Re:Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100
by sillysaurus3 on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @11:27PM
(#12554111)
I can't find the link now, but I read somewhere that it took YEARS after the Wright brothers had achieved first flight to get the attention of the world. People didn't see how transformative that thing could become, yet the proof of concept was there.
Wrights were actually very secretive and they were reluctant to publish anything before they got the patent. They were so adamant about the patent that they didn't do any public demonstration of flight for years until they were literally forced by competing claims. In those times people making claims for "heavier than air" flights were numerous and it was hard to take anyone seriously unless they do demonstration. They not only chose not to do so until they got patent but also did almost nothing to enhance their technology meanwhile. Their contribution except for first flight is very marginal and their rest of the lives are dominated by nothing but patent worries, bringing massive lawsuits on others and getting royalties. They also made a very generic patent claim essentially asserting that any system that produces lift is covered by it. This produced a lot of friction in bringing new innovations to market leaving USA significantly behind of Europe.
In addition to this, there were flight enthusiasts all over the world, and particularly in France. They were hang-glider enthusiasts at the time, as that was the cutting-edge flight technology. One of the famous hang-glider pilots died due to his belief that a hang-glider ought to be controlled by shifting one's body weight, which led to a fatal stall. This further convinced the Wright brothers that "the control problem" was the most important problem to focus on.
A lot of people wanted to fly.
This is all tangential to your point, though, and wasn't meant to take anything away from it.
The truth is the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433966
Wrights were actually very secretive and they were reluctant to publish anything before they got the patent. They were so adamant about the patent that they didn't do any public demonstration of flight for years until they were literally forced by competing claims. In those times people making claims for "heavier than air" flights were numerous and it was hard to take anyone seriously unless they do demonstration. They not only chose not to do so until they got patent but also did almost nothing to enhance their technology meanwhile. Their contribution except for first flight is very marginal and their rest of the lives are dominated by nothing but patent worries, bringing massive lawsuits on others and getting royalties. They also made a very generic patent claim essentially asserting that any system that produces lift is covered by it. This produced a lot of friction in bringing new innovations to market leaving USA significantly behind of Europe.
In addition to this, there were flight enthusiasts all over the world, and particularly in France. They were hang-glider enthusiasts at the time, as that was the cutting-edge flight technology. One of the famous hang-glider pilots died due to his belief that a hang-glider ought to be controlled by shifting one's body weight, which led to a fatal stall. This further convinced the Wright brothers that "the control problem" was the most important problem to focus on.
A lot of people wanted to fly.
This is all tangential to your point, though, and wasn't meant to take anything away from it.