Chapter 24 - The Wright Brothers
Today's Chapter is based on the book “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough.
Buy it on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-McCullough/dp/1476728755
Here's what I have learned from the book:
Intellectual Curiosity
“Every mind should be true to itself—should think, investigate and conclude for itself.”
— Robert Ingersoll
Mark Twain once said, “don’t let your boy’s schooling interfere with his education.” Similarly, the Wright brothers’ father, Bishop Wright was a lifelong lover of books and understood the amazing value in reading. As a matter of fact, he would put much more value in informal education at home over formal education at school for both of his sons.
“He was never overly concerned about his children’s attendance at school. If one or the other of them chose to miss a day or two for some project or interest he thought worthy, it was all right. And certainly he ranked reading as worthy.”
— David McCullough on Bishop Wright
As a matter of fact, their father encouraged the family to read all the time. And more importantly, he wanted his children to have an open and receptive mind and to think for themselves. As such, it is no surprise that the Wright’s house was filled with amazing books from various subjects, from natural history to poetry:
“There could be found the works of Dickens, Washington Irving, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, a complete set of the works of Sir Walter Scott, the poems of Virgil, Plutarch’s Lives, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Thucydides. There were books on natural history, American history, a six-volume history of France, travel, The Instructive Speller, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, plus two full sets of encyclopedias.”
— David McCullough
In Orville Wright’s opinion, this intelligence curiosity that was cultivated from a young age by their father is the main reason for their success in creating the first successful motor-operated plane in history and the special advantage they had over the others that were also looking to master the sky. In fact, despite having no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own, the Wright Brothers still managed to be the first ones in mastering the art of flying.
“But it isn’t true to say we had no special advantages…the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”
— Orville Wright
The Wright Brothers’ story is a kind reminder of what we have learned from James Dyson, the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, who encouraged the idea that anyone could become an expert in a subject through reading and experimenting. As a matter of fact, being an avid reader is definitely a common trait among all the great individuals that we have learned from so far. As Charlie Munger once said, “in my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.”
“Anyone can become an expert in anything in six months, whether it is hydrodynamics for boats or cyclonic systems for vacuum cleaners. After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology.”
— James Dyson
Multidisciplinary Learning
“Learn what the rest of the world is like. The variety is worthwhile.”
— Richard Feynman
The Wright brothers’ story is also a great example of needing to have a multidisciplinary mind. As we have seen from Richard Feynman, by being knowledgeable in multiple disciplines, one can avoid falling into the Man with a Hammer syndrome, meaning that we become biased towards the tools that we possess to solve a problem, regardless of whether such tools are appropriate to the problem at hand. As Mark Twain once said, “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
“Each of us talked about what we thought the “ethics of equality” was, from our own point of view, without paying any attention to the other guy’s point of view. For example, the historian proposed that the way to understand ethical problems is to look historically at how they evolved and how they developed; the international lawyer suggested that the way to do it is to see how in fact people actually act in different situations and make their arrangements; the Jesuit priest was always referring to “the fragmentation of knowledge”; and I, as a scientist, proposed that we should isolate the problem in a way analogous to Galileo’s techniques for experiments; and so on.”
— Richard Feynman
In the Wright brothers’ case, they had to be knowledgeable in various disciplines to find the secret of the art of flying. Notably, to achieve their goals, Wilbur and Orville Wright had to gain knowledge on multiple disciplines such as animal mechanism, meteorology and mechanical engineering. In fact, based on the studies of Otto Lilienthal, Wilbur Wright believed that studying how birds fly was primordial in achieving human flight:
“In his letter to the Smithsonian, Wilbur had made mention of his interest in birds. To achieve human flight, he had written, was “only a question of knowledge and skill in all acrobatic feats,” and birds were “the most perfectly trained gymnasts in the world . . . specially well fitted for their work.””
— David McCullough
“By merely observing with close attention how the winged tribes perform their feats, by carefully reflecting on what we have seen, and, above all, by striving correctly to understand the modus operandi of what we do see, we are sure not to wander far from the path, which leads to eventual success.”
— Wilbur Wright
Similarly, the Wright brothers also understood the importance of mastering the weather and the ways of the wind to achieve their goal of flying. As such, Wilbur Wright had to make an enquiry to the United States Weather Bureau in Washington to study more about the prevailing winds around the country and to find the perfect location to experiment their flying:
“Wind was the essential, the brothers had already come to appreciate. And clearly, if ever they were to succeed with what they had set their minds to, they must learn—and learn from experience—the ways of the wind. In answer to an inquiry Wilbur sent to the United States Weather Bureau in Washington about prevailing winds around the country, they were provided extensive records of monthly wind velocities at more than a hundred Weather Bureau stations, enough for them to take particular interest in a remote spot on the Outer Banks of North Carolina called Kitty Hawk, some seven hundred miles from Dayton.” — David McCullough
Finally, in the same line of thought, after acquiring all the knowledge and skills required to fly, the Wright Brothers had to study mechanical engineering, mainly on their own, to build the first ever motor-operated plane. And, once they had their own creation, the Flyer III, on the market, the Wright brothers also had to master the principles of businesses. Despite their own belief, they were quite talented businessmen, partly due to their experience as owners of a bicycle shop in Ohio. As a matter of fact, they had a solid understanding on running a successful business. Notably, for example, they understood the importance of keeping shares of the business among themselves and had a sound business practice of only selling to those who wishes to buy rather than trying to force goods upon people.
“The point is this, we do not intend you to own twenty percent of any stock. We intend to own the stock. You are the selling agents.”
— Wilbur Wright
“It has for years been our business practice to sell to those who wished to buy, instead of trying to force goods upon people who did not want them. If the American Government has decided to spend no more money on flying machines till their practical use has been demonstrated in actual service abroad, we are sorry, but we cannot reasonably object. They are the judges.” — Wilbur Wright
Do-it-Yourself
“We had to go ahead and discover everything ourselves.”
— Orville Wright
As Isaac Newton once said, “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Similarly, the Wright brothers’ journey first started by reading the works from others who’ve studied the problem of mechanical and human flight. In fact, Wilbur Wright wrote to the Smithsonian Institute to retrieve all papers they had on the subject:
“I have been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight ever since as a boy I constructed a number of bats of various sizes after the style of Cayley’s and Pénaud’s machines. My observations since have only convinced me more firmly that human flight is possible and practicable. . . . I am about to begin a systematic study of the subject in preparation for practical work to which I expect to devote what time I can spare from my regular business. I wish to obtain such papers as the Smithsonian Institution has published on this subject, and if possible a list of other works in print in the English language.“
— Wilbur Wright
However, they quickly realized from their own experiments that the so-called experts’ studies were not as reliable as they thought. As such, the Wright brothers would have to do laboratory work on their own if they were to accomplish their goal of mastering the art of flying. While this was shocking and disappointing to them, this was not totally unexpected. As Wilbur Wright once said, “if one were looking for perfect safety, one would do well to sit on the fence and watch the birds. But if you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.”
“The adjustments of the machine are away off,” Orville explained to Katharine. The curvature, or “camber,” of the wings, from the leading edges to the rear, was too great and had to be changed. It was this that concerned them the most, the ideal camber, or curve, of the wing from its leading to its trailing edge, being that which gave the wing the most lift against the pull of gravity. What was so troubling was that the ratio they had gone by was exactly what Lilienthal had recommended, about 1 to 12, whereas for their glider of the year before, Machine No. 1, the brothers had used a ratio of 1 to 22. They stopped gliding for several days to rebuild—flatten—the wings back to a camber close to what it had been in 1900, and with fine results.”
— David McCullough
“It was not just that their machine had performed so poorly, or that so much still remained to be solved, but that so many of the long-established, supposedly reliable calculations and tables prepared by the likes of Lilienthal, Langley, and Chanute—data the brothers had taken as gospel—had proven to be wrong and could no longer be trusted. Clearly those esteemed authorities had been guessing, “groping in the dark.” The accepted tables were, in a word, “worthless.””
— David McCullough
For example, the Wright brothers found zero existing data on air propellers from their researches and had to solve this issue on their own if they were to accomplish their dream of building the first motor-operated airplane. This was a challenge that they quickly became obsessed with. As we have seen from James Dyson and the Edisonian approach, if there is no adequate theory to base on, inventing through trial and error discovery is far more superior than a more systematic and theoretical approach. A kind reminder that James Dyson had over 5,000 prototypes over five years of testing before his bagless vacuum cleaner went on the market.
“When I want to discover something, I begin by reading up everything that has been done in the past - that’s what all these books in the library are for. I see what has been accomplished at a great labor and expense in the past. I gather data of many thousands of experiments as a starting point, and then I make thousands more.”
— Thomas Edison
“The problem became more complex the more the brothers studied it. Much to their surprise, they could find no existing data on air propellers. They had assumed they could go by whatever rule-of-thumb marine engineers used for the propellers on boats, and accordingly drew on the resources of the Dayton library only to find that 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. “Our minds,” said Orville, “became so obsessed with it that we could do little other work.””
— David McCullough
Persistence
“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”
— Winston Churchill
Outside of their intellectual curiosity, what impresses me the most about the Wright brothers was their character and their persistence. As a matter of fact, they were initially often ridiculized by the media for trying the impossible and many believed that their efforts were in vain. And once they started to achieve success, many thought they were lying about their exploits. Despite all these mockeries, the Wright brothers persisted in the completion of their goal and once they provided sufficient demonstrations to the public of their accomplishments, they were applauded for their strength of character.
“That said, Delagrange openly declared in the article he wrote for L’Illustration, “Wilbur Wright is the best example of strength of character that I have ever seen. In spite of the sarcastic remarks and the mockery, in spite of the traps set up from everywhere all these years, he has not faltered. He is sure of himself, of his genius, and he kept his secret. He had the desire to participate today to prove to the world he had not lied.”
— David McCullough
“Much of the feeling back in Dayton was expressed in a wholehearted home-town tribute published in the Dayton Herald. All were extremely proud of the brothers, declared the paper, and not because that was the fashion of the moment, but because of “their grit, because of their persistence, because of their loyalty to conviction, because of their indefatigable industry, because of their hopefulness and above all, because of their sterling American quality of compelling success.””
— David McCullough
I believe the Wright brothers’ story is a perfect example of Kazuo Inamori’s belief that persistence eventually pays off. As we have learned previously, Inamori believed that one who improves steadily through persistence will eventually be rewarded for his or her efforts. As Inamori once said, “if we remain steadfast in our efforts and do what we can without retreating when that happens, something will surely come along to put wind in our sails.”
"I think many young people feel it's very hard to achieve success even when they grapple with problems before them and put in their best effort. To them I say, try taking your efforts to the point where you truly can do no more. If you work that hard, God will surely give you a wonderful hint to guide your way. You are bound to encounter a person who appreciates your efforts and gives you help.”
— Kazuo Inamori
Beyond the Book
Read "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" by Farnam Street
Read "The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking" by Farnam Street
Listen to "Founders: #300 James Dyson (Against the Odds)" by Founders Podcast