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Re: The Original Egyptians
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: monk</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">monk;
re the plane, check this out:
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">But a model airplane needs a vertical rudder to keep it moving straight. This strange wooden model tapered into a vertical rudder. One can also see that the wing has an airfoil cross-section. It was all aerodynamically correct. <span style="font-weight: bold">Too much about the model was beyond coincidence. Messiha's brother, a flight engineer, reproduced it in balsa wood and launched it. It flew. It really flew! </span>
The model was dug up in Sakkara a hundred years ago. Sakkara is a site of ancient ruins, but this model is more recent. It's from the 3rd century BC, from an age of invention that followed the death of Alexander the Great. That so-called Hellenistic period gave us gears, screws, plumbing, control valves, Euclidian geometry, Archimedes, and Ptolemy's astronomy.
<span style="font-weight: bold">And so, it seems, it also produced a modern concept of flight. 1800 years later Leonardo da Vinci was still trying to invent flapping-wing airplanes and corkscrew-driven helicopters. But here, an Egyptian had produced something with all the features of a modern sailplane.</span>
Did anyone actually build a large version of this thing? Well, no one could have come this close to the real shape of flight without working on a larger scale. This little wooden model could hardly exist unless someone had worked with large, light models, or even with man-carrying versions.
Archaeologists have looked in vain for a prototype. A large model light enough to fly would be too delicate to stand the ravages of 2300 years. The original -- if it ever was -- has long since joined the desert dust. Whatever form this Egyptian airplane might have taken, it has long since returned to the world of dreams and imagination from which it first came.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
photos of the Cairo Museum "bird"
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very interesting. </div></div>
fer sure...
the helicopter and spacecraft looking thingy is freaky as well
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: monk</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">monk;
re the plane, check this out:
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">But a model airplane needs a vertical rudder to keep it moving straight. This strange wooden model tapered into a vertical rudder. One can also see that the wing has an airfoil cross-section. It was all aerodynamically correct. <span style="font-weight: bold">Too much about the model was beyond coincidence. Messiha's brother, a flight engineer, reproduced it in balsa wood and launched it. It flew. It really flew! </span>
The model was dug up in Sakkara a hundred years ago. Sakkara is a site of ancient ruins, but this model is more recent. It's from the 3rd century BC, from an age of invention that followed the death of Alexander the Great. That so-called Hellenistic period gave us gears, screws, plumbing, control valves, Euclidian geometry, Archimedes, and Ptolemy's astronomy.
<span style="font-weight: bold">And so, it seems, it also produced a modern concept of flight. 1800 years later Leonardo da Vinci was still trying to invent flapping-wing airplanes and corkscrew-driven helicopters. But here, an Egyptian had produced something with all the features of a modern sailplane.</span>
Did anyone actually build a large version of this thing? Well, no one could have come this close to the real shape of flight without working on a larger scale. This little wooden model could hardly exist unless someone had worked with large, light models, or even with man-carrying versions.
Archaeologists have looked in vain for a prototype. A large model light enough to fly would be too delicate to stand the ravages of 2300 years. The original -- if it ever was -- has long since joined the desert dust. Whatever form this Egyptian airplane might have taken, it has long since returned to the world of dreams and imagination from which it first came.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
photos of the Cairo Museum "bird"
</div></div>
</div></div>
very interesting. </div></div>
fer sure...
the helicopter and spacecraft looking thingy is freaky as well
It always ends in desparation.
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