Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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It's an interesting question. (One of very few on this subject that are really interesting.)

Those who cause progress to happen to some extent have to have something in them that causes them to ignore conventional wisdom. Because they're swimming against the current. And if they succeed it may well pay off, both in credits and financially.

Montgolfier brothers, Lilienthal, the Wright brothers and so on, and that's just a small slice of aviation. Every one of them went against conventional wisdom and the laws of physics as they were known or suspected to be at the time.

But there is a final arbiter, and those are the real laws of nature, and it's first order derivative: materials science. And this is where it gets much more complex. To design something that can work is an accomplishment in itself, even if it works only once. That one mr. Rush can chalk up as a victory. Where he fails is to take into account the fact that safety knowledge is written in blood and that the difference between 'device safe enough to take passengers on' and 'device safe enough that I, the builder/designer will travel on it' is very, very large. And if all of the industry, including some of your own employees say that you are doing it wrong and you still persist, and risk the lives of others then you are crossing over into irresponsibility, rather than being a pioneer.

Whether or not he realized this himself seems a foregone conclusion: he likely thought this was all perfectly safe and those others were needlessly concerned but they were simply more aware of the real risks involved than he was. Fine line between 'god complex' and 'innovator'.

> Every one of them went against conventional wisdom and the laws of physics as they were known or suspected to be at the time.

This is not true of the Wrights. Their first step was to gather together all the known aeronautical knowledge at the time. They relied on them, too, until they discovered the coefficient of lift was off by a factor of two. Then they built their own wind tunnel to determine the correct value.

They also discovered there was no theory of propellers. So they developed their own theory, which turned out to be 90% correct. Their propellers were twice as efficient as their contemporary experimenters were. This means they only needed half the horsepower! A tremendous advantage.

Correcting knowing knowledge always comes with the chance that what you're observing may be invalid for reasons you aren't considering. So in this regard you're largely agreeing with the post you're ostensibly arguing against. Everybody else says e.g. the coefficient of lift is x, I say it's y - is not just a "discovery", but going against the conventional knowledge of laws of physics of a given time.

It's not like the aviation enthusiasts prior to the Wright Bros were just strapping aluminum sheeting to their backs and jumping off cliffs. Well I mean maybe somebody somewhere at some time did do that, but for the most part people always try to start from a basis of what's known, and work their way up from toy experiments. Same with this story, or even the 'flat earth guy' who was launching himself in rockets. [1] For those who didn't 'get it', the flat earth stuff was just an overtly transparent schtick for interest/funding.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hughes_(daredevil)

> Correcting knowing knowledge always comes with the chance that what you're observing may be invalid for reasons you aren't considering.

They set up experiments to prove the existing theory was wrong. That is completely counter to what you write. Nobody else did that.

> It's not like the aviation enthusiasts prior to the Wright Bros were just strapping aluminum sheeting to their backs and jumping off cliffs. Well I mean maybe somebody somewhere at some time did do that, but for the most part people always try to start from a basis of what's known, and work their way up from toy experiments.

That's pretty much what the Wright's contemporaries were doing. Trying random things in a disorganized manner with eyeballed designs. It's very, very different from the Wrights who:

1. researched all available material

2. identified the fundamental problems that must be solved

3. developed prototypes to solve each problem

4. put the results into a new design that worked

Nobody else was doing that. And that's why the Wrights succeeded, and the others failed miserably. Later, when the Wrights took their Flyer to Europe, they astonished the European aviators by literally flying circles around them. (European designs could not turn.)

Mindlessly strap some wings on yourself and the only place you're going is six feet under. In aviation everybody was building on the shoulders of those that came before them. That included Wright Brothers who heavily credited Otto Lilienthal among others. You could draw a tree of aviation and it'd be going back with Clement Adler, Percy Pilcher, George Cayley, and many more names. And these guys were all brilliant inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs in their own right. All engaging in a similarly rigorous process, but starting with less available information at their fingertips.

In many problems where we're all just standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, somebody's going to eventually get high enough to grab the flag. And while that final achievement deserves distinguished recognition, marginalizing the merit, impact, and ability of the countless individuals holding us up is just crass.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal

> And while that final achievement deserves distinguished recognition, marginalizing the merit, impact, and ability of the countless individuals holding us up is just crass.

Nothing I wrote marginalizes Lilienthal. I never wrote that the Wrights started from zero. In fact, I wrote that they researched all the available knowledge of flight from the start.

Wind tunnels and a scientific approach to aviation were already in use in Europe at the time. In fact you can see all of the steps you list in the work of the early British pioneers e.g. Sir George Cayley.

"About 100 years ago, an Englishman, Sir George Cayley, carried the science of flight to a point which it had never reached before and which it scarcely reached again during the last century."

— Wilbur Wright, 1909.

Except Cayley did not solve the problems of powered, controlled flight. If Cayley had, then Langley's Aerodrome would have flown.

Curtis later attempted to prove that the Aerodrome could fly. He did this by adding a new wing, a working control system, and a much more powerful engine. I.e. he cheated.

I'm not trying to diminish the accomplishments of the Wrights, I'm just noting that applying the scientific method to flight had a significant history before the Wrights came on the scene. I felt that your earlier comment gave the impression that this was the unique key differentiator for the Wrights, but I don't think it was as simple as that.

None of the Wright's contemporaries used the scientific method to develop a working airplane. AFAIK, nobody else had done a directed research and development program to create controlled, powered airplane.

I did not claim that the Wrights invented the scientific method.

Whether Edison's research labs were true R+D programs is debatable. From my reading about them, Edison eschewed theory and did not understand what he was doing. He just tried things until he found something that worked. His efforts to develop the multiplex telegraph, while eventually successful, showed little understanding of electricity. The same with the light bulb - trying thousands of materials for the filament instead of trying to figure out why the filaments didn't last is going around the horn.

Edison invented the vacuum tube by accident, and did not recognize what he had done, because he didn't understand what he was doing.

That said, Edison certainly was a great inventor and deserves the credit for his inventions. But it was not the modern way of doing things - the Wrights get the credit for that.

> None of the Wright's contemporaries used the scientific method to develop a working airplane. AFAIK, nobody else had done a directed research and development program to create controlled, powered airplane.

There were certainly contemporaries of the Wrights attempting to use the scientific method to develop a working airplane.

By the time of the Wright's success at the end of 1903, The Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was already 34 years old. They sponsored the first wind tunnel in 1870 designed by Francis Wenham, one of their members who had also given the inaugural lecture on flight, and the principle by which lift is generated by wings.

This was very much a scientific society, with regular reports and lectures and its members were scientists or engineers, not crazy people strapping sheets of metal to their arms and jumping off towers.

"The organization has never been a large one, and probably years will pass by before the importance of its twenty-nine years of work will be fully understood and appreciated. Even as the missal painters kept art alive during the Dark Ages, so has this band of men kept aeronautics alive during the years in which their branch of science has been by the many regarded almost as a pseudo-science." James Means, Aeronautical Annual Vol 1 (1895), a passage probably read by the Wright brothers, after receiving the journal from the Smithsonian.

Percy Pilcher ('a pale serious fellow, with a great bent for invention, and a brain that was razor keen.') completed his powered triplane in 1899, based on his own research, correspondence with Lilienthal, his work with Hiram Maxim (who had legal battles with Edison over which of their companies invented the light bulb in the US) and correspondence with Octave Chanute (who advised the Wright brothers to choose the mid atlantic coast for their experiments and visited them) and his correspondence with Lawrence Hargrave. It is assumed that the triplane would likely have needed some modification to be practical but it was never tried, since he died in a glider accident before he got chance to try it.

This is just one example of a person at the time who did extensive research, communicated with many of the other key figures of the time, and built lots of prototypes to test approaches. There were lots of others too.

If your point is just that the Wrights succeeded first, then I agree, but to characterise all these characters as approaching the problem in an essentially stupid way is just not true, if anything, I'm struck by how much the early aviation pioneers seemed to be in touch with each other and understood some of the basic principles of aerofoil design and the science behind how lift works.

None of those other experimenters identified 3-axis control as a critical problem to be solved, none of them knew about adverse yaw, none of them built a series of prototypes aimed at solving each problem, and none of them built a controllable powered airplane.

Keep in mind that the Wrights built a series of gliders, each one was to test a particular aspect of the flight problem.

Pilcher's designs were not capable of flight:

"Cranfield built a full-sized working replica of Pilcher's aircraft, but, based on wind tunnel tests with a scale model, they made several alterations to Pilcher's original designs, which they speculated Pilcher would have made, including filling in cut-away sections of the wings to increase the wing area, and therefore lift, and adding a swinging seat to aid control of the aircraft through shifting body weight; a refinement developed by Octave Chanute, which they believed Pilcher would have been aware of. They also added the Wright brothers' innovation of wing-warping as a safety backup for roll control. Pilcher's original design did not include aerodynamic controls such as ailerons or elevators."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Pilcher

and he left no lasting contribution to aeronautical advancement.

It is interesting, however, how many people assert that Wright's rivals designs would have / could have flown, and they set out to "prove" it by modifying those designs by incorporating the Wright innovations.

Besides that, the fundamental reason these competitors could not get into the air is pretty simple. The Wrights had a propeller design that was double the efficiency of everyone elses' propellers. This means the Wrights doubled the effective engine power. Still, the Wrights could not find an existing engine with the needed power/weight ratio, and so they designed and built the very first lightweight aero engine. The Wrights also were the first to create an efficient wing cross section. It still required a much bigger wing than the Wrights originally anticipated.

I.e. even tossing aside the lack of control the rival machines had, there is SIMPLY NO WAY they had the power/weight to get it off the ground. They didn't have the engine, the propeller, or the wing section.

P.S. Even a brick shithouse will fly if you attach a powerful enough engine.

I don't consider myself an expert on this topic, but from my reading, some of what you're saying is correct, and some of it is not.

My disagreement is not at all about whether the Wrights had their own insights and strengths or can justly claim priority to have the first human carrying powered and controlled aircraft. I know it can seem like I'm doing them down in some way, but I do not intend to. So, I recognise their advances and their focus on building their vision of an actually useful flying machine.

Where I disagree is when you say things like:

> Keep in mind that the Wrights built a series of gliders, each one was to test a particular aspect of the flight problem.

as if that were unusual. Almost all of the names I mentioned in my previous comment did exactly that too.

We probably disagree on precisely which of the Wright's achievements meant a significant advance on state of the art (some of the advances you mention were being systematically investigated by others too), but my main point of departure from you is really just the apparent characterisation of the Wrights contemporaries as not following the scientific method and approaching the whole problem in a haphazard and isolated way.

My own impression of those days is of a small group of pioneers that were in touch with each other, building on each others advances, and with incomplete but growing knowledge of the science behind what they were trying to do.

> my main point of departure from you is really just the apparent characterisation of the Wrights contemporaries as not following the scientific method and approaching the whole problem in a haphazard and isolated way.

It's not about the scientific method. It's about a directed research and development program. I just don't see any of the other experimenters doing that. I didn't say they were isolated, either, but they were haphazard. They tried to leap right from an unproven theory to a working airplane. Their airplanes were not even close to flying, which is evidence of their haphazardness. The other evidence is the lack of a trail of documentation - notes, calculations, drawings, etc. Disorganized and haphazard, absolutely.

Which one of them identified control as a crucial element of flight, for example? Which one did the calculations to show they had enough power? Heck, which ones did the calculations to make the airframe strong enough? The Langley Aerodrome fell apart on launch, Pilcher died because his glider broke up in flight. Many copied bird designs rather than trying to figure out what the right shape should be.

An airplane is not like inventing a car, where you can just attach an engine to some wheels, eyeball the whole thing, and it'll work. You have to do the math and the engineering. Eyeballing something that looks like a bird and sticking an engine on it will NEVER WORK.

> with incomplete but growing knowledge of the science behind what they were trying to do.

One of them would have eventually succeeded, just like the Japanese eventually figured out how to make a Samurai sword after centuries of trial and error, but no knowledge of metallurgy.

And that is why the Wrights were different.

You can see the Wrights' notebooks in the Smithsonian. Take a look at that, and you'll see they are not mere bicycle mechanics. We still have the 1903 Flyer, too, and people have built exacting replicas of it - that fly, and fly the way the Wrights described how it flew.

The only rival with some documentation is the Aerodrome, and we know it does not fly for many reasons. The other rivals left next to nothing behind, and nobody has successfully gotten a replica (built from guesswork) to fly at all.

> He developed a triplane that was to include a 4 hp (3 kW) engine.

Pilcher's design did not have remotely enough power, showing he hadn't done the math. The Wrights calculated a needed engine engine power of 8 hp, but the result produced 12 hp.

Sorry to reply to myself here, but I found this comment really interesting on the difference between 'tower jumpers' and 'arm whirlers': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36412847

It's worth adding that they invented the first successful control system for an aircraft. [0] Personally I think that was the single most important step, because it enabled their aircraft (including test gliders) to fly safely.

[0] https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Wright_Story/In...

They had 6 major advances:

1. 3 axis control (as you mentioned)

2. first propeller theory

3. first lightweight aircraft engine

4. wind tunnel tested airfoils

5. solving adverse yaw problem

6. targeted research & development program

They needed all of them to fly. All modern aircraft can trace their designs back to the 1903 Wright Flyer, and none of the other contenders. It's a stunning achievement, and all at a cost of $1,500. (The Langley project cost $50,000 and solved none of the problems.)

In my not-so-humble opinion, the 1903 Wright Flyer is the start of the modern technological age.

It was an outstanding advance. Personally I rate them as the greatest engineers of all time, but I'm also very fond of aircraft. Would be interested to hear opinions on who else might be considered peers of the Wrights.

This makes me wonder how we went from Wright brothers to commercial flight. Despite being the longest Wikipedia article I've ever seen the Wright Brother's wiki doesn't seem to cover it. Maybe it's a poorly defined question.

I believe the answer is war. If there is a class of folks outside of "the inventor" that you can risk on an experimental aircraft, it's soldiers.

WW1 happened very quickly after the invention of the plane and there was a huge explosion in quantity and type of airplane in WW1.

I'm no historian though, there could be nuances I'm missing.

Florida man [1]. More seriously, you have to remember that this was in a time before there were a million rules, regulations, and lawsuits for everything. The first commercial airline was a man with a plane, likely largely "self built" (whatever that means in a time before aviation industrialization), who started offering flights in Florida across a peninsula. It worked, it was profitable, there was a market - commercial aviation was born.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Jannus

> The first commercial airline was a man with a plane,

The Florida Man you linked was the pilot for two other men [1], the first commercial air service was Delag operating Zepplin airships .. followed by Aero Rt in Hungary .. then followed by [1] in Florida.

I can't (right now at least) determine if Aero Rt was operating airships or airplanes ... so you may or may not be correct wrt planes at least.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg%E2%80%93Tampa_A...

Yeah, I'm only referring to airplanes, and Florida man was definitely the first there. But zeppelins, hot air balloons, and other methods of air transport obviously came well before airplanes.

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