
Put a Propeller on It: The Golden Age of Tinkering - benbreen
http://theappendix.net/blog/2014/2/put-a-propeller-on-it
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smacktoward
The problem with golden ages like this is that they commit suicide.

Alberto Santos-Dumont could get away with flying his personal dirigible to
Maxim's because he was the only one doing so. There were no other aeronauts
dashing off for espresso for him to crash into, or to crowd him out from being
able to tie his flying machine to the horse hitch in front.

Which is great for the first person to do something. But if the "something" is
sufficiently cool -- and I think we can all agree that having a personal blimp
would be pretty cool even today, never mind 100 years ago -- other people look
at it and think "man, I wish I were able to do that."

So they go off and build their _own_ flying machines, and before long there
isn't one aeronaut trying to tie up in front of Maxim's, there's ten or a
hundred or a thousand. And, inevitably, because the followers of the genius
usually as bright as the genius is, they start crashing into each other or
into things and people on the ground.

All of which creates demand for bring order to the chaos in the skies, both
from people on the ground and the aeronauts themselves. (The people on the
ground are tired of having daring aeronauts fall on their heads; the aeronauts
are tired of having to argue every question of who has right of way when two
dirigibles meet from first principles.) Which means regulation and licenses
and safety requirements. Which closes out the backyard tinkerers.

It's all very sad, if you're a backyard tinkerer. The very thing that made
what you were tinkering on so cool eventually makes it impossible for you to
keep tinkering on it; you either have to scale up or shut down. But
whaddayagonnado? Such is life.

------
Animats
Yes. Here's Lawrence Sperry, inventor of the gyrocompass and the autopilot,
landing his Sperry Messenger in front of the U.S. Capitol in 1922. (He needed
about 600 feet of clear road to do that, for a 400 foot landing run.) Nobody
panicked over this, even though this was after WWI and aerial bombing was
known.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lawrence_Sperry_at_Capito...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lawrence_Sperry_at_Capitol_steps.jpg)

~~~
benbreen
Seems that landing experimental aircraft on the Capitol steps was a thing.
Senator Hiram Bingham landed both a blimp (1929) and this "autogyro" (1931)
there too:

[https://uschs.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/bingham.jpg](https://uschs.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/bingham.jpg)

(Fun fact: Bingham was the partial inspiration for Indiana Jones).

~~~
trhway
as recent as 1957, while not Capitol Hill, pretty close though

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_X-13_Vertijet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_X-13_Vertijet)
:

>On July 28-July 29, 1957, the X-13 was demonstrated in Washington, D.C. It
crossed the Potomac River and landed at the Pentagon.

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trhway
golden age is created by people. By people who has at least some money,
knowledge/skills and most importantly - passion. We have only one Musk, they
had hundreds - that is the difference.

With respect to the new frontiers to explore our age isn't less exciting - we
have access to DNA to tinker, cyborg-ing, fusion, space.

