"The Wright Brothers did not invent the airplane!"

Mary Pegg wrote:

Michael Walsh wrote:

A lot of this depends on whether you want to credit the invention to
the first person who tried to produce something or the person who
made it a success. Edison invented the first successful light bulb by
providing a longer lasting filament that he discovered through a lot
of exhaustive testing of possibilities.

Did you read that page?

"1878 - Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914), an English physicist, was
the first person to invent a practical and longer-lasting electic
lightbulb (13.5 hours)."

The following year Edison produced a bulb with a 40 hour life.

Well, 40 hours is significantly longer than 13.5 hours and Edison
was the one who was successful commercially. No, I didn't read
that page.

Over the years, filaments have been improved greatly.

I regard this as more of a clarification of what I said than
a contradiction.

Mike Walsh

Michael Walsh wrote:

Mary Pegg wrote:

Did you read that page?

"1878 - Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914), an English physicist, was
the first person to invent a practical and longer-lasting electic
lightbulb (13.5 hours)."

The following year Edison produced a bulb with a 40 hour life.

Well, 40 hours is significantly longer than 13.5 hours and Edison
was the one who was successful commercially. No, I didn't read
that page.

Over the years, filaments have been improved greatly.

I regard this as more of a clarification of what I said than
a contradiction.

You're free to regard it any way you wish, but if you'd perhaps
read that page instead of quibbling, you'd see that Edison's
improvements were just one more step in the process of developing
viable lightbulbs. I do not view a factor of three as "significant":
I imagine that in the ten months between Swan's demonstration of
13.5 hours and Edison's demonstration of 40 hours, Swan himself
had probably managed the same improvement.

Swan's bulb was the first practical bulb; Edison's was a development
of an 1875 patent purchased from inventors, Henry Woodward and
Matthew Evans.

Edison lost in the British courts for infringement of Swan's patent.

The U.S. Patent Office ruled on October 8, 1883 that Edison's patents
were based on the prior art of a man named William Sawyer and were
invalid.

Edison did not invent the lightbulb.

More info he
http://www.lightfan.co.uk/lightinf04.htm

I was reading in the bathroom when I ran across an item written by
Mary Pegg on Mon, 06 Oct 2003
17:27:06 +0100, which said:

Edison did not invent the lightbulb.

And Newton was an alchemist.

So what?


-------------
Beady's 11th Law of Social Harmonics: "Your spouse is precisely the kind of person someone like you would choose to marry."

From John Beaderstadt:
Mary Pegg on Mon, 06 Oct 2003

Edison did not invent the lightbulb.

And Newton was an alchemist.

So what?

I've enjoyed Mary's very informative contributions here.


~ CT

Julian Bordas wrote
[...]
They are also mis credited with being the first to have made a powered
flight. They are not

They did, however, meet the X-Prize criteria, by doing several flights
that day and the next.

/dps

(Stuf4) wrote
[....]
Julian, if you bothered to search the forum, you'd have seen that on
another thread the simple statement of:

(More often, the Wright brothers are miscredited with inventing the
airplane.)

...was taken by more than one member here to be controversial.

I'm sure you meant to say "most _if_ not all". I hope it's clear to
you that no, not all members are fully cognizant of the evolution of
fixed wing heavier than air flight. *I* am not fully cognizant of it
myself, nor are the folks who created that website. But the folks who
made that site are more cognizant than most. I found it to be
enjoyable reading.


Well, the airplane as a concept had been around for a while, but a
machine that could be called an airplane had to be invented. Langley
came close with his aerodrome, but even with the backing of the
Smithsonian Institution, he couldn't quite convince the world (see the
Review of "Unlocking the Sky" (Shulman) in Air and Space, June-July
2003,pp 75-75).

And on page 80, see the quote of Orville's letter, "The largest
machine we handled in nay kind[of weather, made the longest dis]tance
glide (American), the longest time in the air, the smallest angle of
descent, and the highest wind!!!"
October 23, 1902.

/dps

(Other reviews in that issue: "Hypersonic" (Jenkisn &
Landis),"Virtual Apollo" (Sullivan), "Sled Driver" (Shul, 2nd ed).