Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

In this modern age where inventions are generally built on those who came before, it's hard to imagine how inventive this design was with so little prior history (and how crazy it was to fly at all). I wonder if the Wright brothers would have been as successful as they were without Lilienthal thinking about it first.

View on HN

There was a lot of work before Lilienthal but he was the first to demonstrate heavier than air flight, which was a really important step in the history of human flight. The Wright brothers basically copied Chanute-Herring's design, as another user already pointed out. Their design was in turn an improvement on Lilienthal's. The Wrights had studied all of that, they said that Lilienthal inspired them to get into flight. So maybe without him, they would never have worked on it.

That said, there were many others working on gliders both before and after Lilenthal. It's interesting seeing the progress over time, in retrospect. Makes you think about our modern age. The general public was extremely skeptical that "flying machines" would ever work. It's still the same today, with out modern tech innovation. We could have so much more progress if the majority were more open minded and into experimentation. They mock inventors until the invention actually works, and then after a few years everyone pretends like it had always been obvious.

This is why cultures with peaceful enduring martyr religions thrive when it comes to innovation. If its okay for the boss to suffer to get to a break-through and overcome adversity, its okay for you.

Catholic saints, jesus, the Mahdi and the persecuted jews before you, they had it easy.

The way I see it you could assassinate Bell or Watson and someone else would invent it just a little later.

I think the big thing this experiment showed was how important wind tunnel testing was. It also reinforced that the big problem wasn't getting a vehicle in the air, it was controlling it once you did so. This seems obvious now, but back in the 19th century the control schemes were often inadequate or poorly tested so flights usually ended in crashes that destroyed the vehicle. Yet another lesson from the wind tunnel testing. Even in this article they spend a lot of time trying to work out how to trim the glider. Once you add a gasoline engine to a glider trying to control it by swinging your legs around is just not adequate.

I'ld say the Wright Flyer was a more direct descendent of Octave Chanute's work.

Lilienthal's glider I think was a beautiful, art-nouveau-esque flying sculpture. What a tragic loss when he died.

Wasn't his work based on Lilienthal's though?

edit:

"Chanute was too old to fly, so he partnered with younger experimenters, including Augustus M. Herring and William Avery. In 1896, Chanute, Herring, and Avery tested a design based on the work of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, and of hang gliders of their own design. "

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_Chanute

Looks like yes.

Everything was based on everything back then and if the Wrights hadn't flown, someone else would have within 5 years. Many teams were very close.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com