Quote:
Originally Posted by MS Fowler
Don't neglect to visit the MANY wineries in the area, too.
Curtis was, no doubt, a creative genius.
He was also, no doubt quite the opportunist. To solve his early control problems, he sneaked into a not-so-well-guarded tent housing the Wright Flyer to steal some of their ideas.
Part of genius is knowing when you have discovered something valuable. IIRC, one of Curtis's early planes had vertical control elevators both fore and aft of the main wing. A mishap broke the one in front of the wing. He completed removing it, and found the plane flew better.
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The Wright Brothers were no saints themselves. They based a lot of their work on the inventions of others and spent much many dollars suppressing the claims of previous and foreign inventors to preserve their own claims of "invention".
But everyone stole from each other back then. Ford stole the Fokker design for the Tri Motor then Junkers stole it from him. Porsche based the VW on work by Tatra and Chrysler. Just remember history is 2 words His+Story which is frequently at odds with the truth.