The Wright Brothers' Approach to Inventing the Airplane

If a technology may introduce catastrophic risks, how do you develop it?

The Wright Brothers' approach to inventing the airplane is one case study: pic.twitter.com/NNT2L172vK

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

The catastrophic risk, of course, was dying in a crash.

This is exactly what happened to one of the Wrights' predecessors, Otto Lilienthal, who attempted to fly using a kind of glider. He had many successful experiments, but one day he lost control, fell, and broke his neck. pic.twitter.com/HoGWCdjfPm

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

Believe it or not, the news of Lilienthal's death motivated the Wrights to take up the challenge of flying. Someone had to carry on the work!

But they weren't reckless. They wanted to avoid Lilienthal's fate. So what was their approach?

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

(This thread is available as a blog post BTW, in case you prefer that format)https://t.co/qmoKDL5cn5

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

First, they decided that the key problem to be solved was one of *control*.

Before they even put a motor in a flying machine, they experimented for years with gliders, trying to solve the control problem.

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

As Wilbur Wright wrote in a letter:

“When once a machine is under proper control under all conditions, the motor problem will be quickly solved. A failure of a motor will then mean simply a slow descent and safe landing instead of a disastrous fall.”

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

When actually experimenting with the machine, the Wrights would sometimes stand on the ground and fly the glider like a kite, which minimized the damage any crash could do: pic.twitter.com/cWbIgH7Hba

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

When they did go up in the machine themselves, they flew relatively low. And they did all their experimentation on the beach at Kitty Hawk, so they had soft sand to land on. pic.twitter.com/Y9F1KEK6Jj

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

All of this was a deliberate, conscious strategy.

Here is how David McCullough describes it in his biography of the Wrights: “He was there to learn, not to take chances for thrills … caution and close attention to all advance preparations were to be the rule” pic.twitter.com/uzDP9VyNe1

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

Solving the control problem required new inventions, including “wing warping” (later replaced by ailerons) and a tail designed for stability. They had to discover and learn to avoid pitfalls such as the tail spin.

Once they had solved this, they added a motor and took flight. pic.twitter.com/AR2Ch0LjRb

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

Inventors who put power ahead of control failed. They launched planes hoping they could be steered once in the air.

Best known is Samuel Langley, who had a head start on the Wrights and more funding. His final experiment crashed into the lake. (At least they flew it over water!) pic.twitter.com/YL6OdHN5dd

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

The Wrights invented the airplane using an empirical, trial-and-error approach. They had to learn from experience.

They couldn't have solved the control problem without actually building and testing a plane.

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

There was no theory sufficient to guide them, and what theory did exist was often wrong.

In fact, the Wrights had to throw out the published tables of aerodynamic data, and make their own measurements, for which they designed and built their own wind tunnel: pic.twitter.com/0Os8Vr6Ll8

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

Nor could they create perfect safety. Orville Wright crashed a plane in one of their early demonstrations, severely injuring himself and killing the passenger, Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge. pic.twitter.com/F7irM4HATX

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

The excellent safety record of commercial aviation was only achieved incrementally, iteratively, over decades: pic.twitter.com/9iuN6YdkO1

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

And of course the Wrights were lucky in one sense: the dangers of flight were obvious

Early X-ray technicians, in contrast, had no idea that they were dealing with a health hazard. They used bare hands to calibrate the machine, and many of them had to have their hands amputated: pic.twitter.com/bKDKJIRpFh

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

But even after the dangers of radiation were well known, not everyone was careful

Louis Slotin, physicist at Los Alamos, killed himself and injured others in a reckless demonstration where a screwdriver held by hand was the only thing stopping a uranium core from going critical: pic.twitter.com/p2tRw1pW0O

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

Exactly how careful to be—and what that means in practice—is a domain-specific judgment call that must be made by experts in the field, the technologists on the frontier of progress. Safety always has to be traded off against speed and cost.

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023

So I wouldn't claim that this exact pattern can be directly transferred to any other field—such as AI.

But the Wrights can serve as one role model for how to integrate risk management into a development program. Be like them (and not like Slotin).

— Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) June 15, 2023