Giving thanks for american ingenuity

[Diogenes]

The airplane, perhaps?

I actually think it was a German who invented the Airplane first. It was just the Wright brothers who pushed it into an industry.

I recall reading years ago of a German Aristocrat that was towing a glider behind a powered boat on a lake, and had basically worked out all the necessary details for flight. If I recall properly, he was attempting to fit it with an engine so that it could fly by itself, but when the engine arrived, it was far too heavy for the aircraft. Apparently someone had misread his specifications at the factory where the engine was manufactured.

I disagree. The evolution towards powered flight had a long and convoluted history. Gliders and lighter than air aircraft, of course, were present for decades. Various efforts were made to try to power these gliders. The prevailing consensus was that it was impossible. In large part it was the Wright brother's work with a wind tunnel (unique, I believe), and their critical study of propellers that lead to their breakthrough. It wasn't the engine per say that was the problem. It was the aerodynamically inefficient propellers. Surely someone else would have arrived there eventually, but they were first.

Dan Tibbets

Just relating what I have read. The article stated that had the engine been within specs, the powered glider design would have worked. I'm thinking that towing a glider behind a boat is an excellent way of working out design problems. I'm thinking that if the powered flight problem was worked out, the control system and more efficient propellers would be obvious descendant enhancements.

Anyway, while researching it, I ran across this link to people who supposedly achieved powered flight prior to the Wright brothers.

[Diogenes]

On the subject of Thanksgiving, I never quite understood that because it was explained to me in school that it celebrated the harvest of food and fish that the native Americans helped the settlers with and they all celebrated together. Then the settlers shot the natives for their land, so now it's only white Americans who celebrate it. Am I missing some piece of understanding on this one?

No, they just expelled them to Oklahoma. OK, so there were some wars between the natives and the whites first. That resulted in some of them getting shot. Then there was just pure nastiness, like "plague blankets" and leaving people to die of exposure or starvation along the "trail of tears." However, the Iroquois Confederacy moved to Ontario with many of the United Empire Loyalists after 1780, settling near the city of Brantford (named after Joseph Brant, the Christian name of the leader of the Confederacy at that time). The other natives were expelled according to the "Indian Removal Act" sometime around 1840-1850 (too lazy to find the exact date right now - just google it and you will probably get a wikipedia page or something).

Two things.
1. I wish to point out that it was the First Democrat President of the United States (and founder of the Modern DNC) who was responsible for pushing and implementing the "Indian Removal Act", thereby freeing up the land to be exploited by whites and also to expand slavery.

2. Back in the 19th century, the germ theory of disease was mostly unknown, and was the focus of much debate among the experts in the medical community. That relatively ignorant people might hand out blankets which could cause disease is no guaranteed indication of intent to do harm. I've read various articles alleging that this bit of conventional wisdom is just anti-white propaganda.

As for American ingenuity, how about the final/practical push on atom bomb/nuclear power research? The Poles, Brits, Jewish-German scientists and so on started it, but the cumulative research was assembled in the U.S. in the early 1940s and then carried through to creation of the atom bomb in 1945... and from that followed nuclear power.

What is somewhat overlooked is that Szilard was the guy who lit the fuse. He was the one that kept suggesting that Nuclear Fission was possible, even when others discounted the idea.

[Ivy Matt]

What's all this talk about the Wright brothers? I thought everybody would understand I was referring to Samuel Langley.

[chrismb]

What is somewhat overlooked is that Szilard was the guy who lit the fuse. He was the one that kept suggesting that Nuclear Fission was possible, even when others discounted the idea.

That sounds typical. Do you have any useful links on that history?

I am keen to understand the hows-and-whys of inventors/visionaries difficulties in progressing ideas... that then later are taken for granted. I'm there myself at the moment (and is why I do, personally, relate to JFP's diamond biscuit situation).

There is something truly soul-destroying when one attempts to do what is regarded as the impossible, generally hounded, ignored and condemned with every effort seemingly directed to stop that person, and yet once the veil of knowledge and understanding slowly lifts from the mypoic vision of the masses, that person, and their efforts, are then near forgotten and looked upon as something freely given by that person. The really cutting bit, though, is not that part but the total lack of interest in re-considering that person's commitment and sacrifice to establish if apologies are in order over the disrespect/disregard given at the time.

Even when that person does finally get recognition [which does happen occasionally] there is seemingly never any self-questioning by those myopic institutions on why they missed the opportunity to progress the idea in the first place.

I despair over this. It is not to be unexpected that there might be luddite resistance from an ignorant society over scientific developments. But it seems to me that most of the gentlemen-scientists of the sub-1800s would've found it impossible to have achieved what they achieved if the general attitude to lone-inventor/scientists was then as it is today. Yet Big Science has never seemingly stopped to question itself on this.

[chrismb]

Ah hah!!!....

Looking up some on Szilard myself.... so guess where he was when he thought up his chain reaction nuclear reactor.??.. in London!

A Hungarian, in London, invented the nuclear reactor, and he then gave his patent to the British Admiralty so that they'd keep it safe (!!).

http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDeta ... 6&KC=&FT=E



What is truly remarkable is that fission reactions had yet to be discovered!

Richard Rhodes described Szilárd's moment of inspiration thusly:
In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come.

[Diogenes]

What is somewhat overlooked is that Szilard was the guy who lit the fuse. He was the one that kept suggesting that Nuclear Fission was possible, even when others discounted the idea.

That sounds typical. Do you have any useful links on that history?

Nope. Sorry. My knowledge of this comes from reading books on the History of Nuclear Fission, among which a prominent one is "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.


This book details the efforts that Szilard made in trying to interest other scientists in the possibility of Nuclear Fission. Szilard constantly pushed for the theory of fission and stood by it even when the evidence was going against it. It was also Szilard's idea to approach Einstein about writing his famous letter to Roosevelt, thereby kicking off the Manhattan Project.


Einstein writes in his second letter to Roosevelt:

Dr. Szilard has shown me the manuscript which he is sending to the Physics Review in which he describes in detail a method of setting up a chain reaction in uranium. The papers will appear in print unless they are held up, and the question arises whether something ought to be done to withhold publication.

I am keen to understand the hows-and-whys of inventors/visionaries difficulties in progressing ideas... that then later are taken for granted. I'm there myself at the moment (and is why I do, personally, relate to JFP's diamond biscuit situation).

I have been following that discussion as a lurker for quite some time, and JFPs experience is by no means rare. There are numerous scientists throughout history that have been loudly and universally denounced when they proffered their ideas. (Which turned out to be correct! )

Bill Beaty has collected a treasure trove of such examples.

There is something truly soul-destroying when one attempts to do what is regarded as the impossible, generally hounded, ignored and condemned with every effort seemingly directed to stop that person, and yet once the veil of knowledge and understanding slowly lifts from the mypoic vision of the masses, that person, and their efforts, are then near forgotten and looked upon as something freely given by that person. The really cutting bit, though, is not that part but the total lack of interest in re-considering that person's commitment and sacrifice to establish if apologies are in order over the disrespect/disregard given at the time.

Even when that person does finally get recognition [which does happen occasionally] there is seemingly never any self-questioning by those myopic institutions on why they missed the opportunity to progress the idea in the first place.

I despair over this. It is not to be unexpected that there might be luddite resistance from an ignorant society over scientific developments. But it seems to me that most of the gentlemen-scientists of the sub-1800s would've found it impossible to have achieved what they achieved if the general attitude to lone-inventor/scientists was then as it is today. Yet Big Science has never seemingly stopped to question itself on this.

It has long been the lament that Science starts as heresy and ends as dogma. Scientists are people too, and too often motivated by the petty natures of their humanness. (vanity,arrogance etc)

I salute those among them that can overcome intellectual phase lock and pioneer new ground.

[Diogenes]

Ah hah!!!....

Looking up some on Szilard myself.... so guess where he was when he thought up his chain reaction nuclear reactor.??.. in London!

A Hungarian, in London, invented the nuclear reactor, and he then gave his patent to the British Admiralty so that they'd keep it safe (!!).

http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDeta ... 6&KC=&FT=E



What is truly remarkable is that fission reactions had yet to be discovered!

Richard Rhodes described Szilárd's moment of inspiration thusly:
In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come.

I see Richard Rhodes is credited with being the source of this information. His book is quite detailed and award winning. It is narrated from a rather metaphysical perspective though. (i.e. the killing machine that is war has found a new source of food in civilians, and "we are become death" .. etc. )

If you don't have the book, get it. I assure you that you will enjoy it thoroughly.

[KitemanSA]

What is somewhat overlooked is that Szilard was the guy who lit the fuse. He was the one that kept suggesting that Nuclear Fission was possible, even when others discounted the idea.

That sounds typical. Do you have any useful links on that history?

Gee, Szilard almost sounds like Johan Prins (or vice versa).

YES! I'm stirring the pot. Respond at your own risk!