Today, old stories turn from legend into
experimental development. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
Daedalus, the 3400-year-old
legend says, fashioned wings of feathers and wax so
he and his son Icarus could fly from prison on
Crete to safety in Sicily. When Icarus flew too near the sun,
the wax melted and he fell to his death. Daedalus'
flight and Icarus' fall have touched our minds ever
since. Most ancient legends have some basis in
history. I suspect this one does as well.
The Romans twisted the legend. They placed slaves
in the coliseum with building materials. "Try to
build wings and fly to freedom before the animals
get you," they said. No one ever succeeded, of
course.
But not all use of the legend was so cruel or
crazy. In 852 AD, Moorish inventor Armen Firman
built a canvas hang glider, flew off a tower in
Cordoba, Spain, and landed safely. Soon after,
another Spanish inventor with a similar name, Ibn
Firnas, tried to repeat the trick. Like Daedalus he
built wings covered with feathers. Firnas crashed
and hurt his back. Later, he said he hadn't noticed
how birds landed on their tails. He hadn't equipped
himself with a tail for landing. And here the plot
thickens.
About that time, the Vikings told a story with
echoes of both Daedalus and Firnas, but with a new
insight. Their hero, Wayland, fashioned feathered
wings to escape an island prison. When his brother
Egil tested them he crashed -- this time, because
he'd failed to launch himself into the wind.
All these insights converge in a story told by the
twelfth-century English historian William of
Malmesbury. He writes about an Anglo-Saxon monk,
Eilmer, of Wiltshire Abbey:
Eilmer ... was a man learned for those times ...
and in his youth had hazarded a deed of remarkable
boldness. He had by some means, I scarcely know
what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that,
mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like
Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze on the summit
of a tower, he flew for more than the distance of a
furlong. But, agitated by the violence of the wind
and the swirling of air, as well as by awareness of
his rashness, he fell, broke his legs, and was lame
ever after. He himself used to say that the cause
of his failure was forgetting to put a tail on the
back part.
The story of Eilmer's 220-yard glider flight has
eerie similarities to the older tales. You might
think the Islamic accounts found their way to
Christian England and were recast there.
However, like each of the older stories, Eilmer's
adds one more valuable bit of knowledge. If Firnas
failed because he hadn't given himself a tail to
land on, Eilmer crashed because his glider didn't
have a tail to provide lateral stability.
So the legend gained flesh and blood as experience
accumulated. Finally the Wright Brothers added
their chapter. This time the legend was backed with
photos and documents. And it seemed clear at last
that the old legends really had to have been more
than flights of mere fancy.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
