Terrapin Tables

Google is saluting the Wright Brothers with a temporary logo. Kind of neat. Good luck Fatboy.

Everyone talks about the anniversary of the first flight, but is it not also the anniversary of the first plane crash? It's too early for me to determine if that previous statement is in poor taste.

According the the "fact-a-day" calendar in our kitchen, there was a minor accident 3 days before they did it right.

"Boy! won't your face be red when they find the black box on this one."

My selfish nature (see my Hussein thread cop-out) compells me to point out aircraft design was only a hobby of the Wright Brothers...they were bike mechanics, dammit, and good ones. Their original bikes command thousands now, and not just because they're famous name is on them. Much of their early experimentation on air resistance was done while pedalling hard downhill, observing changes in airflow, etc. - seriously.

They didn't become full time plane dudes unitl they won a $25K grant to design a craft for the U.S. Signal Corps, enough cash to close up the Wright Cycle Co. of Dayton, Ohio. Bastards. One less good bike shop.

See, it's a government conspriacy...Bush's great-granddad knew planes would "take off" (what an awesome pun) and eventually, fossil fuel demand would skyrocket, and we'd need to take over oil producing countries in the Middle East...I'm pretty sure this had something to do with the Moon landing too, and there was a Yeti involved in drawing the Wright Bros. blueprints, I think.

I did not know about the bike thing, neat. I guess I am still a little amazed to know that when I get on a plane to fly anywhere, that the whole thing started only 100 years ago. Cars aren't that old either, but they are on the ground, not miles above it, so it doesn't blow my mind. Or maybe it is the heroin.

Nice conspiracy theory. It all makes too much sense, right?

I blame Roy. And Dick Cheney. Dick. It's ok. Say it. Dick. Dick. Dick Armey. You and what Army? Dick Armey. That's a good Army.

If anyone was wondering, my presentation went okay. 20 minutes of me talking, and then another 15 minutes of 9 year olds asking questions, and not bad ones, either.

And for my rant of the day:
One of things that bugs me is that everyone considers the Wright brothers hobbyists when it comes to the airplane. The Wright brothers were true engineers, not just tinkerers. They worked on it full time, and for the most part let their assistant, Charlie Taylor, run the bike shop. They only kept the shop to have funding for their airplane project (once they got involved in aviation, that is).

Anyway, to achieve their goal of flying, they had to build a structurally sound machine, build an aerodynamically sound machine, build a wind tunnel to collect aerodynamic data, develop a state of the art internal combustion engine, understand propeller aerodynamics & build a propeller, and learn how to fly.

so all those things wouldn't count as just being a hobby? i mean, c'mon, michael jordan said he loved baseball, and basketball was only a hobby. seriously, it's pretty clear we are indebted to their work. i've heard the argument that the airplane is the single most important invention in history, as it allowed people to travel/meet/interact with others around the world in profoundly different ways than had been possible before. it's an interesting argument, but my vote goes to the printing press.

Looks like the reenactment at Kitty Hawk didn't go so well today:

Full Story with Video

Oh, and I agree with Roy about the printing press, though the airplane is right up there.

To continue as the voice of the bitter bastard...what makes the Wright Brothers so special? It's not like other people weren't working on the same thing - wasn't the first flight contested by some other dudes in the Ohio area? I mean, congrats to them and all, I can't build a plane, but someone would have got there if they hadn't. It's not like vaccination or anything...flight was a specific goal. Like the atom bomb - we said we wanted one, so we made one happen. If Oppenheimer hadn't been around, someone else would have done it.

And isn't the difference between hobby and invention success?

Ooh, also, I want to get in before Rick and Nate and cast a vote for the transistor as the greatest invention of all time. Maybe not yet, but wait a bunch of years...

I don't know much about that guy in Ohio, but he never did anything with his accomplishment if he did fly, so the world got nothing out of him. An invention's useless if you keep it secret.

The Wrights were years ahead of anybody else. By the time they first publicly demonstrated an airplane in 1908 in France, others had flown. But those others didn't have the same level of control as the Wrights, nor the understanding of the principles of flight. And it's this understanding of the principles that makes the Wrights so significant. They didn't just arbitrarily experiment until they achieved flight. They took the time to understand all the principles, and design a flying machine based off of that. What they did for propeller theory alone makes them some of the most important figures in aviation history. So yes, if the Wrights hadn't have flown in 1903, others would have achieved it. But practical flight probably wouldn't have been possible until maybe 1915 or 1920.

And people always remember the first. Anybody could have sat on a rocket and rode it into space. But we remember Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, John Glen, Neil Armstrong, and all the other "passengers" aboard the early rockets.

Who is Yuri Gagarin?

(Don't answer that)