I do think the American story of the Wright Brothers single handily pushing humanity into the era of flight while the whole world called them idiots and didn’t believe is kind of a stretch. There were at that time many people and teams working on the same general concept.
The idea of a flying wing was well understood, as people had been jumping from high places with them for a while. Some dude in Germany had a private hill constructed, just so he could play with his flying wings. The concept of propellers was also known. So people generally understood if one could build something light enough with enough power, powered flight would in principle be possible. The general public might have been skeptic, but all over the world there was money being invested and people working on it.
Doesn’t mean what the Wright Brothers did wasn’t brave and impressive, because it was. Building a rig with enough lift, while being light enough and sturdy enough not to fall apart. Building their own engine to shave down the weight. Figuring out some sort of control scheme and then trying it out without getting killed. One gust of wind and one of the brothers might have been dead, the project canceled. Some say Percy Pilcher could have flown before the Wright Brothers, but he died in a glider accident before his plane was ready to fly.
But in the end if those two could do it, others would be able as well. If they weren’t the first I would think others would have gotten there within the year. The technology was on the cusp of it being possible and as people had been trying for hundreds of years, it was bound to happen.
Yeah, these is a general conception of “the great man theory” in science, and in some rare cases it may be true (like some math geniuses), but overall it is very much not true. Science stands on the shoulders of giants, of everyone and all the knowledge that came before that we build upon. So many times has the same exact concept or revelation or discovery happened at almost exactly the same time in different places in the world, because we have just reached the point where that next step is possible.
Which is why I often think it’s a bit sad that so much focus is being put on those small handful that do that final push past the finish line, and not the hundreds, or thousands, who all did a small step towards that finish line without crossing it, who all participated in their own meaningful way, but we never hear about them unless you are deep within that specific field because they didn’t make that final headline. And I think that’s harmful to, not only the layperson’s understanding of science, but to science itself, because we end up putting so much focus on parents and individuality and private research and gain instead of the collaborative effort that it truly is.
This list of notable maiden flight on Wikipedia can help realize that the wright brothers are just not that significant. Without them aviation history would have been what? 6 months late?
This (old) tendency to come up with lone geniuses or heroes for everything is tiresome.
The Wrights were the first to fly a controllable, heavier than air craft. Controllable is the big word there. The 1903 Flyer had canard stabilators, rudders, and wing warping for roll control. Most others either attempted to make the aircraft perfectly stable, or used some incorrect notions on weight shift.
And they barely got it done; the Flyer required what pilots would call negative density altitude to fly. They flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (a barrier island a few feet above sea level) in December.
The engine was astonishingly terrible. IIRC it displaced something like 2 liters via 4 cylinders, but made a whopping 12 horsepower. It didn’t have a carburetor; a small pan of gasoline sat over an open flame to boil the gasoline to provide vapor. Mankind flew the very second we had a barely sufficient power plant.
They then went on to do dick all. It’s my understanding that at least one of the brothers was very concerned about IP theft, so they were very selective on who they sold planes to, who they hired and worked with etc. They had a monopoly on aircraft and basically did nothing with it. Glen Curtis wanted in, he wanted to develop aircraft with the Wright brothers, they told him to pound sand, he looked at their patent, the main thing it protected was the Wright wing warping system, to get around that, Glen Curtis invented the aileron. They did end up merging and they kind of puttered out of existence shortly after WWII when large radial engines fell out of favor.
There was a black American man named Charles Frederick Page who has some claim to having invented and flown a heavier than air craft before the Wright brothers.
That was otto von lilienthal. And he died doing that. He had no way to steer the wing(other than shifting body weight), and his tables of lift were full of errors.(according to the wrights, who had to make a tiny wind chamber to do their own experiments)
Sure it mightve been done shortly thereafter. but even france, who had assumed the wrights were a hoax, didnt accomplish anything STEERABLE even many years after.
The other major US competitor was Langley, and his Aerodrome wasnt even close.
This video from gregs airplanes goes into a lot of detail and i thought it was fascinating.
We ‘could have’ built a steam boiler engine back during the days of egypts rein but nobody thought about it. Could have, would have, and should have are vastly different things that can be separated by hundreds or even thousands of years. It was not ‘bound the happen’.
There was a good video i saw-unfortunately dont know who by- that talked about the romans inventing the steam engine. After all, the greeks had the aleopile. But there was SUCH a vast shotcoming in terms of knowledge about physics and the world that it wouldnt have happened. Stuff that even a child knows today they had no idea.
People also seem to be under the impression that a steam engine is a simple machine, because it is old tech. But I like to watch people on YouTube who restore and repair old steam engines and those things are complicated AF. So much engineering goes into the design, materials and function. Sure the basic principle is you put in water and heat and use the steam to do work. But that’s so far from reality it’s like saying an internal combustion engine is adding ignition to fuel and using that to do work.
I do think the American story of the Wright Brothers single handily pushing humanity into the era of flight while the whole world called them idiots and didn’t believe is kind of a stretch. There were at that time many people and teams working on the same general concept.
The idea of a flying wing was well understood, as people had been jumping from high places with them for a while. Some dude in Germany had a private hill constructed, just so he could play with his flying wings. The concept of propellers was also known. So people generally understood if one could build something light enough with enough power, powered flight would in principle be possible. The general public might have been skeptic, but all over the world there was money being invested and people working on it.
Doesn’t mean what the Wright Brothers did wasn’t brave and impressive, because it was. Building a rig with enough lift, while being light enough and sturdy enough not to fall apart. Building their own engine to shave down the weight. Figuring out some sort of control scheme and then trying it out without getting killed. One gust of wind and one of the brothers might have been dead, the project canceled. Some say Percy Pilcher could have flown before the Wright Brothers, but he died in a glider accident before his plane was ready to fly.
But in the end if those two could do it, others would be able as well. If they weren’t the first I would think others would have gotten there within the year. The technology was on the cusp of it being possible and as people had been trying for hundreds of years, it was bound to happen.
Yeah, these is a general conception of “the great man theory” in science, and in some rare cases it may be true (like some math geniuses), but overall it is very much not true. Science stands on the shoulders of giants, of everyone and all the knowledge that came before that we build upon. So many times has the same exact concept or revelation or discovery happened at almost exactly the same time in different places in the world, because we have just reached the point where that next step is possible.
Which is why I often think it’s a bit sad that so much focus is being put on those small handful that do that final push past the finish line, and not the hundreds, or thousands, who all did a small step towards that finish line without crossing it, who all participated in their own meaningful way, but we never hear about them unless you are deep within that specific field because they didn’t make that final headline. And I think that’s harmful to, not only the layperson’s understanding of science, but to science itself, because we end up putting so much focus on parents and individuality and private research and gain instead of the collaborative effort that it truly is.
is it a theory or a paradigm?
there usef to be a lot more low hanging fruit so there were more small teams discovering thing
You are totally right.
This list of notable maiden flight on Wikipedia can help realize that the wright brothers are just not that significant. Without them aviation history would have been what? 6 months late?
This (old) tendency to come up with lone geniuses or heroes for everything is tiresome.
The Wrights were the first to fly a controllable, heavier than air craft. Controllable is the big word there. The 1903 Flyer had canard stabilators, rudders, and wing warping for roll control. Most others either attempted to make the aircraft perfectly stable, or used some incorrect notions on weight shift.
And they barely got it done; the Flyer required what pilots would call negative density altitude to fly. They flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (a barrier island a few feet above sea level) in December.
The engine was astonishingly terrible. IIRC it displaced something like 2 liters via 4 cylinders, but made a whopping 12 horsepower. It didn’t have a carburetor; a small pan of gasoline sat over an open flame to boil the gasoline to provide vapor. Mankind flew the very second we had a barely sufficient power plant.
They then went on to do dick all. It’s my understanding that at least one of the brothers was very concerned about IP theft, so they were very selective on who they sold planes to, who they hired and worked with etc. They had a monopoly on aircraft and basically did nothing with it. Glen Curtis wanted in, he wanted to develop aircraft with the Wright brothers, they told him to pound sand, he looked at their patent, the main thing it protected was the Wright wing warping system, to get around that, Glen Curtis invented the aileron. They did end up merging and they kind of puttered out of existence shortly after WWII when large radial engines fell out of favor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse
TL;DR: The difference between science and screwing around is writing it down.
People often leave out that 99.99% of the population of the world didn’t know who they were.
There was a black American man named Charles Frederick Page who has some claim to having invented and flown a heavier than air craft before the Wright brothers.
My customary podcast link: 99% Invisible episode 674 If mosquito hawks can fly
That was otto von lilienthal. And he died doing that. He had no way to steer the wing(other than shifting body weight), and his tables of lift were full of errors.(according to the wrights, who had to make a tiny wind chamber to do their own experiments)
Sure it mightve been done shortly thereafter. but even france, who had assumed the wrights were a hoax, didnt accomplish anything STEERABLE even many years after.
The other major US competitor was Langley, and his Aerodrome wasnt even close.
This video from gregs airplanes goes into a lot of detail and i thought it was fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q
We ‘could have’ built a steam boiler engine back during the days of egypts rein but nobody thought about it. Could have, would have, and should have are vastly different things that can be separated by hundreds or even thousands of years. It was not ‘bound the happen’.
There was a good video i saw-unfortunately dont know who by- that talked about the romans inventing the steam engine. After all, the greeks had the aleopile. But there was SUCH a vast shotcoming in terms of knowledge about physics and the world that it wouldnt have happened. Stuff that even a child knows today they had no idea.
People also seem to be under the impression that a steam engine is a simple machine, because it is old tech. But I like to watch people on YouTube who restore and repair old steam engines and those things are complicated AF. So much engineering goes into the design, materials and function. Sure the basic principle is you put in water and heat and use the steam to do work. But that’s so far from reality it’s like saying an internal combustion engine is adding ignition to fuel and using that to do work.