape is not a perfect solution to anything. But with a little creativity, in a pinch, it's an adequate solution to just about everything.
fun thought-provoking attention
Fun for us just happens to be screwing around with anything that gets our attention and is thought-provoking.
adam became decade field found grant great hired job people talented tory worked
Adam, Grant and Tory have worked at ILM for some years. I worked there on one job with Grant and we became friends. Adam and Tory had worked with me or for me before then and, in fact, Adam got his first work in the field when I hired him over a decade ago. I found ILM a great place to work and that there were a lot of very talented people there. Many of the people there have worked with me over the years.
guy labs coats
Science isn't just for scientists and guys in lab coats. It's something that everybody can do.
powerful kids thinking
I think LEGOs are one of the best toys ever developed. While LEGOs are sold in kits in order to build specific things, there [are] very few people who leave their LEGOs in those kits. It very rapidly becomes an open system where you can build whatever you want. That's the one thing that signifies my entire life and my career. I learned at an early age that I could make the things that I wanted. That's a very powerful thing to realize as a kid. LEGOs were a key part of that.
people different sometimes
Sometimes the best people to be around are not exactly like you - because if they were, what is the point? If they contribute something different than you can, that is when they are valuable.
imagine i-can has-beens
There are a lot of things that I'd do differently. But I can't imagine being more fortunate than I have been.
curiosity littles way
We have relatively little time and a whole lot of curiosity, so the most efficient way to get there is what we do, and that often happens to be some form of science.
mean looks rockets
One of our neighbors is a salami distributor, and they pretty well - I mean, we used their salami to make a rocket engine out of. They just look at us and they're amused, they're fine with it.