Hope I can word this to where everyone gets it, because as I get older I find I not only have “brain farts”, sometimes I have the whole BM! 
Relatively speaking, once the Wright Brothers made their inaugural flight with that first airplane were improvements on that “invention” made faster than any other, such as say, the telephone?
I put invention in quotes up there because I know they didn’t invent flight, but didn’t know (right off the bat) another word to use.
Thanks
Q
I don’t know if this belongs in GQ, because I doubt that there is a single “correct” answer, but IMHO, I think the computer would outstrip the airplane in terms of accelerated progress.
What about audio recording?
It started out with a metal tube and a needle that was hand turned, and has evolved into the digital recordings (MP3 and related formats) of today.
The quality of electircal wiring and fixtures accelerated at a tremendous rate in the late 1800’s.
I think you may be right (with of both your responses), but when you consider the technology available today as compared to what they had during the Wright Brothers’ era, is it still a viable assertion?
Not arguing your point, just wondering if that should be taken into consideration?
Q
I think computers would win as well.
I know a fair amount about the history of aviation. In many ways, building the first group of successful airplanes was dependent on someone inventing ways to make the engine light enough and powerful enough to power an airplane. The Wright Brothers don’t really get enough credit but they were very detailed and skilled scientist/inventors. Flyer I wasn’t the result of luck or some stunt, they had been building up to it for years starting with gliders and then inventing the whole control systems themselves. Even after they first successfully flew in in 1903, it was almost three years before the rest of the world, including many people that were still trying to “invent” the airplane, were made plainly aware of what they had already done. By that time, the Wright Brothers had competition for a position in history and public demonstrations against their competitors showed that they could literally fly rings around the others.
Once the basic configuration was figured out along with the ideal control surfaces, I beleive that the rest was mainly just smaller engineering challenges dependent on the material available rather than any big theoretical problems to solve. By the 1930’s we had what we might call the first modern airplanes. 30 years or so is rather short but several, more recent technologies, including the PC have moved much quicker. By the 1950’s, small plane technology had become mature and really only started advancing a significant amount again about ten years ago when composites were used in the airframe and there were several leaps in avionics.
The modern airliner came into being in the 1950’s as well. That of course was dependent on the jet engine which caused a huge leap in airliner, business, and military aircraft. However, passenger jet technology really hasn’t advanced that much in the past 50 years in an absolute sense. They are quieter, more full efficient, safer, and have much better avionics now but those are really incremental improvements. They won’t get you across the continent or to Europe much faster and the basic cabin configuration looks the same. The Concorde was a dead end for something that was predicted to revolutionize travel. There are no supersonic airliners realistically on the horizon today so airline travel in 2030 will likely seem much like it does today.
I say airplanes advancing in a few dramatic starts rather than improving dramatically over long periods of time like computers. The early era consisted mainly of improving the engineering and figuring out what an airplane should look like. Things stabilized by the 1930’s and then there was another huge leap when jet engines were introduced. The modern airliner came into being and then things slowed way down on everything but the military front for a few decades. It is picking up again due to advances in electronics and materials.
Overall, it was a pretty good run but it has been over 100 years now and I think lots of things have probably matched that record.
Specifically, one of the 7 unique new things the Wright brothers did was the invention of the wind tunnel, and the use of it to study the aerodynamics of various wing and propeller shapes.
One of the problems with this kind of question is how do you define " how fast" and “how far” with respect to invention development? Is from glider to supersonic airliner in 70 years as fast as from punch card to flash memory in 40? Copper wire telephones to celphones in 100 years? Telegraph to Internet? Wire to fiber? How do you quantify improvements to a line of technology and compare them?
Surely the computer has to be a contender for this one, invented around WW2, and progressing according to Moore’s Law to this day.
Or do you suggest those are all intervals which are too long? “Most rapid development” doesn’t need to mean “inception to modern day”. That discounts older technologies that progressed rapidly when first discovered, but have only undergone gradual improvements since. I think what a statement like the OP’s is getting at is that airplanes progressed from the Wright Brothers experimental models to WWI fighters in a bit over 10 years - an astonishing speed of development. One way of leveling the playing field may be to look for most rapid improvement over the space of a decade. Of course, “most rapid improvement” is still so subjective that the question is essentially unanswerable.
Space flight from Sputnik <sp> to Apollo.
Good answer. That is only twelve years or so which is incredibly rapid. Materials science especially plastics and synthetic fabrics are another contender.
I won’t say it has outstripped the computer, but the automobile has at least kept pace with or passed the airplane.
A model T ford was 177 cubic inches and produced a whopping 20 horsepower. Nowadays engines approaching 2 hp per cubic inch is not uncommon. An engine the size of the Model T’s would produce 300+ HP!
Do you want to talk emissions? The Model T when parked produced more emissions than my car does at the speed limit on the freeway.
Brakes? Mechanical drums vs 4wheel power disc brakes with ABS, and traction control.
Creature comforts?, Noise, harshness, and Vibration? Longevity?
Cars are way better today than they have ever been.
Maybe I should have put this in IMHO.
Sorry, been away so long I forgot how and where to post, apparently! :smack:
Q
I was less concerned about time intervals than quantifying the amount of progress from one stage to another, and comparing that across “platforms”. Was the transition of single-engine plane, single-pilot to enclosed cockpit with passengers a major improvement or minor? How much of either?
Would that compare with the evolution of floppy disk to hard drive in a computer? More? Less? Would it matter if the time of the progress for one was shorter than the other? Should we use a log scale for progress speed or a linear? (Moore’s Law suggests non-linear.) Should the scale for audio development be the same as, say, progress in the internal combustion engine?
Never underestimate the power of descructiveness as an incentive. The idea of nuclear weapons was first given serious consideration in the 1930’s. The first real development programs were started in 1941. The first prototype was build in 1945. Progress was equally rapid; the Soviet Union exploded a fusion bomb only eight years after exploding their first fission bomb.
It’s always amazed me to think that the Wright Brother (Orville, I think), who lived until 1948 or so lived long enough to see a worldwide network of passenger air routes. I’ve always wondered if they let him fly free anywhere he wanted to go–if not, they should have.
The ENIAC computer was built in 1943. According to this Wiki entry, the ENIAC weighed 30 tons, was roughly 8’ X 3’ X 100’, and consumed 150 kW of power.
As of 2004, a chip of silicon measuring 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) square holds the same capacity as the ENIAC.
*Aerospace * from the first airplane to the first manned moon landing, a period of only 66 years - within the lifetimes of many people.
If you were going to break down Aerospace development into periods, there are a few that really stand out:
1930 - 1950:
In 1930, a typical advanced airplane was the Boeing B-12. It was a front-line fighter for the U.S. air force. Max Speed: 189 MPH.
By 1950, The F-101 Voodoo was typical of front-line fighters. Top speed: 1135 MPH.
1957-1969: Going from Sputnik to Apollo 11 in 12 years is simply amazing.