“THE TEN GREATEST”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19050, 1 July 1924, Page 10

“THE TEN GREATEST”

AMERICAN LIST CONSIDERED. PLACE FOR AN AUSTRALIAN. ‘ ‘ Who are the ten greatest inventors of modern times?” John S. Seymour, till recently United States Commissioner of Patents, writing in New York 'in Decemiper last, says, “The following are the Ten Immortals who have done most for man within the last 150 years:—Eli Whitney, Charles Goodyear, Samuel Morse, Graham Bell, Cyrus M’Cormick, Elias Howe, Henry Bessemer, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Wilbur Wright.” The list is a little star-spangled, not to say, as neariv as possible oue hundred per cent. American. There’s not an Australian amougs them. Perhaps that’s Australia’s fault, not America's, declares the Sydney Sun. Yet there is at least one Australian inventor whose name will be remembered in 1000 yeirj, long after some of the above arc forgotten. And what of Marconi (or perhaps Hertz), and wireless, of Gutenberg, the father of printing, of Stevens and the screw propeller, Otto and the gas engine, and many otMirs? In 1916 a British scientific /%)aper asked its readers “what inventions are the seven wonders of/tie modern world?” The anwer, by i iqajority vote was, “wireless telephone, radium, antiseptics and Antitoxins, spectrum analysis, X-rays, '4nd the aeroplane.” This suggest enlargement of the AnKan vision. But before any fair be given to the question, who the ten greatest inventors of the world, the meaning of the query woHhuave to be settled. “The mag-neto-electricity, ’ ’ w rote Tyn^^Bkhirty years ago, “is the greatest attained, and it is the Mont of Faraday’s magnificent achieve^®nts.” Yet 50 years elapsed before .▼ discovery was used with commute’ 1 success in the construction of the dynamo. Which x *was the invention, the discovery of magneto-electricity, or the construction of the dynamo, which is an application of it?

However these considerations may be decided, the conquest of the air was such an immortal achievement that higher honours that tenth place must be accorded to somebody in connection with it. Mr. Seymour says: “Aviation, Wilbur Wright, America,” Lawrence Hargrave, Sydney, is hereby nominated instead. Mr. Seymour writes: “In the last few months man’s mastery of the air has been demonstrated dramatically by the successful inauguration of the trans-continental ail mail, by the trial flight of the Z.R.I. (American dirigible) and the amazing speed record of jver four miles a minute. These achiefoments are reason enough for adding. Wilbur Wright to the ten immortals of modern invention. The flying machine had its beginning in a simple toy —a device of cork and bamboo, driven by rubber bands—given to Wilbur and Orville Wright their father. They called it a bat. Failing to build a bat that would fly, they turned their attention to kites. The flying machine was the ultimate result.”

Well, here is a paragraph from tho Glasg/.v Herald, which tells a different tale. Its publication in America would to-day create no more surprise than its publication in Sydney may create amongst some eminent Australians who have the habit of forgetting and depreciating anything great done in Australia. There are, foisthc most part, those superior sort of persons who place their heads in Borsalino and Stetson hats and are quite content to pay 15 to 20 guineas for a tweed suit, provided only that the cloth is guaranteed to have travelled 16,000 miles. This paragraph is headed: “The aeroplane, a Sydney invention;” and was originally published in 1909. Thus: —

“It may be news to many that Wilbur Wright, Octave Chanute, Baden Powell, Sir Hiram Maxim, and Professor Threfall, and many other prominent men interested in the problem of flight, agree that Mr. Lawrence Hargrave, of Sydney, New South Wales, discovered and applied the first principles of the aeroplane a quarter of a century ago. When Wilbur Knight was a boy Mr. Hargrave proved the efficacy of the cellular box kite, and two of his kites, which were presented to the British military authorities, are understood to have guided Colonel Cody in the evolution of the box kite now used by our army. In a paper on the trochoidal plane, read before the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1884, he demonstrated the motion of a plane surface when acted upon by an undulating one, and the converse, and showed how cy 1 . k drical waves could be reduced to plane waves. He explained the spherical air wave, and pointed out that the conneltion of the trochoidal wave and trochoided plane with the crank and connecting rod, opened up a field for the development of engineering talent as extensive as the discovedy of the screw did, when air mechanisms were limited to the uses of the lever and the wedge.” In August, 1884, Hargrave contrived the first inanimate thing, heavier than air ,that ever flew with its own power. It was a small monoplane with a propeller in front. He invented the rotary engine in 1889 which turned the aeroplane from a scientific toy into a great human utility. He was the absolute inventor of the cellular box kite, of t?e flying machine, and the rotary engine. He sent models to Wilbur Wright in 1900 and the rest followed. Wilbur Wright ’s own acknowledgement ought to settle the question, even in America. He too had made “bats,” driven with rubber bands, just like Wright, but he I'umd solved the great problem, and contrived a practicable flying machine cn other principles, whilst Wilbur Wright was in knickers and still at school. isyfogstralia doing to honour the TiemofV' b?*i'Mjjcreat Australia who igdve a New Agdßp man? r - 7