Planning for Serendipity – Taking Flight
From the ideas from strange places department: So, if Wilber and Orville had decided to open a different kind of shop to pay the bills, let’s say a bakery for example, would they have flown today in 1903? (That would be December 17th, 1903) “While most engineers assumed that a successful aircraft would need to be inherently stable, as bicycle builders the Wrights made their living building vehicles that were inherently unstable.” NOVA Wright Brother’s Flying Machine (Currently on Hulu.com) The bike shop turned out to the the perfect training ground for the first successful aeronautic engineers. The leap concerning stability – …led to a focus on control – …onto a critical insight about wing warping which came when Wilber reached for a cardboard box containing an inexpensive tire tube. From giving a box a helical twist to steering a biplane. Serendipity. But as with all serendipitous moments (and most … Continue reading