Dear Cecil &
The Smart Mass’ of the Thinking Public,
I was browsing online when I read a random article about the Wright Brothers.
Having the handy ability to count I realized Orville Wright died in 1948. That means he saw his co-invention as it were get utilized in not one but two world wars and the two Japanese H-bomb missions. Now he was also around when the sound barrier was broke by Chuck Yeager in October of 1947 and the beginning of commercial air travel.
On the other hand, Wilbur Wright died in 1912, less than ten years after he co-invented the airplane. Which most likely picked him up some fame and notoriety along the way. Because of his untimely death he never would have the experience or knowledge of how his dream become so many other people’s nightmares for years to come.
My question, which brother was more fortunate and why?
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So I guess on balance he thought it was a positive. Also we can note he did feel some responsibility, even if, IMO, he should not (he wasn’t involved in military aircraft, and while we must give due credit to the Wright brothers, it’s not as though powered flight would not have ultimately happened without them).
For your question, it’s entirely subjective. It’s like asking whether it’s better to die in the peak of happiness and health. Or whether it’s better to die ignorant of some unpleasant truth. Some would say yes.
Personally, I’d say no: I’d always like to know as much as I can and my life is not just a maximizing happiness function.
I have no idea how the Wright brothers might have felt about their invention being used in warfare, but it’s worth pointing out that H.G. wells had pointed out in several stories , before they had invented it, that practical aircraft would have the effect of transforming war. It would move war away from the front lines and into the very heartland of the nations waging the war – a prediction that was amply proven (He also wrote about the impact of the tank and of the “atomic bomb” – a term he used long before it was a reality.) That it would eventually become a potent weapon of war should have been a foregone conclusion.
People continued to see the airplane as evidence for higher goals and as a symbol of peace – you can see it in the literature of the time. Even Wells himself, in the film Things to Come, has his future airmen as the bearers of civilization and bringers of peace, rather than war, using non-lethal sleeping gas to overcome their opponents.
This could be said about anyone. Benjamin Franklin’s idea of a great Post Office is now a publicly-subsidized and protected monopoly of bulk advertising that it is still illegal to compete with. Alexander Graham Bell even saw it coming, projecting sadly right at the outset that his invention, with so much promise, would someday be used merely for trivial personal communications. Imagine what the inventor of television would think, surfing with his cable remote (and opening the bill). Henry Ford sitting still on the Dan Ryan at 7:30 am.
The early popularizers of the public internet thought it’d be a conduit for radical freedom in cyberspace isolated from the evils and gravity of the corporeal world.
Instead we have all-knowing Facebook, NSA, and the Chinese government watching and recording our every move while Russian and Bulgarian cyberpirates loot and extort homes and businesses all across the planet. And QVC.
Oops.
But we do have lots more cute pix of kittehs. And massive free porn. So there’s that.
Human Progress Marches Ever Upwards to Our Glorious Destiny!!!1!
One would be hard pressed to think of any invention that has not been used for nefarious purposes, some of which may never have been considered by the inventor(s). Still, while I have heard an occasional “I wish I had never invented the _____!” I have heard of no inventor saying “I wish I had died right after inventing ___ so I wouldn’t know how it was misused”.
I’ve seen some real weapons-grade women doing jello wrestling. Does that count?
A bit more seriously. …
Surely you’ve heard of “jello shots”?
They’d be easy to lace with date rape drugs. Or to pull the poisoned Tylenol play on some packages at the store. Or a real whack-job could bring poisoned jello cubes to a party and stay to watch the fun.
See? That wasn’t so hard to think of, was it? :eek:
Not only was their first customer the Army, but the Wright Brothers understood, as they were working on their airplane, that for a long time their only viable market would be the armed forces of the world. The earliest airplanes were far too small, too limited in range, and too unsafe to be practical for civilian passenger or cargo carriage.
And armies were already using spotter balloons so a faster, more mobile flying conveyance would be an attractive sale.
As to inventors, Mikhail Kalashnikov is reported to have been proud of the good service given by his weapons to his country, saddened/angered by their proliferation among terrorists, and, perhaps apocryphally, to have mentioned that at times he wondered if he should not have better invented a good piece of farm equipment or lawnmower.
Thank you for your response. I enjoyed reading that. To be honest when I starting thinking about how much of the evolution of aviation one brother witnessed over the other was really something I wanted only to mull over in this type of forum. My question as it were was only included to give it reason to be posted.
