Posted on 12/18/2015 8:41:55 AM PST by EveningStar
On this date in 1903, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made what many consider the world's first successful heavier-than-air flight. The flight catapulted the brothers and their machine, the Wright Flyer, into history books. It also propelled them, over the decade to come, into courtrooms throughout Europe and North America.
In the courts, the Wright brothers waged a prolonged, embarrassing and largely unsuccessful battle against other early aviators over who owned the aeronautical principles that made flight possible. Citing a 1906 patent for their flying machine, the Wrights claimed these principles as their own and charged their competitors with intellectual property theft. Fighting back in court, the Wrights' competitors claimed the theory behind the machines as the common property of humanity and argued that the Wrights' patent pertained only to the mechanics of their airplane itself.
In waging this battle, the Wrights proved themselves more than pioneers in aviation. They also proved themselves pioneers of what's sometimes known as patent trolling: the controversial modern practice of suing competitors for infringements that fall beyond the scope of one's patent. Their legacy, therefore, is one of litigiousness and obstruction, as well as brilliance and innovation.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
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Because real journalism is a lost art, the pretenders of today busy themselves with the application of imagined offenses to the historical record.
BFL
Yes, Time would word it, “what many consider” the first heavier than air flight. It was simply the first. The Wrights understood that an aircraft must control pitch, roll, and yaw. They worked their way up methodically from kites, gliders, and powered aircraft. Those Yankees did it.
Howabout, "Madonna is the love-child of Richard Nixon and Barbara Walters"?
One of the major selling points of that wholly remarkable travel book, the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, apart from its relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words Don't Panic written in large friendly letters on its cover, is its compendious and occasionally accurate glossary......the editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnoted in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.
It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws.
Gads, that is a frightening thought.
Time magazine is filth. I don’t and won’t read it.
BUT ...
The Wrights did spend entirely too much time pursuing patent infringement and not enough trying to run an aircraft business. It’s no accident that by the 1930s, “Wright” was pretty much reduced to making (darn good) engines. Aircraft were made by Boeing, Douglas, Lockheed, Vought, Martin, Grumman, North American, Consolidated, Curtiss, Brewster ...
In other news, Thomas Jefferson loved brown sugar.
Not sure what your point might be.
They used a patent they claimed covered all gasoline powered automobiles. One "of the first applicants to be refused a license was a known loser, Henry Ford"
Hang on while I look for a graphic that shows “insignificant allegation completely overshadowing actual historical achievement”.
The 1903 Wright Flyer ended up spending a few decades on display in France because the Smithsonian kept recognizing the contributions of Samuel Langley to manned powered flight.
Iirc the terms of the plane returning to the US after WWII (it was a miracle it survived) included acknowlegement of the Wrights as the sole creators of manned flight AND the removal of Langley’s prototype (never flown manned) from display, allegedly within a certain distance of the Flyer.
The agreement still stands and if the Smithsonian violates it the Wright Estate can reclaim the aircraft. Langley’s plane is on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, at 26 miles outside the display restrictions that are allegedly part of the agreement.
OK ... If you think that the Wrights disappearance from the aviation industry (save for engines as previously stated) by the 1920s is insignificant, that’s your problem. Try to get some help.
Orville and Wilbur invented controlled, powered, sustained, heavier than air flight and gave it to the world. They invented the wind tunnel, and used it to make the first systematic, scientific study of airfoil shape. They solved the problem of 3 axis control. The were and are the very model of modern engineering.
And they failed to run a successful aircraft company. Many of their competitors, whom they spent too much time and effort hauling into court, did succeed in the aircraft business.
Let's not mince words with such an interesting subtext. What you mean is that anyone who does't prioritize things as you do is beneath than you, that apparently being your definition of fitness.
Lovely discussion, thank you for posting!
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