The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Wright brothers’

This is what we talked about on The invisible Mentor Blog this week: Review of How to Read Literature by Thomas C. Foster, Samuel Pierpont Langley, Aviation Pioneer and Interview with Andrina Lever.

Mondays at the Salon

Since 2004, the Samsung Economic Research Institute has put together a reading list for CEOs based on a survey of CEOs.

This Year’s Samsung Economic Research Institute Reading List for CEOs is Out

Booked on Tuesdays

This week we reviewed How to Read Literature Like Professor by Thomas C. Foster. The book is a good guide on how to read intelligently to get the most understanding out of your reading. The trick is to ask many questions – authors of literary fiction have a reason for doing what they do in works.

Review: How to Read Literature Like Professor by Thomas C. Foster

Wisdom Wednesdays

Samuel Pierpont Langley was one of the pioneers in aviation. Even though the aviation industry followed the path of the Wright Brothers, the brothers studied Otto Lilienthal’s and Langley’s work among others. Because of what Langley and others in the industry did, the Wright Brothers had a starting point when they entered the industry.

Samuel Pierpont Langley, American Scientist and Aviation Pioneer

Perspective Thursdays and Workshop Fridays

This week we featured Andrina Lever who attended 17 schools in three countries while growing up. And, how does a family enterprise continue when the founder dies suddenly? Read this and more in Andrina Lever’s interview. Here are Part One and Part Two of her interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Samuel Pierpont Langley was one of the lesser known pioneers in aviation. Though his formal education ended after completing high school, Langley was well read, reading extensively in science, literature and history. He popularized scientific knowledge by writing magazine articles. Using his knowledge of aerodynamics, Langley built a number of elastic-powered models. In 1896 (the same year Otto Lilienthal died), Langley was successful in flying several small-scale unmanned, steam-powered aircrafts launched from the top of a houseboat on the Potomac River. In 1898, at the request of the US government Langley started to build a piloted machine. The aircraft did not fly because the launching apparatus failed.

Name: Samuel Pierpont Langley

Birth Date: August 1834 – February 1906

Job Functions: Scientist, Aviator Pioneer, Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Fields: Astrophysics, Aviation

Known For: Bolometer

Though Samuel Pierpont Langley’s formal education ended when he completed high school, he was a voracious reader and studied various branches of science. He worked as an engineer and architect and held positions such as head of an observatory at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

An inventor in his own right, Langley invented and sold a technique to provide standard time signals to railroads. Between 1879 and 1881, he also invented the bolometer, an instrument for measuring tiny quantities of heat. “The superior measurements by means of the bolometer, the newly discovered extent of the solar spectrum, and the new results for selective absorption of the earth’s atmosphere were significant contributions to the study of the sun and its effect on earth.”

In 1887, while Langley was at the Allegheny Observatory, he started a series of aerodynamics experiments. He continued his investigation into the possibility of piloted flight after his appointment as Secretary of the Smithsonian. “He studied the lift and drift of moving plane surfaces on a sophisticated scientific basis. Experimenting with small models propelled by elastic strips, he worked out the mathematics of the problem. His contributions to aviation rest not only on knowledge he acquired and shared with others upon his successful distance flight of power-driven models, but also upon the dignity he brought, as a man of sound scientific reputation.”

In 1896, Langley successfully flew a 14-foot steam-powered aircraft model for 3,000 feet over the Potomac River. He repeated his experiment, and this time, the model flew 4,200 feet. The novelty of the situation was that these were the first sustained free flights of powered heavier-than-air machines. Two years later, the US War Department awarded Langley a grant for $50,000 to continue his experiments to achieve piloted flights.

Langley built a full-sized aircraft with a 53-horsepower gasoline engine. He made two highly publicized events at flying and failed both times – the craft fell into the water shortly after takeoff. It’s believed that there were defects to the launching device. It’s worthy to note that in 1914, Glenn Curtiss successfully flew a modified version of Langley’s airplane.

What Did Langley Do Wrong?

Langley’s aircraft had excellent propulsion and adequate aerodynamics, but the structural design was poor. The Wright Brothers are credited for inventing the airplane, and what they did differently from Langley, was they first mastered the art of fly using unstable gliders before they added power, and that made the difference to their success. The development of flight followed the trajectory of the Wright Brothers and not Langley. The Wright Brothers also built a wind tunnel where they could test their flying devices in a more controlled environment.

Steps to Success

• Langley was a voracious reader and read several branches of science to elf-educate.
• He was a keen observer, and experimented a lot.
• Langley shared his research findings with others to move the field forward.
• He gave legitimacy to the to the early aviation field because he was a respected scientist.

Why Samuel Pierpont Langley Contribution Matters

Samuels Pierpont Langley may not have contributed that much to piloted flight but Max Planck’s interpolated radiation law were based in part on bolometer measurements. Langley invented the bolometer.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Works Cited/Referenced

Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Science and Its Times

Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy

During an interview once, the interviewee told me that she has often been mentored by the many books that she has read. While browsing a book about authors as mentors in a bookstore, one of the contributors called books, paper mentors.  The contributor also indicated that the author of Harriet the Spy mentored and influenced her as a writer.

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Can a book be a mentor? Or is it the author who assumes the role of mentor? What about the characters in fiction, can they act as mentors? To answer these questions, requires that we look at the roles that mentors play in our lives. In the most basic sense, a mentor helps a protégé to achieve something that’s really important to her.

The Role of Mentors

• Advisor
• Role Model
• Sounding Board
• Guide
• Teacher/Skills Developer
• Resource Provider
• Champion/Advocate
• Cheerleader
• Confidant
• Critic
• Friend
• Facilitator

Mentors play many of the roles above, but no one mentor can play all of the roles in our lives. Let’s say for argument sake that books can be mentors, what characteristics would the books have for them to be great mentors? For a book to assume the role of a mentor, it has to have many of the elements below:

• Provokes thought
• Provides a deeper level of understanding and heightened awareness
• Ignites passion
• Awakens deep-seated emotions
• Provides practical wisdom
• Chronicles events for strategic guidance
• Provides formulas and intellectual frameworks to use
• Be about a change maker
• Solves everyday problems
• Shifts the reader’s mindset

Reflecting on the elements of a book that make it a mentor, when was the last time you read a really good book that mentored you? If there are books that have mentored you, just like my interviewee, think about the following questions.

• What was it about that book that made it memorable?
• How did you feel after you finished reading the book…sated… hungering for more…unnerved…?
• Did you take copious notes while you were reading this book?
• How many people did you refer this book to?
• Did it evoke any strong emotional response from you?
• Have you used any ideas from the book?
• What genre of book was it?
• Would you say that the book had a profound impact on your life?

If there are books that have mentored you, look at others that deal with the same topic, and do what Mortimer Adler recommends in How to Read a Book, and that is to read syntopically to master the topic, and I would add to also get divergent views. How do the books compare to each other? If the book is about a new area, think about what the author is saying, does it make sense? How does it stack up against what you already know? Also, identify:

• The problem the author presented and how it was solved
• The relevance of the information to your work and life
• Five takeaways
• Five great ideas you can glean from the information presented
• Any rule breaking
• Ideas/solutions that relate to work and life
• Solutions to everyday problems
• Ways to use ideas/insights/takeaways to increase the value of your product/service to your customers both internal and external to the organization

A book can never take the place of a traditional mentor, but it can assume some of the roles of a mentor, especially when you are trying to learn something, to gather information or to further your understanding of something.

Examples Where Books (and other publications) as Mentors Helped

Charles Darwin and British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection in the mid-1800s after reading Essay on the Principle of Population by British pastor Thomas Malthus.

After many years of research and observing birds in flight, German engineer Otto Lilienthal, also known as the King of Gliders published his findings in the widely read book Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation. Lilienthal’s research article Practical Experiments for the Development of Human Flight, writings and notes proved invaluable to Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright also known as the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers believed that they could improve Lilienthal’s designs and resolve the problems plaguing aircraft theories. The Wright Brothers are credited for inventing the airplane.

As a child, while confined to bed because of illness, Robert Hutchings Goddard read H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds and became captivated with rockets and outer space. Goddard was a pioneer in liquid-fuelled rocketry and made significant contributions to the field.

While reading an article on a flight, Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon learned that the Internet was growing 2,300 per cent each year and wondered how he could use the information. He then looked at the top 20 catalogues to identify which would translate best to an online business and as a result Amazon was formed.

Now that you have read all this information, can books, authors and characters mentor you? I will leave that for you to digest and decide for yourself. How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links!

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Summer is the time when most get caught up on their reading. And most are reading novels during this time, but what if you did something a little differently from the rest. Gene Waddell, an architectural historian and College Archivist at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, pulled together an extensive list of rare books that inspire learning. I have taken 10 books from his list, and as you will note, they are from a variety genres to build your general knowledge and increase your ability to strategize and solve problems.

1. Anthropology: Race, Language, Psychology, Prehistory, Kroeber
2. Antiquities of Athens by James Stuart; Nicholas Revett
3. Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen: Discovered by the late Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter, Howard Carter
4. Roughing It, Mark Twain
5. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, Frederick Douglas
6. Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Richard Griffin Baybrook
7. New System of Chemical Philosophy, John Dalton
8. Emerson: Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, Mungo Park
10. The Wright Brothers Aëroplane, by Orville and Wilbur Wright Century Magazine, September 1908

Over the summer, try to read a couple of the above, and I will do the same. What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Some of the links to the books are for free downloads, some are Amazon affiliate links.

Photo Credit: Flickr via Apture