
The Wright Brothers Conquered the Skies with Data - leeeeenaaa
https://humansofdata.atlan.com/2019/07/historical-humans-of-data-the-wright-brothers/
======
Isamu
>They did several things differently, from doing their own research to
building wind tunnels to validate their data and eliminate guesswork.

>Sometimes the non-glamorous lab work is absolutely crucial to the success of
a project. - Wilbur Wright

>Since the 18th century, engineers had been using Smeaton’s coefficient to
calculate the density of air. After running over 50 simulations using their
wind tunnels, the brothers determined its value to be 0.0033, and not 0.005.

>They also used the data from wind tunnels to design wings with better lift-
to-drag ratio and used them to build their 1902 flying machine, which
performed significantly better than their previous gliders.

The wind tunnel work was crucial to their success, arguably the single most
important element. It enabled them to iterate their designs and compare them
quickly. In today's language, it helped them to fail fast.

Had they been better funded, they might have committed the error of trying to
iterate mostly with full-sized fliers, which would have drastically slowed
down iteration.

~~~
ereyes01
Yes, it enabled them to not only fail fast, but to fail and live to tell the
tale! Much talent and knowledge was lost in the people that died trying to fly
before them.

It's also amazing to read about the many pilots who died trying to cross the
Atlantic before Charles Lindbergh did it. The journey nearly cost him his life
as well, and it took some time before such flights were safe enough to
routinely attempt.

Early aviators had some serious guts.

~~~
AceyMan
> Early aviators had some serious guts.

Here, here!

On this note, I must recommend _Fate is the Hunter_ by Ernest K. Gann. It's a
terrifying and honest account of his experiences in the early days of
commercial aviation (Gann's narrative starts in the '30s).

Wikipedia citation,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate_Is_the_Hunter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate_Is_the_Hunter)

------
LyndsySimon
This was really interesting. I've always viewed the Wrights as "hobbyists" or
"tinkerers" \- but now I'm going to have to do some research on their lives.
If the impression I got from that article is remotely accurate, they were
engineers. It seems almost insulting to call them "bicycle makers".

~~~
sveit
Check out the book The Wright Brothers by David McCullough[1]. You will see
that they are anything but tinkerers, but more the founders of aeronautical
engineering.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-
McCullough/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-
McCullough/dp/1476728755)

~~~
mohaine
But don't forget that they also threatened to hold the entire aircraft
industry hostage with a overly broad patent and then spent years trying to
rewrite history so they got most if not all of the credit. Even their gift of
their flyer to the Smithsonian came with strings attached about how the
Smithsonian could frame other developments at the time.

[http://www.wright-
brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_A...](http://www.wright-
brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Doers_and_Dreamers/Wright_Smithsonian_Controversy/00_Wright_Smithsonian_Controversy_Intro.htm)

------
sytelus
Fixing Smeaton’s constant was only small part of the puzzle. They discovered
in wind tunnel that certain shapes produces almost 3X better lift to drag.
They tried out 150 shapes varying one variable at a time to find optimal shape
and angle of attack [1]. Another big problem was 3 axis control system and
designing propellers that can generate enough thrust. Before Wrights,
propellers were used in ships but no one really understood how the worked and
their design was largely “cut and try”. Wrights needed to produce enough
thrust to lift whole machine with just ~10HP engine. They literally invented
theory of propellers as wings and deviced equations to compute thrust. They
also designed mechanism to transfer power from engine to propellers and the
fact that they need two propellers rotating in opposite directions [2].

[1]
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eb92/1d44112fbdd04532f56cb2...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eb92/1d44112fbdd04532f56cb2f0944f46c54a30.pdf)

[2] [http://www.wrightexperience.com/wp-
content/uploads/sites/161...](http://www.wrightexperience.com/wp-
content/uploads/sites/161/2015/07/Propeller-Evolution.pdf)

------
anderber
> However, do you know why two flight enthusiasts from Dayton, Ohio succeeded?

This just makes me think that Alberto Santos-Dumont also "invented" heavier-
than-air flight, only 3 years later and it was better.

Wouldn't we still have the same flying ability if the Wrights never pursued
flying?

Previous discussion on Santos-Dumont:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9542480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9542480)

~~~
LyndsySimon
I can't think of any technological advance that was achieved primarily through
the effort of a single individual - in retrospect, it seems "obvious" that the
fundamental principles had been in place and that it "only" took someone to
come along and put them together in a new way.

I'm a firearms enthusiast and have spent some time studying the development of
small arms. If transported back to the late 18th Century, I could explain and
document the mechanism for an automatic rifle suitable for use by infantry
like an AR or AK - but I likely could _not_ produce one, and certainly could
not produce them on an industrial scale. The metallurgy simply wasn't up to
the task, nor was the machinery of the day. The metallic cartridge would't
even make a lot of sense; as the percussion cap hadn't yet been invented. Even
a manually-operated mounted Gatling gun wouldn't be possible without it.

Once a stable, impact-sensitive explosive suitable for use as a primer was
invented, everything was in place for the invention of the metallic cartridge
- and that's exactly what happened. Metallic cartridges lead to breech-loading
firearms, which lead to the bolt action, which in turn lead to automatic and
then semi-automatic actions. Neither of the last two made much sense until the
invention and adoption of smokeless powder, as traditional gunpowder leaves so
much residue that it would only work for a few shots before "fouling".

All that said, there are individuals that push the state of the art forward a
great deal through their contributions. John Moses Browning, for instance. He
created the first gas-operated machinegun and several of his designs remain in
use (essentially unchanged) by major militaries around the world more than a
century later.

~~~
technothrasher
_which in turn lead to automatic and then semi-automatic actions_

Hmm, now you've got me curious. I'm not exactly a firearms history scholar,
but the earliest automatic firearm I know of (not including civil war era
Gatling type guns, which aren't actually automatic) is the Mannlicher 1886,
which was also produced as a semi-automatic at the same time. So I was under
the impression that we got fully and semi auto firearms at exactly the same
time.

------
bluGill
The real key is advancement in metallurgy and engine technology made a
lightweight engine feasible. The correct formula might have taken a couple
years off the time frame, but no more.

As always you see farther than others by standing on the shoulders of giants.

~~~
AceyMan
As I understand it, the biggest innovation the Wright Brothers brought to the
goal of powered flight was the understanding that the biggest hurdle was not
propulsion but _control._

In a nutshell, most others of the era (not counting Santos-Dumont!) were
striving to get more power with an assumption that once aloft with sufficient
power that flight would "just 'happen."

Meanwhile, the Wrights knew more power was coming, and instead focused on the
more important truth that if the operator couldn't control the ship it didn't
matter at all how much power was available, how much lift was generated or how
efficient the propeller was.

To this day the three-axis controls they settled on are fundamental to all
conventional aircraft. (Though the weird "twisting wing" solution for roll
control couldn't scale and so the aileron mechanism was a huge improvement.)

~~~
bluGill
Correct, control was their innovation. However control without enough power
isn't useful. It is possible (albeit very unlikely) someone in the 1300s was
able to build a controllable glider much like the wright brother's but lacking
any means of propulsion it would be impractical and forgotten to history.

I'm not discounting their innovation, just stating that it depending on
propulsion. Once propulsion was there it was inevitable that someone would
figure out control in a few years when they realized more power wasn't enough.

