>They did several things differently, from doing their own research to building wind tunnels to validate their data and eliminate guesswork.

>Sometimes the non-glamorous lab work is absolutely crucial to the success of a project. - Wilbur Wright

>Since the 18th century, engineers had been using Smeaton’s coefficient to calculate the density of air. After running over 50 simulations using their wind tunnels, the brothers determined its value to be 0.0033, and not 0.005.

>They also used the data from wind tunnels to design wings with better lift-to-drag ratio and used them to build their 1902 flying machine, which performed significantly better than their previous gliders.

The wind tunnel work was crucial to their success, arguably the single most important element. It enabled them to iterate their designs and compare them quickly. In today's language, it helped them to fail fast.

Had they been better funded, they might have committed the error of trying to iterate mostly with full-sized fliers, which would have drastically slowed down iteration.

This was really interesting. I've always viewed the Wrights as "hobbyists" or "tinkerers" - but now I'm going to have to do some research on their lives. If the impression I got from that article is remotely accurate, they were engineers. It seems almost insulting to call them "bicycle makers".

Fixing Smeaton’s constant was only small part of the puzzle. They discovered in wind tunnel that certain shapes produces almost 3X better lift to drag. They tried out 150 shapes varying one variable at a time to find optimal shape and angle of attack [1]. Another big problem was 3 axis control system and designing propellers that can generate enough thrust. Before Wrights, propellers were used in ships but no one really understood how the worked and their design was largely “cut and try”. Wrights needed to produce enough thrust to lift whole machine with just ~10HP engine. They literally invented theory of propellers as wings and deviced equations to compute thrust. They also designed mechanism to transfer power from engine to propellers and the fact that they need two propellers rotating in opposite directions [2].

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eb92/1d44112fbdd04532f56cb2...

[2] http://www.wrightexperience.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/161...

> However, do you know why two flight enthusiasts from Dayton, Ohio succeeded?

This just makes me think that Alberto Santos-Dumont also "invented" heavier-than-air flight, only 3 years later and it was better.

Wouldn't we still have the same flying ability if the Wrights never pursued flying?

Previous discussion on Santos-Dumont: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9542480

The real key is advancement in metallurgy and engine technology made a lightweight engine feasible. The correct formula might have taken a couple years off the time frame, but no more.

As always you see farther than others by standing on the shoulders of giants.

I can't think of any technological advance that was achieved primarily through the effort of a single individual - in retrospect, it seems "obvious" that the fundamental principles had been in place and that it "only" took someone to come along and put them together in a new way.

I'm a firearms enthusiast and have spent some time studying the development of small arms. If transported back to the late 18th Century, I could explain and document the mechanism for an automatic rifle suitable for use by infantry like an AR or AK - but I likely could not produce one, and certainly could not produce them on an industrial scale. The metallurgy simply wasn't up to the task, nor was the machinery of the day. The metallic cartridge would't even make a lot of sense; as the percussion cap hadn't yet been invented. Even a manually-operated mounted Gatling gun wouldn't be possible without it.

Once a stable, impact-sensitive explosive suitable for use as a primer was invented, everything was in place for the invention of the metallic cartridge - and that's exactly what happened. Metallic cartridges lead to breech-loading firearms, which lead to the bolt action, which in turn lead to automatic and then semi-automatic actions. Neither of the last two made much sense until the invention and adoption of smokeless powder, as traditional gunpowder leaves so much residue that it would only work for a few shots before "fouling".

All that said, there are individuals that push the state of the art forward a great deal through their contributions. John Moses Browning, for instance. He created the first gas-operated machinegun and several of his designs remain in use (essentially unchanged) by major militaries around the world more than a century later.

In the book Visions of a Flying Machine (about the Wright brothers), the author's answer to this is "definitely." If the Wrights, and Santos-Dumont had failed, someone else in the world would have come up with a practical airplane within the next year or two. There were certain enabling technologies, like more efficient motors, that made it possible. Understanding of gas dynamics in academia was very high (Ludwig Prandtl was studying supersonic flow in tubes at the time), though fluid mechanics not as much. This is apparent in how rapidly aircraft development proceeded around the world after the Wrights, and how it left the brothers behind despite their patent protection attempts.