On 12/18/2009 10:58 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
At this point we need the academics. We should ignore the critics. The Wrights should have! They should have dealt with the British War Office instead of the U.S. War Department, because the British understood and appreciated what they had accomplished.
You've said or implied this several times now. It seems to me that there may have been another issue present, aside from simple economics.
There is a problem when you have an invention of military value, which is that if you shop it around among foreign governments, even "friendly" foreign governments, you may eventually be accused of being a traitor. You may even feel, yourself, that you are being a traitor.
It seems possible that the Wrights went first to the U.S. War Department specifically because they were U.S. citizens, and did not feel it would have been appropriate, feasible, right, or (fill in blank) to sell their technology overseas before the U.S. military adopted it.
