The Wright Debate will go up today. Here is some info.
The debate was not streamed live, it was recorded which was done to make sure the quality would be good and we wouldn't have a repeat of the technical problems we saw with the last debate.
I feel pretty good about my performance. Of course I would always like to do better, but when shooting from the hip live, it's sometimes hard to keep a train of thought going and on track.
Magnar, basically conceded the key points of the debate pretty early on. I did conceded that in terms of basic wing structure that Octave Chanute contributed something to the Wrights. Not in terms of a wing that could make enough lift to work, controls or anything else, just structure.
When trying to talk about Georgy Cayley I was trying to force myself to grant that the two claimed "flights" happened, but my mind just couldn't cope with trying to say that when I don't really believe it, I think that came through in the video.
Here are some other points I would like to clear up.
1. Regarding the wings on the Wright flyers. I was having a hard time putting this into words on the spot. The wings on the various Wright flyers were NOT great wings in terms of lift and drag by MODERN standards. However at the time it they were the best man-made wings in existence and were the basis of the wings on almost all successful airplanes until the German Gottingen wing in World War One around 1917.
2. The Bridgport Hearld Newspaper was a weekly publication. Page 1 was the heavy or serious news, Page 2 sports, Page 3 light news, Page 4 letters to the editor and opinion based editorials. Page 5, fun stories like the Wolfman of Wyndam. The Whitehead story about his flight in Bridgeport was a page 5 story that was then picked up and republished in many other newspapers. It's analogous to a wolf man sighting report.
3. It occurred to me that some younger folks may not know why I mean by "Marxist". Karl Marx, was very much anti-patent, his felt any human discoveries belonged to the public at large. Various big name people of the time, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell and others, were people who vigorously defended their patents. However when it came time to talk about the Wrights, all they sudden they adopted Marxist ideology, but ONLY in regards to patents from others that they wanted to cash in on.
I'm proud of the debate, both Magnar and Andrew did a great job and I hope you folks like it and are happy with my performance.
Thank you so much for your support here, without Patreon, this channel wouldn't be happening.
Greg
Comments (7)
>However when it came time to talk about the Wrights, all they sudden they adopted Marxist ideology, but ONLY in regards to patents from others that they wanted to cash in on. Economists call this rent seeking. Marx discussed economic rents in Volume 3 of Kapital, so nobody has ever read it. Like most of his economic analysis, he was building on the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent
The story ofWhitehead’s historic flight in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald was headed by an illustration of 4witches flying broomsticks. The Herald story is suspiciously similar to a New York Sun report, dated two months earlier, of Whitehead unmanned test flights, the description presumably supplied by Whitehead. The Virginia-Pilotconcocted a story of the Wrights' first flight based only on Orville’s tersetelegram. The flight was much exaggerated and the description of the airplanefanciful. The editor of American Inventor wrote, “Newspaper readers willremember several accounts of Mr. Whitehead’s performances last summer. Probablymost people will put them down as fakes…”. This describes the attitude ofpeople towards reports of flying machines in this era.
Just dove down the "Gottingen Wing" rabbit-hole for an hour, very interesting!!!
Thank you Greg for taking the effort and time to debate persons of the "fake moon landing" crowd. It is appreciated.
As far as Marx goes, Chico is my favorite, but that's just my opinion......
Can’t wait to watch it. Want to share it with a friend who always questions the validity of the Wright Brother’s accomplishment.
Sweet, should be a good listen once the roads are clear of ice. I drive a semi.