What was the context of Lord Kelvin's infamous statement about flying machines?

[Mangetout]

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (often referred to as 'Lord Kelvin') infamously stated (apparently during the time he was president of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge) that "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."

What I can't seem to find is the context of this quote. Can anyone help?

[Mangetout]

I meant to post this in GQ. Could someone please report it?

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

I meant to post this in GQ. Could someone please report it?
Done.

[Elendil's Heir]

I vaguely remember Lord Kelvin saying that, but don't know the context. I'm reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's axiom: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is very likely right. When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is impossible, he is very likely wrong."

[Czarcasm]

Moving thread from GD to GQ.

[CalMeacham]

I can't find any reference to the context, but plenty of reputable places citye it (giving somewhat different dates).


Nevertheless, he shouldn't have said it. By the time he did, several heavier-than-air craft already HAD flown. To begin with, there was Stringfellow's well-reported 1848 steam-powered biplane, which I wrote an article about in Teemings:

http://www.straightdope.com/teemings/issue15/calmeacham.html


There were also flights by spring-powered helicopters before 1895. For that matter, Chinese kids had been building and flying little "hand helicopters" for hundreds (if not thiousands) of years before that. Heck, you can make a case for Kites being heavier-than-air flying machines, and Kelvin must have seen those. About the time Kelvin made this statement, George Francis Fitzgerald was making short flights in his glider.

[Anaglyph]

Moving thread from GD to GQ.
"I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machines are impossible."

"I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of ... I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society." [Source]

"The air-ship, on the plan of those built by Santos-Dumont, is a delusion and a snare. A gas balloon, paddled around by oars, is an old idea, and can never be of any practical use. Some day, no doubt, some one will invent a flying machine that one will be able to navigate without having to have a balloon attachment. But the day is a long way off when we shall see human beings soaring around like birds." [TLWT, vol. 2, p. 1168]

"They never will be able to use dirigible balloons as a means of conveying passengers from place to place. There never was and never can be any commercial value to any such affair. It is all a delusion and a snare. Santos-Dumont is a very bright young man, but an air ship as planned by him is not practicable." [Said to reporters after having arrived in New York on April 19, 1902. Quoted in the New York Times, p.2, the next day.]

more (http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/quotes/)

[Elendil's Heir]

According to Wiki, Lord Kelvin also not-so-accurately predicted that radio would have no practical use, that X-rays were a hoax, and (in 1900) that all useful discoveries had already been made in physics.

[SmackFu]

Great list of awful predictions:
http://www.skygod.com/quotes/predictions.html

[Philster]

SmackFu, that list has incredibly good and bad quotes/predictions.

The one from Scientific American circa 1860 almost seem like a hoax it is so good. Too bad Scientific American can get its head out of its ass nowadays.

[Frylock]

SmackFu, that list has incredibly good and bad quotes/predictions.

The one from Scientific American circa 1860 almost seem like a hoax it is so good. Too bad Scientific American can get its head out of its ass nowadays.

Did you mean "can't"?

-FrL-

[Philster]

Did you mean "can't"?

-FrL-


Haha -- yes. "Too bad Scientific American can't..."

[Half Man Half Wit]

I can't provide an answer to the OP, but I've often wondered what it was that made Lord Kelvin say such a thing -- apart from the already successful flying machines CalMeacham mentioned, there's also just plain old birds, who are pretty clearly heavier than air, and also pretty clearly able to fly, so there's obviously no technical impossibility to heavier-than-air flight...
This has always led me to assume that their ought to be something missing about the quote, perhaps a qualifier that with the then state of the art engineering heavier than air flight was infeasible, otherwise, it'd imply that Kelvin believed birds have some magical means of achieving flight inaccessible to humans (or maybe he just didn't get out much).

[Mangetout]

I can't provide an answer to the OP, but I've often wondered what it was that made Lord Kelvin say such a thing -- apart from the already successful flying machines CalMeacham mentioned, there's also just plain old birds, who are pretty clearly heavier than air, and also pretty clearly able to fly, so there's obviously no technical impossibility to heavier-than-air flight...
This has always led me to assume that their ought to be something missing about the quote, perhaps a qualifier that with the then state of the art engineering heavier than air flight was infeasible, otherwise, it'd imply that Kelvin believed birds have some magical means of achieving flight inaccessible to humans (or maybe he just didn't get out much).
That is in fact my motive for asking the question in this thread - I'm wondering if the context makes it less ridiculous - maybe he thought that heavier than air flight couldn't be scaled up beyond birds, or something.

But looking at the transcript of the interview available on the site linked by Anaglyph - here (http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/interview_aeronautics_and_wireless.html) - it really does start to look like he just believed his own opinions a little too strongly. (This interview is apparently not the source of the quote I'm asking about, but it does discuss the same subject matter)

[Half Man Half Wit]

That is in fact my motive for asking the question in this thread - I'm wondering if the context makes it less ridiculous - maybe he thought that heavier than air flight couldn't be scaled up beyond birds, or something.
Yes, I realized while writing that my whole post essentially amounted to asking 'what's the context of this quotation?', but I hate to throw things away while they're still perfectly good, so I decided to put up with the redundancy. :)

But looking at the transcript of the interview available on the site linked by Anaglyph - here (http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/interview_aeronautics_and_wireless.html) - it really does start to look like he just believed his own opinions a little too strongly. (This interview is apparently not the source of the quote I'm asking about, but it does discuss the same subject matter)
But it's still a far cry from calling heavier-than-air flight flat-out impossible -- he merely states it is impracticable, and ever will be; a bold assertion, surely, but not quite the denial implicit in the original quotation.

[Mangetout]

Yes, I realized while writing that my whole post essentially amounted to asking 'what's the context of this quotation?', but I hate to throw things away while they're still perfectly good, so I decided to put up with the redundancy. :)No problem at all - I'm glad it wasn't just me.

[maggenpye]

With heavier than air flights already happening, was Kelvin a victim of the poor communication of the time? Were the reports local? Reliable? Believable? One of our TV Stations used to run a montage of footage of, a whole bunch of silly and bizzare 'flying' machines from the turn of the 1900's - some that mimicked bird flight, a lot that mimicked the insanity of their inventors. If that's the sort of thing Lord Kelvin was used to seeing, it would fit that he'd be skeptical.

Was the context of that statement an unreliable print media?

Leslie Charteris did a nice wee early Saint story about some conman trying to get investors for his prototype 'helicopter'. The conman demonstrated his machine knowing that it could never go into production - he'd been conned into buying the plans himself. The Saint bought up all the stock, making sure to get receipts for himself and the friends who'd already lost their money. The kick being that, at the time, helicopters were only theoretically possible, but no-one had worked out how to stabilise them. The conman, not realising this, had thought his plans were wrong and engineered his way around the 'faulty' design - making the first commercially viable chopper. The conman knew helicopters weren't profitable, he didn't know why. The Saint knew that Helicoptors couldn't fly until he saw one for himself.

Maybe Kelvin 'knew' what everyone except the crackpots and looneys knew, and any isolated incident would have to be taken with a grain of salt.

There are conflicting claims about the first flight even now. New Zealand's Richard Pearce eventually accepted that the Wright Brothers were quicker, but I believe there are some European claims for the title.

Or maybe Kelvin was just a jerk and I should invest in that water powered engine the bloke down the road was hawking.

[ralph124c]

I really think it was Dr. Simon Newcomb (noted astronomer) who pronounced heavier-than-air flight impossible. The best such prediction was Dr. Earnest Rutherford (nuclear physicist)-the man who correctly identified the structure of the nucleus:
"anyone who is thinking about extracting energy from radioactivity, is talking moonshine!"
-This was just 5 years before Streisman and Meitnor split the atom.

[Xema]

... he shouldn't have said it. By the time he did, several heavier-than-air craft already HAD flown. To begin with, there was Stringfellow's well-reported 1848 steam-powered biplane, which I wrote an article about in Teemings:
http://www.straightdope.com/teemings/issue15/calmeacham.html
There were also flights by spring-powered helicopters before 1895. For that matter, Chinese kids had been building and flying little "hand helicopters" for hundreds (if not thiousands) of years before that.
Though cites seem to be lacking, I've always understood that the context of the quote is "aerial navigation" - the common name at that time for the idea of manned, controlled, flight. This would account for his not taking much notice of small flying models.

[BTW, your Teemings article contains this: "Curtiss was then involved in a patent lawsuit with the Wright brothers about flight, and took the commission as a way of puncturing the Wright’s claims. Wright was able to make the Aerodrome fly, albeit with extensive modifications"
which should read: "Curtiss was then involved in a patent lawsuit with the Wright brothers about flight, and took the commission as a way of puncturing the Wrights' claims. Curtiss was able to make the Aerodrome fly, albeit with extensive modifications"]


About the time Kelvin made this statement, George Francis Fitzgerald was making short flights in his glider.
More to the point, Otto Lilienthal had been making numerous short flights for at least 3 years (indeed, FitzGerald's glider was a Lilienthal design.)

[CalMeacham]

Though cites seem to be lacking, I've always understood that the context of the quote is "aerial navigation"

If you have info about the context of the quote, you should share it -- that's precisely what the OP is asking about. Is this something beyond what you think it should mean?

[Xema]

There are conflicting claims about the first flight even now. New Zealand's Richard Pearce eventually accepted that the Wright Brothers were quicker, but I believe there are some European claims for the title.
About the only possible European claim for manned, powered, heavier-than-air flight prior to Dec 1903 would be the experiments of Clement Ader. He claimed a flight of around 1000 feet in 1897, and was able to put forward some evidence for it. But in 1910, a report from a commission that had observed the attempt was made public, proving that no flight had been achieved.

There were also claims of a short (50-meter), low-altitude (under 1-meter) powered flight by Ader in 1890. This may have happened, but was no more aerodynamically significant than a motorcycle jump (the machine had no provision for any sort of control).

[Elendil's Heir]

I seem to remember a Time magazine essay about how the head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recommended, sometime in the late 19th century, that the office should be closed, as all useful inventions had already been made.

[Deeg]

According to Wikiquote (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_Kelvin) the quote is sourced from The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (1984) by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky. I have no idea regarding the veracity of the book (I'm dubious) but perhaps someone can pick it up and see what it says.

[Xema]

If you have info about the context of the quote, you should share it
Sorry if I didn't make it clear, but I haven't been able to come up with a cite that the context of the quote is aerial navigation.

Yet I'd argue that it stretches credulity to believe he was saying that no man-made object could possibly fly. Such things were indeed commonplace in 1895. For example, the Wrights received a toy helicopters as a gift from their father in 1877.

[CalMeacham]

I seem to remember a Time magazine essay about how the head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recommended, sometime in the late 19th century, that the office should be closed, as all useful inventions had already been made.


This quote has twice been debunked in the pages of The Skeptical Inquirer. No one can locate an actual source for a serious statement from an officer of the Patent Office saying anything of the sort. It originally appeared in the Spring 1989 issue, pp. 310-313 and was reprinted in the May-June 1993 issue


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_3_27/ai_100755224

It is rare that we feel moved to republish an earlier SKEPTICAL INQUIRER article. But the myth that a patent commissioner once resigned because "everything that can he invented has been invented" keeps being uncritically repeated in prominent news outlets. So we thought it would he interesting and useful to reprint Samuel Sass's brief article investigating that claim, "A Patently False Patent Myth," from our Spring 1989 issue. The article has not appeared in any SI anthology. Author Sass has slightly revised one paragraph, and at the end he provides an update.

For close to a century there has periodically appeared in print the story about an official of the U.S. Patent Office who resigned his post because he believed that all possible inventions had already been invented. Some years ago, before I retired as librarian of a General Electric Company division, I was asked by a skeptical scientist to find out what there was to this recurring tale. My research proved to be easier than I had expected. I found that this matter had been investigated as a project of the D.C. Historical Records Survey under the Works Projects Administration. The investigator, Dr. Eber Jeffery published his findings in the July 1940 Journal of the Patent Office Society.

Jeffery found no evidence that any official or employee of the U.S. Patent Office had ever resigned because he thought there was nothing left to invent. However, Jeffery may have found a clue to the origin of the myth. In his 1843 report to Congress, the then-commissioner of the Patent Office, Henry L. Ellsworth, included the following comment: "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end." As Jeffery shows, it's evident from the rest of that report that Commissioner Ellsworth was simply using a bit of rhetorical flourish to emphasize that the number of patents was growing at a great rate. Far from considering inventions at an end, he outlined areas in which he expected patent activity to increase, and it is clear that he was making plans for the future.

When Commissioner Ellsworth did resign in 1845, his letter of resignation certainly gave no indication that he was resigning because he thought there was nothing left for the Patent Office to do. He gave as his reason the pressure of private affairs, and stated, "I wish to express a willingness that others may share public favors and have an opportunity to make greater improvements." He indicated that he would have resigned earlier if it had not been for the need to rebuild after the fire of 1836, which had destroyed the Patent Office building. In any case, the letter of resignation should have put an end to any notion that his comment in the 1843 report was to be taken literally.

Unfortunately, the only words of Commissioner Ellsworth that have lived on are those about the advancement of the arts taxing credulity and presaging the period when human improvement must end. For example, the December 1979 Saturday Review contained an article by Paul Dickson titled "It'll Never Fly, Orville: Two Centuries of Embarrassing Predictions." He lists a pageflil of "some of the worst wrongheaded predictions." Ellsworth's rhetorical sentence is included with such laughable statements as that said by Napoleon to Robert Fulton: "What sir, you would make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I pray excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense.

If in the case of Commissioner Ellsworth there was at least a quotation out of context on which the "nothing left to invent" story was based, a more recent myth attributing a similar statement to a commissioner who served a half-century later is totally baseless. This news story surfaced in the fall of 1985, when full-page advertisements sponsored by the TRW Corporation appeared in a number of leading periodicals, including Harper's and Business Week.

These ads had as their theme "The Future Isn't What It Used to Be." They contained photographs of six individuals, ranging from a baseball player to a president of the United States, who had allegedly made wrong predictions. Along with such statements as "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote," attributed to President Cleveland, and "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom," attributed to physicist Robert Millikan, there is a prediction that was supposedly made by Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office Charles H. Duell. The words attributed to him were: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." The date given was 1899.

Since I was certain that the quotation was spurious, I wrote to the TRW advertising manager to ask its source. In response to my inquiry, I received a letter referring me to two books, although I had specifically asked for the primary and nor secondary sources. The books were The Experts Speak, by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, published in 1984 by Pantheon, and The Book of Facts and Fallacies, by Chris Morgan and David Langford, published in 1981 by St. Martin's Press.......

(see the link for the rest)



See also http://www.ipmall.fplc.edu/hosted_resources/PatentHistory/posass.htm

[bonzer]

But looking at the transcript of the interview available on the site linked by Anaglyph - here (http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/interview_aeronautics_and_wireless.html) - it really does start to look like he just believed his own opinions a little too strongly. (This interview is apparently not the source of the quote I'm asking about, but it does discuss the same subject matter)

I'm not aware of any more detailed discussion from Kelvin of his doubts. The oft-quoted remarks he made are generally lacking in context and justification. He was extemely widely quoted in the press at the time, so it's hardly surprising to find him expressing essentially unsupportable opinions off-the-cuff. However, I will note that the interview only really touches on controllable flight. Thus he's not denying that Lilienthal flew, he's suggesting that he couldn't do so safely. Similarly, his objections about airships are whether they can do more than effectively drift with the wind.

That is in fact my motive for asking the question in this thread - I'm wondering if the context makes it less ridiculous - maybe he thought that heavier than air flight couldn't be scaled up beyond birds, or something.

By contrast, Simon Newcomb did explicitly explain his reservations in his famous 1903 popular article (http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v3p167y1977-78.pdf) (a pdf). While wrong in hindsight, his arguments were cogent and the article is clearly written and well worth reading.

[tanstaafl]

It looks to me as if he meant that practical flying machines were impossible using the technology of the time. Consider this quote that Anaglyph posted above...

"The air-ship, on the plan of those built by Santos-Dumont, is a delusion and a snare. A gas balloon, paddled around by oars, is an old idea, and can never be of any practical use. Some day, no doubt, some one will invent a flying machine that one will be able to navigate without having to have a balloon attachment. But the day is a long way off when we shall see human beings soaring around like birds." [TLWT, vol. 2, p. 1168]
That, to me, sounds as if he is saying that it could be done, just not at the time. The only mistake he seems to have made is overestimating how long it would take to become practical.

[maggenpye]

About the only possible European claim for manned, powered, heavier-than-air flight prior to Dec 1903 would be the experiments of Clement Ader. He claimed a flight of around 1000 feet in 1897, and was able to put forward some evidence for it. But in 1910, a report from a commission that had observed the attempt was made public, proving that no flight had been achieved.

There were also claims of a short (50-meter), low-altitude (under 1-meter) powered flight by Ader in 1890. This may have happened, but was no more aerodynamically significant than a motorcycle jump (the machine had no provision for any sort of control).

There's a few (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_flying_machine) more than that - but I wasn't denying the Wright's their claim - I was trying to find context for Lord Kelvin's skepticism.

At a time when there were multiple claims, from sources of varying reliability, Kelvin may have only witnessed attempts that were so far off base that the other claims could also be dismissed.

Film was in its infancy, there was no way of transmitting pictures faster than trains could carry them. No instant report by radio. Kelvin's fastest information would have arrived by morse code.

It's all very well for us to say that aerodynmics are logical and an intelligent man like Lord Kelvin should have realised what was possible, but early planes were developed along different lines because even the makers were trying to work it out as they went.

The Wrights used a bi-plane model with 'pusher' propellers to keep the aircraft stable - Pearse (to my eternal shame, I spelt his name wrong previously) used a mono wing with a single tractor propeller, using the low centre of gravity for stability. Pearse also used aelierons, but sited them in the wrong place, so even if he'd flown earlier, he'd still have trouble claiming controlled flight.

Both invented heavier than air flight independantly - the laws of physics were the same for each, but their methods of using those laws had to be worked out from scratch. The Wrights' plane is very similar to the bi-planes that followed it. Pearse's is very similar to modern microlites.

wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#Competing_claims) - also has a section detailing the Wrights' troubles having their invention recognised, The Paris edition of the Herald Tribune headlined a 1906 article on the Wrights "FLYERS OR LIARS?" , which would put Lord Kelvin's 1895 quote into context. People still didn't believe it three years after it happened, why should he have believed it 8 years before?

[Xema]

Both invented heavier than air flight independantly - the laws of physics were the same for each, but their methods of using those laws had to be worked out from scratch. The Wrights' plane is very similar to the bi-planes that followed it. Pearse's is very similar to modern microlites.
The important difference is that the Wrights developed and patented a practical system of 3-axis control (which has been fundamental to about 98% of manned flight ever since). Pearse did not.

[maggenpye]

Yes, their approaches were different, as were the approaches of the other inventors - most were not successful - that was my point.

Kelvin would have known more unsucessful attempts (n>0) than sucessful ones (0) at the time he made the quote - even though the other plane makers had the same knowledge of physics that the Wrights and Kelvin did.

I'm not arguing the details of powered flight - I'm trying to put Kelvin's attitude in context, as per the OP.

[samclem]

If you start out by rereading the very useful post #7 by Anaglyph, you'll see under the section titled "On Aeronautics" four quotes attributed to Kelvin. The last three quotes all have quite verifiable links to sources. The first, the one in question in the OP, has no link. That should be your first clue.

The statement "I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machines are impossible." is a paraphrase of what Mangetout asked about in the OP.

I have no doubt that the quote attibuted to Kelvin in this or a similar form didn't happen.

[Xema]

Kelvin would have known more unsucessful attempts (n>0) than sucessful ones (0) at the time he made the quote
Agreed - the statement would be a piece of utter nonsense if made after the appearance of a successful flying machine.

[Elendil's Heir]

The Wrights were very wary of patent infringement and there were still doubters that they had actually made the first controlled flight for several years after the historic Kitty Hawk flight.

CalMeacham, thanks for the info on the spurious remark by a U.S. patent official. Ignorance fought!

[maggenpye]

Agreed - the statement would be a piece of utter nonsense if made after the appearance of a successful flying machine.
A lot of people made similar statements after the fact - as previously stated by several posters. There wasn't enough reliable reporting for such an event to be taken on trust. The Wrights didn't help by refusing more public demonstrations (as Elendil's Heir said, for fear of their work being copied). That disbelief wasn't "utter nonsense", it was ignorance of the facts.

To clarify once more - there were attempts at powered, controlled flight, maybe none successful, definitely none proven during the time Kelvin made the statement. Even in 1907, when he died, there was still no definitive proof that the Wrights had flown - they waited till they had not only the patent, but also production contracts before staring flight demos again in 1908.

Again, you seem to be missing the 'context' - that Lord Kelvin did not have direct proof that any flight had been made, he had unreliable second or third-hand reports. The Wrights certainly had flown before he died, but he still would have had no proof and therefore no reason to alter his belief.