Byline: CHRIS KIDDER THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, ``Guns, Germs, and Steel,'' points out that the Wright brothers did not invent a powered flying machine because of any great need or useful demand for the product. In fact, explains Diamond, many or most inventions were developed by people driven by curiosity or by a love of tinkering, in the absence of any initial demand for the product they had in mind.
These inventions in search of a use include most of the major technological breakthroughs of modern times, ranging from the airplane and automobile, through the internal combustion engine and electric light bulb, to the phonograph and transistor, he writes.
The Wrights' experience marketing and selling their invention bears this out. Their ideas for how the airplane might be used seem to have been limited to military reconnaissance. They said on several occasions they saw little, if any, commercial application for using airplanes to move goods or passengers. (Ironically, on Nov. 7, 1910, a Wright plane made the first commercial air delivery: 10 bolts of silk from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio, but it was a publicity stunt for their exhibition team.)
Others had even less grasp on the potential of the invention they were offered. Most of the military powers of the western world were trying to develop air power in the first years of the 20th century. The British half-heartedly toyed around with using aircraft as an attack vehicle but, for all practical purposes, better reconnaissance was their only goal.
Practical was an interesting word in the early development of the airplane. What could be done with a machine that few people could even imagine much less put to use? For hundreds of years, men had been trying to fly; there was hardly a mechanical genius from Leonardo da Vinci on up to the 20th century who didn't study the problem and dream of its solution. But, as Diamond points out, an actual need for the ability to fly had yet to be developed.
While the Wrights spent two years turning their Flyer into a practical airplane, their idea of practical extended only to its actual operation and performance as a flying machine. By the end of 1905, they had a machine that could take off, land and be reliably controlled in the air for up to an hour's flying time. Beyond that, no one had a clue about what it might do.
Practical or not, the idea of flying didn't lose its appeal once it was possible. Just as men throughout the ages had been intrigued by the challenge to fly, once flight was possible those same daredevils took to the air. Almost immediately, flying became a spectator sport.
As soon as the French were able to coax a plane into the air in 1906, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Louis Bleriot and others drew huge crowds even though they were barely hopping a few hundred feet. When Wilbur Wright made his first public flights in France in 1908, thousands made the trip to the countryside near LeMans to see him perform. Orville Wright's performances at Fort Myer, Va., later that year were just as popular.
At first, flying alone was enough to entertain. The crowds were awed by the fact the plane could rise into the air carrying a man and probably somewhat titillated by the idea they might witness a crash. When the pilot could turn the plane, flying a simple circle or figure eight, the crowd gasped in amazement. These astounding feats were recorded and published in the world's newspapers and newsreels, shared with millions of people who hadn't had the privilege of seeing powered flight with their own eyes.
Over the next few years, public exhibitions of flight became commonplace across Europe and America. At first the shows were straightforward performances at events such as the 1910 Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York that offered a $10,000 prize to the pilot who could fly fastest from Albany to New York City. By later that same year, teams of pilots were performing the Drop of Death and other acrobatics.
At the end of that year, according to Wright biographer Fred Howard, the Wright Co. books showed that the majority of its $100,000 profit was earned from the sale and licensing of airplanes for exhibition flying.
