
The Man Who Almost Never Succeeded (2012) - brudgers
https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/10/the-man-who-almost-never-succeeded/
======
rmason
I knew that a lot of nineteenth century inventors were renaissance men but
despite being a ham and adoring fan of Morse code I knew little of his story.

Did you know Alexander Graham Bell almost beat the Wright brothers to the
invention of airplane? I visited his workshop, which is now a museum, in
Northern Nova Scotia which has his plane hanging in the rafters.

[https://www.carnetdevol.org/Bell/aeronautical.html](https://www.carnetdevol.org/Bell/aeronautical.html)

[http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-
nhs/ns/grahambell/index.aspx](http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-
nhs/ns/grahambell/index.aspx)

Interestingly he worked with Glenn Curtiss. After the Wright's Brothers
success he lost interest. Curtiss went on to start Curtiss aircraft which was
a pioneering airplane company.

[https://www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org/about-the-man-glenn-h-
cu...](https://www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org/about-the-man-glenn-h-curtiss.php)

~~~
rebootthesystem
The difference is that Bell didn't understand aerodynamics and didn't seem to
do a thing about it.

The Wright brothers, not happy with they thought they knew about aerodynamics
built their own wind tunnel and proceeded to fully understand what they needed
in order to achieve successful controlled flight under power.

Bell's design was nearly optimized for all forms of drag.

~~~
orbitingpluto
Poor Gustave Whitehead. Overlooked yet again... maybe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead)

~~~
MegaButts
Reading this makes me wonder how accurate our historical records are. And then
I think of this.

[http://pbfcomics.com/209/](http://pbfcomics.com/209/)

~~~
dghughes
Look at the Alaskan panhandle dispute you'd think Canada (British controlled
at the time) wanted to give the land to US. Roosevelt threatened to send in
Marines to take it by force just because he wanted it. We did not want to give
up anything but you get stuck in the middle of back-stabbing politicians and a
war monger president you don't have much choice.

History is written by the victors.

------
ryandamm
This is a _fantastic_ blog for camera/lens nerds. Highly recommend, very happy
to see Roger Cicala get some love here. It's like my nerd-planets aligning, HN
and Lens Rentals.

If you read through the Lens Rentals archive, you'll find the absolute best
(bar none) public discussion of lens build quality, imaging optics, and
generally user-friendly discussion of very technical-but-practical optics
issues. And it gets technical enough that there's no fluff.

Also, you'll also get the kind of war stories you only get when you see
thousands of copies of lenses, abused in ways your imagination thankfully
can't grasp. Required reading if you're an optics nerd. Or if optics is one
flavor of your nerd (for me, it is).

I've used their service in the past, though only briefly (I think I've given
Roger less than $1k total). I come for the blog and MTF charts, mostly.

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hyperpallium
Just wanted to add about the patents: his first telegraph patent was
reasonably specific about the tech; but in a later one, he tried to cover
every possible method of telegraphy.

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dredmorbius
Among Samuel F. Morse's accomplishments (he being the clickbaited man of the
title): _Imminent dangers to the free institutions of the United States
through foreign immigration, and the present state of the naturalization
laws._ (1835)

Quite the xenophobe.

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/imminent-dangers-to-the-
free-...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/imminent-dangers-to-the-free-
institutions-of-the-united-states-through-foreign-immigration-and-the-present-
state-of-the-naturalization-laws/oclc/165693688&referer=brief_results)

Full text: [https://www.jesus-is-
lord.com/imminent_dangers.htm](https://www.jesus-is-
lord.com/imminent_dangers.htm)

~~~
elastic_church
Well he wasn't wrong. Its just that most of the immigrants were
disenfranchised groups from the place that they might have retained allegiance
with, and this was from so many places that extreme causes still became a
gradient that primarily improved US diplomacy with most of the countries.

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joe563323
Elon Musk came to mind after reading the title.

