ORVILLE AND WILBER; SOME REVISIONIST THOUGHTS....
"Dissect the bat and on this model build the machine" wrote Leonardo Da Vinci concerning the secret of flight. Da Vinci pretty well understood the principles of lift and drag, the use of flaps and ailerons, and landing (raise the nose, lower the tail). That was back in 1500. So why did we have to wait another 400 years for two dour grumps from the Buckeye State to figure it out all over again?
Yes, I know it sounds both churlish and curmudgeonly to be bonking the Wright Brothers in the very month that we honor the 100th anniversary of their achievement, but I just can't warm up to those guys. Especially when one considers there were so many more colorful and admittedly crazy characters who came before them and got at least part of the equation right.
As early as the 1300's, Marco Polo reported that Chinese businessmen about to embark on a sea journey always sought a weather briefing. No need to dash off into perilous waters without a meteorological update. To accomplish this, a drunkard or fool was usually taken from the ship's crew and tied to a kite which was tethered to the ship. The kite was then brought into the wind with its' screaming passenger affording a rather unique, and reasonably accurate wind check. While not quite as salient as an FSS briefing, none the less it demonstrated an early awareness of the importance of wind.
Or how about Baron de Bacqueville, who in 1742 strapped on a pair of wings, stood on the edge of the Pont Neuf in Paris and announced that he would fly across the Seine to the Tuilleries. Alas, de Bacqueville's flight merely took him off Pont Neuf for a landing on a washerwoman's scow moored in the Seine. Indeed he broke a leg, but still managed a smile. The age of science had arrived.
If you consider that the Wright Brothers' accomplishment was essentially based on a continuum that extended back about 700 years, then who during that span contributed the most to the inevitability of flight? My vote goes to the English inventor George Cayley, who in 1799 designed an airplane precisely the way we perceive it today. Cayley's plane exploited the principle of lift, had a fuselage, wings, and a rather natty T- tail. Throughout his life he was known as a loving father (he had 10 kids) and a wonderfully generous and fearless guy exactly those traits we admire today. He is generally regarded in Britain as "the father of aeronautics."
Of course the two siblings from Dayton, Ohio surely deserve a least a nod for pulling it all together it's just that they never seemed to get any joy out of it. Surely had all these guys been in high school together Da Vinci would have been valedictorian, de Bacqueville captain of the lacrosse team, and Cayley class president. Orville and Wilber glee club anyone?
Life isn't fair.
Albin Cofone
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