Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I hate to burst your bubble, but...

The Wright Brothers started in a bicycle workshop, as did practically every auto maker, in Europe, in the early days. The bicycle workshop was the cradle for many things.

The Wright Brothers were not good for progress. Their game was patents. They were rent seekers, as in 'patent trolls', not innovators. This is why so much early aviation switched to Europe.

With the bicycle the Wright Brothers patented the left-hand thread. This is needed on a bicycle to prevent one of the pedals working its way lose over time and is how it works today.

This was 'target practice' for the Wright Brothers, their innovation was in slowing down technological progress by patenting solutions that were not entirely innovative.

Yet we have invented this story where the Wright Brothers are the heroes, and anyone that questions that might as well be communist, or whatever the slur of the times may be, 'Spanish' maybe. Please mod me down in flames for being un-American, without hesitation!

> The Wright Brothers were not good for progress. Their game was patents. They were rent seekers, as in 'patent trolls', not innovators. This is why so much early aviation switched to Europe.

This just isn't true. The Wright Brothers solved fundamental problems in aviation that no one else did.

The three axis control mechanism is still what every plane uses today. They literally had to invent that notion. Adverse yaw is something that every single pilot learns about and handles.

They discovered the notion of stalling (literally they were the first to identify the notion and use the term) and the relationship between angle of attack and stalling. This is the sort of thing that will 100% kill you immediately when you fly, but if you know what to do it's part of routine training.

And that's just the start of it. You should read "What the Wright Brothers Did and Did Not Understand About Flight Mechanics—In Modern Terms" by Fred E.C. Culick

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/What-the-Wright-Brothe...

This has nothing to do with being American or not.

> With the bicycle the Wright Brothers patented the left-hand thread.

I tried to verify that a couple of years ago, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42709428 . It does not seem to be true.

https://www.wright-brothers.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Fa... says "Wilbur and Orville were in the vanguard of those manufacturers that offered right-hand threads on one crank arm and left-hand threads on the other" but not the inventors.

I was also able to find earlier uses of left-handed threads for bicycles, like in this 1881 book, at https://archive.org/details/indispensablebic00stur/page/14/m...

"The Centaur Crank is first screwed up to a shoulder on the axle with right and left-handed threads, so that the pressure of the foot tends to make it all the more secure ; whilst, to prevent its loosening by “ back-pedalling,” a slightly tapered conical pin is driven through both crank and axle, and secured with a nut."

Do you know the patent number? I searched the USPTO but found no bicycle related patent by either of the Wright brothers.

When the Wright Brothers first came to Europe in 1908, their prototype could fly for several kilometers of controlled flight. The best European prototypes at that time were absolutely inferior, which is why the Wright Brothers immediately managed to sign contracts with European companies. They introduced the three-axis control system which was a major innovation, basically the opposite of a patent troll.

What controlled the roll axis? Why were ailerons invented? Was wing warping patented by the Wrights?

I think a lot of early scientists and inventors got embroiled in patent disputes and lawsuits etc. In UK, mainland Europe too. Say what you might, money is a big motivator and that is what kept US going. Altruism is all fine for occasional gestures like not patenting some medicine or stuff like that but sustained innovation is basically a profit chasing exercise. And patents are its biggest enabler.

Anyway my comment was in the context of speed of innovation. Humanity that struggled to get a cycle going for 50 years managed to fly in the next 10 years and within the next 50, intercontinental regular passenger flights were common!

Besides those early French helicopter things what major early aviation innovations were unique to Europe ?

The Montgolfier brothers preceded the Wright brothers in human flight by 100 years. Cayley had essentially already invented the modern aeroplane by 1799, and was flying gliders by 1804. Trevithick patented the screw propeller in 1815 (although the concept was known in Antiquity). Otto invented the internal combustion engine necessary to power it in 1876.

Still, plenty of people were skeptical that powered heavier-than-air flight could be achieved. The Wright brothers deserve the credit for putting all the pieces together, getting the controls to work, and managing not to kill themselves like countless other early aviators. It probably helped that they were from Ohio which is flat.

Their bicycle shop was successful, and the brothers used both profits and spare parts in service of their prototype: the controls involved bicycle spokes, and steering used a handlebar. They were decent engineers. I believe they created their combustion engine using not much more than hand tools and a lathe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com