[ih] what's an invention, was Review: Yasha Levine's "Surveillance Valley"

[John Levine]

In article <46ec716cb643a587bb3aabccaebf6537.squirrel at webmail.ic.unicamp.br> you write:
>
>regarding innovation and airplanes I recommend reading
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont

Santos-Dumont did some interesting stuff but he didn't build a heavier
than air plane as opposed to a balloon until 1906.  A good biography
in English is "Wings of Madness" by Paul Hoffman (not the one we
know.)

The Wrights were excellent engineers, who solved a bunch of
engineering problems to create a working plane.  They invented the
wind tunnel and used it to test airfoils and propellers, having found
that the existing tables for airfoils were wrong.  Their engine was
the first to have an aluminum crankcase, which made it much lighter.
There were a lot of people working on airplanes in the early 1900s but
it's clear enough that the Wrights were the first to put the pieces
together and build planes that flew and had controls that worked.

Unfortunately they were also control freaks who wanted to control
everything about their airplanes.  They got into huge patent fights
with Glenn Curtis whose planes worked better.  (He used ailerons,
the Wrights twisted the wings.)  If they had more sense they would
have formed a patent pool with Curtis and made a lot more money
from better planes.

There is surely a lesson here about innovation and invention.  The
technology was simple enough in 1903 that a pair of gifted mechanics
could self-fund to build and fly a plane.  But as the technology
progressed, I doubt that anyone could have done a self-funded jet
engine in the 1940s.

ObComputer: Konrad Zuse built his mechanical Z1 and relay Z2 on his
own, in his parents' apartment but I don't think there's been any
significant solo work since then.  The Apple ][ was a tour de force of
assembling parts made by other larger companies.  Wozniak created an
excellent design using low cost parts, but Jobs bamboozled Intel
into providing them with enough 2K RAMs to build it.