The Wright Brothers - Creating your own expertise
The Wright brothers won because they systematically favored their own data and first principles over the established conventions of the "experts."
While their competitors—backed by universities and governments—had more funding and more credentials, they were ultimately focused on solving the wrong problems. The pieces to solve flight had been available for decades, but it took two bicycle mechanics from Ohio, who tilted their heads a slightly different way, to see the path to man-made flight clearly.
Their victory was built on three core, non-obvious insights.
§1. They Solved for Control, Not Power
The "experts" were obsessed with the engine. They were trying to build a powerful motor and attach it to a set of wings, hoping brute force would achieve flight.
The Wrights, as cyclists, understood the problem differently. They knew practical transport isn't about inherent stability (a bicycle falls over when left alone) but about controlling instability.
"My idea is merely to experiment and practice with a view to solving the problem of equilibrium... When once a machine is under proper control under all conditions, the motor problem will be quickly solved."
§2. They Invented Their Own Data
The "experts" were working from flawed, "accepted" data. When the Wrights' 1901 glider, built using the esteemed Otto Lilienthal's tables, performed terribly, they had a crisis of faith.
Instead of quitting, they concluded the expert data was wrong.
"so many of the long-established, supposedly reliable calculations and tables... had proven to be wrong... The accepted tables were, in a word, 'worthless.'"
Their solution was not only to find the data themselves, but to invent tools, machinery, and techniques to do so.
"They devised and built a small-scale wind tunnel—a wooden box 6 feet long and 16 inches square... For nearly two months the brothers tested some thirty-eight wing surfaces... 'those metal models told us how to build.'"
Their lack of resources made them more inventive. They were forced to build their own engines, experiments, and even nails. It forced them into this cheap, iterative process of gliding, failing, and learning, while their rivals, like Samuel Langley, spent $70,000 on "all-or-nothing" tests that were catastrophic and taught them nothing.
§3. They Engineered the Entire System
The Wrights were the first true systems engineers of flight. When they couldn't find a component that met their standards, they invented it from scratch.
- Propellers: They discovered that nobody knew how propellers worked, not even for ships.
"Much to their surprise, they could find no existing data on air propellers... after a hundred years in use the exact action of a screw propeller was still obscure. Once more they were left no choice but to solve the problem themselves." They correctly theorized a propeller was a wing rotating vertically and, using their own wind tunnel data, designed propellers that were 80% efficient, a massive leap.
It was remarked after their success that their solution seemed so simple in hindsight. But the leading minds of the time were blinded by their expertise, focused on the wrong problem (power) using the wrong data.
"The best dividends on the labor invested," they said, "have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power."
§Some more quotes I liked
- "The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power"
- "Too many people were beginning to believe that all of the world's problems had been solved" --> imagine how much came after this quote in the early 1900s!
- "And yet it was so simple, Borglum wrote, that one wondered why in the world human beings had not built one long before"
- "In 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for fifty years. Two years later, we ourselves were making flights" --> everybody is bad at predictions, even when you are the one creating change
- "Neither the impatience of waiting crowds, nor the sneers of rivals, nor the pressure of financial conditions not always easy, could induce him to hurry over any difficulty before he had done everything in his power to understand and overcome it" --> focus on the mission (flight), not on the crowd
- "Those who worked with him at the factory marveled at his meticulous craftsmanship, how he would make his own parts when needed, even a needle if necessary."
- "Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks"
- "Dayton ranked first in the country relative to population in the creation of new patents"
- "Make business first, pleasure afterward, and that guarded. All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden on others."
- "Every mind should be true to itself—should think, investigate and conclude for itself"
- "After the accident, Wilbur remained a recluse, more or less homebound for fully 3 years, 3 years when he began reading as never before"