Wilbur Wright's Letter to the Smithsonian (1899) | Hacker News Reader

Wilbur Wright's Letter to the Smithsonian (1899)

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66 pointssethbannon34 comments

They succeeded 4.5 years later.

Their argument that birds make maneuvers 3-4x more aggressive than needed for level flight, and therefore level flight may be within the reach of man, is an intriguing one. You could make parallel arguments about AI today, for example that driving a car requires only 1/3 - 1/4 of a brainpower.

Yet we keep passing laws and performing studies that assume or find otherwise.

Though I do think AI will be able to drive cars in the long term - I'm very pessimistic about the immediate short term ~5-10 years. It's not the technology that will need to get there - its the laws, and support infrastructure that makes certain assumptions about there being a human there.

As a function of our neurons' computing power, definitely so (c.f. humans doing math). But as a function on the energy requirements to power a biological brain, I am more doubtful; we require much better nanoscale manufacturing processes.

One could make that argument, but we do not know at this point if it is valid, and the Wright's success does not change that.

And isn't it great that the Smithsonian did NOT reply

"We have found 14 articles related to your letter, here are the titles, you can rent them for $15.95 each for a week or we will print them out and send them too you for $56.00 each. Please let us know which ones you want."

" I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then if possible add my mite to help on the future workers who will attain final success. "

I think this also says a lot about Intellectual Property right here. Just think of how todays innovation is hindered with NDAs and patent trolls.

And how much is it helped by the internet and open access. The maker movement is a testament to that.

To a large extent, other experimenters in the field at that time freely shared information. As indicated by this letter, the Wrights eagerly drank from that well, but did not reciprocate, as it was their intention to patent their achievements.

If they had managed their patents with the aggressiveness that we see nowadays, early aviation development might have been stalled for a decade.

that is just so disappointing.

>> As indicated by this letter, the Wrights eagerly drank from that well, but did not reciprocate, as it was their intention to patent their achievements.

From the letter we can see that they did not expect to succeed but only hoped to contribute. From what I've read they really got a rude awakening to the ways of the business world after they invented something of significant value. I am in the odd position of agreeing with you and also thinking they deserved the patent and everything they could get from it. It was not a trivial achievement and involved a number of unique innovations and challenges to the published wisdom.

I agree that the Wrights deserved to be rewarded handsomely for their achievements, but so too do the others who made important contributions afterwards, though perhaps not to the same extent. The issue of the fair reward for innovation still has no satisfactory solution to this day.

The Wrights also had to fight with the Smithsonian over their historical legacy, with the result that the original Flyer was displayed in London's Science Museum for many years, where its significance was properly recognized.

If you look at the history of the Wright Brothers company[1], you'll find they spent too much time trying to litigate patents and not enough time innovating. Unfortunately, while they had a lead in powered flight, they blew it away by trying to hard to protect their intellectual property.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Company

They did reciprocate. They freely shared their discoveries with Octave Chanute and spoke about their earlier but still important discoveries at an aeronautics conference Chanute invited them to.

It is amazing what they had to invent and discover to get from the then-current state of the art to a practical flying machine. To give a few specific examples: invent modern propeller theory, dispel long-revered aerodynamic experiment results (Smeaton's coefficient and Lilienthal's airfoil performance data), manufacture a sufficiently lightweight and powerful engine (with significant help on this front from a mechanic they employed for their bicycle business), and pretty much the only effective aircraft control schemes at the time (when people did not even think control was that important!). I am probably missing a few things but each of the points I listed required lots of effort and iteration.

They deserved much more than they got, and tried to use patents for its intended legal purpose. People just didn't play fair by the Wright brothers' estimation. One could speculate that they maliciously and/or selfishly held back innovation, but if you look at their character throughout their journey of invention it seems more likely that they decided to engage unscrupulous enemies, which unfortunately absorbed a lot of their time.

They demonstrated integrity. Inventors all over the world were chomping at the bit of flight by making hops and such, but no one could make a practical flying machine. While others would grandstand on small successes, the Wright brothers focused only on the ultimate end goal of a practical flying machine. They did not make public demonstrations, even though they were far ahead of all others. A small number of people witnessed their progress, and word would spread slowly. But since they were not overtly public about this great progress people doubted them and even accused them of being frauds. This did not deter them, and they continued with their work. The truth was finally revealed to the whole world when they made demonstrations in France, having completed a practical flying machine. It was utterly sensational all around the world, amplified by the fact that they had been highly doubted by prominent figures. These prominent public detractors promptly made public apologies.

In my opinion, the Wright brothers are the greatest inventors / founders in human history. Their biographies are definitely worth a read. My favorites are the ones by David McCullough and Peter Jakab.

The Wrights might not be the best precedent to cite here -- after they got a patent on the airplane, they wouldn't license for years, until government pressure broke the logjam during World War I.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war

Early on, Langley (and the Smithsonian Institute), who opposed the Wright brothers, was funded by the military early on failed flights whereas the Wright brothers were unable to secure funding even though they had a working prototype. Considering such opposition, it seems only natural that they would be careful about the licensing of their patents. Wright brothers certainly weren't patent trolls, since trolls typically don't even have a working prototype and are uninterested in commercializing the technology.

I may be mistaken, but I don't think they ever sought "funding". In fact, they had been offered this by Octave Chanute but declined because they did not want to quit their regular business of selling bicycles. They actually tried to sell units of their fully-developed machine.

http://wifcon.com/anal/analwright.htm

What was the point of that link? It shows that even the government assumed they were asking for funding but they were trying to sell fully-developed machines, as I said.

> If the latter features are of interest to our Government, we shall be pleased to take up the matter either on a basis of providing machines of agreed specification, at a contract price, or, of furnishing all the scientific and practical information we have accumulated in these years of experience, together with a license to use our patents; thus putting the Government in a position to operate on its own account.

I took this to mean that they were inquiring whether the government would be interested in a system manufactured according to specifications agreed to by both parties (or just providing the IP according to a license agreement), not necessarily for a pre-existing system. Necessary modifications to a system do not make for a fully developed machine.

If you're implying that the Wright brothers are not looking for R&D funding like Langley, I agree. They made that explicit in a later letter to the government. It's too bad that the government gave funding to Langley yet somehow rejected contracts to complete a working system with the Wright brothers, despite their initial successes.

I was not implying they were not looking for funding, I explicitly stated so. They were principally interested in selling units, or, as in your cited text, the means to build them. Again this is clearly not funding for development. The qualitative difference is that, unlike contemporaries, the Wrights were out to provide what they had (or were easily capable of), not what they were yet to have if given money.

Here is the book he apparently ended up ordering (in the next letter, linked to on the left):

https://archive.org/details/experimentsinae01langgoog

"I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine"

So, cranks were a wellknown commodity already in the nineteenth century. Whoever would have guessed...

I came here to copy and paste the exact same quote. It makes me feel better when I dream up AI algorithms that I don't even know are possible or not given my limited vocabulary yet know I can go forward with any of them and learn what I don't know. We learn what we don't know, experts in fields, the specialists, rarely lead big creations. It takes someone with just enough knowledge of the various facets of their business to bring a dream / innovation to life by finding those who specialize in those facets to help build that dream.

It is a good quote, isn't it? And very nicely stands the test of 118 years.

Well, look at Goethe's color "theory" or Newton's dabbling into alchemy.

It's fascinating to see "behind the curtain" like this. Same with the civil rights movement etc. People know some highlighting event, but it's harder to express or celebrate the years of methodical work behind that.

If like me you were wondering how the Smithsonian replied, there are links to other letters on the same page. The next one is a letter of thanks for sending certain pamphlets and recommendations, enclosing one dollar for another book.

An interesting question, though I'm wondering if the Smithsonian made duplicate copies of replies to things like these.

To get the letter they sent (unless they kept the original fairly insignificant seeming administrative letter "yes sir please see enclosed") it would've had to have been kept by Wilbur.

The part that stood out for me was:

"I am about to begin a systematic study of the subject in preparation for practical work to which I expect to devote what time I can spare from my regular business."

Wilbur Wright actually hoped to enroll at Yale and become a teacher, for which he enrolled in college prep courses. All that changed when he suffered a brutal injury during an ice hockey game, following which he retreated into a long depression and eventually opened a bicycle shop in 1992.

1892?

It was a very long depression.

Probably the Great Depression.

"It is only a question of knowledge and skill..."

I really like this observation that Wilbur made. It's definitely part of the ethos of someone who likes a technical challenge.

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