Peter Heckert <[email protected]> wrote: Yes, here is the reason why they did not believe: > http://youtu.be/kEdtvct6Tf0 > > The Wright brothers where not the only one. There where hundreds of others, > that built -from our todays viewpoint- ridiculous and funny machines. . . . >
On the other hand, by 1912 every newspaper in Europe and the U.S. had published extensive accounts and hundreds of photographs. Just about every Prime Minister, King, President and VIP has observed flights heaped praise upon the aviators. In 1911, a special issue of Scientific American devoted to aviation reports that "more than half a million men are now actively engaged in some industrial enterprise that has to do with navigation of the air." The French and German armies were hard at work developing aviation for warfare, and in 1914 a German pilot flew 1900 kilometers in 21 hours 50 minutes. In other words, the weight of evidence from authoritative sources in favor of it was much stronger than evidence of fraud. That did not stop irrational people and uneducated people from rejecting the claim. As I said, they resembled the 9/11 deniers of today. Such people will always be with us. > People had no TV. They have seen this in cinema and of course journalists > select the most funny and ridiculous examples and gave false reports. > There where a lot of unbelieveable rumours and untrue stories. > But such rumors were not featured in on the front pages of every major newspaper and scientific journal, and in speeches by the U.S. president. The U.S. Congress did not award a Congressional Gold Medal on the strength of a rumor. (March 4, 1909) These sources of information had credibility. Some sources are more credible than others. People in 1912 understood that as much as they do today. When the U.S. president says "we killed Bin Laden" I assume you give that more credibility than an Internet rumor that Bin Laden was seen yesterday buying a bagel in the Bronx. Could be there was a pioneer that did fly and did a better job than the > Wright brothers and you dont know him? > Possibly nobody knows him. This is possible. > That is extremely unlikely, for technical reasons somewhat beyond the scope of the discussion. It was not possible to fly without extensive technical knowledge, careful mathematical engineering modeling of the aircraft, and good wind-tunnel data. There is no evidence that anyone prior to the Wrights had such knowledge. Before 1830 or so, they could not have had it. The basic physics were not discovered. People could no more invent an airplane before that then they could have developed an electronic computer. Trying to build one by intuition, trial and error, or based on incorrect data was suicidal, as Lilienthal demonstrated. The history of early aviation is well documented. Many serious people, such as Langley, Bell and Maxim were paying close attention and spending large sums of money on it. I do not think it is possible there were hidden successes. See: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthewrightb.pdf - Jed
