6 ms·

I think this is correct. For example, the Wright Brothers' sole motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money. Without patents, they wo

I think this is correct. For example, the Wright Brothers' sole motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money. Without patents, they would've either kept it secret or not done it at all.

yxhuvud 13y ago
That is quite ridiculous. There were lots and lots of people that tried (increasingly successful) to create aircrafts, both before and after the wright brothers. If there is one high profile invention that would capture the dreams of inventors and invent just for the hell of it, then flying is that invention. The results of the patents the Wright brothers were granted is quite evident if one compares the state of aircraft during the first world war - USA was woefully behind everyone else, mostly because the Wright patent(s?) stopped aircraft innovation there until it expired.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  I have no idea what you're talking about, but the Wright brothers' primary motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money off it. You don't have to take my word for it. Also, it wasn't at all clear what the way to invent flight was going to be. Most people were trying an approach called something like "inherent stability" where they were trying to design their aircraft so that it couldn't crash. I.e. instead of giving pilots three axis control, they felt it necessary to design their aircraft so that pilots didn't need any control. So it may be obvious in hindsight how to invent flight, but it was extraordinarily non-obvious at the time, as every invention is. We'd certainly like to believe invention happens for the sake of invention, but empirically dollar signs make the world go 'round.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    That they thought they could make money off of an airplane patent is proof that they understood that airplanes would be useful in their own right. Had they not done it, somebody else would have, with or without patents; it was inevitable. It might have taken a handful of more years, but it was inevitable. A crude though reasonable way to estimate how inevitable a development was is to look at the period of time between when the prerequisites for an idea were created, and when the idea itself was created. Some ideas, such as the phonograph (which could have been created at least a few centuries earlier) have a very large span of time between these two things. These ideas could plausibly have been "missed" if circumstances didn't align. Other ideas were devised shortly after their prerequisites. Liquid fuel rockets burning LOX and LH2 were first considered by Tsiolkovsky just two years after hydrogen was first liquefied. Goddard did not know of Tsiolkovsky but that hardly mattered, that idea was inevitable. He, instead of Tsiolkovsky, went through with the idea. In the case of the Wright brothers, powered controllable airplanes hit the scene quite shortly after suitable engines were feasible. They deserve credit for being the ones that actually did it, but there is really little reason to think that there was ever a risk of a future without planes.
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      I figure that without the Wrights, the problem would have been solved within 5 years or so. But still, the Wrights did it.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Absolutely agree.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    Sole motivation? Primary motivation? I don't see the evidence for it. From "The Bishop's Boys", pg. 164: "Wilbur was thirty-two years old in the spring of 1899. He realized that now was the time. He needed a challenge, a measure of himself—a problem that matched his skills and abilities. The recognition that flight was such a problem did not come in a blinding flash of insight, but grew slowly during the years 1896-99." He'd been interested in flight since he was a boy.
    - tonyarkles 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war Yeah, not a primary source, blah blah blah, but lots of citations in there.
- microcolonel 13y ago
  Thank you, same thing happened with the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, and again is probably going to happen with Beeline(that lovely technology which helps your brain transition text lines).
specialist 13y ago
And how well did that work out for the Wright brothers? While they were busy trying to enforce their patent, they stopped innovating, and their competitors kept moving forward, exploiting the market the Wright brothers created.
- sangnoir 13y ago
  It didn't work out very well for them (or the U.S. in general. Innovation simply moved to France- further away from harassment by the Wright's. I remember reading an article stating that this is the reason so many parts of the aeroplane have French names (fuselage, aileron, &tc)

yxhuvud 13y ago

That is quite ridiculous. There were lots and lots of people that tried (increasingly successful) to create aircrafts, both before and after the wright brothers. If there is one high profile invention that would capture the dreams of inventors and invent just for the hell of it, then flying is that invention. The results of the patents the Wright brothers were granted is quite evident if one compares the state of aircraft during the first world war - USA was woefully behind everyone else, mostly because the Wright patent(s?) stopped aircraft innovation there until it expired.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
I have no idea what you're talking about, but the Wright brothers' primary motivation for inventing the airplane was to patent it and make money off it. You don't have to take my word for it. Also, it wasn't at all clear what the way to invent flight was going to be. Most people were trying an approach called something like "inherent stability" where they were trying to design their aircraft so that it couldn't crash. I.e. instead of giving pilots three axis control, they felt it necessary to design their aircraft so that pilots didn't need any control. So it may be obvious in hindsight how to invent flight, but it was extraordinarily non-obvious at the time, as every invention is. We'd certainly like to believe invention happens for the sake of invention, but empirically dollar signs make the world go 'round.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  That they thought they could make money off of an airplane patent is proof that they understood that airplanes would be useful in their own right. Had they not done it, somebody else would have, with or without patents; it was inevitable. It might have taken a handful of more years, but it was inevitable. A crude though reasonable way to estimate how inevitable a development was is to look at the period of time between when the prerequisites for an idea were created, and when the idea itself was created. Some ideas, such as the phonograph (which could have been created at least a few centuries earlier) have a very large span of time between these two things. These ideas could plausibly have been "missed" if circumstances didn't align. Other ideas were devised shortly after their prerequisites. Liquid fuel rockets burning LOX and LH2 were first considered by Tsiolkovsky just two years after hydrogen was first liquefied. Goddard did not know of Tsiolkovsky but that hardly mattered, that idea was inevitable. He, instead of Tsiolkovsky, went through with the idea. In the case of the Wright brothers, powered controllable airplanes hit the scene quite shortly after suitable engines were feasible. They deserve credit for being the ones that actually did it, but there is really little reason to think that there was ever a risk of a future without planes.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    I figure that without the Wrights, the problem would have been solved within 5 years or so. But still, the Wrights did it.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Absolutely agree.
- WalterBright 13y ago
  Sole motivation? Primary motivation? I don't see the evidence for it. From "The Bishop's Boys", pg. 164: "Wilbur was thirty-two years old in the spring of 1899. He realized that now was the time. He needed a challenge, a measure of himself—a problem that matched his skills and abilities. The recognition that flight was such a problem did not come in a blinding flash of insight, but grew slowly during the years 1896-99." He'd been interested in flight since he was a boy.
  - tonyarkles 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war Yeah, not a primary source, blah blah blah, but lots of citations in there.
microcolonel 13y ago
Thank you, same thing happened with the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, and again is probably going to happen with Beeline(that lovely technology which helps your brain transition text lines).

specialist 13y ago

And how well did that work out for the Wright brothers? While they were busy trying to enforce their patent, they stopped innovating, and their competitors kept moving forward, exploiting the market the Wright brothers created.

sangnoir 13y ago
It didn't work out very well for them (or the U.S. in general. Innovation simply moved to France- further away from harassment by the Wright's. I remember reading an article stating that this is the reason so many parts of the aeroplane have French names (fuselage, aileron, &tc)