Wings #2 - McDougle

1.  The discovery of flight had an impact on many areas outside of aviation.  Painters, such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, were inspired by the planes they saw at Issy-les-Moulineaux and created model airplanes as a result.  They also created paintings of aviation.  Poets and novelists also took inspiration from the flights they witnessed.  An Italian poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, developed the artistic movement of “Futurism”.  He believed that the development of technology was an art of its own and greater than the art that he personally created with words.  Plays, poetry, and novels began to have themes that included aviation.  Music was another area outside of aviation that was effected by flight.  Songs incorporated aviation in their themes and titles, such as “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine” by Tin Pan Alley.  Aviation became a very stylish or trendy, so household items were decorated with pictures of airplanes.  Toys, model airplanes for example, were created for children to play with.  The daily lives of people around the world were influenced immensely by flight, because it became incorporated in many different areas of their lives.

(pg. 122-123)

3.  Louis Bleriot, a retired French exhibition pilot, started the first major aviation business.  Due to lack of space in his original workshops, Bleriot moved his business to a new factory just one year after began taking orders.  Over 150 individuals worked at his plant and they created hundreds of airplanes.  Although the aircraft that were created there were many different shapes, sizes, and often experimental, the business sold the most of the Bleriot XI, his earliest famous airplane.  Bleriot not only created airplanes, he also taught people to fly them as a component of his business.  Incredible competition began around the world shortly after the development of aviation as a business.  In Bleriot’s case, he competed against more than 30 businesses in France alone.  Individuals who had no training in engineering or aviation, such as Belgian cabaret singer Armand Deperdussin, went into business with those experienced in aircraft.  Millions of government and private dollars were invested in aircraft in countries all around the world, with Germany, France, and Russia being the largest spenders. (pg. 126-129, 134-135)

5.  The test states that the patent suits caused the United States to lose their momentum in the aviation industry and become ranked as one of the less successful countries.  I agree that the patent suits may have had a negative effect on the development of flight technologies in the United States, but I do not think they negatively effected the progress of aviation overall.  The patents encouraged inventors and engineers to think outside of what the Wright’s had already developed.  For example, the Herring-Curtiss Company was required to create a new control system for its aircraft that did not include components that were patented by the Wrights.  The threats of companies getting taken to court encouraged innovation and creativity.  The Wrights’ true interest was not in the business of aviation, which was made clear when Orville sold the company in 1915.  The development of technology was their true passion, and it was in this manner that the patent suits actually positively effected the progress of aviation, in my opinion.  (pg.  145-148)