Well, I wasn't convinced by the Brazilians' argument that catapults don't count, but then Otto Lilienthal's flights should also count. Either you want completely unaided flight, and Dumont did it first, or you don't, and Lilienthal's flights are the first.
Dumont did it first in the sense that he achieved a flight long enough, i.e. over 100 meter, in order to win the prize for such a flight that had been instituted a couple of years earlier.
A half of year before Santos Dumont, also in Paris, there had been other flight attempts that had succeeded to take off completely unaided, by rolling on wheels (by Traian Vuia), but the achieved lengths of sustained flight had been much shorter, too short to qualify for any prize.
So while the achievements of Santos Dumont are very commendable, the word "invention" is not really appropriate for them, because all he had done was to do better some of the things already done by others in their attempts to win the French flight prizes.
The Wright brothers have started from Otto Lilienthal's work. While their improvements have been extremely important, their work has also not started from zero, but it had built upon the work of the predecessors.
In the history of inventions, it is typically impossible to say that something has really begun with some inventor. Instead of that, the right way is to point to each inventor and show what they have done better than what existed before them.
The Wright brothers have invented many components of an airplane, which made powered flight possible, but it seems inappropriate to say that they have invented an "airplane".
The idea of making an "airplane", with fixed wings and with screw propellers, had been widespread for most of the second half of the 19th century, and it had been discussed in countless publications and in "heavier-than-air" flight clubs.
However, before the Wright brothers, nobody had succeeded to build such an airplane that actually worked, the main reason being the lack of an appropriate system of aircraft controls, like that conceived by the Wright brothers.
The patent obtained by the Wright brothers, is formulated very well and of course it does not claim to have invented any new kind of flying machine, but it claims certain new and useful improvements in flying machines of the airplane kind (most of which refer to the aircraft control surfaces).
If they are the first to build an airplane that "actually worked", then why would it be inappropriate to say they invented an airplane?
It wouldn't be appropriate to say "they were responsible for 100% of the technological development and research that led to this machine" but if that's what "invented" means then nobody has ever invented anything.
Their invention patent (US 821,393) correctly claims the invention of a 3-axis airplane orientation control system, not the invention of the airplane, which is treated as a well-known class of flying-machines, which is improved by their invention.
An airplane without good aircraft controls could start to fly without problems, but it would normally crash sooner or later, either due to flight instabilities or because it had to eventually land somewhere.
Say, if I invent everything to make a bike work but the wheels just happen to be a teeny tiny too small to actually allow someone to ride it uninterrupted.
You come and adjust them. Did you just invent the bike? Or did you build upon my previous invention(s) and perfected it, making us both partial inventors?
'if that's what "invented" means then nobody has ever invented anything.'
People invent things. But "airplane" turned out to be much more than one thing. Not all of them were invented by Curtiss (a local favorite), or by Santos-Dumont, or by Lilienthal, Caproni, the Wrights, or whoever.
I think it's fair to say someone invented a thing if they design and build the first one that actually works. The concept of an airplane had been around for a while by 1903, but nobody had one. Similarly today we have the concept of a warp drive. We even have that concept outside the realm of science fiction now, but we're far from having a working prototype and don't even know if a practical example can be built.
It's also fair to debate what qualifies as an airplane. If I were to list criteria, I would include two that the first Wright Flyer did not demonstrate: the ability to take off from level ground under its own power, and sufficient maneuverability to return to and land at the point of departure.
I had the impression it took off downhill for that flight, failing my criterion, but it actually took off from level ground with a strong headwind. I'll give it partial credit; I don't think its rail would have been long enough in calm wind.
The Flyer was on a rail with a wheeled cart. The fact that it moved forward under its own power (faster than Orville could run) demonstrated that it could take off in a calm, just that the rail would have had to be longer.
Their experiments with it ended when a gust flipped it on the ground and broke it beyond repair.
If someone came forward with a perpetual motion machine that allowed for infinite energy, no one would argue that they didn't invent it even though generations of cranks have come up with similar ideas. For any non-hacked definition of airplane, the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, they were the first ones to put all the pieces together for powered flight then actually go and do it.
The only source that will respond Ford invented the car is a person who has no idea and is simply guessing the first name comes to mind. It can't really even be contested since Benz's and Ford's inventions are decades apart.
I've never been taught that Ford invented the car, but instead Ford invented the mass production of cars. Not really sure where "Ford invented car" comes from
He was the first to mass produce cars. But given that cars and mass production already existed it was probably only a matter of time before someone decided to mass produce cars.
Nobody claims Ford invented the car. Its undisputed in the mainstream that Karl Benz did. What Ford achieved was making it into a viable mass market product. Ford's inventions had less to do with the car itself and more with the process of mass production. Ford's system was incredibly influential and very wide reaching. But the car was very much invented and known before he did that.
Exactly. Ford didn't actually invent anything. Kinda like Jobs and Woz didn't invent the IC or CPU or even PC. Ford was in tune with the innovations of the time and composed them in a novel and appealing way. His success came from his skilled execution and were more financial and social than technical in nature. Ford marketed cars to the middle class, and paid his employees well enough to buy the products they built.
I'm not even sure I would compare ford to Jobs or Woz. Woz is a talented engineer. Jobs was a great product guy. I've always thought of Ford as process/production expert. The Model T wasn't a particularly great car compared to its competition. What made it and Ford succeed was his production process made it cheaper than the competition. But his processes also allowed him to make it faster and he came up with the franchise system which gave Ford national reach at a time when every other car maker was regional. The Model T wasn't just cheaper than the competition, in many parts of the country it was realistically the only car you could buy for awhile.
Thats actually more interesting that LLMs answer based on language questions are asked, I never thought to test that. It would be nice if we got to a point where you train an LLM to genuinely figure out these nuances and fix its own model.
Google, I suspect, would do the same, if you were in Texas coffee's origin would not get you the result that mentions Yemen, Ethiopia would be the first result. This is how I won a $100 bet with a Texan who insisted that google gave him Ethiopia. The trouble is, we were in the Middle East when asking google for the bet.
If it makes you feel better, in the U.S. we learn that the Wright brothers used Lilienthal's glider data extensively in the R&D phases of their work. He managed to gather a lot of data on gliders and glide slopes which informed the brothers' earlier work. Their achievement summits their peers only in qualifications, the first:
The Wrights did use Lilienthal's data for their earlier gliders, but it turned out to be off by a factor of 2. That is why the Wrights built a wind tunnel to determine the correct values.
Lol - when I studied aerospace in France the hagiography literature was all about Louis Breguet and Louis Bleriot. I don't recall mention (i.e. in general conversation, offhand references in non-formal literature, or on posters, etc.) about the Wright brothers.
Oddly I don't recall much mention of Alberto Santos-Dumont either so, go figure.
