When striking pilots were die in the 1900s some the great unwashed protrude to wonder if air power really had a future . French daredevil Leon Delagrange died in early January of 1910 , leading magazines like the Literary Digest to have doubts about whether melodic line locomotion could become a serious way of fare .
“ The death of Leon Delagrange , crusht under the shipwreck of his falling aeroplane at Bordeaux last week , raise again the question whether the aeroplane is not to be classed with the tightrope and the loop - the - grummet , ” study the January 15 , 1910 issue .
And the Literary Digest was n’t alone . Serious - minded science and technology magazines had headache that people were n’t being pragmatic about the restriction that modern aviation confront .
The December 1909 issue of The Engineering Magazine perhaps best summed up the concerns . Emphasis mine .
As a scientific achievement , as a demonstration of cool cheek , or as an example of ascendence of brainiac and muscle , cultivated to the point where it becomes natural , Wilbur Wright ’s flight up the Hudson on October 4 is memorable . But the leap by which popular imagination flies to the rendering that this performance establishes commercial domination of the aeroplane is purely marvelous . Emotion has run off with reason .
[ … ]
We do not query the interest or excellency of the Wrights ’ mechanically skillful achievement . There is no reason apparently why they should not vastly better any recorded carrying out — fly thousands of foot mellow , or hundreds of mil in aloofness . Our skepticism is only as to the utilitarian value of any present or possible accomplishment of the plane . We do not believe it will ever be a commercial fomite at all . We do not believe it will find any very large place in the human race of sport . We do not believe its military grandness is as great as is normally supposed , or will extend ( except incidentally ) beyond the range of reconnoitring and messenger service . Even here it continue wholly undetermined how much ( except mutual death ) can actually be fulfill by valet in flying - simple machine , if other men in other flying - motorcar are trying to preclude the accomplishment . And even the attempt must always be restrict by the rank dependence of aerial navigation upon weather conditions which in most places and in median seasons exist during only a minor fraction of the time .
It ’s sometimes hard for people to remember that engineering science splatter along in fits and starts . With hindsight we remember the first powered trajectory of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903 and more or less skip over the next tenner in collective memory . We trust that since we capture flight , that man must have more or less directly used it for delight the great unwashed and good . But , of course , that was n’t the case .
The airplane still had to turn up itself in many ways . And respected people in respected issue were saying rather roundly that not only would the airplane not be used for commercial-grade purposes anytime shortly , it would never be used for them at all . As the Literary Digest suggest , maybe aeroplane were just novelties like the tightrope walker .
History would prove these people wrong . But history would also mostly bury that there was ever a question that aircraft would zip around the skies transport people and goods . There was nothing inevitable about the future , despite it always feel that path — whether we ’re talking about air travel , smartphones , or politics .
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