Chris Zell wrote:
I understand that the rejection of reality in the case of the
Wrights went to astounding extremes. Newspapers spoke of their
efforts as a hoax while any reporter could simply wander down to the
area where they were testing and watch them fly.
Yup. In the summer of 1904 and 1905 they flew fairly often, although
unannounced. (They could not announce flights; there were too many
glitches from the weather and mechanical failures to know if they
would get off the ground on any given day.) They were in plain sight
of a trolley car. The car operator would often stop so that the
passengers could watch. The Wrights asked prominent citizens of
Dayton to sign affidavits saying they had watched the flights. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthewrightb.pdf
The reporters were not all hostile, but they did not understand the
significance. One asked them "have you done anything interesting
lately?" Orville responded, "we flew in a circle the other day." The
reporter said (as I recall), "Oh, that's interesting, well . . . call
me if you fly a long time, say for an hour." Perhaps the reason he
was so blase was because people had flown blimps for hours at a time
over long distances and around the Eiffel Tower. Some reporters did
not grasp the difference between lighter-than-air and
heavier-than-air aircraft. Even if they understood the physical
difference, they probably did not appreciate the potential
performance differences; i.e., speed, maneuverability and so on.
Modern reporters sometimes have difficulty understanding the
difference between electrochemical fuel cells with cold fusion cells.
They do not realize that nuclear energy is millions of times more
energy dense than chemical energy.
I think it most critical to produce a simple useful product based on
cold fusion - or whatever new principle is to be accepted - and then
ignore the critics and academics.
Airplanes before 1912 were anything but useful! They were deathtraps.
At this point we need the academics. We should ignore the critics.
The Wrights should have! They should have dealt with the British War
Office instead of the U.S. War Department, because the British
understood and appreciated what they had accomplished. Cold fusion
researchers should make more of an effort to reach to their friends.
As I have often said, there is tremendous latent support out there.
It is waiting to be tapped. If only the cold fusion researchers would
make their own case more clearly with much more credible detail, I
think they would get a lot more financial support and technical
assistance from mainstream researchers. Unfortunately, just as the
Wrights did, they expect others to believe them because they know
themselves to be honorable people, and they are miffed when other
people express suspicion and ask for more details and bona fides.
The Wrights should have realized that the U.S. army officers had good
reason to demand proof. The Wrights read mass media and science
journal articles about aviation as assiduously as I read articles
about cold fusion. They were tied into a network of people such as
Chanute who forwarded information to them. They knew all about the
Langley "scandal" (as it was considered at the time). So they should
have understood where those army officers were coming from. Along the
same lines, cold fusion researchers should understand why many
mainstream scientists who do not actively oppose them are still
reluctant to believe them. They should take steps to convince these
people, but they seldom do. They, like the Wrights, almost seem to
consider it beneath their dignity to make their own case.
The other mistake made by both the Wrights and cold fusion
researchers is that they are subtle. Understated. They make technical
assertions that only an expert can appreciate. They should heed
Winston Churchill's advice:
"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or
clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit
it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack."
This is vital because people are not familiar with cold fusion. Even
scientists don't get some aspects of it which should be obvious,
simply because they are unfamiliar with it. Read the 1901 Wright
paper, or von Neumann's early papers describing computer
architecture. Ask yourself how well you would have understood these
documents if you had never seen an airplane or computer, and you
started off with no idea how they might work. The Wright paper is a
blizzard of details: wing loading, center of mass, angle of
incidence, and blah, blah, so if you were hearing the presentation
you might miss the significance of this statement:
". . . That with similar conditions large surfaces may be controlled
with not much greater difficulty than small ones, if the control is
effected by manipulation of the surfaces themselves, rather than by a
movement of the body of the operator."
That's revolutionary. It is perhaps the single most important
breakthrough in the history of aviation, although there were lots
more described in this paper, such as the "pressure testing machine"
(wind tunnel). In cold fusion, the equivalent would be something
like: "We can dispense with electrochemistry and the double
structured cathode, and prevent sintering by using purified
nanoparticles dispersed in a matrix of some other material." That may
well sound like "buzz, buzz, blah, blah" to the uninitiated, even to
a person with considerable technical knowledge.
- Jed
