
Heavier Than Air (1930) - bookofjoe
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1930/12/13/heavier-than-air
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ExodusOrbitals1
Really interesting piece and impreccably written!

A noteworthy statement from Orville: "He feels deeply upon the subject of
accidents, saying that there are vastly too many of them and that this country
has a bad record. He regards this as a matter of better pilot training; not,
he thinks, until the spirit of daredeviltry dies out and pilots shun a hazard
with the horror of a veteran locomotive engineer will we witness material
improvement"

I also noted there were a few words that I have not seen before in modern
English texts: "bumboatmen", "spoke-shave" "self-bailer", for example.

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stan_rogers
You're hanging out with the wrong crowd if you haven't heard _spokeshave_
(it's not generally hyphenated anymore). It's still a commonly-used
woodworking tool - just another in the family of planes, really - as is its
"roughing" kin, the drawknife. When I were a lad, my father once remarked that
a spokeshave seemed to be a bit of a modern contraption for Roy Underhill to
be using on a particular project; I had to remind him that wooden spokes were
just a little bit out of date and that the class of tools probably had a more
meaningful name once upon a time.

~~~
neogodless
I have also not seen "spoke-shave" in modern English texts. I'm not sure how
that relates to the crowds I run with. I'm an amateur wood-worker but I prefer
building to finishing so I don't do much planing. Likely my neighbor and a
close friend knows what that tool is, but it never came up in conversation.

So that is to say that your comment is informative, but it could do without
the "wrong crowd" comment. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you
meant it in jest!

~~~
dbcurtis
We will forgive you if you can turn a hook on a scraper :)

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burlesona
Wow, what a time capsule!

I have a newfound appreciation for the New Yorker after this. I’ve often found
their articles tiringly long and full of unnecessary mundane details and side
tangents.

But reading something from a hundred years ago, those very details and side
tangents are the best part. People generally don’t care to record what
ordinary life was like - everyone knows! - yet when we look back far enough in
history that is the kind of stuff we have the most difficulty relating to and
understanding. Perhaps better to think of the New Yorker’s style as not
writing for today, but writing for future historians.

~~~
ralphc
Reading the "digression" about the plans for the monument at Kitty Hawk, and
Washington's meddling and bumbling, gives you a whole "the more things change,
the more they stay the same" feel.

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joe_the_user
The interesting thing is that after the Wright Brothers successfully flew,
their main contribution was a patent war which held back the US aviation
industry significantly.

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

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hal9001
In related news:

[https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/orville-wright-bust-
stol...](https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/orville-wright-bust-stolen-from-
monument/)

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fulafel
Wher does the aëro spelling come from and where did it disappear?

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zb
The New Yorker has a famously idiosyncratic style guide that calls for
diaresis to be explicitly marked (in words like e.g. coöperate). This is
pretty interesting though because it seems to indicate that the pronunciation
has shifted - nobody would pronounce "aero" with a diaresis today.

~~~
aaron_m04
Obnoxious as well as idiosyncratic.

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mhb
Though predating it by many decades, this is a bit of a tldr of the book The
Wright Brothers by David McCullough which I thought was great. Presumably if
you liked this article, you would feel similarly.

~~~
chrisbrandow
I second the recommendation. It’s a pretty easy read but gave me a much deeper
appreciation for these two that I had sort of dismissively _mis_ characterized
as “two bike shop mechanics”.

