A quote about "Man building an engine big enough to blow up the world."

Cafe Society
1

I was just wondering if someone could help me track down the origin of a half-remembered bit of dialogue that’s been bouncing around my skull for a few days.

It starts out with someone saying something like “You know, one day mankind’s going to build an engine so big, it’ll just blow up the world.”

To which a character responds, in a wisecrack, “…Yeah, and you can bet it’ll be an American who builds it!”

I think it might have been from one of the works by Jules Verne or H.G. Wells, but I’m not sure.

This isn’t meant to start a political debate, or anything. I just wanted to find the original text, so I could print it, and hang it above my worktable. >:D

So…can anyone help me out?
Ranchoth

2

So…nothing? Nothing at all?

Don’t tell me that I just dreamed it…

3

Jules Verne. The original was referring to building a boiler with some absurd level of steam pressure, on the order of a million atmospheres or something.

For some reason I think it was in Robur the Conqueror but I cannot be certain.

4

[simpsons]
Kang: It seems the earthlings won.
Kodos: Did they? That board with a nail in it may have defeated us. But the humans won’t stop there. They’ll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!
[/simpsons]

5

Ah! You’re right…it was Verne, in Five Weeks in A Balloon

So, almost like I remembered it. And “boiler” instead of “engine” made all the difference to the search engines.

Thanks, DrFidelius!