The Detail That Allowed Men to Fly

  

Until the 19th century, all attempts made by man to fly resulted in failure, if not death.

But what was wrong? If they were imitating exactly what the birds did: flapping wings back and forth.

This question was only answered with the arrival of the high-speed camera in the 1890s. When photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey were able to record the flight of a bird, freezing their movements.
Looking the pictures they noticed a revealing detail: Birds twisted their wings which allowed them to control a flight despite all the variations in the air.  

The sequence of photos, exposed in the Science Museum of London, was published in a magazine and it quickly reached and influenced everyone in the quest to fly - among them the Wright brothers.  Finally, a few years after the publication, the Wrights managed to reproduce the "wing twist" in an aircraft, with a set of flags and small reverses, allowing a total control of the aircraft for the first time in history.  

This little insight is still relevant today. As Barrel Collins, from the Wright Brothers Memorial, said, " Before the Wright Brothers, no one working in aviation did anything fundamentally correct. Since the Wright Brothers, no one has done anything fundamentally different ." 

 Note that the solution to the enormous problem was only possible with a new technology.  Today, we are experiencing a time of unprecedented rapid technological advancements. It is worth revisiting the old challenges and try to identify an opportunity in disguise.  

Born in Brazil, Santos Dummont is considered the first aviation pioneer in Brazil and also France. For the rest of the world the Wright Brothers were the real inventors. For me, the fundamental heroes of this story are others: Muybridge and Marey.