Were the Wright Brothers First in Flight? Inside a 1925 Dispute
You may have noticed we've been taking a bit of a break from our usual Monday news roundup to make room for special episodes, including our bird flu series, as well as to accommodate some summer holidays and vacation plans for our small but mighty team. We'll be back to the news roundup format next week.
For today I thought it would be fun to dip back into the Scientific American archives for a few minutes. Let's check in on what SciAm was up to exactly one century ago, in July of 1925.
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I'll start with the issue's cover story, which was contributed by the curator of marine life at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and seems to have been written, at least in large part, to introduce readers to the concept of tide pools. These are indents in rocky coastal areas that during high tide get filled with water, which remains trapped once the tide goes back out.
The writer describes the abundant marine life that could be found in the high tide puddles of Woods Hole, Massachusetts and other Massachusetts tidal zones, waxing poetic about barnacles and sea worms, which he compares to 'acrobats' and 'Goddesses of the sea,' respectively. One hundred years later, scientists and laypeople alike are still quite taken with tide pools. They're really interesting environments: during low tide they're generally shallow enough that they can get quite warm, which can be challenging for the organisms living inside them. Other difficulties for these organisms include the fact that tide pools are easy for predators such as birds and crabs to access. On top of that, oxygen levels in the pool drop off between infusions of new seawater. Plus, tidal pool residents often have to withstand crashing waves when the ocean reaches them again.
A lot has changed since 1925, but checking out tide pools is still a great pastime for anyone hanging around the coast. Depending on where you live, you can spot anemones, starfish, coral and even octopi, among other things.
The issue also features a somewhat scathing assessment of the U.S. commercial aviation industry as it stood in 1925. According to Scientific American 's editors, someone visiting from abroad asked them whether one could travel from New York to Chicago by airplane. (He asked this question, by the way, by calling up the magazine's office. Life was hard before Google.)
The editors told him that he'd have to hire his own airplane to make such a trip, which would be very expensive. But that got them thinking: Would this request have been reasonable in the traveler's home country? Thus began SciAm 's investigation into the world of commercial flight. RIP SciAM Editors, you would've loved The Rehearsal.
The resulting article points out that in the U.S. in 1925 commercial aviation was mainly used to get mail from one coast to the other. Meanwhile, the article explains, countries in Europe were already in the midst of an aviation boom, using planes to move people and products all over the place. According to the article, one could travel from London to Berlin for $40, which amounts to about $753 today. That's not exactly bargain airfare, but it's not so far off from what a modern flier might pay to travel in business class, and one can imagine that most folks paying for the privilege of air travel in 1925 were either traveling for important business, flush with cash or more likely both.
It's clear that the Scientific American editors were dismayed to find the U.S. lagging so far behind. In an inset titled, rather dramatically, 'Are We a Negligent People?' the magazine asks what has become of American aviation. 'We invented the airplane, neglected it, and left to Europe the task of putting it into widely extended commercial service,' the section reads probably in a transatlantic accent. 'As a people we are supposed to have a perfect genius for practising rapid-fire methods in our industrial activities. We are supposed to have developed time-saving into an exact science and have shown the world how to practise it. In the airplane, the Wrights gave us a time-saving machine which, if our business men had not been so possessed with the desire to make money and make it quickly, would today be one of our principal means of transportation for men, mail and light freight. Save for the fine work of the Army, the Navy, the Air Postal Service and a few private firms, we have done practically nothing, leaving to Europe the developing of commercial transportation.'
That's not the only aviation tea in the July 1925 issue. In the magazine's 'Our Point of View' section the editors reflect on Orville Wright's decision to send the first power-driven, person-carrying aircraft to the British National Museum. If you're not familiar with this historical scandal, here's the gist: the Wright brothers are famous for making the first powered, controlled flight in 1903. But for decades the Smithsonian Institution tried to give that honor to Samuel Langley, its former secretary, whose own flying machine had crashed just days before the Wrights' aircraft succeeded. In 1914 the Smithsonian's director had Langley's aircraft retrofitted to prove it could have flown—if only it hadn't failed—and used that to award him the credit. The museum displayed the aircraft with a placard to that effect. Orville Wright was, understandably, displeased. In Scientific American 's July 1925 issue the editors say that the museum display is misleading and that Langley definitely did not beat the Wright brothers. 'The whole matter, indeed, may be regarded as very much of a tempest in a teapot,' the editors wrote, 'and it could easily be set right if the Smithsonian Institution would remove the objectionable placard and change it so that there could be no possible misunderstanding.' That wouldn't actually happen until 1928, and the Smithsonian didn't get around to apologizing until 1942. But hey, we tried!
Though the U.S. was lagging behind in commercial flight, a graphic from the 1925 issue shows we were leading the charge in at least one technological arena: gabbing on the phone. The infographic contends that 62.9 percent of the world's telephones in 1925 were located in the U.S. and that the country led the way in phones per capita as well. We also came out ahead in terms of how often people got on the horn: the average person in the United States apparently sent 182 messages via phone each year, with second place going to Denmark with 123. And Russians, the editors noted, were 'content with four and one-half calls' each. Sure we're talking a lot, but are we actually saying anything?
That's all for today's archival adventure. We'll be back on Wednesday to talk about some of SciAm 's hottest summer reading recommendations. And tune in next week for a return to our good old news roundup.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
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