tv Book Discussion CSPAN August 24, 2014 11:00pm-12:01am EDT
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recounts the competition between the right brothers and glenn curtiss to be the man in flight. this is about an hour. >> [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everyone. we would like to welcome you all to the rogers memorial library. my name is penny right i'm the director of adult programs and we are very delighted to have our discussion tonight by an esteemed acclaimed author. we would like to thank c-span book tv for being here with us this evening and when we progress to the question and answer segment, we will have a handheld microphone for you all to use to ask your questions.
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we are also grateful to our local independent bookstore for being here this evening as well. we are most happy and grateful however to our visitor and guest laurent's goldstone -- lawrence goldstone. he's the co-author of more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction. six written with his wife, nancy, and has written extensively on both american and european history. larry has been widely interviewed on radio and television appearances on the diane green show on fresh air to the best of our knowledge the faith middleton show some of the take away and have it smiley and now the rogers memorial library. [laughter] his work has been profiled in "the new york times," the toronto star, salon and slate
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and his articles and review of opinion pieces have been in "the wall street journal," the "boston globecovered the la times, "chicago tribune," miami herald and hartford current. his current book "birdmen: the wright brothers, glenn curtiss, and the battle to control the skies," reviewed and received starred reviews in publishers weekly and library journal. it was chosen as one of the best books of the year so far by "time" magazine and was the subject of an entire column in "the new york times." it also received reviews in "the wall street journal," the financial times, nature, usa today and the christian science monitor. larry is an eclectic fellow and has been a teacher, lecturer, senior member of a wall street trading firm, taxi driver, actor, show contestant and
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policy analyst at the hudson institute. he currently -- we are delighted to have them on the eas east enf long island. please welcome larry goldstone. [applause] >> thank you. that was wonderful. thank you all for coming. as for those of you that were familiar with my work no, i don't specialize in any one topic. i've written on the history of medicine and science, baseball. i'm always looking for subjects where there is a current parallel with historical topics. something that can illuminate the past and present at the same time. this book i found through my
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favorite method of finding a topic and i stumbled on it. it was just complete luck. i had been co-authoring a book on a biography of the hall of fame baseball pitcher and i was doing this with his daughter and he pitched in the 1930s and was the best friend and roommate and known for eccentric behavior and a series of bizarre statements. what i discovered, his daughter did this amazing job of interviewing him before he died and what i discovered about lefty is he was a highly intelligent guy with a voice between mark twain and the great sportswriter and very much belied the public image one of
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his famous gloves is aviation. and in 1937 he stopped pitching in the worl world famous game in front of the packed stadium to watch the airplane flying overhead. this is one of lefty's -- what is less about the story was the bottom of the inning and there wasn't quite as inflammatory as it came down through history but it was a big deal nonetheless. what i discovered is that he had acquired his love of aviation as a six-year-old boy in 1915. what i discovered is not only was link in the most famous aviator of the greatest aviator of that age but with apologies he was probably the greatest
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aviator of any age. the things he did was so astounding people wouldn't believe if he did with hundreds of thousands of people. in the country where the population was 75 million estimated 20 million people saw him fly. to give you an example, at the first great airfare. he wanted to break the altitude record that was 11,200 feet. they flew in airplanes that were completely open and there was no cockpit is just the frame and they flew in suits and the only way they could keep warm as toast newspapers and their clothes. and he discovered that in the the onlonly way to break the ale record. so the last day of the fair the
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megaphone man in the grandstand that held about 30,000 people and there were half a million people packed along the lakefront. they told everyone they are going to try for the altitude record. sure enough there are 11,641 feet and they know this because they had a thing that they mounted on the plane and they used air pressure to measure altitude which i don't completely understand but it seemed to work. he's a dot in the sky. half a million people are watching and all of a sudden it starts to circle. it's larger and larger and the people see that the propeller isn't moving because he had used all of his people on the way out. he's out over the lake where if he crashes he's going to certainly die. he circles down and in front of
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half a million people, he lands his airplane in front of the grandstand dot 200 feet from where he took off. now, that is flying. [laughter] the signature trip he called the death of death he would take the airplane 3,000 feet, 5,000 feet in the air and then head straight down. sometimes he would cut his engines and sometimes he would put his arms out and controlled airplane with his knees and when it seemed like it would be impossible not to crash he would pull out and perfectly land or go off and do some more tricks. he was the only person who could do this in at least 68 theaters and maybe as many as a dozen died trying to do this because he was so famous. in those days flying near niagara falls the wind currents were careful, the spray would foul the motor. not only in front of 150,000 people he flies under a bridge,
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goes on the canadian side and basically flies straight up. he had an interesting sense of humor. also in front of half a million people, he announces that he has trained a woman to fly and that she can fly as well as any man. they had women aviators in those days bu there were not a lot of them. and sure enough, the megaphone comes on, a woman comes out and she is a short relative to the stocky woman wearing a heavy coat to keep warm and a big hat and she gets in the airplane and takes off. it's immediately apparent that she is not a particularly adept at aviator. first thing she does is buzz the grandstand and everybody has to
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duck. then the plane maneuvers wildly and goes out over michigan avenue, flying so low that the wheels of the airplane are bouncing along the tops of the automobiles on michigan avenue. the plane goes again out over lake michigan, just missing the water about eight times. this goes on about ten, 15 minutes and somehow, she seems to get her bearings and flies pretty well, does some tricks and then land is perfectly in front of the grandstand and the crowd is now applauding probably in relief. she gets out of the airplane, takes off her hat, the wig comes with it and there is lincoln. [laughter] all of these were his -- that's how good he could fly. he could fly so he could bounce his wheels on the top of automobiles on the commission again. he is an odd character. he didn't drink and he didn't smoke. he had one vice that he indulged
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in copiously and with great gusto angreatergusto and that w- women. it didn't seem to bother him that he actually had a wife in san francisco. but the wife took to chasing him around the country. now this is all during interviews o with contemporary flyers and believe me i'm not making this up. he was so nervous she would get his money that he opened a bank account under phony names all across the country. there are probably some of them that stilstill have money. ultimately, she got an undisclosed but sizable settlement in 1914 when they got divorced. i did a little more research and i discovered that while beachie was the most flamboyant there were others that were wonderful and i put together and decided this is the book. i put together a proposal which i called the exhibitionists, the
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romance in the era of the early fight because many of these eight theaters by and i gave it to my editor and he came back and said these people are interesting but nobody has ever heard of them. i thought i was a selling point with my editor disagreed and said while he beat you can work them into the title. and i thought the exhibitionists of the wright brothers in the era of the early flight didn't have the same zip to me that i agreed to see if we could get them in the book and i must say i went about it with a bit of skepticism because there's been a lot written about the rights and i wasn't sure that there was anything new to find. what i discovered is that there was a remarkable amount. there were large areas of the
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experience both in the invention and what they did subsequently into who they were as people that were either fluffed over, talked about were some cases totally ignored and that there was a great story and part of that story was the more i will discuss in a bed with another br great aviator named glenn curtiss. i put together a proposal with the wright brothers and the battle to control the skies. i'm not going to extrapolate here and se see the editor is always right. but in this case, he was. the most important thing i learned about the wright brothers was that they weren't clones, they weren't siamese twins, they were not to have the same people. they didn't work in harmony yes,
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they had their stats. he was the older brother more than chronologically. in addition to being brilliant he could also be sarcastic and he could be dismissive. he could be overbearing and he could be cool and he exhibited all of these traits from time to time. orville is flying in the test in washington, d.c. to try to sell airplanes to the army and the airplane crashed.
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he was horribly injured, broken ribs, he was in the hospital for six weeks and he lived in 1948 and was in pain from that injury is crashed his entire life. next to him was an army lieutenant and thomas who died in the crash. the first aviation fatality. he was in europe trying to sell airplanes to the military of germany, britain, france and the wind. and while orville was in the hospital, he wrote him blaming him for the crash and saying if he had been there it wouldn't have happened. it was so cruel that their sister who was kind of a part of this was with orville everyday in the hospital wrote to him and said basically what are you doing blacks he backed away
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the relationship between the brothers and what they did and what they did not do was directly on the invention and what happened with the flyer wilbur worked alone. getting the idea of working together in the bicycle shop until between the first trip in 1900 worked alone. only before the trip did it start becoming the in the correspondence.
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he had been working with him the entire time. orville lived in 1948 and the last 46 years of his life, he never credited wilbur with anything individually. it was always them together. which is why most of the biographies and most of the things written about the wright brothers have orville and wilbur basically two sides of the same claim. coin. while working alone between 1896 and 1890, wilbur had one of two great epiphanies. it is important nothing and anything i wrote or anything anybody else wrote should be tracked from the other brilliance of wilbur wright. here's a man that never graduated from high school and had an engineering course or dynamics which was a formative science to begin with to solve the problem that had stumped isaac newton, leonardo da vinci
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and a host of the greatest thinkers in history. wilbur was one of the great intuitive scientists country has ever produced. utterly brilliant. what he discovered was wilbur wasn't interested in speed or the motorola q. wanted was a motor that was fast enough to create risk. but he realized is that the trick of the controlled flight was actually controlling the airplane in the air. everyone else and there were lots of other people working at the time, everyone else thought that the best way to have an airplane in the air was to have a facsimile stable kind of like a car that you drive around. and what they did was they had the wings go slightly in the shape from the center of the aircraft which is called the dihedral and that is for reasons i won't go into creat create a t deal of stability in the aircraft. but you cannot do, however, is
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turned except very broad terms and you're very susceptible to wind currents. what wilbur recognized as the best way to create an aircraft that could fly successfully was to have an aircraft that was inherently unstable. the wings of the flyer and if you go to see you will see this it goes down from the center of the aircraft and that is called him and he drove into that creates instability. but, you must have the means of controlling the aircraft. he came up with the means and it's funny because he got this from watching birds and a lot of other aviation pioneers watched. while we live right near the ocean and i go down and i watch birds over time and i am looking for the same things they saw and i don't see them but they were smarter than i was. whatever it was, he saw that
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they varied. so what he did was with the systems of cables and pulleys the wings of one side with slamdunk when the other ones would slam down. and that corrected attitude. when the plane was losing in one way or another he corrected it and he could think on a turn, which the other airplane could not do. he got the idea of banking on the turn as bicycle manufacturers. it is incredible how many aviation pioneers and automotive pioneers got her start in bicycles which came in the 1880s was one of the great inventions and at this just there've been some books written on it at the bicycles change everything scientifically. so, wilbur came up with wing warping as his means of control. the second great insight he had
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after he started working with orville when they started working on the power was that a propeller shouldn't be these little stubby things you find on both cars aerodynamics was formative science. so they thought was take hydrodynamics and apply stuff and he recognized he needed an elongated propeller which is basically the wings turned. so they incorporate these and they make the famous flight. one of the most famous iconic pictures and photographs is of orville in the center of the airplane as it kicks off with wilbur standing next to him. the irony is that it was supposed to be wilbur because they took turns. they tried first on december 14 that the plane had a minor malfunction and it went straight into the sand. and it was his turn next. so they do this and it's one of
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the great events of scientific and human history. the only problem is nobody knew about it. they didn't go and publicize it or go to the newspapers. they didn't in any way what the world know what they have done. in fact, after kitty hawk they didn't fly publicly again until 1908. and while they were perfecting the aircraft and people came by like farmers, the first accurate record of the flyer was in a journal to buy a beekeeper that happened to see them fly in ohio. [laughter] and the reason -- before i get to the reason that they are not flying perfect and in 1906 a brazilian named alberto santos
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living in paris builds a glorified kite with a motor and a propeller and kind of bounces a quarter of a mile across. headlines around the world over as the firsis the first to fly e nobody knew that the wright brothers had done it. they said they had nobody believed then and in france they were called bluffer is because nobody believed they actually flew. to this day brazilian children are taught that alberto santos was the first to fly. the reason nobody knew about the wright brothers and the reason they didn't announce it was what their intention was and they were completely open about this was to establish a monopoly not just a monopoly on airplanes with wing warping but a monopoly that would allow them to collect a licensing fee on every airplane that subsequently went into the sky and they filed the first thing they did after they
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got home from kitty hawk they saw the folks and then they went and hired harry who was a patent lawyer and he filed a patent application and another thing most people don't know is that the wright brothers didn't get a patent on a motorized airplane. the patent was on a glider. he told them that it would take too long to patent the examiners. it would be very difficult to get it on the motorized craft. so it was received on the craft with no motor. there was a change in the patent law by the supreme court doing it on their own in the 1890s which established something called the pioneer patent and the pioneer patent band not only do you get -- are you granted the patent for your particular manifestation, but if you've done something really cool and
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that advances technology by some order of magnitude, you can file for a patent that allows you to collect licensing fees not only on your invention but anybody who creates convention debate could invention even roughly like yours. it's as if delegates got a package that allowed him to collect licensing fees on anybody who created software for personal computers. now, we don't do that. the pioneer patterns don't exist anymore but they existed then and that's what they wanted. and that's why they didn't fly. now it come got to the point tht they were trying to sell the airplane but that what they were doing because the delay didn't come in until 1906 because of the delay in the patent they refused to demonstrate their airplane so they try to sell it to the american and german military and french military but what they are willing to do is give testimonials of the farmers
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and the beekeepers who would see them fly in to show pictures and they are asking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government's and they were frankly stunned and it is based on the testimonials from beekeepers. as soon as he flew in 1906 the other french aviators started getting very close. the customs inspectors in 1907
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wilbur was going to try to sell it to the various european governments and orville had already in the states made overtures to the american government which that was the demonstration in which orville heard. so they fly in 1908 and they still have the best machine. there was no machine. none of these other craft could do with the fly your could do. and the crash notwithstanding at fort minor were agape at the fly your could do. he did things people thought were impossible. and in europe over went to enormous celebrity. he used to wear a little tap and he met royalty and heads of
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state. the things he did fly in figure eigheights it was very formative that it was so in advance of what anyone else could do and certainly what alberto santos vermont could do and the other french pioneers who were getting closer and closer that he was just the toast of europe and when wilbur came home they gave a huge ceremony and the generals came and got testimonials from the president and it was an enormous, just this enormous success. the irony is that at that moment when they flew and the world posted at ten, there were craft had already become obsolete. technology had caught up and would catch up the next year because if you think about it, you can't really do with -- they are moving away so you have to have fabric wings.
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they had little wings that stuff between the upper and lower airfoil that would do the same thing. one would go out and one would go down, they would establish control and they would enable them to turn. the wrights got the word they were developing these planes and they flew some formative flights and he was doing quite well. remember i say they got their patent in 1906 and threatened him with the infringement suit and curtis said this is nonsense. what i'm doing is nothing to what you're doing. it's completely different and it's better. he went off to france in 1909 at the first great international air show and he won the cup which was the single most prestigious award in aviation
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and became the most famous aviator in the world. while glenn curtiss is winning in france, the wright brothers voyeurs are serving his wife with papers for the patent infringement suit. he was an interesting fellow he didn't start as an airplane pioneer. he started as a motorcycle -- he built voters. he had a speed craving. he raced bicycles and built voters. it was pretty recent and he got his motor and put it together and said i can do better than this and he did. and in fact in january of 1907, he built an eight cylinder motor, mounted it on the bicycle frame and went to florida
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daytona beach and set a land speed record of 136.7 miles per hour. the thing went so fast that he had to stretch his body down so because the wind would have blown him off. but he is building these motorcycles and hammonds scored new york. his name is glenn hammonds curtis and it was such a wonderful place that they gave him back into the town name is his middle name which i'm sure made every real estate agent happy. and he's building his motorcycles and in the california, one of the motorcycles comes to be attention of a man named thomas scott. i could do two hours just on captain tom even though she was never a captain, professor tom
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even though he never went to school. he was born probably in illinois but no one is sure. probably in the 1860s but no one is sure. his parents were either killed by indians, readers or abandoned him. nobody is sure. he went to an orphanage and ran away at some point but nobody's aware of the ether and he probably got a job in the circus as a tumbler. the first time he came to the public recognition as when he would get money doing tumbling routines on the tops of moving trains. his first great move into deviation is he was the inventor of the flexible. shoot they have parachutes before that but they were rigid if they malfunctioned they didn't really work. he invented the flexible parachute and put it to use she would go up in the balloon 3,000 feet sometimes 5,000 feet, jumped out of the balloon
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holding his flexible. shoot he was in no way harnessed. the only way he was attached despite holding onto a ring that he would do this for a dollar of it. [laughter] and people paid him because he was really strong. he really was an accurate acrobat because he lived through it. captain tom went to japan and thailand and was able to travel or. he was charming and everyone loved him. when he was in california at the time he saw the motorcycle, he was trying to create the world's first steerable balloon. and he knew that what he needed was a lightweight powerful motor and he sees the motorcycle into the manufacturing company so he writes away. they get this order and he tells
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they started working in concert. in 1906 they ran into a couple of brothers who were rumored to have something to do with radiation. and wilbur and orville wright and scott thomas baldwin and glenn curtiss seemed to get along well and the wrights invited them back to their workshop for a chat. what happened in that meeting is the single most controversial and pivotal meeting in the history of the american aviation. the wright brothers later claimed that they told curtis everything and he went off i and store their ideas. curtis said this was nonsense. all he was trying to do if they
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talk generally he was trying to sell voters to the right airplanes. the correspondence bear him out a great deal on this. he definitely was trying to because the letters would indicate that he was and the letters went back and forth and they were very cordial. it seems a little far-fetched. shortly thereafter, alexander graham bell got in touch with him.
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it also seems true but it is hard to believe that curtis had no information and insight. in the modern aircraft today. they have two to three pages of the landing gear and the steering wheel. first one to take off from the ship to develop the airplane that can land on the ship the first workable hydroplane the scientist that wilbur was that he was an absolutely brilliant innovator. after that meeting that is what
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caused the right of such animus. they took into the consortium of investors really rich guys started by j.p. morgan and included the belmont and vanderbilt and very other wealthy people. but the other investors, just to give you an idea of how powerful j.p. morgan was. he was president and vice president and wilbur simply refused. he pursued his patent case
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against curtis and micromanaging it, talking to the lawyers the last letter before he died was to frederick who was his patent attorney and not a family member decrying how long it was taking. he died of typhoid fever and he had gotten really thin. he ran himself into the ground and died in may of 1912. in february of 1913 they actually won their patent. they never collected a dime and the reason you have to read the book for that. they gave an interview to "the new york times" which he accused glenn curtiss is essentially telling his brother by what he had exhibited by openly stealing their ideas and refusing to pay them licensing fees to which they make that charge.
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i just wanted to talk one other aviator. i said there were these are marketable in theaters when he was flying some of them were women. there was a woman who when amelia ehrhardt was a aviator and probably died tragically. but before a millionaire, there was a woman named harriet and she was born in a michigan farm moved to san francisco she tended to lie about her age a little. she became an actress in a room with a woman named linda.
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she wrote articles on becerra bernhard and the chinese ambassador that came to america with bound feet and all of these splashing articles many of them in the san francisco call. she moved to new york to become the weekly which is a very popular weekly magazine at the time. the actor's name is florence griffith and eventually they moved to new york and his career isn't taking off at all so he decides to go into production and do a thing called a film that she hated florence which i think is a perfectly nice name and decided and told him that instead she should use his initials. so dw griffith has been making short films on wrongdoing: island and is an actress if you
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look on imdb she's writing screenplays for these. for the weekly she controls her editor into paying for flying lessons at the belmont park. she becomes the first woman to fly across the english channel and develops and designs her suit which is a one-piece flying suit that covered address. they were so formative they didn't even use seat belts until 1910 and 1911 and whether harriet was wearing a restrained is unclear.
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to me, there was a space you just mentioned about the horizontal left. you didn't go into too much detail about how the other things you were speaking about on what they were doing but that lead me with a blank on how they actually came to put the propeller. most of it is a balancing act in a book like this. most of it was trial and error.
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one thing that is in the book, the wind tunnel had been invented already. but it was a very imperfect, and when the wrights realized the wing which is curved on the top to allow the air to move faster over the top and left and all of that. they were having a problem because they were using the tables. so they invent and more or less invented even though there've been primitive wind tunnels. they more or less invented a wind tunnel to come up with a better airfoil. but most of what they did in those trips were trial and error. they've try stuff and the plane would go on the ground. they would change the
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measurements. orville really was a remarkable master craftsman. they would take measurements and try different things until they found one to work. and in fact after the first year in kitty hawk they thought it was all going to be wonderful. it was a disaster. they couldn't get it to fly. they had to go back and that's when they would reformulate everything. so, yes i mean i wanted to avoid making into technical. they said i didn't stand on the science which was extremely gratifying to me because my daughter read that magazine and i was terrified of a bad review. [laughter] >> anyone else?
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my assistant is on the way with the microphone. >> were there any other stories you came across that you regretted not having included? >> probably about a thousand. there are the people who were flying were so remarkable. remember there were no test pilots. these people were the test pilots. that's why so many of them died because they were trying out concepts. they were trying out things that were completely new. half of the story i couldn't fit in. there were other aviators and remarkable progress in aviation and russia if there were so much
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written about them that i wanted to spend a lot of time on the places where people didn't they were all terrible businessmen. curtis hooked up with the guy who was the major fraud and the right brothers didn't go back to the shop and there is a whole correspondence between a man named andrew friedman who is the people they investors put up to handle the businessmen train andrew friedman and wilbur which are incredibly illuminating and i would only put out a couple of those where they kept saying what's going on and you're supposed to be making new airplanes. why are you doing this? why aren't you at this airshow? and you get a flavor for that. so what i try to do is to hit
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everything that's needed. anyone else? yes sir. >> you said that the list of contributions made as much larger than what the wright brothers made. but weren't they the ones that did all the trial and error to make the discoveries about the wing and the importance of the mechanism or are other people at the same time making this discovery is? >> that is a good question. there was a man in egypt who i
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mentioned in passing. he was the most famous of all engineer in america. he build bridges across missouri and retired with great wealth and became the kind of clearinghouse for information. he was the first after. everybody in the world was essentially sending him oceans and plans and some ask for money and there was one in egypt who may or may not have come up with the idea of changing the orientation of the wing tips.
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the technology is moving forward. if he hadn't discovered this, somebody was going to. but wilbur did and we reward that and should because it was insightful, intuitive brilliance. so yes, we owe the wright brothers a debt that it was also a tragedy that after decembe december 1903 there wasn't a single innovation that either of those brothers made that not only do we have been the modern aircraft. that's when they started to die and they die disproportionately in the aircraft because the wing warping wasn't good in the tight turns and in stressful flying. so, yes there is no underestimating what he did and orville, too for his part in the
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process. but it is equally true that technology doesn't simply stop. i don't know the man. i think it was john but did anything on the first computer. nobody talks about him. we talk about the pioneers became subsequently. so, there is a kind of place for both. i can take one more i think. >> weight. you have violated protocol. >> what package could they possibly have had? they basically were flying a kite. how could anybody after them infringe on what was so important about the wings which is basically what they did.
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lilienthal was a german and he lived outside of berlin and formulated the wings, actual 30-foot wings which he braced himself against and ran down the hill and glided. if you look at the pictures he would say that's one of those nuts trying to but they took tens of thousands of measurements of different airfoil shapes. support those peoples that the wright brothers used first, what they patented was this ability to change what they called the lateral margins of the wings and control the aircraft in flight and nobody had done that before. these were the best they could do before that and they were
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very susceptible to the shifts where they crashed a lot so they invented the first flight into the motor was weak but they changed it later. whether they deserved the patent to take in everything that was done subsequently, that is not clear, but they definitely deserved the patent on their invention and anybody that used to do should they have to pay for but when they came in, that was that. i want to mention that we have to pilots in the audience. we thank you for coming. and we are going to think he thu but could you just end by telling us if what you are up to next and if there's huge interest that you have in the subject made a very interesting for the reader brought you to another line of writing about?
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>> thank you for that question. and despite what anyone thinks, i didn't even need to pay her to ask me that. [laughter] i'm actually working on a similar but about automobiles which is the same kind of study of the progress of technology and the innovative process which focuses on henry ford who i don't want to give too much away but where the wrights were brilliant innovators but not good businessmen. i think the reader will see that it's an utterly brilliant business man so that's what i'm working on now. thank you so much for that. [laughter] >> we would all like to thank you. it's been fascinating and illuminating. we will be back for your next book reading when it's finished. thank you all for coming.
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it's been a wonderful reading. [applause] >> booktv asked what are you reading this summer. >> what is on your reading list click. >> i'm eager to read the nubuck innovators. he's terrific at writing those kind of books. and jonathan's new book just arrived at simon and schuster. that's always good news from jonathan. i'm in the middle of reading arianna huffington's book. and of course hillary clinton's memoir called hard choices. i was happy that she used that title because i had written a biography called hillary's
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