Posted on 12/18/2015 8:41:55 AM PST by EveningStar
Something similar happened in WWII. The big aircraft manufacturers were resisting giving up their aircraft designs.
The government threatened to seize the designs outright, suggesting strongly that the companies figure out a way to license the designs to companies that had production capacity. Quicky enough Eastern Aircraft (GM) was building TBFs and F4Fs (TBMs and FMs) Goodyear was building F4Us (FGs) Ford was building B-24s and Vega was building B-17s. Amongst others ...
I mean what I wrote, and wrote what I mean. Your pathetic and failed attempt at mind-reading reveals much about you ... none of it good.
At the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, there is a plaque stating that the Wright Brothers were awarded the Langley Medal for their contributions to powered flight. I once told the director of the museum that there should be a plaque stating that Langley was specifically denied the Wright Brothers Medal for his contributions to retarding powered flight. Langley had just about everything wrong, but the Smithsonian kept backing him. They gave Langley's Aerodrome to Curtis, who modified it and flew it in an attempt to show that Langley had the idea before the Wrights, but just ran into bad luck.
As the late Charles Draper, of MIT, used to say, organized science has never forgiven a couple of bicycle mechanics from Dayton,Ohio, for inventing the airplane.
Keep in mind that Wright didn’t disappear. They merged with the first Martin aircraft company in the mid-teens to form Wright-Martin, and then again with once arch-rival Curtiss in the late 1920s to form Curtiss-Wright. The merged company produced the P-40, the C-46 and various Helldiver bombers for the Navy.
What I find amusing about the whole business with the Wrights is that their radial engines largely powered the "golden age" (if such a thing existed) of piston powered aircraft. The one major thing they didn't build back in 1903 was the engine. That, they outsourced.
Lightweight, high-powered engine design and development totally controlled early manned aircraft design. In a lot of ways it still does, but in those days it was a matter of basic safety and survival, while now it's about maximizing flight and efficiency capabilities.
The Wrights were flying kites and gliders, before they worried about power. They correctly understood that at the time the big problem was control, not power.
by Lawrence Goldstone
Interesting. I had heard something along those lines, however not the details. Thanks.
At various times control, power, duration, speed, or reliability have been the Big Thing dominating design efforts. For DeHavilland-Canada, ruggedness and STOL were the big thing when everybody else was concentrating on speed and power. The wonderful Twin Otter was the culmination of that effort.
Actually I meant the very early days, when the engines weren’t even powerful enough to lift their own weights. That’s why the earliest planes were basically kites with tiny engines. Engines had to be completely rethought concerning weight vs horsepower. Before aircraft, the weight of an engine just didn’t matter.
Right. And the Wrights initially (1903) turned to an engine builder, rather than trying to solve the problem themselves.
ogawdILOVEU!
The Wright Brothers epitomize American Exceptionalism.
Smithsonian Snubs Wright Brothers
http://www.ntesla.org/ntesla/NT-P6.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1445741/posts?page=62#62
When you visit the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian you see this famous Wright Flyer that made man’s first successful flight December 17, 1903. What Smithsonian officials do NOT tell you is that they snubbed the Wright brothers for 45 years, refusing to acknowledge their great accomplishment and install this famous plane in the museum. They refused because their own Secretary of the Smithsonian, Samuel P. Langley, built an airplane shortly before the Wright brothers...but it could NOT fly!
Forty-five years is a long time for the Smithsonian to deny the truth. Wilbur died Spring 1912, weakened by his nine-year dispute with the Smithsonian. Orville finally gave up the fight in 1928 and sent his famous plane to the Museum of London as a gesture of contempt for the Smithsonian.
American public pressure increased in the years that followed. Many people wondered why our famous Wright Flyer was in London instead of here in America. Orville died January 1948. Later that year the Smithsonian finally agreed to bring the plane back from London to be formally installed December 17, 1948. Unfortunately, neither of the Wright brothers lived long enough to know that their own country officially acknowledged their great accomplishment.
The Smithsonian is cheating the public from learning Tesla’s history in much the same way as they did with the Wright Brothers, except that Tesla’s snubbing has lasted more than a century.
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