I was
shocked to discover that me and the Wright Brothers figured out all about flying in much the same
manner.
Amazon link to book.
One of my favorite
TV shows is "The Shark Tank", which features a panel of investors
willing to stake money in inventions and new products as submitted by eager
entrepreneurs.
I couldn't invent anything, truthfully, but man I am full of ideas about stuff needing inventing.
Oh to have lived in
the era before airplanes because I am going to tell you true, I figured out the
same thing that the Wright brothers did-that would be Wilbur and Orville. Which is that flying is a fairly simple thing
and entirely possible with a little tweaking here and there and proper
configuration. Even more mind-boggling
to me was knowing that the Wright brothers watched the birds for hours and
hours until they figured out how to do it.
I DID THE SAME
THING!!!
Ok, yon reader may
laugh. But I am an avid bird-watcher and
also spent many hours watching my bird fellows of all kinds, from
turkey-buzzard (one the major bird-teachers in the Wright brother school of
flying) to hummingbird to titmouse. At
some point in my many hours then years of bird-watching I realized that it is
pretty easy to fly and not at all an activity restricted to birds.
Of course airplanes
and jets and stuff had already been invented when I was watching the helicopter
hummingbird to the jet osprey on to the turkey-vulture glider. During my birding pondering all sorts of
flying vehicles made by man took to the skies.
And each method of manufacture imitated the way some bird, somewhere on
the planet, flew. Only the birds evolved
to their method of flight while humans used metal and wood to create theirs
from scratch.
Well maybe you had
to be there.
Because Wilbur and
Orville got to dream it into happening, while I looked at that hummingbird at
my feeder, and the helicopter had already been invented.
I got viscerally
excited reading about the many hours the Wright boys studied birds until they
finally realized that it's only air. And
air, with the right machine, can be navigated.
With a touch of serendipity, mankind's first form of air travel was
copied from the birds' evolution.
Along with many
hours of studying birds, I was transfixed with the reading of this book. David McCullough is a well-known author and
this reader admired his research skills.
McCullough studied up on the Wright Brothers and all details was known.
The subject of the
book is, of course, fascinating. Reading
the facts gathered and written within made it all more fascinating. After all, what did I know before reading
this book about the Wright Brothers? I
knew that two nerdy guys rigged up some goofy
contraption that stayed in the air for a few minutes.
I had no idea they
owned a prosperous bicycle shop or that they were the toast of France, or even
that neither of them ever got married.
David McCullough did
a wonderful job in showing the reader, via concise and accurate prose, all the
facts about the Wright Brothers.
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