Wright Brothers Research Articles

Languages of Art and Languages of Science

At the turn of the 19th century, new inventions and technologies, such as the railways, the internal combustion engine, the motor car, and the airplane began to change human visual experiences. Karl Benz's Motorwagen was launched in 1886, and the Ford Model T car began to be made in 1908. The Wright brothers flew their airplane in 1903, and Louis Bleriot made his air journey from Calais to Dover in 1909. Riding the fast-moving machines provided previously unknown views, such as the blurred perspective seen from a speeding car. Furthermore, photography, and later film, enabled analysis of serial images. The surroundings in cities also changed dramatically, becoming man-made to a greater extent—to mention only the impact of gas and then electric lighting. A striking example of the new architectural possibilities was the iron structure of the Eiffel tower, built in 1889 for the Paris World's Fair Exhibition. Perhaps symbolically, its designer, Gustave Eiffel, was an engineer, not an architect 1. There also were changes in the intellectual framework for perceiving the world. From 1905 to 1911 Albert Einstein introduced the theory of relativity, which shook the “fixed” world of Newtonian physics. Henri Bergson's philosophy of human experience, which emphasized process and change, followed similar lines. Between 1900 and the beginning of the First World War in …

The Science Behind How Planes Fly

To understand how planes fly we need to understand the science behind flying because the basic principles of flight apply to all planes. From the Wright Brother’s first machine to modern Airbus, there has been no change in the science behind flying over the centuries. A plane will maintain its flight if it maintains its control surfaces, that are mainly the ailerons, elevator, rudder and the flaps. The elevators are located at the back of the plane and they cause change in lift with small changes in movement. The ailerons control the longitudinal axis and maintain the plane’s rolling activity. The rudder gives direction to the plane and is located at the back of the plane. The flaps or the wings are the main reason behind the lift of the plane and they are the most important for flight (Moore, 2008). This paper tries to enumerate the different forces and laws behind the science of flying.

Second genesis of a plastid organelle

One of the more remarkable discoveries of 20th century biology is that all eukaryotes are chimeras of two or more different cells (1). The tree of life does not just bifurcate through successive speciation events; its branches also graft, one onto another, merging lineages to produce novel fruit. Our mitochondria, and the photosynthetic plastids of plants and algae, are proof of the success of these new combinations. Both organelles were acquired from separate bacterial lineages, where a useful bacterium was internalized and maintained within the host cell—a process known as endosymbiosis. These organelles are no mere hitchhikers. They have been elaborately integrated with their hosts, so intimately that even their genes have been relinquished to the host cell to allow these partnerships to truly operate as one. To achieve this, the host cell learned to take responsibility for expressing the organelle genes and delivering the protein products back into the organelle according to its requirements. Our understanding of how these seminal achievements of organellogenesis occurred, however, is obscured by their antiquity, both organelles arising ∼1+ billion years ago (2). It is akin to studying modern jet aircraft in the hope of reconstructing the Wright brothers’ first daring attempts at flight. Iterative leaps of technology often mask the formative innovations. However, now we have a chance to revisit this process, as Nowack and Grossman in PNAS (3) show that the new photosynthetic endosymbiont of Paulinella chromatophora has also commenced this journey of genetic integration.

EARLY HISTORY OF AVIATION IN THE EASTERN PROVINCE

Let me firstly state categorically that the Eastern Province is the cradle of aviationin South Africa. Although Admiral John Weston built the first aircraft in SouthAfrica at Brandfort in the Orange Free State in 1907, his machine was takenoverseas for its first flight on 10th December 1910. It was not flown here untilJune, 1911.2 When one asks the question, "who made the first ever heavier-thanairflight?", the answer is invariably "the Wright brothers at Kittyhawk, USA in1903". Who made the first flight of this type in South Africa? A scant six yearsafter the Wright brothers, Albert Kimmerling flew on 28th December, 1909, in aVoisin single-seater biplane at East London. This historic flight took place near theNahoon racecourse. "The aeroplane answered his every wish, swooping, turningand twisting in a marvellous fashion at about thirty miles per hour" wrote an excitedreporter of the great occasion. The flight was repeated on New Year's Day, endingin a minor crash. Thus occurred the first air crash on South African soil. Fortunatelythe damage was slight and the flying programme soon continued.

S203021 飛行機の他の発明者達

About 12 years before the Wright Brothers' success, Chuhachi Ninomiya successfully invented a model propeller aircraft by himself. Without any financial support, he was not able to fully develop his invention for human use. However, it is thought that if he was given the proper resources, he could have developed a similar design to the current aircraft. There are historical records which suggest that other inventors, such as Chuhachi Ninomiya and Alphonse Penaud, were already designing and building model aircrafts before the Wright Brothers' research began. In this research, the reasons why those other inventors did not succeed in inventing an aircraft for human use will be investigated and also the conditions necessary for them to succeed will be examined.

The Wright Brothers’ Patent Lawsuits

The Wright Brothers pioneered the first sustained, powered, heavier than air, manned flight on December 17, 1903 (Garber, 1978). Some say that the Wrights' invention and innovation brought the "aerial age" into being (Douglas, 2003, p. 367). Having invented something truly unique and accomplishing it before anyone else, the Wrights took prompt action to protect their invention by filing patent applications in the United States, France, Germany and Great Britain (Johnson, 2004). Once these patent applications were accepted, the Wrights spent significant amounts of time and money defending their patents (Johnson, 2004). Ultimately, the Wrights recovered little in return for their herculean efforts, and further developments of the airplane by the Wrights languished as they sought to protect what they had wrought. A student of aviation history might ask if the Wrights were "right" or "wrong" to devote so much effort to protecting their patents, when ultimately, they recovered so little, at such a great expense. This paper contends that they were ultimately right.

Measuring Lift with the Wright Airfoils

In this laboratory or demonstration exercise, we mount a small airfoil with its long axis vertical at one end of a nearly frictionless rotating platform.1 Air from a leaf blower2 produces a sidewise lift force L on the airfoil and a drag force D in the direction of the air flow (Fig. 1). The rotating platform is kept in equilibrium by adding weights (the measured values of L) to the lower end of a string passing over a pulley and connected to the other end of the rotating platform (Fig. 2). Our homemade airfoils are similar to those tested by the Wright brothers in 1901. From our lift plots in Fig. 3, we can draw the same conclusions as the Wrights about the influence of an airfoil's curvature and shape on lift.

Traian Vuia – the Romanian inventor who first flew a powered airplane in 1906

As observed the beginning of heavier than air devices started with Wright Brothers who flew in 1903 the first catapulted airplane equipped with an engine, similar to present motor gliders. In March 1906 took place the first flight of Vuia's monoplane using on board installations. Since then a real competition between manufacturers has started to improve their airplanes as they become more efficient. Traian Vuia's first flights and his beginnings are explained below.

A Critique of Mark Lemley’s 'The Myth of the Sole Inventor'

Professor Mark Lemley advances a thesis that “the canonical story of the lone genius inventor is largely a myth” and describes a selection of pioneer inventions to support his thesis. We show that Lemley has many of his facts wrong. We examine his assertions and set the record straight in the pioneer invention cases of Edison, the Wright brothers, the Selden automobile patent vis-a-vis Ford, Watt and the steam engine and Fleming and penicillin. We are concerned with the errors in alleged historical and legal facts in what Lemley calls “lessons of history” and “realities of innovation” because these are used to argue that the patent system does not work as patent theory suggests. We show that Lemley’s major thesis that these inventions were made “near-simultaneously” by others has no basis in fact and show that patent law inherently ensures that patent protection is not extended to near-simultaneous inventions. We illustrate that the lessons of history, when informed by consultation of relevant patents, legal decisions and patent law not only do not support Lemley’s central thesis, but offer valuable insights into how America’s historical patent system and innovation work together to foster development.

Defining Patent Scope by the Novelty of the Idea

Patent law defines novelty by the creation of a new embodiment, not an idea. For example, the Wright brothers are deemed to have invented the airplane because nobody made an airplane before, and not because they were the first to think of flying.Patent law then defines monopoly scope through a theory of disclosure of embodiments: despite the airplane being new, the Wright brothers could not patent every airplane, ostensibly because they did not teach how to make every airplane embodiment such as a jet fighter. Disclosure theory, however, is incoherent. Patent law cannot confine the Wright brothers to the embodiment they actually taught - a barely-flying wooden glider - since doing so will eviscerate incentives. But once we say that patents can cover more, disclosure theory provides no limit. If the Wright brothers could cover some undisclosed airplanes, why not all undisclosed airplanes?I argue in this Article for a different theory. In order to be fairly credited as the inventor of something, the patentee must be the first to articulate the idea of that thing. The Wright brothers could not patent all airplanes under this theory, not because they did not disclose how to build every airplane, but because the idea of airplanes was old. By keying patent scope to the novelty of the idea rather than the disclosure of embodiments, my rule provides a fairer and more accurate measure of the patentee’s contribution.

Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910 (review)

Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910 (review)

The Myth of the Sole Inventor

The theory of patent law is based on the idea that a lone genius can solve problems that stump the experts, and that the lone genius will do so only if properly incented. We deny patents on inventions that are obvious to ordinarily innovative scientists the field. Our goal is to encourage extraordinary inventions – those that we wouldn’t expect to get without the incentive of a patent. The canonical story of the lone genius inventor is largely a myth. Edison didn’t invent the light bulb; he found a bamboo fiber that worked better as a filament the light bulb developed by Sawyer and Man, who turn built on lighting work done by others. Bell filed for his telephone patent on the very same day as an independent inventor, Elisha Gray; the case ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which filled an entire volume of U.S. Reports resolving the question of whether Bell could have a patent despite the fact that he hadn’t actually gotten the invention to work at the time he filed. The Wright Brothers were the first to fly at Kitty Hawk, but their plane didn’t work very well, and was quickly surpassed by aircraft built by Glenn Curtis and others – planes that the Wrights delayed by over a decade with patent lawsuits. The point can be made more general: surveys of hundreds of significant new technologies show that almost all of them are invented simultaneously or nearly simultaneously by two or more teams working independently of each other. Invention appears significant part to be a social, not an individual, phenomenon. Inventors build on the work of those who came before, and new ideas are often in the or result from changes market demand or the availability of new or cheaper starting materials. And the few circumstances where that is not true – where inventions truly are singletons – it is often because of an accident or error the experiment rather than a conscious effort to invent. The result is a real problem for classic theories of patent law. If we are supposed to be encouraging only inventions that others the field couldn’t have made, we should be paying a lot more attention than we currently do to simultaneous invention. We should issuing very few patents – surely not the 200,000 per year we do today. And we should be denying patents on the vast majority of the most important inventions, since most seem to involve near-simultaneous invention. Put simply, our dominant theory of patent law doesn’t seem to explain the way we actually implement that law. Maybe the problem is not with our current patent law, but with our current patent theory. But the dominant alternative theories of patent law don’t do much better. Prospect theory – under which we give patents early to one company so it can control research and development – makes little sense a world which ideas are the air, likely to be happened upon by numerous inventors at about the same time. And commercialization theory, which hypothesizes that we grant patents order to encourage not invention but product development, seems to founder on a related historical fact: most first inventors turn out to be lousy commercializers who end up delaying implementation of the invention by exercising their rights. If patent law its current form can be saved, we need an alternative justification for granting patents even circumstances of near-simultaneous invention. I consider two other possibilities. First, patent rights encourage patent races, and that might actually be a good thing. Second, patents might facilitate markets for technology. Both have some logic to them, but neither fully justifies patent law its current form. As a result, I offer some suggestions for reforming patent law to take account of the prevalence of simultaneous invention.

Anesthesiology: From Patient Safety to Population Outcomes

Anesthesiology: From Patient Safety to Population Outcomes

Grand Ambitions Drive Early “Baby Steps” In Synthetic Biology

With synthetic biology, “don't believe the hype; we're taking baby steps and it's hard to get things to work the way you want,” says James Collins of Boston University in Boston, Mass. “We're still like the Wright brothers, putting wood and paper together,” adds Herbert Sauro of the University of Washington, Seattle. “This field has had its hype phase; it's time to deliver.”

The Wright Patent Lawsuit: Reflections on the Impact on American Aviation

The Wright brothers, it must be conceded, were the first to fly a powered, heavier-than-air machine in sustained flight and under control. To deny them this rightful distinction is to willfully ignore fact (Hayward, 1912). Their contributions to aviation are innumerable, and without their insight, man may have been years awaiting what they accomplished in 1903. The Wrights' status as first in flight notwithstanding, their treatment of the issues surrounding the patent which was taken on their aircraft was harmful to the progress of aviation in the years following their success at Kitty Hawk. To claim that they owed the world the whole of their invention, and by extension, the profits arising from it, is unreasonable; but to suppose that in pursuit of their rightful gains, they would not impede any other from pursuing experimentation and improvement of aircraft is an expectation that is difficult to argue. In litigating against all those they deemed infringers upon their basic ideas, the Wrights forestalled what may well have been more collaborative and productive progress in aircraft design.

Dubious American license: The first in flight

Dubious American license: The first in flight The symbols, colours and slogans on vehicle registration plates are part and parcel of the United States iconography. While not everybody relates readily to Ohio's license plate motto "Birthplace of Aviation", everybody seems to know North Carolina's motto "First in Flight". (Although the Wright brothers came from Ohio they chose North Carolina as the site for their 1903 groundbreaking experiment.) With the open horizon as the obligatory conceit of the U.S. landscape, North Carolina's license plate projects a homonymic mis-association with the dominant motif of American popular cultural discourse recognized emblematically by Leslie Fiedler (1960: 318) as the razzle-dazzle of escape.

S202011 世界航空技術史における二宮忠八の評価([S20201]機械技術史・工学史(1))

Chuhachi Ninomiya, who didn't have access to information about airplane development in Europe and America, succeeded independently in flying a miniature aircraft which resembled a crow. This flight took place 12 years prior to the Wright brothers' success. And he also conceived an aircraft design resembling a jewel beetle. His achievement should be valued more highly. However, his name is not well-known even in Japan, and likewise his name is not present in world aviation history. Approaches to evaluating the achievements of Ninomiya more fairly and to ensure his name become present in world aviation history are examined.

The Dawn of the Jet Age in Austerity Britain: David Lean's The Sound Barrier (1952)

Every self-respecting country house in the past century housed a cinema. In the early 1950s, the Prime Minister had a choice of venues in which to view his favourite films—on home territory at Char...

Introduction: The Meeting of Deconstruction and Science

In 1738, Daniel Bernoulli published a formula establishing the correct relation between pressure and kinetic energy when a fluid flows over a solid object. A generation earlier, Newton had argued that drag was calculable as a relation among the density of the fluid medium, the dimensions of the object, and the square of the velocity of that object. By that reasoning, if air acted as an ideal fluid, it would make flight all but impossible. Had Newton been right, the lift needed to get a Boeing 707 off the ground would require a wingspan on the plane greater than 400 yards (rather than the 43 yards it actually takes). Bernoulli, it turned out, had figured out the true nature of air: a fluid, but not an ideal fluid by any means. It would take until the turn of the twentieth century for scientists to realise the implications of Bernoulli’s Principle for aerodynamics, thus leading to the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight in 1903 and every other innovation and application in flight today. The history of the airfoil is often thought to be a direct proof of the realism of science.1 If science is not truly describing an objective world separate from the knower, so goes the claim, then why do planes fly? And especially, why do they fly according to a principle that was discovered long before anyone knew it would be applicable to flight? Bernoulli’s Principle did not explain why air flows at different speeds across an airfoil, but it did describe the difference in pressures. It did not give directions for building an airplane wing, but it did establish the scientific law of nature that would make the planes of the future fly. And the proof was in the pudding in the sky. Unlike Icarus, Orville and Wilbur stayed up. Still today, the Bernoulli Principle is used to make predictions and

Imperial Airs: Leo Amery, Air Power and Empire, 1873–1945

In January 1904, at a lecture by a famous geographer, only a few weeks after the first flight of the Wright brothers, a young journalist named Leo Amery argued that air power would become a major ingredient of world power. His prescient comment is often quoted, but only to be glossed over. This article elaborates on it. The origins of Amery's views on air power lay in his childhood, his experience covering the South African War and the ‘national efficiency’ movement of Edwardian Britain. His views developed through his service in a variety of government appointments, including Lloyd George's Cabinet in the First World War and Churchill's Cabinet in the Second World War, and he occasionally managed to get his ideas turned into actions. Thus contextualised, Amery's views on air power illuminate both the man and the times through which he lived.