8 ms·

The Wright Brothers Defeated Gravity and the Government Machine

68 points by TheSpine 8y ago

WalterBright 8y ago
When you look at the engineering of the Wright Flyer: 1. propeller nearly double the efficiency of flat blades other contemporary experimenters used 2. a special engine that had about double the horsepower to weight ratio of any other engine at the time 3. a wing shape designed in a wind tunnel rather than seat-of-the-pants "bird shapes" 4. a 3 axis control system that worked 5. a research and development program that first identified the problems and solved them one by one with a series of prototypes 6. every modern airplane can trace its design back to the Flyer, and no other 7. the Flyer exists and can be examined 8. exact replicas of the Flyer have been made, and they fly like the Wrights documented the way theirs flew it's pretty clear that none of the other "first flight" claimants have much of a case (especially since none of their alleged machines exist and can be examined).
- AWildC182 8y ago
  Also interesting is that they settled on what would now be called a canard design with the pitch control surface on the front rather than the tail. This is actually a superior arrangement in most cases as both the wing and the stabliator are both generating positive lift. Most conventional aircraft have the center of gravity in front of the main wing, such that the system is dynamically stable (try throwing a dart backward and you'll see what I mean). To control pitch, they then have control surface in the rear pushing down to keep the nose up. In a canard, the CG is still forward of the wing (and the center of lift) but the control surface helps lift the nose up instead of pushing the tail down improving efficiency. This also has an important safety feature in that you can add a couple degrees to the canard's angle such that it will stall before the main wing. In effect, this means the pilot cannot fully stall the aircraft and put it into a spin, it'll simply mush about, descending in and out of canard stall until the control input is relaxed. Edit: an excellent example of a modern canard would be the Rutan LongEZ and it's accompanying, rather ridiculous, performance numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    The canard design is unstable, which is why the first flight was of such short duration. Curtiss put canards on his racing airplanes, because he copied the Wrights. On one race, the pilot hit a fence and damaged the canard. He cut off the wreckage and rejoined the race. He then told Curtiss that the airplane flew better and faster without the canard. Curtiss immediately pulled them off of his other airplanes.
    - AWildC182 8y ago
      It's only unstable if the aircraft is designed incorrectly. You can achieve the same situation with a far-aft CG in a traditional aircraft. It doesn't matter what the setup is, the aircraft will be unstable if the center of lift is near or in front of the center of gravity.
      - WalterBright 8y ago
        Modern canard designs also use active controls to compensate for the instability. You're right about the CG location relative to the center of pressure, but to make the canard effective it has to be big enough to also make it unstable.
        AWildC182 8y ago
        Can you provide any sources on that? The only one I can think of would be military aircraft (ie. the Eurofighter) and they likely have relaxed stability (CoL ~= CG) as a design goal. All the GA examples (Long/VariEZ, the Velocity line, Cozy Mk*, etc.) have straight mechanical linkages and don't have any stability issues when operated correctly.
        WalterBright 8y ago
        Here's a paper that mentions the instability of the Wright Flyer: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315549654_A_STUDY_ABOUT_CANARD_TYPE_AIRPLANE_STABILITY https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315549654_A_STUDY_A... A bit about active controls for canards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard_(aeronautics)#Computer_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard_(aeronautics)#Computer_...
- mandevil 8y ago
  While I totally agree that the Wright Brothers work was amazing and ground breaking, their engine was not. It weighed ~180 lbs. (was the heaviest single thing on the airplane, heavier than either of the brothers- if you look carefully you will see that the pilot is a bit further from the centerline of the aircraft than the engine is, to balance out the weight) and produced 12 hp (the spec said <200 lbs and producing > 8hp, so it was better than the spec). Samuel Langley, working on his own engine for the failed full-sized Aerodrome #5, had an engine that weighed <210 lbs but produced 52hp, more than 4x the power. But the Wright Brothers fabulous propellers (seriously, today, with 115 years experience building airplanes, fancy computer modelling, etc., we can build a propeller out of wood about 3% better than the ones the Wright Brothers built) more than made up the difference. Because sometimes good design beats brute force.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    More on the Langley engine: http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Doers_and_Dreamers/Wright_Smithsonian_Controversy/Could_the_Langley_Aerodrome_have_flown.htm http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_A... The reason the Wrights built their own engine was they wrote to several engine manufacturers with a specification that they all turned down as unbuildable. So their engine was groundbreaking, though it may not have been the first. I don't know anything about the provenance of the Langley engine, except that it's clear he had to build his own engine, too. More to the point, where did the engines for the other first flight claimants come from?
  - elihu 8y ago
    Even if the engine wasn't particularly amazing, I'm impressed that they could just ask one of their employees to build an engine and he had one working in a month and a half. > There was no manufacturer that created an engine which was as light weight as they needed. They undertook this enterprise themselves as well. The brothers asked one of their employees, Charlie Taylor, to build them an engine. Taylor built an engine in six weeks with an aluminum block to meet weight requirements. In their rough sketches given to Taylor, the brothers stated they need an engine to produce 8 horsepower. Charlie’s engine produced 12.
- marktangotango 8y ago
  I’ve often wondered if there are any other examples of “scientific engineering” the Wright brothers pioneered. I’m not familiar with any. My feeling is Edison was a lot more random trial and error for example.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    I read Josephson's biography of Edison and it indeed looks like Edison's work was based on intuition, and trial and error. I don't think he ever did anything like what the Wrights did with propellers. For example, his development of the multiplex telegraph did not seem to show evidence of understanding electricity, just an awful lot of tinkering. Other aeronautical contemporaries of the Wrights exhibited little understanding, and a lot of tinkering, which is why the Wrights were able to leap so far ahead of them.
  - abecedarius 8y ago
    Oliver Heaviside comes to mind, a little earlier, though when he was doing his best work he wasn't in a position to build it for real. He was even more of an outsider than the Wrights.
    - petepete 8y ago
      James Watt, James Maxwell, Sir George Cayley, Francis Reynolds, Johann von Zimmerman. Science and engineering were closely intertwined during the industrial revolution. Even before then, Ismail al-Jasri fits precisely into this category.
  - ImprovedSilence 8y ago
    I believe Tesla would be right up there with in the realm of “scientific engineering”, if not even ahead of the Wrights.
  - Theodores 8y ago
    The Wright Brothers started out in a bicycle shop, their engineering was based on what they knew from bicycles. There are things like the CV joint that is not bicycle engineering but the nuts and bolts of how so many things that are put together can be worked out by people fluent in how bicycles work. All engineering on a bike is at human scale and can be related to, all of it is exposed and not hidden in magic black boxes. The Wright Brothers also added to the canon of bicycle design and engineering, with the left-hand and right-hand thread. They deeply understood how 'nuts and bolts' worked in order to solve a problem of the pedal and chainset of a bicycle falling out over prolonged usage, even if the bolts are done up tightly. Try and service a modern bicycle and when it comes to taking the pedals off you will only be able to do so if you appreciate left-hand and right-hand threads. The pedal on the left-hand side of a bike unscrews normally, the pedal on the right hand side needs you to unscrew it by turning the other way to expected, clockwise removes the pedal instead of securing it. Although a small innovation compared to building a whole plane, this left-hand/right-hand thread could have been devised by others, however it is the Wright Brothers that got there first, demonstrating their deeper understanding of how things are made and put together. Practically every auto manufacturer got started with bicycles instead of 'horseless carriages with horses'. The bicycle workshop is not recognised for what it is, the cradle of innovation and lightweight engineering (that contrasts with the 'big iron' of steam engines and what went before in the Industrial Revolution). Some of this innovation is just in little things like having standards, e.g. the 9/16" diameter of the screw on bicycle pedals. A lot of these things needed to be sorted out so that other things could be made.
- Kim_Bruning 8y ago
  I think you will find that there were many people doing heavier-than-air R&D during the nineteenth century! Around the start of the twentieth century, many people started coming up with more-or-less viable designs. Nowadays we all agree the wrights were first. Others came up with designs in the same period (but probably later) . The fact that the wrights were(considered) first in the face of some pretty stiff competition actually makes it all the more impressive! In fact, the Smithsonian maintained that one Samuel Langley was first for quite a while! Technically he did have a heavier than air machine airborne as early as 1896, though that one was not piloted. I think the Smithsonians' position (together with Glenn Curtis) had more to do with a desperate need to establish Prior Art in the US patent war that followed. History does show that when the USA joined WWI, they were forced to start out in French and British combat aircraft. They had definitely squandered their lead by that time. I'd also question point 6 somewhat ("every modern airplane can trace its design back to the Flyer"). In many aspects, modern aircraft in fact seem to differ markedly from the wright design, even to the casual observer. They lack canards and wing warping, and tend to be of a "puller" design. See also: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#The_19th_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#The_19th... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Powered,_controlled_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Powered,...
  - Kim_Bruning 8y ago
    see especially: Open Technology and the Early Airplane Industry Peter B. Meyer http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Meyer.pdf http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Meyer.pdf
theothermkn 8y ago
> The Wright brothers are a timeless example of how private enthusiastic entrepreneurs can outperform heavily financed and government backed organizations. They’re also a prime example that a degree or title in itself doesn’t qualify you for success in an endeavor. Experience, imagination, and courage will generally be the currency that pays for success. You sort of knew that bit was coming, but you can't really be prepared for that much hogwash that quickly. First, they're obviously not a timeless example. A distinguishing feature of their time, compared to ours, is that there were no qualified aerospace engineers. Another feature is that the scientific and analytic culture was far more disjointed, immature, and parochial at the time. Consider, for example, fusion research today. No amateur will produce a burning plasma. ITER will. Because the scientific environment is more sophisticated, and is able to take on challenges outside of what amateurs can. Second, they are not a prime example about the efficacy of a degree regarding "success," not least because n=1 in an endeavor riddled with variation. It's equally likely that they got very, very lucky, in spite of their apparent rigor. Third, and finally, "[e]xperience, imagination, and courage" are not dichotomous with a "degree or title." It's not really apparent to me that, outside of the imaginations of sophomoric libertarians, that anyone believes that the world is stuffily dismissing outsiders who clearly have the facts on their sides in scientific and technical endeavors. Focusing on this fair-tale split between imagined elitists in their ivory towers and the pragmatic and gritty masses betrays a fascination with a staple of corny Americana, the garage workshop and its ilk. It's trite, predictable schlock.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  > It's equally likely that they got very, very lucky, in spite of their apparent rigor. I recommend reading a detailed account of their R+D program. They were not lucky. They did not randomly produce a flying airplane. They first identified each of the problems, and set about building prototypes directed at solving each of the problems one by one. You could say that the Wrights invented the directed research and development process.
  - theothermkn 8y ago
    Whether one is able to settle on a working solution involves luck. The article says they "noticed" that birds warp their wings. They were unlucky, for a time, in that they experienced adverse yaw. Then they were unlucky, for a time, when a fixed tail arrangement did not work. Then they made the tail assembly steerable. They were also unlucky in that they killed a passenger, but lucky that it wasn't rather than one, or both, of themselves. I realized that luck-minimizing framings are popular within entrepreneurial settings, and particularly in cultures where we're all "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but it would be far healthier if we took on board the role that fortune plays in success. We would be, for example, far more heroic if we were facing odds, rather than a grind with a guaranteed success at the end.
rmason 8y ago
Professor Langley wasn't the only well known individual trying to be the first to fly. I visited the Nova Scotia workshop of Alexander Graham Bell who also was trying to become the first to fly. He enlisted the help of one Glenn Curtiss, a motorcycle racer who built him an engine. When news of the Wright Brothers flight was confirmed Bell suspended all operations. Glenn Curtiss thought there was excellent potential for a business competitor to the Wright's but Bell wasn't interested. So Curtiss went back to Illinois and started his own airplane company now known as Curtiss-Wright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sethrin 8y ago
This is ludicrous anti-government propaganda that ignores the government's role in developing air power. Yes, the Wrights made the first one on their own. The Army and USPS provided a raison d'etre for quite a long time before commercial air traffic caught on. The idea that only private tinkerers can innovate is a lie. In the modern era, government-sponsored research has been responsible for the majority of innovation, but especially in the aerospace industry.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  Jet engines were developed independently twice by private investment, and the government was not interested until presented with flying aircraft. The US government even ordered Lockheed to cease work on their jet engine and concentrate on piston engines: "Lockheed had tried to produce a turbojet in 1940. Research engineer Nathan Price designed the startlingly advanced L-1000 with two-spool axial compressors aimed at a p.r. of 17 plus an afterburner, but when President Robert E. Gross took the brochures for the L-1000 and the L-133 canard fighter to be powered by it to Wright Field in 1942 he was told 'Forget it, keep building P-38s'." "The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines", Gunston, pg. 143 The DC-3, privately developed, was foundational for Army Air transport in WW2. The 707 was also entirely privately developed, and was foundational for all jet transport since. The Supermarine Spitfire of WW2 came from technology developed for Schneider Trophy races in the 1930's.
  - melbourne_mat 8y ago
    I'll give you some government funded counter examples: space flight, the Internet, WWW.
    - WalterBright 8y ago
      space flight - liquid fuel rockets were privately developed before the government got involved, both in the US and Germany. internet - the first internet was the telegraphy network, privately developed. www - is not the first internet. BIX, Prodigy, CompuServe, MCIMail, RBBS, Timenet, etc.
jsanford 8y ago
I've read a first person account of early automobiles and automobile racing, Charles Jarrott's 1906 book "Ten Years of Motors and Motor Racing" https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRKAAAAYAAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRKAAAAYAAJ Does anyone know if there is a similar, first person, written in the period, book about early aviation?

68 points by TheSpine 8y ago

When you look at the engineering of the Wright Flyer: 1. propeller nearly double the efficiency of flat blades other contemporary experimenters used 2. a special engine that had about double the horsepower to weight ratio of any other engine at the time 3. a wing shape designed in a wind tunnel rather than seat-of-the-pants "bird shapes" 4. a 3 axis control system that worked 5. a research and development program that first identified the problems and solved them one by one with a series of prototypes 6. every modern airplane can trace its design back to the Flyer, and no other 7. the Flyer exists and can be examined 8. exact replicas of the Flyer have been made, and they fly like the Wrights documented the way theirs flew it's pretty clear that none of the other "first flight" claimants have much of a case (especially since none of their alleged machines exist and can be examined).

AWildC182 8y ago
Also interesting is that they settled on what would now be called a canard design with the pitch control surface on the front rather than the tail. This is actually a superior arrangement in most cases as both the wing and the stabliator are both generating positive lift. Most conventional aircraft have the center of gravity in front of the main wing, such that the system is dynamically stable (try throwing a dart backward and you'll see what I mean). To control pitch, they then have control surface in the rear pushing down to keep the nose up. In a canard, the CG is still forward of the wing (and the center of lift) but the control surface helps lift the nose up instead of pushing the tail down improving efficiency. This also has an important safety feature in that you can add a couple degrees to the canard's angle such that it will stall before the main wing. In effect, this means the pilot cannot fully stall the aircraft and put it into a spin, it'll simply mush about, descending in and out of canard stall until the control input is relaxed. Edit: an excellent example of a modern canard would be the Rutan LongEZ and it's accompanying, rather ridiculous, performance numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ
- WalterBright 8y ago
  The canard design is unstable, which is why the first flight was of such short duration. Curtiss put canards on his racing airplanes, because he copied the Wrights. On one race, the pilot hit a fence and damaged the canard. He cut off the wreckage and rejoined the race. He then told Curtiss that the airplane flew better and faster without the canard. Curtiss immediately pulled them off of his other airplanes.
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    It's only unstable if the aircraft is designed incorrectly. You can achieve the same situation with a far-aft CG in a traditional aircraft. It doesn't matter what the setup is, the aircraft will be unstable if the center of lift is near or in front of the center of gravity.
    - WalterBright 8y ago
      Modern canard designs also use active controls to compensate for the instability. You're right about the CG location relative to the center of pressure, but to make the canard effective it has to be big enough to also make it unstable.
      - AWildC182 8y ago
        Can you provide any sources on that? The only one I can think of would be military aircraft (ie. the Eurofighter) and they likely have relaxed stability (CoL ~= CG) as a design goal. All the GA examples (Long/VariEZ, the Velocity line, Cozy Mk*, etc.) have straight mechanical linkages and don't have any stability issues when operated correctly.
        WalterBright 8y ago
        Here's a paper that mentions the instability of the Wright Flyer: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315549654_A_STUDY_ABOUT_CANARD_TYPE_AIRPLANE_STABILITY https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315549654_A_STUDY_A... A bit about active controls for canards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard_(aeronautics)#Computer_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard_(aeronautics)#Computer_...
mandevil 8y ago
While I totally agree that the Wright Brothers work was amazing and ground breaking, their engine was not. It weighed ~180 lbs. (was the heaviest single thing on the airplane, heavier than either of the brothers- if you look carefully you will see that the pilot is a bit further from the centerline of the aircraft than the engine is, to balance out the weight) and produced 12 hp (the spec said <200 lbs and producing > 8hp, so it was better than the spec). Samuel Langley, working on his own engine for the failed full-sized Aerodrome #5, had an engine that weighed <210 lbs but produced 52hp, more than 4x the power. But the Wright Brothers fabulous propellers (seriously, today, with 115 years experience building airplanes, fancy computer modelling, etc., we can build a propeller out of wood about 3% better than the ones the Wright Brothers built) more than made up the difference. Because sometimes good design beats brute force.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  More on the Langley engine: http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Doers_and_Dreamers/Wright_Smithsonian_Controversy/Could_the_Langley_Aerodrome_have_flown.htm http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_A... The reason the Wrights built their own engine was they wrote to several engine manufacturers with a specification that they all turned down as unbuildable. So their engine was groundbreaking, though it may not have been the first. I don't know anything about the provenance of the Langley engine, except that it's clear he had to build his own engine, too. More to the point, where did the engines for the other first flight claimants come from?
- elihu 8y ago
  Even if the engine wasn't particularly amazing, I'm impressed that they could just ask one of their employees to build an engine and he had one working in a month and a half. > There was no manufacturer that created an engine which was as light weight as they needed. They undertook this enterprise themselves as well. The brothers asked one of their employees, Charlie Taylor, to build them an engine. Taylor built an engine in six weeks with an aluminum block to meet weight requirements. In their rough sketches given to Taylor, the brothers stated they need an engine to produce 8 horsepower. Charlie’s engine produced 12.
marktangotango 8y ago
I’ve often wondered if there are any other examples of “scientific engineering” the Wright brothers pioneered. I’m not familiar with any. My feeling is Edison was a lot more random trial and error for example.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  I read Josephson's biography of Edison and it indeed looks like Edison's work was based on intuition, and trial and error. I don't think he ever did anything like what the Wrights did with propellers. For example, his development of the multiplex telegraph did not seem to show evidence of understanding electricity, just an awful lot of tinkering. Other aeronautical contemporaries of the Wrights exhibited little understanding, and a lot of tinkering, which is why the Wrights were able to leap so far ahead of them.
- abecedarius 8y ago
  Oliver Heaviside comes to mind, a little earlier, though when he was doing his best work he wasn't in a position to build it for real. He was even more of an outsider than the Wrights.
  - petepete 8y ago
    James Watt, James Maxwell, Sir George Cayley, Francis Reynolds, Johann von Zimmerman. Science and engineering were closely intertwined during the industrial revolution. Even before then, Ismail al-Jasri fits precisely into this category.
- ImprovedSilence 8y ago
  I believe Tesla would be right up there with in the realm of “scientific engineering”, if not even ahead of the Wrights.
- Theodores 8y ago
  The Wright Brothers started out in a bicycle shop, their engineering was based on what they knew from bicycles. There are things like the CV joint that is not bicycle engineering but the nuts and bolts of how so many things that are put together can be worked out by people fluent in how bicycles work. All engineering on a bike is at human scale and can be related to, all of it is exposed and not hidden in magic black boxes. The Wright Brothers also added to the canon of bicycle design and engineering, with the left-hand and right-hand thread. They deeply understood how 'nuts and bolts' worked in order to solve a problem of the pedal and chainset of a bicycle falling out over prolonged usage, even if the bolts are done up tightly. Try and service a modern bicycle and when it comes to taking the pedals off you will only be able to do so if you appreciate left-hand and right-hand threads. The pedal on the left-hand side of a bike unscrews normally, the pedal on the right hand side needs you to unscrew it by turning the other way to expected, clockwise removes the pedal instead of securing it. Although a small innovation compared to building a whole plane, this left-hand/right-hand thread could have been devised by others, however it is the Wright Brothers that got there first, demonstrating their deeper understanding of how things are made and put together. Practically every auto manufacturer got started with bicycles instead of 'horseless carriages with horses'. The bicycle workshop is not recognised for what it is, the cradle of innovation and lightweight engineering (that contrasts with the 'big iron' of steam engines and what went before in the Industrial Revolution). Some of this innovation is just in little things like having standards, e.g. the 9/16" diameter of the screw on bicycle pedals. A lot of these things needed to be sorted out so that other things could be made.
Kim_Bruning 8y ago
I think you will find that there were many people doing heavier-than-air R&D during the nineteenth century! Around the start of the twentieth century, many people started coming up with more-or-less viable designs. Nowadays we all agree the wrights were first. Others came up with designs in the same period (but probably later) . The fact that the wrights were(considered) first in the face of some pretty stiff competition actually makes it all the more impressive! In fact, the Smithsonian maintained that one Samuel Langley was first for quite a while! Technically he did have a heavier than air machine airborne as early as 1896, though that one was not piloted. I think the Smithsonians' position (together with Glenn Curtis) had more to do with a desperate need to establish Prior Art in the US patent war that followed. History does show that when the USA joined WWI, they were forced to start out in French and British combat aircraft. They had definitely squandered their lead by that time. I'd also question point 6 somewhat ("every modern airplane can trace its design back to the Flyer"). In many aspects, modern aircraft in fact seem to differ markedly from the wright design, even to the casual observer. They lack canards and wing warping, and tend to be of a "puller" design. See also: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#The_19th_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#The_19th... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Powered,_controlled_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_flying_machines#Powered,...
- Kim_Bruning 8y ago
  see especially: Open Technology and the Early Airplane Industry Peter B. Meyer http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Meyer.pdf http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Meyer.pdf

theothermkn 8y ago

> The Wright brothers are a timeless example of how private enthusiastic entrepreneurs can outperform heavily financed and government backed organizations. They’re also a prime example that a degree or title in itself doesn’t qualify you for success in an endeavor. Experience, imagination, and courage will generally be the currency that pays for success. You sort of knew that bit was coming, but you can't really be prepared for that much hogwash that quickly. First, they're obviously not a timeless example. A distinguishing feature of their time, compared to ours, is that there were no qualified aerospace engineers. Another feature is that the scientific and analytic culture was far more disjointed, immature, and parochial at the time. Consider, for example, fusion research today. No amateur will produce a burning plasma. ITER will. Because the scientific environment is more sophisticated, and is able to take on challenges outside of what amateurs can. Second, they are not a prime example about the efficacy of a degree regarding "success," not least because n=1 in an endeavor riddled with variation. It's equally likely that they got very, very lucky, in spite of their apparent rigor. Third, and finally, "[e]xperience, imagination, and courage" are not dichotomous with a "degree or title." It's not really apparent to me that, outside of the imaginations of sophomoric libertarians, that anyone believes that the world is stuffily dismissing outsiders who clearly have the facts on their sides in scientific and technical endeavors. Focusing on this fair-tale split between imagined elitists in their ivory towers and the pragmatic and gritty masses betrays a fascination with a staple of corny Americana, the garage workshop and its ilk. It's trite, predictable schlock.

WalterBright 8y ago
> It's equally likely that they got very, very lucky, in spite of their apparent rigor. I recommend reading a detailed account of their R+D program. They were not lucky. They did not randomly produce a flying airplane. They first identified each of the problems, and set about building prototypes directed at solving each of the problems one by one. You could say that the Wrights invented the directed research and development process.
- theothermkn 8y ago
  Whether one is able to settle on a working solution involves luck. The article says they "noticed" that birds warp their wings. They were unlucky, for a time, in that they experienced adverse yaw. Then they were unlucky, for a time, when a fixed tail arrangement did not work. Then they made the tail assembly steerable. They were also unlucky in that they killed a passenger, but lucky that it wasn't rather than one, or both, of themselves. I realized that luck-minimizing framings are popular within entrepreneurial settings, and particularly in cultures where we're all "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but it would be far healthier if we took on board the role that fortune plays in success. We would be, for example, far more heroic if we were facing odds, rather than a grind with a guaranteed success at the end.

rmason 8y ago

Professor Langley wasn't the only well known individual trying to be the first to fly. I visited the Nova Scotia workshop of Alexander Graham Bell who also was trying to become the first to fly. He enlisted the help of one Glenn Curtiss, a motorcycle racer who built him an engine. When news of the Wright Brothers flight was confirmed Bell suspended all operations. Glenn Curtiss thought there was excellent potential for a business competitor to the Wright's but Bell wasn't interested. So Curtiss went back to Illinois and started his own airplane company now known as Curtiss-Wright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sethrin 8y ago

This is ludicrous anti-government propaganda that ignores the government's role in developing air power. Yes, the Wrights made the first one on their own. The Army and USPS provided a raison d'etre for quite a long time before commercial air traffic caught on. The idea that only private tinkerers can innovate is a lie. In the modern era, government-sponsored research has been responsible for the majority of innovation, but especially in the aerospace industry.

WalterBright 8y ago
Jet engines were developed independently twice by private investment, and the government was not interested until presented with flying aircraft. The US government even ordered Lockheed to cease work on their jet engine and concentrate on piston engines: "Lockheed had tried to produce a turbojet in 1940. Research engineer Nathan Price designed the startlingly advanced L-1000 with two-spool axial compressors aimed at a p.r. of 17 plus an afterburner, but when President Robert E. Gross took the brochures for the L-1000 and the L-133 canard fighter to be powered by it to Wright Field in 1942 he was told 'Forget it, keep building P-38s'." "The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines", Gunston, pg. 143 The DC-3, privately developed, was foundational for Army Air transport in WW2. The 707 was also entirely privately developed, and was foundational for all jet transport since. The Supermarine Spitfire of WW2 came from technology developed for Schneider Trophy races in the 1930's.
- melbourne_mat 8y ago
  I'll give you some government funded counter examples: space flight, the Internet, WWW.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    space flight - liquid fuel rockets were privately developed before the government got involved, both in the US and Germany. internet - the first internet was the telegraphy network, privately developed. www - is not the first internet. BIX, Prodigy, CompuServe, MCIMail, RBBS, Timenet, etc.

jsanford 8y ago

I've read a first person account of early automobiles and automobile racing, Charles Jarrott's 1906 book "Ten Years of Motors and Motor Racing" https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRKAAAAYAAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRKAAAAYAAJ Does anyone know if there is a similar, first person, written in the period, book about early aviation?