Really? I learned about it long before then. In school, even, so it wasn’t just because I was a nerd who read everything.
I’d add a few more nines to that.
There’s this sort of weird effect where people discover that so-and-so didn’t “really” invent something and that it’s really just a bunch of existing things put together, and isn’t really deserving of the accolades. Or they find that someone else put things together a little earlier, and maybe deserves the “real” credit.
It’s not wrong but people should have a more relaxed and realistic view of how invention works in the first place. Early versions of inventions often go unrecognized because they’re impractical. But practicality is a significant advantage–possibly the most important one. And everyone is building on the work of others.
Even Einstein’s Special Relativity was “in the air” and built on the work of others, most of whom are unrecognized by the public. But there was significant value in putting the ideas together in one neat package, and Einstein deserves credit for that. Not sole credit, but unfortunately people tend to demand a simplified view of history.
Special Relativity was in the air, and would have been developed within a few years even without Einstein. But General Relativity, while it still stood on the shoulders of giants, put those pieces together in a way that nobody else was even close to.
That’s why I went with the example of Special Relativity 
. Though probably Hilbert would have gotten there eventually.
I’ve never heard or seen that legend. I have seen the story of the Wright Bros. written about in great detail including their comprehensive research on everything known about flight at the time and the long step by step process they used to design and develop the first controllable powered aircraft.
I suppose we should add “Legends told to children” as a corollary to the well established “Lies told to children”.
IOW, some simplification is necessary when explaining complex ideas to early, necessarily simple learners. The error lies in permitting the simplifications to stand unchallenged as the kids grow in age and sophistication.
And in not disclosing at the time that [whatever] is the easy version and there’s a lot more under the covers that you’ll be exposed to later.
Also Canadian mythology. Because to add to all the fun, both Canada and the US claim Bell as their own, since he did his pioneering work in both countries, first in Brantford, Ontario, where his family originally settled after immigrating from Scotland, and then later alternating between Boston and Brantford. Arguably, Bell did his most important pioneering work in Canada, but America’s claim derives from his historic US patent on the principles of the telephone.
Homer Simpson’s advice was:
People are afraid of new things. You should have just taken an existing
product and put a clock on it or something.
Thanks to my eye floaters, I saw the heading as Invasion of the telephone.
IIRC
“Communication! A telephonic invasion. I’m planning my escape!
I’m sorry I’m not home right now
I’m walking into spiderwebs”
Did they come from the Poles?
The Wright Brothers found out that the German’s (Otto Lilienthal) figures were wrong and they had to re-start from scratch. Likewise, the “help” they got from Octave Chanute is severely overstated, as Chanute didn’t know what he was doing.
Absolutely correct. Next to nothing was known about aerodynamics at the time. Even propellor design in the steamship industry was rather primitive and they started from scratch to design an effective propellor. What surprises me is how people can believe the outlandish stories of manned flying machines that preceded the Wright Flyer.
Similarly with other inventions, like TV, radio, steam railways (well, perhaps more than tinkering, but so many had several different originators working on different aspects)
Pretty much that is how it always works.
But in any case the Wright brother did invent the first airplane.
So, like with Edison and the Lightbulb. No, he didnt invent the electric light bulb. But what he did was perfect the design so that electric light bulbs were practical. Up until then, few could even last a whole day.
Yes, Bell filed his patent first. That makes him the winner.
I did not know that.
Philo Farnsworth is generally credited with invented the TV. But yep, others did work also.
John Baird would be the automatic UK answer for the inventor of television. His system was mechanical. Farnsworth’s was electronic so his was the more direct ancestor. Yet Baird did public demonstrations of every important television milestone before Farnsworth so he has a very good claim.
I’m not questioning you, but can you give me more information? It was my understanding that televison was not really practical before Farnsworth as the picture quality of mechanical television was low, and watching for a prolonged period caused severe headaches.
The image quality of early mechanical television was low, for sure. But the image quality of early electronic television was low as well. Both needed time, funding, and engineering genius to succeed. As said above, Edison did not even come close to inventing the light bulb, but he did invent a bulb that was higher quality and longer-lasting and one that led to the modern understanding of incandescent bulbs. Do we gainsay that achievement just because LED lights are far superior and rapidly taking over the industry?
I’m not remotely qualified to get into the technical details of early television. A good popular book, however, is Michael Ritchie’s Please Stand By: A Prehistory of Television. It contains this sentence.
The very first television system [in the U.S.] was a mechanical system, and it was not invented by Philo Farnsworth. [italics in original]
The inventor was Charles Francis Jenkins, a major name historically and utterly forgotten today. It was awful quality, except that the year was 1925. Farnsworth hadn’t even taken out his first patent. Baird was already doing demonstrations.
Brits credit Cooke and Wheatstone as the inventors of the telegraph, even though it’s not the system that Morse superseded them with. Brits would similarly credit Baird with television, because the earliest BBC transmissions - in 1929 - used his system. They switched over to an EMI electronic system in the 1930s, because even Baird realized that was technically superior.
These nuances are always lacking in the reductionistic system of crediting “firsts.” Who invented television? First define “television.” Nerd.
Thanks!
As noted above, until quite recently the US did not have a first-to-file patent priority. It was a first-to-invent (in the sense of writing it down in a dated notebook, for example.
(I was greatly troubled by the patent review policies of the universities I did research at. They required the researcher to send the school’s lawyers the potentially patentable information and they had 6 months or a year to decide whether to file. If they didn’t, the researcher could then file for the patent themselves. Bad enough before, but with first-to-file completely insane.)