Assignment 13A - Reading Reflection 1

1. The book I read was Wright Brothers by David McCullough. What surprised me the most was how well the brothers worked together. Going into the reading I knew that they accomplished a lot together but I did not realize how well they worked as a pair, with each having their own strengths to draw upon. The thing about the Wright Brothers that I most admired was their dedication to achieving their goals in their own way. Throughout it all, they kept their standards and ideals, even when the competition was starting to replicate their work, and quickly. One thing that I least admired about the Wright Brother was their secrecy during their work and testing. I understand that they were worried about people taking their ideas or copying them, but they had very little recognition when they started and rarely invited anyone besides friends and family to witness the miracle of flight. The Wright Brothers repeatedly encountered adversity and failure with their designs. The book quotes a period of three months where the brothers weren’t able to accomplish anything, due to repeated issues with their plane. They never gave up and continued to fix each issue and try again, even if only to be met with a bigger problem.

2. The Wright brothers had a background in bicycles which provided them with some prior knowledge about how to get moving in the right direction with their designs for their airplane and frame. They used this competency along with their ability to methodically solve problems and create inventive solutions to issues, such as using a catapult-like system to get a better launch than with a motor by itself.

3. One part of the reading I found confusing was the technical descriptions. The book describes certain parts of their designs or plans in great detail, which can be hard to follow. Their designs are very different from the planes we know today, so when they are described in the book it can be hard to imagine. It important to understand the designs they’re working with and testing so that their feats can be appreciated and properly understood.

4. The first question I would like to ask the Wright Brothers would be for their total cost to achieve flight, meaning what was the R&D investment to invent flight? The second question I would ask the Wright Brothers is if our current air travel technology is where they saw the future of flight headed? Meaning did they foresee us being able to take hundreds of people into the air at a time, and transport them across the globe?

5. The Wright Brothers were never afraid to get their hands dirty and do the work themselves. I think to them, hard work means not only a lot of work but putting in the work even if you don’t entirely want to. Many times the brothers headed into a test knowing something would break and have to be fixed again, but it was the hard work they needed to do if they wanted to learn and make progress. I think this is a great way to look at hard work, because if you’re working on something really hard but it’s not helping the end cause, what’s the point?