THE WRIGHT WAY

We often receive letters from young people or their parents asking where the best opportunities for the future lie. Our answer is that special opportunities do not exist in the particular industry or profession-they exist within men themselves. 

On December 17, 1943 the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of the first successful flight of a

self-powered airplane - and I can think of no better time to review some of the highlights in early career of the inventors - the wright brothers. After you have heard the simple story of their lives - I wonder if you will think they were conscious of what Destiny had in store for them?

Wilbur wright was born on a farm near Millville, Indiana - in 1867 - and Orville was born four years later in Dayton, Ohio. Their father was the Reverend Milton Wright. In this period - just after the Civil war - there were yet no electric lights, telephones or automobiles, and their home town, Dayton, a typical American town of about thirty thousand people.

The Wrights were not wealthy people and the boys had no special advantages, except their home environment. Their parents encouraged them to investigate aroused their curiosity, but urged them to try to earn enough to cover the costs of their experiments. The boys tried many things, and to finance their experiments, they sold kites, folded papers and collected junks.  

When bicycles became the fad, the Wright boys each saved up enough money to buy one. This was a new field to them and, after a thorough job of investigation; they went into the bicycle business. Business grew; they not only sold several makes but repaired them, and in 1895 even brought out a custom model of their own make – the Van Cleve. 

As they read scientific papers, they ran across an article on Lilienthal’s glider experiments in Germany. so they got together all the information they could find about Lilienthal and his work – they investigated Chanute’s experiments – and read about Langley. But the wrights could never be satisfied just reading about these experiments - they had to try things for themselves. They didn’t let the fact that Lilienthal and Pilcher had been killed – or that Chanute had quit after a careful study and many experiments in gliding – prevent them from going ahead. They wanted to fly! 

The Wright boys – in 1899 – began with a biplane kite equipped with wing controls. It is interesting to note their first man-carrying kite cost them, in actual cash outlay, about $15.00. As a result of a letter to Chanute – and Weather Bureau reports – they decided to go to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for their first experiments. 

You probably know the story from then on – how they made glider after glider – how they fought the weather – about their accidents – and their inaccurate data. During the next two years, they visited Kitty Hawk with new wings, new controls – and collected fact after fact – until in 1902 they felt they had enough information to build a power machine. Then began another long year’s experiments on engines; they found that there was none in existence that met their requirements. 

On December 17, 1903, after many disappointments and weeks of waiting, they made the world’s first successful flight of a self-powered, heavier-than-air flying machine. Orville was the pilot. The flight lasted 12 seconds. 

These few highlights in the early life of the Wright brothers can give only a sketchy impression of those two American pioneers. Perhaps they weren’t ordinary boys – although there was certainly nothing unusual about their environment. They did not have wealth, family influence or educational advantages. To me they seemed average American boys from an average American town. But they had outstanding qualities – curiosity, persistence, an intense desire to succeed and, above all, they were self-sufficient. They were encouraged to develop themselves from within and not expect too much help from without.

I believe if these young people who write us every year would take the same point of view, they could solve many of their own problems. I don’t believe anyone outside should tell them they should be lawyers, doctors or engineers or advise them what business to get into. Suppose someone had insisted that the Wright boys get into the new automobile business – the development of the airplane might have been delayed for decades. Certainly no one, at that time, could have advised them to investigate the airplane business – there simply wasn’t any.

A young man starting out today should analyse his own problems, prepare himself, perfect his thinking – and be ready and willing to face the inevitable failures and discouragements. I would not depend too much on a fairy god-mother pointing out the Road to success. I would be more inclined to do some surveying and map making of my own.

RESEARCH IS A STATE OF MIND

Every time l have the good fortune of being in the studio audience, l am impressed with the fact that it takes much less energy to listen to music than to direct or play it. 

So, while the Maestro and the Orchestra rest for a moment, i will tell you of a simple comparison between Music and Research that we have used many times. 

This evening, we are listening to the compositions of Mozart. He was one of those rare and talented individuals who had the natural gifts of both composition and execution. He was a child prodigy. This type of individual is rare but each generation may produce one or more - they occur not only in the musical field but also in art, medicine and science, and their contributions are of great importance. Most of our work, however, must be done by people with just ordinary abilities in the beginning who reach positions of skill or responsibility by practice, study and plain persistence. 

Now, i don't know the individual histories of men in the his Orchestra but I suspect the majority of them are here as a result of arduous practice and much hard work, and in many cases, sacrifices of many kinds. This symphony Orchestra is a body of men, who, in order to perform superbly as a group, must first be able to perform equally well as individuals. Just organizing a group of poor musicians doesn't make a good Orchestra. 

Research is done in much the same way. Our work can either be the effort of a group or of individual specialists. In fact, just like a good Orchestra, each man must be a skilled and talented individual. There is one outstanding difference, when we compare Orchestra with research - research has no Mozart score to follow - we are working with unwritten scores. The procedure must be different in nearly every case. It is more like composition and performance at the same time. 

For many years there has been much misunderstanding as to just what research is. The popular conception seems to be that there is something mysterious about it, and before any research can be done, it is necessary to have expensive scientific apparatus and large ; elaborately equipped buildings. Actually, this is not so. Research isn't a physical thing at all but just a state of mind. It is a simple organised way of trying to accomplish something you wish to do-so simple that anyone can do research anywhere at any time. 

First, you select the problem you would like to solve, and then you list at least ten reasons why this has not been solved. But in picking that problem be sure to analyse it carefully to see that it is worth the effort. It takes as much effort to solve a useless problem as a useful one. Make sure the game is worth the candle. 

After carefully selecting the problem and the ten things between you and the solution, you then use the same procedure as in solving a cross-word puzzle. 

You take the easy obstacles first and by a process of elimination you arrived at last at the one or two major ones. In the solution of the remaining obstacles you may need some simple apparatus, but the things you will probably need most are infinite patience and persistence. Few people realise the difficulties of doing any new thing. 

Maybe one of the reasons people are so early discouraged is because of their education. During all of our years at school we were examined two or three times a year. If we failed once we are out. In Contrast, all research work is 99.9 percent failure and if you success once you are in. If we are going to process in any line we must learn to fail intelligently, so we won't become discouraged at the 99.9 percent failure. 

EXPLOSIVE IDEA

As no one can predict who will make an invention or how it will be used, we should not be surprised when we learn that 780 years ago an English monk carefully wrote this down, “I have produced an explosion that out-roared thunder and with a flash that exceeded the brilliance of lightning”. Roger Bacon hid this formula in a Latin cryptogram which said, “Take seven parts of saltpeter, five of charcoal and five of sulphur”. When he wrote down these dozen words, Bacon probably had no idea that they might later influence the whole of civilization because, as you know, he was describing gunpowder, the first of the great family of explosives. 

He may have had some conception after all of the possibilities of the mixture because he was a remarkable, farseeing man who not only experimented with chemical combinations but also predicted the use of the steamship, the automobile and the airplane, and described in detail the magnifying or reading glass. 

Roger Bacon lived near the end of the dark ages – the days of the alchemists and the Black Arts. But even in those days of superstition, he was a strong advocate of the fundamentals of modern research. He stated it this way, “Take nothing for granted – use your own eyes and test all new theories with your own hands”. Roger bacon by his work in philosophy laid the foundation for modern scientific research. 

He wrote once that his gunpowder mixture might completely blow up an opposing army or put it to flight by the terror of the explosion; however, he made no mention of using it in firearms. 

It wasn’t until after his death that the cannon was first mentioned. There is an Arabic account of a cannon in 1303 and in Oxford, England, a picture dated 1326 shows what was called a “dart-throwing vase”. Edward  used wooden canon and a weapon consisting of 144 barrels in groups of 12 – an idea not unlike our battery banks of today.       

   

When Mohammed 11 besieged Constantinople in 1453, he had 13 large guns called bombards and 56 small cannon. The bombards were immense – requiring 60 oxen to pull them in place. They threw stones 30 inches in diameter which weighed three quarters of a ton. But since it took 2 hours to load them, they could fire only a few times each day. However, the new weapon was effective and Mohammed’s army battered its way into the city in less than two months and ended the Roman Empire in the East. 

The invention of gunpowder and the subsequent development of the cannon and musket emphasize the importance of Roger Bacon’s work as a bridge between the Dark ages and the beginning of the new scientific era. He knew his methods of careful experimentation were at odds with the superstition and guess-work of his time because he was often thrown into jail. He realised that his theories and experiments belonged more to the future than to his own time. 

Yet it is hardly possible that he could have foreseen the great commercial and industrial applications of his ideas, for just as the steam engine and the internal combustion engine were used first in industry and then became important factors in the conduct of war, so gunpowder, developed and first used in war, made an even greater contribution to industry in such places as mines, quarries, clearing of new lands, digging irrigation ditches and in many other applications. In fact, the development of explosives from the work of Roger Bacon has been taken by some to the beginning of the age of industrial chemistry. 

The peacetime use of explosives has been so great that the production of military needs were met with no unusual difficulty. The millions of shells from thousands of guns and the bombs used by our airplanes on all the battlefronts are the evidences of just a part of what came from the idea born seven centuries ago. No one can sit in judgment of any new born idea and say what its future uses may be.

GROPING IN THE DARK

As we listen to fine music, you probably wonder, just the same as many others, what kind of person the composer was and how he arrived at the combination of notes and intervals that resulted in this particular composition. We are sure that back of it there are long hours of cut and try, discouragement and hard work. We hear only the successes.

I wish we could see the great amount of patient work that is required and the great amount of discarded material which is necessary to produce one of these successes.

Composition, development and invention are not new things. The procedure used is as old as mankind itself. However, there is a certain amount of dramatic appeal to discovery inasmuch as it always includes the element of surprise. It is often the result of starting out to do one thing and ending up with something different. Columbus, of course, is the classical example of this. He started out to find a new route to India, and discovered America.

Many years ago, I read a story which had a great effect on me and whenever I think of men groping blindly to find things, it always comes to my mind.

The story is about a man by the name of Bernard Palissey who lived in the southwest of France about 400 years ago. He was jack-of-all-trades _ surveyor, painter, a worker in glass and, in addition, he was a nature lover. 

One day, a wealthy nobleman of the neighbourhood showed Palissey a white enamel cup which came from the east. It fascinated him immediately. In fact, he admired the cup so much that, then and there, he resolved to make enamelware just like that cup, in spite of the fact that he knew nothing about pottery, and the best of his knowledge, there was no man in France who could make enamels.

He told his wife that evening, “I have to grope in the dark, for I have no knowledge of clays and don’t know anything about the composition of enamels”. As we say today: he had to start from the scratch, because there was no other way. There was nothing in literature, as all important information at that time was kept a secret.          

Palissey said: “I will build a furnace in the old open shed back of the house and will work on this in the evenings. I can coat some of the broken pieces of flower pots with the chemical compounds which I will want to try. Some of these may turn out to be the white enamel I am looking for”. For months, in all kinds of weather, he worked in the open shed without apparent results. However, he was getting first-hand experience.

But instead of continuing to work only in the evenings, he began to neglect his regular work, so, as months become years, his family became destitute. After five years of this constant research, he was so poor that he could not buy fuel for his furnace.

One day when his family was away, he tore down the fence around the garden for fuel. But this was not enough to raise he temperature, so he tore up a part of the floor in the house and then started to use the furniture! The neighbours were sure he had gone mad and notified the magistrate. When the officers arrived to take him into protective custody, they did not find a crazy man but one in ecstasy, “Look, look!” he said. “The enamel has melted!”

Some of the pieces out of this hectic experiment caught the eyes of the Duke de Montmorency, who gave him the job of decorating a chateau. Now he could feed his starving family and he was able to replace the fence, the floor and furniture. He was able also to get a better furnace.

Three years after his first experiment, he made another important step in the process. But still he was not satisfied. All of this work had been adding to his experience, but it took another seven years, that is, fifteen in all, until he had worked out a process for making this particular new type of enamelware for which he became famous.              

If he had discovered the white enamel, which he so painfully sought, he would never have been known.  

It was the new thing which he discovered, more or less accidentally, that makes him famous as a creative artist. I did not realize when I read of Palissey that, instead of this being a story of a specific incident; it was really the universal history of all development.

The Palissey principle can often lead to new and valuable results. Not always the results sought for, but frequently things of far greater value. On many research problems, after all scientific methods have been tried, I prefer the cut-and-try method of groping in the dark, with the possibility of bumping into something, to just sitting still and philosophizing.