Today, not another first airplane! 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.
My producer rolls her eyes
when I bring in yet another program on early
flight. I try to explain: This isn't really about
flight or priority. This is about
Zeitgeist; it is about the spirit of
the times.
Perhaps I can make my point by recalling some
research my student and I did back the 1970s. We
created a new kind of water jet. It emerged from a
circular annular slit instead of a hole, and it had
some remarkable properties. Left alone, this moving
annular sheet drew back into a simple jet at some
distance beyond the slit.
If we pressurized the air inside the annulus,
pressure, inertia and surface tension combined to
create remarkable shapes. The moving water would
even form sharp corners. The student's analysis
explained this weird behavior, and we were about to
publish our work. Then we found a Russian paper
that told our story exactly. The Russian had got
there first, and we had nothing to publish.
It was a crushing blow. We both felt as though we
owned the discovery. What had this Russian to do
with our genius? Some years later another
American paper appeared. Same discovery, same
analysis, no mention of the Russian; one could only
curse.
With that in mind, I'll list some early claims to
the invention of the airplane: In the Texas hill
country, one Jacob Brodbeck experimented with
models, and, in 1865, he actually flew an airplane.
The flight ended when he crashed into a chicken
coop.
John Montgomery built
gliders in southern California between 1883 and
1911. A great deal of legend surrounds his work and
even credits him with powered flight. Glen Ford
portrayed Montgomery as the inventor of the
airplane in the 1946 movie Gallant
Journey.
There's good evidence that Gustave Whitehead of
Bridgeport, Connecticut, flew his Number
21 airplane over a mile in 1901. We also have
photos of several Whitehead flying machines -- all
on the ground. There's a lot more: Maxim flew, and
Ader flew. Santos Dumont flew after the Wrights,
but his flight attracted a great deal of early
attention in Europe.
In aggregate, these airplanes include all the
elements that came together so beautifully in the
Wrights' airplane -- cambered wings, internal
combustion, even controllability.
Now, a new one on me: a listener just wrote to tell
me about the New Zealand farmer Richard Pearse.
Pearse built an airplane with all these features
and moveable ailerons to boot. He flew over a
hundred yards in 1902 and then crashed. He also
built an early motorcycle and attempted other
airplanes.
So: who invented the airplane? Well, it was the
same Zeitgeist that set us all to working
on annular jets twenty-five years ago. Invention is
a drumbeat that draws us in and carries us on, a
relentless flow veering here and there. How often
do we hear of inventor A reaching the patent office
scant hours before inventor B! Just as flight was, dare I
say, "in the air" a century ago, so too every good
idea touches many people -- in that moment just
before it comes to light.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
I am grateful to Connecticut listener Peter Andrew
for triggering this episode when he pointed me to the
Pearse website:
A photo from a 1901 article shows a man riding in a
large kite
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-2002 by John H.
Lienhard.
