![\"3](\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-3-5.gif\" "\\"3")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by David McCullough, 2015, Simon and Schuster, New York<\/p>\n
I thought this book was interesting, primarily because I didn’t know that much about the Wright brothers, even though I had made one visit to Kitty Hawk.\u00c2\u00a0 McCullough, as usual in his books, provides a lot of information about the capabilities, personalities, and idiosyncrasies of his primary characters, in this case Wilbur and Orville Wright and their sister, Katharine.<\/p>\n
My reaction to the book is that it certainly isn’t McCullough’s best effort.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00c2\u00a0accurately depicts the lead up to the Wright\u00c2\u00a0brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, but the rest of the book seems like a catalog of\u00c2\u00a0the various\u00c2\u00a0rewards and\u00c2\u00a0accolades the Wrights received afterward.\u00c2\u00a0 From 1903 to 1910 the Wrights must have made significant advances in\u00c2\u00a0the technology of flight, but McCullough only mentions these in passing.\u00c2\u00a0 The book would have benefited greatly from a collaboration with an aeronautical expert.\u00c2\u00a0 McCullough apparently is not one of those as he\u00c2\u00a0describes only the duration of the flights, sometimes the altitude, and who\u00c2\u00a0of note was in the audience.\u00c2\u00a0The first flight was only twelve seconds and, by 1910, the Wright brothers were able to fly for over an hour.\u00c2\u00a0 Much of the improvement was due to their additional experience in flying, but certainly their ingenuity must have led to technological advances that they applied to each iteration of their aircraft.\u00c2\u00a0 McCullough mentions some increases in horsepower of the subsequent engines, but not much more.<\/p>\n
I was intrigued on my visit to the Edison museum with the advances in design and technology that Edison applied to each succeeding\u00c2\u00a0of his phonographs.\u00c2\u00a0 The Wright brothers essentially invented the first powered aircraft and also learned how to fly it.\u00c2\u00a0I would be interested in knowing more about how they improved upon it over the years following.<\/p>\n
Also of interest might have been the lineage of the Wright Company and the fact that it subsequently became a part of the Curtiss-Wright Company, a company that survives today.\u00c2\u00a0 McCullough mentions the Wright brothers’ rivalry with Glenn Curtiss during the early years of powered flight.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems ironic that the two companies later became part of one company.<\/p>\n
I very much enjoyed reading this book.\u00c2\u00a0 I think it would have been much better, however, if the author had provided some additional information about what was developed after the initial flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by David McCullough, 2015, Simon and Schuster, New York I thought this book was interesting, primarily because I didn’t know that much about the Wright brothers, even though I had made one visit to Kitty Hawk.\u00c2\u00a0 McCullough, as usual in …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17,20,16,32],"class_list":["post-1928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-biography","tag-history","tag-non-fiction","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1931,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions\/1931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}