The Wright Brothers - just "Dead White Males"?

[Dis]

The Wright brothers were responsible for 9/11

[Dis]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/10/brazil.santosdumont.reut/index.html

PETROPOLIS, Brazil (Reuters) -- As Americans prepare to celebrate the centennial of the Wright brothers' first flight, a whole country is cringing at what it believes to be a historical injustice against one of its most beloved heroes.

Ask anyone in Brazil who invented the airplane and they will say Alberto Santos-Dumont, a five-foot four-inch (1.6 meter) bon vivant who was as well known for his aerial prowess as he was for his dandyish dress and high society life in Belle Epoque Paris.

As Paul Hoffman recounts in his Santos-Dumont biography "Wings of Madness," the eccentric Brazilian was the first and only person to own a personal flying machine that could take him just about anywhere he wanted to go.

"He would keep his dirigible tied to a gas lamp post in front of his Paris apartment at the Champs-Elysees and every night he would fly to Maxim's for dinner. During the day he'd fly to go shopping, he'd fly to visit friends," Hoffman said.

An idealist who believed flight was spiritually soothing, Santos-Dumont financed his lavish lifestyle and aerial experiments in Paris with the inheritance his coffee-farming father had advanced him as a young man. Always impeccably dressed, he regularly took a gourmet lunch with him on his ballooning expeditions.

It was on November 12, 1906, when Santos-Dumont flew a kite-like contraption with boxy wings called the 14-Bis some 722 feet (220 meters) on the outskirts of Paris. It being the first public flight in the world, he was hailed as the inventor of the airplane all over Europe.

It was only later that the secretive Orville and Wilbur Wright proved they had beaten Santos-Dumont at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, three years earlier on December 17.

But to bring up the Wright brothers with a Brazilian is bound to elicit an avalanche of arguments -- some more reasonable than others -- as to why their compatriot's flight didn't count.

"It's one of the biggest frauds in history," scoffs Wagner Diogo, a taxi driver in Rio de Janeiro, of the Wrights' inaugural flight. "No one saw it, and they used a catapult to launch" the airplane.

Did it count?
Apparently, the debate comes down to how you define the first flight of an airplane.

Henrique Lins de Barros, a Brazilian physicist and Santos-Dumont expert, argues that the Wright brothers' flight did not fulfill the conditions that had been set up at the time to distinguish a true flight from a prolonged hop.

But Santos-Dumont's flight did meet the criteria, which in essence meant he took off unassisted, publicly flew a predetermined length in front of experts and then landed safely.

"If we understand what the criteria were at the end of the 19th century, the Wright brothers simply do not fill any of the prerequisites," says Lins de Barros.

Brazilians also claim that the Wrights launched their Flyer in 1903 with a catapult or at an incline, thereby disqualifying it from being a true airplane because it did not take off on its own.

Even Santos-Dumont experts like Lins de Barros concede this is wrong. But he says that the strong, steady winds at Kitty Hawk were crucial for the Flyer's take-off, disqualifying the flight because there was no proof it could lift off on its own.

Peter Jakab, chairman of the aeronautics division at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and a Wright brothers expert, says such claims are preposterous.

By the time Santos-Dumont got around to his maiden flight the Wright brothers had already flown numerous times, including one in which they flew 24 miles (39 km) in 40 minutes.

"Even in 1903 the airplane sustained itself in the air for nearly a minute. If it's not sustaining itself under its own power it's not going to stay up that long," Jakab says.

Even in France -- never a country too eager to agree with the U.S. point of view -- the Wrights are considered to have flown before Santos-Dumont, says Claude Carlier, the director of the French Center for the History of Aeronautics and Space.

"There's a strong nationalist issue at play here," says Marcos Villares, Santos-Dumont's great grandnephew. "Flight was a very important step in human history, in the history of technology. Every country wants to claim priority."

First to use a watch?
But that is not to say that Santos-Dumont does not deserve recognition for his other contributions.

By rounding the Eiffel Tower in a motorized dirigible in 1901, he helped prove that air travel could be controlled and a practical means of transportation.

"Just to show that the flying machine was practical is an incredible achievement," says Hoffman, his biographer.

At his summer home in the Brazilian mountain town of Petropolis, tour guides perpetuate myths about Santos-Dumont -- such as how he invented the wristwatch.

Santos-Dumont experts deny that assertion, although they concede he was probably the first male civilian to use a watch after asking his friend Louis Cartier to make him a timepiece he could use while flying. Previously, only royalty and soldiers had used watches.

To this day, you can still buy the Santos-model Cartier watch for only a couple of thousand dollars.

[connorkimbro]

Putting the entire quoted passage in italics does not make it more important, it just makes it hard to read,

You have a problem reading italics? That's really strange. You might wanna get your eyes checked or something.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
I thought the Wright brothers are celebrated?

I suspect that the writer of that article has unresolved issues about nearly everything.

What do you base this dubious assertion on? Here's his bio btw:

THOMAS SOWELL
Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. As with many others in his neighborhood, he left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University, worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics.

After graduating magna *** laude from Harvard University (1958), he went on to receive his master's in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968).

In the early '60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University, he began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments include Rutgers University, Amherst University, Brandeis University and the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught in the early '70s and also from 1984 to 1989.

Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college. Moreover, much of his writing is considered ground-breaking -- work that will outlive the great majority of scholarship done today.

Though Sowell had been a regular contributor to newspapers in the late '70s and early '80s, he did not begin his career as a newspaper columnist until 1984. George F. Will's writing, says Sowell, proved to him that someone could say something of substance in so short a space (750 words). And besides, writing for the general public enables him to address the heart of issues without the smoke and mirrors that so often accompany academic writing.

In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by The American Enterprise Institute.

Currently Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, Calif.

Let me know when they publish your 12th book.

[:) Smiley]

Representation is good though it should be proportional. The majority of the U.S.A. is white. So from a purely statistical view, at least half the important scientists ought to be white.

I have a far larger problem with the lack of recognition given to scientists as a whole. For a nation whose strength comes from its scientific edge, we sure don't give them the respect they ought to be getting, be it in our schools, in the media, on our currency, etc.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Adam Smith
One of the U S history books used in our local public school system has short biographies of black and women inventors, but you can't find Edison's name anywhere in the book. I have a problem with that.

edison was a hack. He stole most of his inventions from other people

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Wait...the strawman was the author's, not ours. Your trying to twist out of his point. He's saying that the Wright Brother's achievement is being denigrated because of a trend to abolish white males from history. Yet he provides not one iota of support for his claims, other than a specious reference to his flipping through his kid's textbook. Ok, here's my own testimonial--the vast majority of the people discussed in all my math, science, music, literature and history texts were white men. Satisfied?

If you can show me even one claim from anyone of consequence that the Wright Brothers should be stricken from history that is based on their being white males, I'd be astonished.

This author is simply a hack, has inserted an irrelevant rant about the Wrights into his diatribe against a purported trend, when nothing about how the Wrights are viewed supports such a notion.

This is simply an opinion column. Check out one of his books if you want to see documentated facts, he has millions of them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

edison was a hack. He stole most of his inventions from other people

Yeah and so is Stephen Hawkings by that logic. Science is about 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. Edison took things and made them better (like the light bulb) and also invented totally new things (like the phonograph). Edison was the greatest inventor the world has ever seen (perhaps Leonardo Da Vinci has a case, but he theorized much more than made things).

[Dis]

I'll grant you he was a great inventor. But he was no scientist.

[connorkimbro]

Edison was the greatest inventor the world has ever seen

Actually, I am the greatest inventor the world has ever seen. I just like to keep all of my inventions a secret. Mwahahahaha

[Dis]

I have an invention I want to patent. Toilet Seat warmer. Don't you hate it when you sit down on a toilet seat and it is ice cold? My invention will warm the toilet seat before you sit down. Nothing is better than a warm toilet seat.

wait! why am I telling you guys? Anyone who steals my idea will be sued.

[Drake Tungsten]

I have an invention I want to patent. Toilet Seat warmer. Don't you hate it when you sit down on a toilet seat and it is ice cold? My invention will warm the toilet seat before you sit down. Nothing is better than a warm toilet seat.

They're all over in Japan. They have seats that are not only warmed, but also have a built in bidet, wash and air dry.

[Q Classic]

some people think jesus was a dead white guy. maybe that's why some on the left hate him.

[Q Classic]

of course, it's usually those on the right who think he was a dead white guy.

the tenses are correct, btw. he was a dead * guy. a lot are under the persuasion that he's not anymore.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Dissident


edison was a hack. He stole most of his inventions from other people

It's now well known that the lightbulb was in fact invented by his dog, Sparky.


Anyway, you are all missing the point of this article. It is quite clear that books about oppressed minorities are just not selling like they used to. In order to stay alive in academia you've got to be ready to jump on the next bandwagon as soon as it arrives, if not early. The oppressed majority is now the hot topic. And it'll sell just as well to those who went out to buy all the old oppressed minority books to pretend to be intellectually and morally 'with it.'