Ok let me see if I can put this another way.
The laws of physics are still vastly theoretical. You will continue to innovate within the sphere of what is known while the next big innovation will come from people who ignore the laws of physics and take us to the next level, most probably by accident, but that's the way it goes. Over and over again, it happens this way.
As to your comment that planes were accepted as the future back then, you greatly diminish the commitment the Wright Bros. showed. An excerpt from Wiki -
In years to come Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep. James M. Cox, publisher at that time of the Dayton Daily News (later governor of Ohio and Democratic presidential nominee in 1920), expressed the attitude of newspapermen—and the public—in those days when he admitted years later, "Frankly, none of us believed it."[91]
And if your comparing everyone, the masses, to the visionaries back then, well I just don't comprehend what you are trying to say except that maybe you want to be a vissionary and that only trained people are vissionaries, I don't know. Gees, they didn't even have high school diplomas, so good luck with your innovating, this conversation is going nowhere, Im unscribing, Cheers
Tje laws of physics in technology are not pure speculative theory, they are tools used every day in a myriad of domains. We are not in the theory of chords or some parts of particles theory which are speculations waiting to be validated or rejected.
The words of Cox are those of an not enough informed man.
Lilienthal made 2000 flights betweem 1891 and 1896 with his gliders. He published a fundamental book in 1891. The Lilenthial polar of lift and drag is always used when comparing profiles.That was public with pics in the European newspapers.
Paper and bamboo unmanned gliders were flying for about 40 years on 1903. Propellers were known and used with rubber bands as engines. Yes free flight planes with rubber engines ware used well before the first official manned powered flight. You could buy them around 1885-1890 if I remember well in London and Paris if rich enough.
So the Wright Bros beneficed of the invention of usable gas engines and from the former flying gliders unmanned or not. The principles of sustentation, stability and control in the 3 dimensions were known.
The dangers of stalling, ie losing lift by too much angle) were known. Cody of the famous kites explained it very well, Lilenthial also, the poor guy killed himself later in a stall of his glider in 1896.
In 1890 Clement Ader financed by the French Army had an unmanned plane the Eole which made a brief jump powered by a steam engine.
Gustave Eiffel (the same od the Eiffel Tower) was designing and published profiles around 1900. He created the first official laboratory of aerodynamics with a wind tunnel as we now see them in 1909.
The Wright knew it, as that was public and in all the numerous publications of the numerous aviation societies. The word avion (plane in French) and aviation were coined by Ader in 1890 and used widely in Europe around 1900.
So around 1890-1900 many people were working in the problem.
The problem to solve was to get an engine light and powerful enough installed in a controllable cell and to make it fly with a pilot. Nobody educated doubt in 1900 that one next day an heavier than air will fly by its own means.
That was a extremely difficult task with the technology and knowledge of the day, The immense merit of the Wright Bros was to solve it. The problem solved by the Wright was not a theoretical one, it was a practical one, and they showed a lot of imagination and ingenuity.
But the plane did not appeared suddenly from the vacuum as the American journalistic myth wanted to make it believe.
No, no isolated poor boys in the middle of the prairie had a red blooded yankee trait of genius and against all invented the plane.
They were self educated guys, engineers by mind, very well informed of what was succeeding and they methodically searched and found the solution. Only intelligence and knowledge are needed not diplomas. They even took a big pack of patents, and that took too much time, in fact years. Meantime the others were progressing and as typical Europeans did not bother to take brevets or having secrecy.
When touring in Europe in 1908, it appeared to the Wright Bros that they had no chance to have the exclusivity and to defend the patents as there were many precedents of identical solutions years before.
The very first public (ie in presence of a crowd in a public meeting) flight of a Wright plane, the Flyer III, was in France in 1908. All the former flights of a Wright plane are only documented by witnesses and pics. The flights were private and secret until 1908.
The Flyer III was already totally obsolete in 1908 when it appeared in public. A few months later on 1909 the channel was crossed in a flight of about 46 km in 35 minutes by Bleriot on the Bleriot XI.
Facts are stubborn, but that do not retire any merit to the Wright Bros. They did it. And made a lot of money making planes later, so nobody died poor and forgotten.
I see them as consenting victims of the fabrication of a legend. They are not holy icons of the Golden Legend of Inventions, just tenacious and smart guys.
Cheers.
