The Process of Technological Discovery, Essay Example

The process of technological discovery that lead to the development of the Wright Brothers’ flying machine can be described as one that was above all cumulative. Namely, the Wright Brothers’ invention was only possible within a context where previous technological developments by other inventors informed the Wright Brothers’ own contribution. This is not to discount for the inventive genius which each unique discovery entails: if this individual element were not present, it could be concluded that anyone could accomplish what the Wright Brothers’ accomplished. In this regard, the Wright Brothers’ individual prowess as inventors, their innovative concepts and ideas, fused with the context of cumulative knowledge that had developed to the point of time in which they made their contributions, enabled the flying machine to be created.

For example, the Wright Brothers’ model of an airplane was informed by previous developments from a vast number of fields. The possibility of man flight developed in the late 1700s with the invention of the first hot air balloon by the French inventors Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier. After this initial breakthrough, inventors embarked upon ameliorating the French inventors’ model. Combustion engines after this created a power source that was amendable to the concept of flying machines. From this point onward, using these basic principles, a non-balloon model of a flying machine was necessary, one that relied on so-called “heavier-than-air” flight. Various inventors, such as Cayley and Lilienthal, worked in this field, providing ideas that would later influence subsequent models, for example, in Cayley’s case, understanding that the angle of the wings was crucial to the possibility of such machines. The Wright Brothers’, seizing on the cumulative knowledge, of their predecessors, experimented with these concepts, investing their own individual genius into the project, and thus developed their historic flying machine.

Arguably, the two main reasons behind patenting a device are, firstly, to achieve smoe type of financial reward from an important discovery, and, secondly, to make one’s individual mark as an inventor. Therefore, the aims of patenting themselves can be said to be divorced from the actual inventions that are patented: the aim of patenting is economic and social, whereas an invention such as the airplane, while having economic and social questions, is a response to an entirely unrelated problem: how to create a heavier-than-air flying machine.

The Wright Brothers’ patenting of their wing-warping idea, according to the academic literature, would give them a monopoly over flying machines: in so far as the wing-warping idea was a decisive development in actually producing airplanes, the control over this idea through legal means entailed that the Wright Brothers’ would dominate the industry unless another inventor could discover a superior solution to wing-warping. At first glance, patenting in this context seems to be entirely egocentrical in terms of its aims: it is an attempt to gain control over an industry. By not patenting the concept, the Wright Brothers would have stimulated the development of the airplane from other inventors who seized upon their ideas. From the perspective of a scientific community, therefore, it is arguable to understand how patenting can be beneficial to this community, in so far as its aim is development and progress. The sharing of ideas corresponds to the cumulative accumulation of knowledge that shapes scientific discovery: a cumulative knowledge that the Wright Brothers also benefitted from. The decision to patent, therefore, can only be justified from an economic and social context, where the prestige of the inventor or the desire to dominate and monopolize an industry are viewed as ends in themselves. To the extent that science is not reducible to these notions, then the Wright Brothers’ decision could be rightly criticized from the perspective of the scientific community working in the field of aeronautics.