Founders - #241 The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies

Starting point is 00:00:00 As the saga of early flight becomes more distant, it gains rather than loses fascination. Air travel is now so commonplace, has been so widely experienced, that those who risked their lives every time they took an airplane up, who flew an open aircraft totally exposed to the elements and without seat restraints, who took their machines to great heights in freezing cold or in pelting rain, who died and watched their friends die, freezing cold or in pelting rain, who died and watched their friends die, pushing up against the limits of performance,

Starting point is 00:00:32 have become almost mythical figures. They were that, of course, but they were also simply young and eager men and women embracing a new technology with the breathless zeal of youth. The fear of death would dissuade them no more than it did the first climber to summit Everest. That is an excerpt from the epilogue of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is Birdman, the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtis, and the Battle to Control the Skies, and it was written by Lawrence Goldstone. So two weeks ago for episode 239, I reread David McCullough's fantastic biography of the Wright Brothers. In that book,

Starting point is 00:01:10 Glenn Curtis is mentioned several times. Glenn was the most formidable of the Wright Brothers competitors at the very beginning of the Age of Flight. And so I immediately started looking for a biography on him. As I searched, I came across this book. I immediately started reading the sample on Kindle, and I was immediately blown away by not only the quality of the writing, but just how insane the stories in the first few pages were. I'm going to read something from the back of the book. It says, A meticulously researched account of the first few hectic, tangled years of aviation

Starting point is 00:01:38 and the curious characters who pursued it. And so I want to go right to the beginning. This is the part that I read on the Kindle and immediately ordered the paperback version which i hold in my hand right now there are a lot of characters we're going to go over today and a lot of detail this book took me well over 20 hours to read and to digest so it says on may 30th 1912 wilbur wright died peacefully in his own bed wilbur had contracted typhoid fever one month earlier from, the speculation went, eating tainted clam broth in a Boston restaurant. At 5'10 and only 140 pounds, his body had lacked the strength to fight off an ailment that in the coming decades would be routinely vanquished with antibiotics. He was only 45 years old.

Starting point is 00:02:19 America had lost one of its heroes, one of the two men to solve the riddle of human flight. Across the nation, newspapers decried the sad stroke of luck that had robbed the nation of one of its great men. Now, this is what immediately drew my attention. I was like, what is going on here? And so Wilbur Wright and Glenn Curtis are the two main characters of the book. They're going to be supported by probably a dozen, maybe two dozen other just insanely interesting people that we can learn from. I'm not going to read anything that I covered on episode 239. I won't cover on this one. It's very much, I'm going to think of these two episodes as like a two-part series almost. I think it's beneficial to listen to both of them. So it says, the bitter decade-long Wright-Curtis feud pitted against each other, two of the nation's most brilliant innovators, and shaped the course of American

Starting point is 00:03:29 aviation. The ferocity with which Wilbur Wright attacked and Glenn Curtis countered first launched America into preeminence in the skies and then doomed it to mediocrity. So that's going to be a main theme of the book. I have a ton of highlights on that. I'll just bring it to your attention right now is the fact that you should avoid any activity that distracts you from improving the quality of your product and the quality of your business. They both spent so much, especially more Wilbur Wright than Glenn Curtis, because Wilbur Wright starts out ahead and then Glenn Curtis actually passes him by a significant margin and is much more successful in the aviation business than the Wright Brothers ever were, in terms of building an actual business.

Starting point is 00:04:07 But Wilbur stopped working. He had one of the most gifted engineers, and he had this crazy inventive mind, and all of it was tied up for the last few years of his life was just fighting lawsuits. And so the quality of his product and the quality of his company suffered dearly. So that's what they meant. They launched him into America, took the lead, and then doomed it to mediocrity. And a bunch of other companies overtook the lead from America. It says it would take the most destructive conflict in human history to undo the damage. And so that was actually reversed during World War I, when there was a call to arms by the American

Starting point is 00:04:38 government for all, stop fighting. Essentially, they said, hey, stop fighting, guys. Not only Curtis and Wright, but all of them. Stop fighting and start working together. We need to have superior air power to help win this war. The combatants were well matched. This is so fascinating what the author does here. As is often the case with those who despise each other, Curtis and Wilbur were sufficiently alike to have been brothers themselves. Both were obsessive and serious. Wilbur Wright was the son of a minister,

Starting point is 00:05:06 Curtis the grandson of one. Each came to aviation via the same route, racing, repairing, and building bicycles, and each displayed the collection of analytical instincts and dogged perseverance that a successful inventor requires. And that's one of the things I came to admire most about Glenn Curtis becauseis because i knew how his story ends up i know that he cashes out he makes like 30 million dollars winds up retiring in his late 40s he comes down to florida keeps inventing and start and starts developing real estate does all this other crazy stuff but there are so many times in

Starting point is 00:05:38 the book where it just seemed like oh this guy's finished and it's that idea that's dogged perseverance it's just fused to give up Neither of these men would ever take one small step backward in a confrontation. They may have been alike, but they were not the same. Wilbur Wright is one of the greatest intuitive scientists this nation has ever produced. There's also a reason why you should listen to 239 and read the book if you haven't yet. Completely self-taught, he made spectacular intellectual leaps to solve a series of intractable problems that had eluded some of history's most brilliant men. That is an amazing sentence because it is 100% true. Imagine solving a problem that had eluded some of history's most brilliant people

Starting point is 00:06:16 up until that point. Curtis was not Wilbur's equal as a theoretician. Few were, but he was a superb craftsman, designer, and applied scientist. If this was physics, he would be Fermi to Wilbur's Einstein. Later in the book, the author does a fantastic job, in case I forget to read it to you, he says essentially that Wilbur Wright is a master architect, and Glenn Curtis was a master builder. So I think it's a great way to think about the difference between the two. After Wilbur's death, Orville, right, attempted to maintain the struggle. But while his hatred for Curtis matched Wilbur's, his talents and temperament did not. After his brother's death, Orville was never able to muster the will to pursue their mutual obsessions with necessary zeal. And then we're still in the prologue and we get the introduction to Curtis.

Starting point is 00:07:03 It says Curtis, who often spoke of his speed craving.'s his quote he had a craving for speed who often spoke of his speed craving first turned his attention to propulsion he experimented with motorizing bicycles and in 1907 set a one mile speed record of 136 miles per hour so let us just let's just pause there so not only was he able to build this himself, but he was the one that actually piloted the bike. Think about how insane a person you have to be or how unusual a person you have to be to go 136 miles on a motorized bicycle in 1907. That is crazy. And I'm going to repeat the crazy, insane, these kind of adjectives I'm using over and over again. My nose is just, this guy's nuts. This is insane. I cannot. And I'm going to repeat the crazy, insane, these kind of adjectives I'm using over and over again.

Starting point is 00:07:46 My nose is just, this guy's nuts. This is insane. I cannot believe what I'm reading. Just over and over again. So it says, he was hailed as the fastest man on earth. Two years later, he would also be the fastest man in the sky. By the time the Wrights, after a three-year delay, finally decided to aggressively market their invention, Curtis was engineering the

Starting point is 00:08:05 most efficient motors in the world. So that is his path into aviation. He starts with bikes, starts building motors for bikes, realizes, hey, why don't we put my motor on all these other people, these early aviators, they're doing these glider experiments. Well, let's just put one of my motors on one of those gliders and see what happens. And so Curtis winds up building the best motors for airplanes, early airplanes, than anybody else in the world at the very beginning of the aviation industry. So it says Curtis was engineering the most efficient motors in the world, that he would mount those motors on aircraft, created a threat to the Wright's aspirations of monopoly, and they brought suit to stifle him, the upstart. So in the background of this book,

Starting point is 00:08:46 and I'm not going to talk too much about it today, other than Wilbur Wright's preoccupation with it, is this gigantic patent infringement lawsuit. I've read a bunch about patent infringement lawsuits in the past. This is the most unusual because I think the rights bring up, I think every single, I think they bring nine total lawsuits against Curtis and other people. They don't lose any of them. But the reason I say it's bizarre is because it never stopped the behavior. People just kept going on building airplanes. So if this preoccupation with winning these lawsuits actually caused Wilbur Wright to exhaust himself and then being more exhausted, obviously you're prone for his brother survived typhoid fever.

Starting point is 00:09:22 Other people, obviously, it was more deadly in their time than it is in ours. But it was a survivable disease. But if you've pushed yourself too far, you didn't take care of your health, you push yourself to exhaustion, and you're doing that because of these lawsuits. And then the lawsuits really don't stop anything. It's almost like we lost one of the most important people in American history for essentially no reason. So there's definitely a lot of cautionary tales in this book as well. Back to the prologue.

Starting point is 00:09:46 The Wright-Curtis feud was at its core a study of the unique strengths and flaws of personality that define a clash of brilliant minds. That is the reason you'd want to read this book. It is a clash of absolutely brilliant, brilliant minds. Glenn Curtis and Wilbur Wright are these like power law people. They are N of one people. Neither Glenn Curtis nor Wilbur Wright ever came to understand his own limits. That luminescent, this is so important, I double online this, check this out. So Curtis and Wilbur never came to understand their own limits. That luminescent intelligence

Starting point is 00:10:21 in one area of human endeavor does not preclude gross incompetence in another. And because Wilbur Wright and Glenn Curtis might have been the principal players in this story, but they were hardly the only ones. Early flyers, bird men, but they were hardly the only ones. Early flyers, birdmen, as they were called, so that's why this book is called what it is. The early pioneers in the aviation industry were called birdmen, as they were called, were pioneers heading, heeding the same draw to riches or fame or illumination of the unknown that motivated those who had crossed uncharted oceans century before. And so aviation was replete with outsized personalities, brutal competition, and staggering bravery.

Starting point is 00:11:12 I am so thankful that the author drew that conclusion. He's like the same kind of person. So main theme of the podcast, right? History doesn't repeat, human nature does. And so he is saying, the author is saying, hey, the same kind of personality, these crazy pioneer type that wanted to say, hey, let's jump in a boat and see what happens at the end of the ocean. Or let's explore the North Pole or the South Pole.

Starting point is 00:11:35 Or let's try to solve this ancient problem of human-powered flight. It's all the same personality type. That's why I think if you go back, there's a lot of parallels. So if you go back and look in the archive, starting around 118, episode 118, all the way to 130, I did like a 10-part series or something like that on all the early automotive industry pioneers. And usually I was doing them in a row. Sometimes I had to wait because these books were very uncommon. So sometimes I had to wait months for them.

Starting point is 00:12:01 So you'll see me do like, I think I did like a three-part series of Larry Ellison in there or something like that. But the same kind of personality, the same person, essentially, that was interested, that was drawn to the very beginning of, they had an inclination how important the industry was. But it was so tiny compared to how big the automotive industry is today. What I found is the early automotive founders are very similar to the early aviation founders. They're very similar to the personality type, that is. They're very similar to the people at the beginning that built the first railroads, the people that built the first Internet companies. And so I think going back and studying these people and all these births, a birth of these industries that wind up becoming foundational to the modern economy. Having that knowledge gives you an advantage because it's not like that's going to stop.

Starting point is 00:12:44 Humans are going to constantly discover new things they're going to constantly create new gigantic industries and i think with that knowledge if that appears in our lifetime we're able to take advantage of that but i think the author absolutely nailed it it's like listen it's the same kind of person that was drawn to rich's fame or illumination of the unknown that motivated those who had crossed uncharted oceans centuries before they were uh so now he's going to name some of these people. So it says, there were great designers such as Louis B. So if I can't pronounce a person's name, I'm just going to use their initials.

Starting point is 00:13:12 There were great designers such as Louis B. Who flew across the English Channel. The first man to do so with a foot. He was the first man to do so. And he had a foot so badly burned that he had to be lifted in and out of his seat. So he's going to wind up surviving. I'm going to tell you, a bunch of the people he's about to list all die. He survives. I mean, he dies of like a heart attack when he's in his 60s.

Starting point is 00:13:30 So that's the first guy to fly the English Channel. Then you have Thomas Scott Baldwin. He was the inventor of the flexible parachute and a showman, very similar to P.T. Barnum, who almost convinced the world that balloons were the future of aviation. He survives. Then you have John M., John Moissant. He's going to die. John M., who after three failed attempts to overthrow the government of El Salvador,

Starting point is 00:13:57 took to aviation and within months became the preeminent flyer in the world. That sentence is insane because it is true. Harriet Quimby, she's gonna die an actress and journalist who cajoled flying lessons from her employer to become the first woman to receive a pilot's license and then the first woman to cross the english channel and lincoln beachy he's gonna die perhaps the finest aviator the world has ever seen a man who boasted so many firsts and bests and never before done, that his exploits would beggar credibility had they not all been documented by eyewitnesses. And the author makes the point that in the first few years of aviation, a pilot would die once.

Starting point is 00:14:40 One pilot would die every 10 days, just to give you an indication of how large the body count was at the beginning of the industry. The saga of the Wrights and Curtiss's is the story of early flight. There was no one and nothing in the remarkable decade of 1905 to 1915 that one or both of them did not touch or affect. Their drama was played out on a stage populated by incomparable characters engaged in a pursuit that had held mankind in its thrall from the dawn of civilization. So that is the end of the prologue. That is the exact moment where I put the Kindle sample down and said, I have to read this book. And I ordered the book. So then we go into the first character. I'm going to weave all these characters as best I can through the story of Curtis and Wright. This one you've heard me

Starting point is 00:15:29 talk about because it was the person that probably inspired Wilbur Wright the most. And it was this guy named Otto Linlenthal. It says a wealthy German engineer named Otto Linlenthal. Otto Linlenthal was no amateur. So he starts doing these experiments in the 1800s. So he's about a generation older than Wilbur Wright. Lilienthal was no amateur. He was the most sophisticated aerodynamicist of his day. For 30 years, he had taken tens of thousands of measurements of variously shaped surfaces moving at different angles through the air. In 1889, he produced the most advanced study ever written on the mechanics of flight. As Wilbur Wright would later assert, of all the men who attacked the flying problem, Lilenthal was easily the most important. That is

Starting point is 00:16:18 a quote from Wilbur Wright. He was easily the most important. His greatness appeared in every phase. And to me, that is always very important to pay attention to. When you have a formidable individual, someone who's a flat-out genius, extremely talented, somebody with a quality of person like Wilbur Wright saying, hey, this is the guy. You need to study him. The most common example I always give you on the podcast is the fact that Steve Jobs is arguably the greatest entrepreneur ever to live. And all he tells you over and over again from the time he was in his 20s to right before he's about to die, Edwin Land was the man. He was my hero. He's who we should aspire to be like. If you're an entrepreneur and you have not studied

Starting point is 00:16:52 Edwin Land yet, the founder of Polaroid, Steve Jobs' hero, you're really messing, you're making a mistake. But I think anytime you see somebody that you admire, say, hey, this is who I admire, that's a no-brainer. And so we're seeing that right now with Wilbur Wright. I'll look for a biography on Lilienthal because he obviously didn't make any money in aviation and he made money being an engineer. I should actually look for a biography on him. So it says Lilienthal became a world-renowned figure, but he had little use for popular acclaim. Didn't care about anything. He just kept doing his experiments and documenting what he learned and sharing it with other people. So he's like a hero to almost every – the future founder, the future founders of the aviation industry look at Otto Lindelof as like the godfather or the grandfather of the agency – or industry, rather. It's not that different if you go back and study the early American automotive industry, you had this guy, Henry

Starting point is 00:17:45 Leland, was a generation older than every other American automotive founder. And Leland founded Cadillac when he was 60. He founded Lincoln Motors when he was 70. He came as a full, fully grown, fully formed, fully mature man to this new industry. And he had multiple decades of making extremely high quality products before he even decided, hey, I'm going to jump into the automotive industry. So all of them. Henry Ford would go to Leland when he had multiple decades of making extremely high-quality products before he even decided, hey, I'm going to jump into the automotive industry. So all of them. Henry Ford would go to Leland when he had a question.

Starting point is 00:18:09 Alfred Sloan, the best well-known CEO of General Motors, would go to him. The Dodge brothers trained under him. And so, of course, I had to read a book about him because you have all these other people that built these gigantic, Billy Durant, all of them. So the founders of GM, Dodge, Ford are all learning from Leland and then using what they learned from Leland to help build their companies. So back to the book, even though Leland becomes world famous, he didn't care about popular fame. He just continued to publish, run experiments and then publish those results in scholarly papers and articles. He was as sophisticated as anyone living on the vagaries of air currents. Remember, this is at this point. I shouldn't say remember.

Starting point is 00:18:48 You may not know this, but at this point, there's no engines. This is all gliding. They're just trying to figure out how birds can fly. How can we figure this out? So it says for 30 years, he's doing experiments. He's in the air. He's got skin in the game. He's going to risk his life, and he's going to die as a result.

Starting point is 00:19:03 So it says says as sophisticated as anyone living on the vagaries of air currents lillenthal was aware that luck had played a role in his continued success and luck he knew had a habit of running out so he he's doing this the problem is so important that he's willing to risk his life for it and wait till you see what some of his last words are it's insane in 1896 all in l Lilienthal's luck did run out. He stalled 50 feet from the ground, fell, and broke his spine. The next day, Otto Lilienthal was dead. In his last hours, he uttered one of aviation's most famous epitaphs, sacrifices must be made. Wilbur had been following Lilienthal's exploits with fascination, and word of his death aroused an interest in him that had

Starting point is 00:19:42 existed since he was a child. Lilienthal's passing left a void in the struggle for man flight, and on that day, Wilbur decided to fill it. And then the author does a fantastic job of saying Lilienthal was just the first of many formidable people throughout history that have tried to attack this ancient problem. The heavens have been home of the gods in virtually every recorded religion, and not a single civilization from earliest antiquity fails to depict men and women often in flight. So it's essentially saying this is an ancient problem, right? Achieving flight

Starting point is 00:20:14 might well be considered the oldest and most profound of all human aspirations. This is a fantastic sentence too. The science of flight has attracted the greatest minds in history. And you know they're great because it only takes one name, and you know exactly who these people are. Aristotle, Archimedes, Leonardo, and Newton. But achieving the goal stumped them all. Achieving human flight turned out to be a giant puzzle solved over centuries, piece by torturous piece.

Starting point is 00:20:44 So at this point, I'm only seven pages into this book. And I have notes coming out of my ears, right? And so I'm thinking about, okay, saying, let's go back to one page. It says, since earliest antiquity, people have been thinking about this, right? And so I want to, I was thinking about, like, what other problems?

Starting point is 00:21:03 I'm going to pause here, and let's just try to think together real quick. Like what other problems can be described as this, right? It's achieving human flight, essentially solving the problem of human flight, turned out to be a giant puzzle solved over centuries. Peace by torturous peace. So when I came to this part of the book, I wrote inside the book, what else can be described in the same way? Like what are we working on right now? It's a giant unsolved puzzle.

Starting point is 00:21:28 Solving it would be a huge benefit to all of mankind, just like powered flight has been a huge benefit to all of mankind, right? So the three things I wrote down that just came to mind was energy, housing or shelter, and aging. And these things are the things that I'm worried about the most, especially as my kids get older, is older is energy costs are right now and as i'm recording this are spiking and housing costs are getting more and more expensive but housing is shelter it's like one it's an ancient problem every single human both both of those things if you think about every single human's ever lived needed shelter needs some form of energy so it says achieving human flight turned out to be a

Starting point is 00:22:00 giant puzzle solved over centuries piece by torturous piece we have still still not found a way to shelter all of humanity and to have to produce energy like to have an abundant abundant energy policy and then something else that humans that came to mind that humans have been trying because i was saying i sat on this page for a while like i didn't just skip i thought about that sentence for for a good amount of time and i was like all right what else have humans been trying to solve that haven't like we've just we've made a lot of progress and that's that's aging or that's the reduction of disease or whatever you want to call it and i think really the benefit of that sentence or reading books like this is just like all right like this the wright brothers

Starting point is 00:22:32 and then curtis obviously extends on it but like they solved a problem that humans had struggled with for 500 years for a thousand years for 1500 years i think this is our benefit to understand that every single problem that we have in the world right now, there is a solution. We might not solve it in our lifetime, but I think the worst mindset we can have is, oh, this is just the way things are. No, absolutely not. If the Wright brothers just said, you know, at the time the Wright brothers were doing the experiments, you had people like the major newspapers today saying human flight is impossible, won't be solved for a thousand years. Like, what if they actually listened to that?

Starting point is 00:23:02 And I think that's just one of the benefits of reading a ton of history. It's just like, oh, okay, at their time, they thought this was impossible too. And yet I live in the reality that they thought would never happen. And the best way to describe this thought that's percolating in my mind right now is, Elon Musk put it in the best words. He says, if you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic. Being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, assessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago. So anyways, these are just

Starting point is 00:23:34 the things that popped to my mind as I'm reading the book. So obviously I'm going to share those thoughts with you in case they spawn any thoughts in your own mind. So now we go to Octave Chanute, who I talked a little bit about. He was like Wilbur Wright's mentor. Again, another about a generation older than the Wright brothers. And it's really interesting if you think about the role he played. He never built his own flying machine, but he organized the information of everybody was doing that and then shared the data across everybody. And that actually sped up progress. Right. So says if the flying process was to move forward with any efficiency, experimenters would need some means to separate what seemed to work from what seemed to not. So what are they talking about? They're talking about data, right? Valuable information. Data and results would have to be shared. The man who most appreciated the need was someone who, while not producing a single design that resulted in flight, was arguably the most important person to participate in its gestation. That is a crazy sentence. So he's saying not the most important person might not be the Wright brothers, might not be the Curtis's, might not be the Linlethals. It's the person that organized all the information and acted as a catalyst of thought and action for the people that actually solved the problem.

Starting point is 00:24:37 Would the Wright brothers have solved the problem without Octave Chenute? That is not at all clear. And so it talks about that here. It was not his intent initially to design aircraft, but rather to serve as a catalyst, a focal point for the growing streams of theory and data then being generated about what everybody used to call this problem, the flying problem. That's exactly what they say. It's a flying problem. It's a problem. That's a great way to think about it. It's like, this is just a problem. All problems have solutions. It may take five lifetimes to get the solution but there is a solution here and so octave is going around he's going to he's seeing experiments happen in africa seeing

Starting point is 00:25:12 experiments happen in europe seeing experiments happen in america and he's going around and collecting the data he's like the central like the main node if you want to think about that in the network of all these other people and most of these people did not know each other they didn't talk they didn't communicate they didn't even know they weren't even aware of their of each other's existence before chanute and so he's like this master networker chanute proceeded to correspond with everyone who he could discern was working seriously on heavier than air flight and thus thrust himself into the forefront of the ongoing research and then what does he do here he does something

Starting point is 00:25:45 that's genius he takes all his learnings and then produces it into a format that makes it other easy for other people to download these ideas into his brain he compiled all the information about the historical experiments of flight and he put it in a book and he wrote a book called the progress in flying machines was read by virtually everyone who was experimenting in flight and anyone who was considering it. Its publication in many ways marked the beginning of aviation as a rigorous science and fertilized the soil from which the right flyer sprung nine years later. So in the beginning of any industry or any new business, you're going to have a ton of really serious people that are interested in solving the problem and then you're going to attract a lot of scammers and liars and

Starting point is 00:26:29 just people essentially like rat poison to use charlie munger's term of just low quality people this is one of them this guy's name is augustus moore herring so it says the second assistant came with a reputation for brilliance that would and he would become one of the most controversial figures in the annals of early flight his name was augustus moore herring audacious and deceitful as he might have been he did not lack intelligence or talent so remember his name i'll reference him many times throughout the book he's essentially like the the the biggest scam artist in the early aviation history the wright brothers identify immediately they just see hey none of the stuff the guy says is actually true. Because there's like a – sometimes something that you do can be

Starting point is 00:27:10 simultaneous like an asset and a liability. So something about the Wright brothers is like they closed themselves off from everybody. They didn't want partners. They were extremely skeptical of other human beings. So that caused them not to be taken advantage of by people like Herring, where Curtis actually winds up getting taken for a ride by by herring but also closing yourself off can close yourself off to the bad but also the good ideas and so there was innovations happening after uh

Starting point is 00:27:35 the wright brothers successful flights uh kitty hawk and others like especially made by curtis that they were just essentially no they didn't believe anybody else was as talented as them and because they weren't really paying attention to what other people were doing, they wind up losing their lead. They took the foot off the gas and then were quite actually quickly outpaced and overtaken and then never, they never caught up again. Now they jump into Wilbur Wright getting ready. And some of these things I'm just going to pull out real quick. Wilbur Wright began by reading everything on the subject. So reading everything is just part of the job. You do that because then you can combine, once you download into your brain what everybody else has learned, then you can

Starting point is 00:28:11 combine their ideas with your ideas and you come up with unique ways to create something new, right? Which is exactly what Wilbur did. He read everything on the subject. After three years of self-education, Wilbur had gained some theoretical knowledge of aviation and was ready to move on. That Wilbur devoured the literature and became thoroughly versed in the principles of flight as they were understood there is no doubt. And then he talks about what he did after the fact. So he combines that knowledge with his own thoughts and then trial and error. And it says, just as a result, his insights were fresh and groundbreaking.

Starting point is 00:28:38 And also he was the only one that arrived at his unique conclusions. And his first big breakthrough comes to using a method that is available to you and I. He found his first breakthrough by doing the exact opposite of his competitor. So I just downloaded into my brain every single thing other people are doing to try to solve the problem of flight. And he realized they're all doing the same thing,

Starting point is 00:29:01 which is they're trying to avoid, they're trying to be too stable, and they're avoiding for the plane to roll at all. But Wilbur also spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours observing birds in flight. And he realized that's not what they do. And so it says within weeks, Wilbur had his first great epiphany, a counterintuitive deduction. He came to understand that the best way to achieve stability in flight was to make an aircraft inherently unstable. Langley had employed, so now he's talking about, they're comparing what Wilbur, Wilbur saw what Samuel Langley was doing. I talked a lot about him on the last Wright Brothers podcast. He's like, all right, I'll just do the opposite. Langley had employed wing arrangements to prevent

Starting point is 00:29:41 his plane from dipping to one side. Instead of avoiding roll, Wilbur embraced it. Similar to the way he surmised birds twisted their wingtips to maintain lateral control rather than by shifting their weight. And so I really want to pause here on this idea, because I think it's a powerful idea, that you can find a breakthrough by doing the exact opposite of your competitors. The greatest example, the one that I always reference, is the fact when William Randolph Hearst, right, he built one of the biggest media empires the world's ever seen.

Starting point is 00:30:14 At his apex, he's worth like 30, equivalent like $30 billion, right? That started from one newspaper in San Francisco. And so what he realized is like, all right, well, I'm just one of like six other newspapers in San Francisco. So he analyzed like, what do we do for customer acquisition? Well, we do for customer acquisition what every other newspaper does. What do all newspapers at that time do? They hire newsies, which were like underage boys, seven years old, 10 years old, to go on the street and to sell my newspaper as people are walking by, you know, on the street,

Starting point is 00:30:43 they're sitting in their car, whatever the case is. And so at first, Wilbur Randolph Hearst, excuse me, William Wilbur, William Randolph Hearst did the same thing. He's like, all right, well, I'll just have more newsies and maybe I'll just compete and maybe I'll just hire just more people. And he's like, this is stupid. What are my competitors not doing? And he had his first gigantic breakthrough, which is exactly what's happening with Wilbur right here. He's like, all right, well, what do I write about? I write about news events, weather, things that happen in the city, things that happen in the world at large. He's like, are the only people interested in what I'm doing just happen to live in the city of San Francisco? Probably not. So then he combined that idea with the new technology of his day, which was railroads. He's like, well,

Starting point is 00:31:22 there's all these railroads that they're not within the confines of the city of San Francisco, but they have people in them just like the people that are in these little small towns are the same, very similar to the people that are in this big city. So instead of me competing where everybody else is going, what did he do? He put his newspapers on railroads and he started selling into small towns where none of his competitors were and almost immediately his circulation surpassed i haven't read the book in a while but i thought i remember they said that his circulation surpassed all of his other competitors combined and i think this works extremely well especially in the customer acquisition domain it's something i've been thinking about lately it's like okay what i would do is like and what

Starting point is 00:32:03 i did take right on a piece of paper every every single thing that you know, people that are doing something similar in your business, like how do they find customers, right? Do a thorough study of your industry, write down, this is how all my competitors find customers, right? Then draw a circle around everything you know, draw an X to it. I am not allowed to have any idea that has anything to do with that. I must come up with some unique method of looking for customers where no one else is, which is exactly, in his day, what Hearst did. So now I'm going to draw a big X. I can't do any of that.

Starting point is 00:32:33 So now I have just this white space. It's much harder because there's no one for me to copy. But that also means I'll be the first one to discover this. And if I'm the first one to discover it, I'll have no competition. So back to the book. Just going to fast forward a little bit. This is where Augustus Herring pops up again.

Starting point is 00:32:47 He's going to pop up over and over again. This guy just won't go away. And Chanute, you know, Chanute's a lot nicer than Wilbur Wright is. And so he gives people multiple chances because he's interested. And he's very passionate about this. He's also older. He wants to see this problem solved before he dies. So it says Chanute showed up at Kitty Hawk and he brought Augustus Herring with him.

Starting point is 00:33:04 And this is where the Wright brothers realized this guy's full of shit. And so this winds up being beneficial to them because not that they would ever agree to have any partners anyways. But it says Herring had been unsuccessful out of aviation. Once again, out of money, he contacted Chanute and he asked for patronage. Chanute agreed and suggested Herring test his design at Kitty Hawk where great things were afoot. Herring's glider failed. The Wright's glider did not. More significant, Herring saw why the Wrights had been so much more successful than he. He left after 10 days, but he left with a notion of what it would take to successfully fly a heavier than air aircraft. So it's at this point in the book where the author

Starting point is 00:33:40 actually talks about, hey, and this is something you also see is like there's at the very beginning of an industry you'll have it's not at all clear which technology is going to win so there is a ton of people trying to do gliders trying to build what we what eventually becomes an airplane but there was an entire section of the aviation industry where it's like no that's the wrong thing clearly hot air balloons which they call gas bags at this point in history which is hilarious it's like one of the worst product names you could ever come up with. They thought gas bags were the future. And so eventually all the guys that are making innovations in gas bags, spending all this time in this early technology, they realize, hey, we need to apply our talents.

Starting point is 00:34:20 This is a dying industry. This is not going to be our dead end, rather. We need to apply our talents and all of them jump out and then jump into building airplanes. So this is the first guy I wrote. This guy is both really smart and completely nuts. He survives, though. His name is Thomas Scott Baldwin. The fascination with balloons was largely the work of one man with the courage of a tightrope walker, which he was, and the audacity of P.T. Barnum, whom he rivaled. That's Thomas Scott Baldwin. Like most daredevils, Baldwin rigorously tested his theories before risking his life on them.

Starting point is 00:34:57 So he literally was a tightrope walker. Eventually, he's going to start jumping out of gas bags for money. This is also the person that invented the parachute. So again, completely nuts, but really, really smart. I studied the matter for months. I experimented with sandbags of my own weight and did not venture a jump until I had the feel that it could be safely done. I had made most of my jumps in water. And if it had not been for that, every particle of my body was hard as iron from former training as a gymnast, I would not have lasted through these early experiments. He was ready for a public expedition. Baldwin offered to prove the

Starting point is 00:35:33 efficacy of his invention, which is the parachute, assuming, of course, that someone would pay him to do it. So he wants to do a public test jump. He goes to all these business owners, says, hey, what if I jump and you put on the show? Right. Like what essentially what Red Bull does for marketing today. And so these business businesses are like, yeah, I'll do it. So he finds a guy. He says, I told him I would jump for a dollar a foot. And he answered, OK, go jump a thousand feet. Baldwin did precisely that, floating gently to the ground below and claimed his thousand dollar prize. So this is his business at this point, finding more business owners and going higher and higher up and jumping for a dollar a foot. Then he took his parachute on the

Starting point is 00:36:08 road. He would venture higher and higher for greater prize money, eventually getting to like 5,000 feet. Imagine jumping out of a hot air balloon at 5,000 feet. Now this is what's interesting. Baldwin is credited as the inventor of the flexible parachute, but he never bothered to take out a patent. And he did this on purpose. He didn't, he wasn't a fan of patents. And this is where it gives the Wright brothers so much, so many people in the industry wind up disliking them because they were trying to build a monopoly and they're trying to prevent other people from the continuation of their work. So Baldwin wasn't with that. He's like, listen, I'm taking a patent for this, a practice he would

Starting point is 00:36:42 continue in his research with his airships. Now, one thing this book does a fantastic job of is it shows how all of these people wind up being connected and knowing each other. This is the exact same thing that I discovered when I read 12 or 15 books, whatever it was, about the early automotive industry. And so Baldwin's like, hey, I have a gas bag. He has the same thought that Curtis had. He's like, well, what if i just put a motor on this thing then maybe i could steer it maybe i can like it could be we can we can transport people in it and do all this kind of stuff so he's trying to find he has that idea he's like all right where do i find a motor

Starting point is 00:37:16 and he that this is how he meets glenn curtis and so baldwin is a generation older than curtis and so he winds up seeing a motorcycle. Baldwin sees a motorcycle. He's like, OK. And he looks at the motorcycle and on the engine of the motorcycle says Curtis Manufacturing Company. So then he's like, OK, he sends a telegraph and he asked to purchase a motor that's not attached to a frame. The message was received by the owner of Curtis Manufacturing Company, which at the time was a 26-year-old mechanical whiz named Glenn Curtis. And then we start getting an introduction to Curtis, and I just found him extremely, extremely fascinating and somebody I want to read more about in the future. His father died when Glenn Curtis was four. In school, he completed

Starting point is 00:38:00 only the eighth grade. Now think about this. He's going to be an aviation industry pioneer. He is going to be fabulously wealthy. Wait till you see all the stuff this guy invents. It's insane. Now he's invent like, invents the first airplane that takes off and lands on the water, invents the throttle for motorcycles, holds at some points in history, the fastest speed record on land, fastest speed record in the air, makes the best motors in the world at the very beginning of the industry. And again, his dad died when he was four, only has an eighth grade education. I find these stories extremely inspiring. He showed high proficiency in mathematics.

Starting point is 00:38:37 He was a tinkerer. At 10, he made a camera out of a cigar box. What? At 12, he built a telegraph out of spools, nails, tin, and wire. He was often hired to wire neighbors' houses for telephones or electric light when he was in his early teens. Like Wilbur Wright, Curtis was always thoughtful and analytical when taking on a mechanical problem, and even as a young boy, seemed very serious. He had a sharp, his first business that took off was building bicycles. By 1900, he was building bicycles, and his designs were superior to most other machines on the market.

Starting point is 00:39:21 Curtis decided to mount a gasoline engine on one of his bicycles. He then took this proto, like think about it's like a, like a, one of the first motorcycles, right? Took it to a nearby fair to race his own machines. And as a result of being just, of winning these races, orders began to roll in. He opened a factory to keep up with demand. But no matter how big the business got, Curtis never ceased being a fixture on the factory floor. So one of the reasons he was much, much, much more innovative and invented a ton more things than the Wright brothers did after they invented powered flight is because all the time Wilbur was focused on lawsuits. Curtis was still, he never stopped tinkering his entire life until

Starting point is 00:40:00 he died. He was just a tinkerer. So he's not going to be in the office. He's going to be in the factory floor. He's going to be in the factory floor. He's going to be essentially like an engineer and inventor first, entrepreneur and businessman second, even though, if you think about it, his company, imagine selling a company for $30 million. I think he did that in the 1920s, maybe 1930s. So an insane, insane amount of money. So there's probably a lesson there. If you're constantly improving your product and focus on that instead of being distracted,

Starting point is 00:40:26 you actually will wind up having a better economic outcome than letting yourself be distracted by other things. So Baldwin goes to meet Curtis, and it says, remember, Baldwin is the P.T. Barnum kind of older guy that wants to motorize gas bags. Baldwin said afterward that he expected to encounter a stuffy businessman in his 40s or 50s. Instead, he found himself opposite, a quiet, painfully shy young man dressed in overalls

Starting point is 00:40:48 who had to wipe his hand free of grease in order to offer a handshake. This unlikely pair struck an instant friendship, each drawn by admiration to qualities in the other that he lacked. So in the introduction, they talk about maybe the greatest aviator to ever live. This is a guy named Beachy. Beachy starts out working for Baldwin. See how all this is connected it's wild to me so says baldwin winds up at this point so again he used to be a tightrope walker he's older now he's too fat he realizes i'm too fat to pilot my own balloon so i gotta hire a pilot now

Starting point is 00:41:19 and so it says uh he needed a replacement pilot he's too fat. Early in 1905, a brash, fearless teenager named Lincoln Beachy walked into his office, and within minutes, Baldwin knew he had struck gold. So this guy is going to put on these crazy feats in a gas bag and then eventually jump into and learn how to fly an airplane and become— they said he might be the single most famous person in the United States after the president at this point. At the time, the population of the United States after the president at this point. At the time, the population of the United States was 75 million. 20 million Americans had seen Lincoln Beachy in person. That's crazy. So it says, at this point, he was not yet 20 years old. The boy

Starting point is 00:41:57 Aeronaut, as he called himself, became a regular feature in newspaper and magazines. In between mishaps, Beachy set records for altitude and speed, astonishing the thousands who regularly came to see him perform. So the way to think about Beachy is he's a daredevil, and he's constantly pushing the limits. And that's obviously going to lead to his early death. So we see a bad decision here from the Wright brothers. We know if you read the book or listen to the past podcast, that they reversed this decision. You have to demo your product. This is what they're about to do here. This is the opposite advice that Claude Hopkins, I think it's founders number 170, if I remember correctly off the top of my head. Claude Hopkins, probably the greatest copywriter to ever live,

Starting point is 00:42:33 literally spent 12 hours a day, seven days a week, sitting in a room by himself, writing copy that sold other people's products. He wound up writing a book, Scientific Advertising, winds up selling 8 million copies. I bought two copies so far. And just with his own research and his talent and a typewriter sitting in a room by himself, he made the equivalent of like $4 million a year, right? And he says, listen, I spent my entire life thinking about persuasion and human quirks and words that persuade people to hand over money for products. And he's saying the single best thing you could do, it's like all the words in the world world never beat one dramatic demonstration of your product. And so the Wright brothers were not letting anybody else see them fly.

Starting point is 00:43:13 Giant mistake. Increasingly concerned that their design would be stolen, they decided to do no more public flying. A signed contract would be a prerequisite to a demonstration. The Wrights were willing to forego payment if the machine did not perform as advertised but anyone who bought either an airplane or the design would be forced to do so without without having first seen the airplane in flight and we may compound this mistake by thinking they're so far ahead that no one can catch them we're going to get a great line here the right flyer remained the only successful airplane and the brother's technological advantage was vast but neither wilbur nor Orville seemed to

Starting point is 00:43:45 grasp that no, this is a great line, that no lead is insurmountable if you stop running before you reach the finish line. So eventually the Wright brothers are going to reverse this decision. They start doing these fantastic demonstrations in Europe and America, literally to over 200,000 people at a time. So you can imagine if somebody's paying tickets to watch you demo your product, and there's 200,000 of them, how many of your product are you going to sell? A ton. But then we go back to this idea that they all knew each other. Here's when Glenn Curtis and the Wright Brothers meet. At this point, they're not enemies yet. Glenn Curtis wrote to the Wright Brothers in an attempt to persuade them to mount a Curtis motor on the flyer. Although the light and

Starting point is 00:44:21 powerful Curtis motor would make the flyer more attractive, the brothers were not about to deal So that's, again, their standard MO. They don't trust anybody. No. It's a mistake. Again, if he can make a motor better than you can, like, that makes your product better, right? The Wrights and Curtis were each impressed with the intelligence and acumen of the other. Wilbur and Orville invited Curtis to visit their shop. What followed was the most important and controversial meeting in aviation history.

Starting point is 00:44:50 The three had a long and amicable discussion in which they exchanged a good bit of expertise. And so the problem is, depending on how you view this meeting, depends on what side you fall on with this gigantic patent infringement case that goes on. So it says one says, what was Curtis pumping the brothers for technical information that he could then use to create his own airplane? None of those questions have ever been definitively answered. And in that dispute default that followed, the fault line runs directly through whichever interpretation of that meeting one ascribes to. And so Curtis doesn't wind up linking up with Wright Brothers, but he winds up linking up with Alexander Graham Bell.

Starting point is 00:45:29 And I've already said this a few times, but I don't know if I left myself on this page. It's just amazing how all these people were connected. So it says in 1906, Alexander Graham Bell decided to assemble his own team of talented young men to attack the flying problem. So again, you have this smart, very successful inventor, very rich. He's a generation older, and he realizes innovation usually comes from the young. One of those young people he's going to recruit is Glenn Curtis. So it says his first recruit came from an unlikely source. He received a letter from a young army lieutenant named Thomas Selfridge.

Starting point is 00:45:58 So I was reading that word. I'm like, why do I know Thomas Selfridge? Why do I know Thomas Selfridge? And then I realized that is the guy that winds up being the first fatality ever he's the one that crashed with orville right over almost died thomas selfridge dies so it says before communicating with alexander grimbell selfridge had solicited the rights now we see you already know what's going to happen if you send a letter to them right he asked permission to come and work as a mechanic under supervision and instruction i'm pretty sure that Wright brothers never even responded. Selfridge then met with Bell in Washington, where Bell was at the time. Bell was so impressed that he wrote to President Theodore Roosevelt and asked for—

Starting point is 00:46:36 remember, he's in the—so Selfridge, the reason Bell was writing to Roosevelt is because Selfridge is in the Army. And so he says, and he asked Roosevelt for the young lieutenant to be assigned to him. Roosevelt was an old friend of Alexander Graham Bell. So he agreed. Bell then met Glenn Curtis and Bell asked Curtis to join him as well. And again, it's just amazing how everybody knew each other. And not only that, like if you think about the history of how interconnected the history of entrepreneurship is, Like I've done podcasts on Alexander Graham Bell, a bunch on Theodore Roosevelt, the Wright brothers. Now we're doing, now I'm doing one on Glenn Curtis.

Starting point is 00:47:10 Like it's just fast. It always fascinates me. And so Bell has now had this formidable team. You got people all over the world making experiments. This is after the Wrights have already solved the problem. And they're so focused on trying to build a business and protect their patents. They're not innovating. And Chanute knows he's like listen you're you're messing up man i'm i am like the the main note here i'm seeing what everybody else is doing

Starting point is 00:47:32 you're falling behind and something i learned from the the churchill biography i read uh probably like what a month or two ago is something there's a line in there where churchill would net he never made the mistake that so many other leaders did, especially during World War II. He's like, never underestimate your opponent because it's all downside and no upside. You underestimate your opponent. What is the benefit if you're right? Nothing. What's the consequences if you're wrong?

Starting point is 00:47:59 Everything. You don't engage in something where you have limited upside and uncapped downside. You literally should be doing the reverse of that, right? I want to cap my downside and leave my upside unlimited. So again, never underestimate your opponent. It's just really, very stupid. There's smart people everywhere. You just can't underestimate them.

Starting point is 00:48:14 And a lot of them, the smartest ones, don't want you to know they're smart. So we see that here. Chanute tried to warn Wilbur that the French were making great strides and might soon produce machines to rival his. Wilbur replied, I still hold to my prediction that an independent solution to this problem would require at least five years. If anything, Channut had understated the case. French designers had been experimenting furiously and the gap was closing. So again, Wilbur Wright, profound self-belief, profound stubbornness that

Starting point is 00:48:42 he can solve this problem. Those are all good things. Then after you solve the problem, to think that, oh, no one else can do it, that's where you take a former strength and you turn it into a weakness. He was absolutely wrong about that. That's something we should look out for in our own lives. Let's not underestimate. Let's not think that we are prognosticators. Human beings are terrible at prediction. Eventually, though, they smarten up.

Starting point is 00:49:01 They realize, hey, we should actually cultivate the press. They're going to help us sell our products, and we do that through the power of demonstration. So they go to Kitty Hawk again. This is years later. I think we're in, like, 1909 still, 1908 thereabout. And this time they're like, hey, let's bring a bunch of reporters with us. And this is the result of the power of a demo, which is exactly what we learned from Claude Hopkins. After years of disdaining the media, Wilbur and Orville had finally learned that perception could not be ignored.

Starting point is 00:49:26 They encouraged a number of reporters to follow them and report on their progress. And this is the result. One of the journalists who had witnessed all these flights, they're killing it over there, who extolled in a long, laudatory piece about the Wright brothers. He said, I did not believe that they had made progress and sustained flight, and I did not believe they had made a record of 24 miles as they had claimed. Before, they're like, yeah, we flew 24 miles, but no one saw each other. And so this is the punchline.

Starting point is 00:49:53 I believe all these things now and more. Something smart that Wilbur does here. And he's pointing out after the fact that it's extremely dangerous to allow yourself to be distracted. It's really a reminder for us to maintain our focus. And he's writing a letter after his brother has that crash where Selfridge dies and Orville's in pain. He almost dies, but he's in pain like the rest of his life. He has the crash is like the turning point in his life. He's going to have to deal with the ramifications forever.

Starting point is 00:50:21 And so Wilbur says, I do not mean that orville was incompetent to do the work itself but i realized that he would be surrounded by thousands of people who with the most friendly intentions in the world that's important it's like they're not wanting him to crash not wanting to distract them but even if they're friendly their intentions are positive if you allow them to for for if you allow other people to to distract you and to to change where your focus goes there's consequences to that. And in his case, these were dire physical consequences. I realized that he would be surrounded by thousands of people

Starting point is 00:50:50 who, with the most friendly intentions in the world, would consume his time, exhaust his strength, and keep him from having proper rest. When a man is in that condition, he tends to trust the carefulness of others instead of doing everything and examining everything himself. So Wilbur, before he did a demo, he checked literally every single bolt himself if orville had not delegated delegated

Starting point is 00:51:09 the fastening of the screws but had done it himself he would have noticed the thing that made the trouble so he was flying one of the parts wind up breaking and that's what caused the crash so that's what wilbur is referring to there so now now we have the scumbag Augustus Herring popping up. And I'm going to read. He winds up really taking advantage of Curtis here. And it's just a reminder what Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have taught us over and over again. You can't make a good deal with a bad person. You can't make a good deal with a bad person.

Starting point is 00:51:39 You can't make a good deal with a bad person. It's important to repeat that so we get in our brain. Like there's going to be bad people that are going to say, I can make you rich. Just don't believe them. It's not going to work out, man. This mistake winds up costing the heirs of Glenn Curtis $500,000 because the lawsuit that's going to go on between Curtis and Herring

Starting point is 00:51:58 isn't resolved if both of them are dead. So think about that, how long this goes on. So it says, Curtis proceeded to take steps to exploit aviation commercially and in exhibitions. So he's making money both trying to produce airplanes and also at this time, millions of Americans and millions of people all over the world have proven that, hey, I will pay to watch you fly. Having been repeatedly shown by the rights, Augustus Herring persuaded Curtis that he held patents on airplane stability that preceded the rights. He did not. That's a lie. He also said he had financial connections in New York who were itching to

Starting point is 00:52:33 capitalize on commercial possibilities of airplane production. Also a lie. The deal seemed too good to pass. It was. So they announced the new formation of the Herring-Curtis company. It was a colossal blunder. Curtis put up almost all the money. Herring ended up with almost all the stock. Curtis wasn't alone in his stunning gullibility. Before the ink was dry on the agreement, Herring was off, supposedly dividing his time between preparing his airplane and rounding up customers and investors. Also a lie.

Starting point is 00:53:04 As Curtis would later learn, he was doing neither. So let's go back to this mistake that the Wright brothers are making that, hey, we're so far ahead, no one's going to catch us. No benefit. We've already discussed no benefit to underestimating your opponent. And really, it's just a reminder to you and I, there's smart, dedicated people everywhere, all over the planet. Some have access to resources now, some don't, but will in the future. Even if it's a small percentage of overall human population that are smart, driven, dedicated, won't give up, it's still a small percentage of a giant number. It's still a lot of people, right?

Starting point is 00:53:32 So it says, this is an example of that. Before Wilbur could sit down with the generals, he's trying to sell some planes to the military, the Wrights' dream of dominating aviation had been smashed. An event occurred whose immense significance not even the Wright brothers could deny. In a plane of his own design and with a foot so badly burned that he had to be helped into the cockpit, Louis B flew across the English Channel. So again, Wright brothers, very arrogant, underestimating competition, saying, no, we're so far ahead, no one is going to catch us. That's assuming that you could possibly know what every single person on the planet is actually doing,

Starting point is 00:54:07 and you don't. These people come out of nowhere. I think about back to the Michael Jordan biography where, you know, he's dominating in North Carolina. His coaches convince him, they're like, hey, we need to send, this kid is good. Like, this guy has, like, unreal talent. They send him to some kind of basketball camp. I think it was in the Northeast. I'm just going off memory here.

Starting point is 00:54:24 And the people at the basketball camp see him and he starts just completely taking over and they the scouts and the coaches and everybody they're like we thought we knew that we knew of we knew all the best basketball players in the country well they wind up thinking wrong and so michael jordan later in his career after he retires as a matter of fact says that he's like listen you don't have to worry about finding the next michael jordan that will happen and he's like first of all you didn't find me and his point was like these people are special they're end of one individuals they will cut they will present themselves you will see you will find out about them somehow just like very few people the right brothers might not even known who louis b was he's like all right well you're gonna know now because i'm gonna break

Starting point is 00:54:59 this i'm gonna i'm gonna put my name in the history books and there's nothing you can do about it right brothers so really for me the lesson I'm taking from that paragraph is the combination of those two ideas. They're smart, dedicated people everywhere. And it's just really foolish to underestimate people that you don't even know. You can't possibly know that they exist or what they're capable of, not only what they're working on, but what they've already been able to accomplish. And so the Wright Brothers had a massive head start and advantage over curtis but curtis might not be the architect but he's the builder right so he winds up within two years it says in two short years so for two years he's like hey i'm gonna put one of my motors on this plane i offered

Starting point is 00:55:36 my motor you you said no okay i'll put my motor on my own plane and so now and i don't know i don't know if you know this but the what makes this even more kind of tragic, the death of Wilbur Wright fighting Curtis, is the two companies are going to wind up merging much later on, right? After the Wright brothers have nothing to do with their own company. But that company that merges in 1929 still exists to this day. It's publicly traded. It's Curtis Wright. It's this gigantic aviation company. I'm sure if Wilbur Wright knew that, he'd be spinning in his grave.

Starting point is 00:56:04 So anyways, it says in two short years, Curtis had gone from an obscure fabricator, right? He said no one's really paying attention to him. He's building bicycles and motorcycles, to now Wilbur Wright's most loathed and formidable competitor. He's making some of the best planes and engines in the world. So this is the point where the Wright brothers actually capitalized their company. And so it says, the financial arrangements were immensely favorable to Wilbur and Orville. The Wright company would be capitalized at a million dollars. The Wrights would receive $100,000 in cash, one third of the stock, and a 10% royalty on sales. And this is where I also think they might have made the mistake. Because if you've listened to the podcast I did on J.P. Morgan,

Starting point is 00:56:41 Cornelius Vanderbilt, you realize, and all the Robert Barons back in the day, they did not view competition as you and I might in today today's age they viewed it as something to get rid of like they don't want competition they'll just buy the entire um like they'll buy up every single company in the industry i remember there's a there's a fantastic quote where jp morgan is talking about i forgot who it was it might have been the guys that started moette and sean on the champagne company and he said something that just that gives a great illustration into his mindset he's like oh you know they're like hey maybe we should buy our competitor he's like why don't you just buy up the whole champagne region and so they want to do the exact same thing with the rights that they did in

Starting point is 00:57:16 their career it says the primary goals of the new company was to permanently neuter competition so you have the rights just raise a ton of money. They have these very formidable people on their team now. And at the same time, you have the Curtis and Herring partnership. Curtis is realizing Herring's a scumbag. And so this is what I mean where there's just so many times where Curtis is on the floor. You're like, how is this guy going to survive? Much less surpass the Wright brothers.

Starting point is 00:57:42 Even worse for Curtis at this very moment that the Wrights solidified their business, his partnership was descending into chaos. The board at the company was like, we need to see the patents, Herring. Where are they? He's like, okay, I'll be back. And then he disappeared for a month. And then he come back like, where's the patents? Oh, I'll be back. And just went over and over again. So it says Herring could not comply because there were no patents to produce. The company had almost no money now. Herring and Curtis had only sold one airplane, and the purchaser was being sued by the Wright brothers, which made further sales in the immediate future problematic. So that's the start. It's already now, I think we're like two years

Starting point is 00:58:14 into this gigantic patent war. So not only are the Wright brothers suing Curtis, but they're suing anybody that's trying to do business with Curtis or any other, in their opinion, patent infringer. And the Wright brothers were kind of laughing at this because they knew Herring was clearly a liar. The Wrights merely watched with amusement and satisfaction. The contrast between the elite, qualified partners they had taken and the shady, self-promoting confidence man with whom Curtis had thrown in with could not have been more acute.

Starting point is 00:58:43 So Curtis does do something smart here. And the lesson here is find people that are great at selling your product and hire them. So the main way to determine, okay, do I want a Wright Flyer? Do I want a Curtis? Do I want any of these other ones? It's through these demonstrations, these races. It's very similar to if you remember, we went through Enzo Ferrari. The reason Ferrari is the brand it is today is because of all the races, the Le Mans, it won back in the 50s and 60s, and maybe even the 40s. It's like you win race after race after race. It's like, oh, I want that. I want the very best. They were attracted. The Ferrari name came

Starting point is 00:59:15 synonymous with victory. And so that, again, then that brand equity compounds decade after decade after decade. And now you have people paying $200,000 or $ people paying 200 or 300 or 400 000 for one of your cars curtis fly curtis's flyer was charles hamilton i want to tell you about this guy hamilton demonstrated a remarkable ability to survive crashes he would have 63 of them he showed up to curtis's factory and pestered him into submission he wouldn't leave until curtis taught him how to fly curtis finally agreed to teach Hamilton to fly and he discovered that he had stumbled on a natural, a man capable of wowing audiences and keeping Curtis airplanes in the headlines. Curtis signed Hamilton to an exhibition contract and then turned Hamilton loose on an eager public. And this is the punchline here, the crowds, which began in the hundreds, grew to the thousands, and they loved him.

Starting point is 01:00:05 So again, find people who are great at selling your product and then hire them. And so then I want to bring something to your attention because it's one of my favorite Henry Ford stories. And it's about how there were so many corrupt judges and how the car patent cases affected the Wright Brothers' strategy. And there's this guy that's infamous in the early automotive history. He's called George Selden. And essentially, he was just a guy that had no ambition to or nor qualification to build an actual car of his own, but he patented his invention and then said, hey, I'm going to get rich by suing anybody else that tries to make a car. And so, again, I think in hindsight, the Wright brothers, if they knew what you and I know today, I don't think they would have pursued the same path.

Starting point is 01:00:47 And so the author talks about what happened with Selden and the automotive industry happened about 25, 20 years, about, started in 1878 and then lasted for about 20 years, maybe 25 years, actually a little longer than that. And so this knowledge of history that came before them impacted the way the Wrights thought about this. So this is why I want to read it to you. George Selden was fully aware that his patent had no immediate application. And so without ever attempting to build an automobile himself, he repeatedly filed amendments to his patent, still with no intention of ever building an automobile. And so the same judge that held up the Wright brothers patent wound up holding up Selden's patent many years before. And he said, despite grounds that many experts in the field thought dubious at best, the guy's name is Hazel, the judge upheld Selden's application of his patent to every internal combustion engine.

Starting point is 01:01:36 And so immediately the patents upheld. Other people in the automotive industry, including people like Billy Durant, the founder of GM, start paying Selden a royalty. Because like, oh, we thought like this is what we had to do. Henry Ford, not the kind of person you're going to like. He just he's very he's very similar to Wilbur Wright in his stubbornness, the level of stubbornness he had. So said some independents, however, refused to knuckle under. One of those was Henry Ford, who at the time was a small operator. That's extremely important. I double underline that part.

Starting point is 01:02:05 At the time, Ford was a small operator. Ford is eventually going to be the richest man in America. Not yet. So at the time, he was a small operator with a vision of affordable mass-produced machines. Where most of the others tried to keep a low profile, Ford openly flaunted the ruling. He went so far as to take out advertisements promising to reimburse anyone who purchased a Ford product if the higher court's decision went against him, for which he was widely hailed as a David standing up to a Goliath. That is a bold, bold decision by Ford. Everybody else is like trying to run away from Selden. He's putting ads in the newspaper saying this guy's trying to crush everybody. I'm David standing up to a Goliath. There's a fantastic quote from the book I read a long time ago. The book is called I Invented the Modern Age, the Rise of Henry Ford.

Starting point is 01:02:49 In the book, there's a story where Ford is having a meeting with a bunch of other auto manufacturers, and they're all saying, hey, let's just band together, see if we can get a license cheaper for bulk. And Ford's the only one saying, no, I'm not going to do this. And so the guy running the meeting is a guy named Smith. And he said, you men are foolish, said Smith. The Selden crowd can put you out of business and they will. And Ford's response, let them try it. So why is that important to our story?

Starting point is 01:03:13 Because that circuit court decision broadened the principle, the pioneer principle, meaning gives greater patent protection to other people that have patents okay and so the Wright brothers attorneys saw that as a positive sign for their case and so this is the first time where Wilbur Wright Wilbur Wright respects Octave Chanute right this is his mentor as much as he could respect anybody else I mean they are like they wind up having a falling out or whatever but he does respect him and he's probably one of the only other people that he'll somewhat listen to and so really there's a there's a letter that octave is going to write wilbur it's like what are you doing here man like you're you went from trying to solve this problem and to advance power to fight for

Starting point is 01:03:51 humanity to now trying to build a monopoly that's not good that's only good for yourself and so he's going to write he's going to speak to wilbur frankly and i don't know if myself here is it's good to have people that can check you in your life, people that you respect. Even if they're harsh with you, you understand that their motivation is not – they're not trying to peg you down or trying to diminish you. They're not trying to hurt you on purpose, but they legitimately love and care for you and want to see you succeed, and they think you're making a drastic mistake. That's what I mean by it's good to have people in your life that can check you. And this is what he says. I told you in New York that you were making a mistake by abstaining from prize-winning contests while public curiosity

Starting point is 01:04:27 is so keen and by bringing so many lawsuits to prevent others from doing so this is still my opinion and i am afraid my friend that your usually sound judgment has been warped by your desire for great wealth and i just want to pull out one thing that has nothing really to do with the story other than that books are the original links and they're constantly introducing us to new interesting people. This guy I've come across before and I actually have his biography on my wish list

Starting point is 01:04:52 so I got to actually order it. But his name is John Bet-a-Million Gates. John Bet-a-Million Gates. And I just want to read a paragraph that gives you an idea of why I want to read a book about this guy. Gates made a fortune selling barbed wire in the dying days of the open range, parlayed that into a bigger fortune in land speculation, then in 1902 struck oil in Texas and founded the company that would become Texaco. Gates' penchant for wagering enormous sums on

Starting point is 01:05:19 horses prompted newspapers to refer to him as Bet a Million Gates. He had been an early investor in United States Steel and came to know Albert Gray, who let him in on the Wright Company Incorporation. How is that possible that it all happened in one lifetime? Made a fortune selling bar buyer, made a fortune in land, founded Texaco, bets millions of dollars on horse races, early investor in United States Steel, horse races early investor in united states steel and an early investor in the right company incredible okay so now the author introduces us to just some insane characters i want to pull out i have a bunch of highlights on this guy named john moissant so i'm going to call him john m because i'm most likely butchering his last name

Starting point is 01:06:02 john m was something of an international celebrity. He had narrowly evaded capture and possible execution after a third failed attempt to lead an invasion of El Salvador. And so what was he doing in El Salvador? So he is part of this remarkable family. They're essentially building a giant business empire together. So it says, an entire day to ride from one end to the other. And so eventually the government in El Salvador, not going to like these gringos coming down and essentially making a ton of money on natural resources.

Starting point is 01:06:53 I'll get there in a minute, but it says, this is a description of John. He was driven by an uncontrollable desire for adventure and wealth and almost an adolescent need to be seen as a swashbuckling hero. So there's like this three separate countries are after him, including his own country. So El Salvador, Nicaragua, and then the United States. Essentially, they're like, hey, on his third and final attempt, the people that stop him, it's actually gunships from America.

Starting point is 01:07:20 They're like, if you don't turn around, we're going to fire on you. Go home. And so the book goes into more detail, but I'm just giving you the high level highlights here. John Moisan was a plantation owner, a gun runner, a mercenary, an impeccable dresser, was allowed to return home a free man if he foreswore Central American politics. So he goes home and he never visits Central America again. Forced to eschew leading invasions of foreign nations, John was left desperate for an outlet for his obsessive audacity. These are just such great descriptions.

Starting point is 01:07:53 Obsessive audacity. And it says an uncontrollable desire for adventure and wealth and an adolescent need to be seen as a swashbuckling hero. This is just a mastery of language. You read this and you get a good idea of who this person was, right? And so he instantly turns his attention to aviation, which is obviously the thing that's drawing so many people's attention at this point in American history, in world history, really, if you think about it. John might have been headstrong and narcissistic, but he was far from stupid.

Starting point is 01:08:18 His plan was to become the world's greatest exhibition flyer in an aircraft of his own creation. So usually you do one or the other, right? You either make airplanes or you become famous by flying them in these exhibitions. So John's like, I'll do both. He makes a couple of airplanes. They don't really do well, but he's one of the first people to use aluminum, if you think about how important that was.

Starting point is 01:08:39 So he gives up. He's like, wait, making planes is way too hard. Flying them, like he wants to be famous and world-renowned. He's like, that seems to be a better path to my actual goal. And again, just great writing here. So it says, John gave up on that portion of the plan, meaning producing airplanes, and turned his attention solely to flying. Aviation had acquired a comet. And so we also see he has a very strong personality.

Starting point is 01:09:06 He does not take no for an answer. He tries to, he starts, even though he's French, like his French last name, his family was originally from France, he thought of himself as American, but he couldn't break in, so he goes to Europe, tries to enter these races that are happening all over Europe, and they say, no, you can't enter. He's like, all right, well, I'm just going to show up, so what are you going to do about it?

Starting point is 01:09:23 John had burst onto the scene at an event in which he had been refused entry. When the French declined to allow the crazy American kid to fly in the world's first long-distance air race, John packed up his friend into his passenger seat and flew 37 miles across Paris and then landed on the field where a quarter million people had shown up to see the event. And so he winds up competing, becoming one of the best aviators. He winds up also taking a lot of risks. And so he wins this race back in America. This is like a year later. And he does it because it's just a timed event. So you take off, you have to complete this course, and then whoever lands under the best time wins. And he was able to win because

Starting point is 01:10:01 the person that was supposed to come in first wouldn't take a path, take a route that wouldn't allow him to have an emergency landing if he needed to have an emergency landing. And John realized, well, I'll take this other path. It's shorter, therefore it should take me less time, but it has to work out. There's no margin for error, and this is just a fantastic line. It gives you an insight exactly who this person was. Later, when his sister Matilda was asked about John having chosen a flight path without any chance of emergency landing, she replied, my brother doesn't fly to land. He flies to win. And so you can imagine you have that attitude, but you're also applying that attitude into such a dangerous profession. The crazy thing is he's going to die. I think he starts flying in 1907. He's dead by 1910.

Starting point is 01:10:42 And the way he dies is because he actually falls out of his airplane. And that also shows like a blind spot to humans that humans have. It's you have some of the smartest, most interesting people to ever live working in this field. And nobody thought that you should have a seatbelt or a harness. And the book talks about like many people just were flung out of the airplane. There'd be a draft or a return or something would happen. And it's not that he even crashed. They literally flew out.

Starting point is 01:11:05 And in some cases, they fly out, they die, and the plane glides and lands without any damage. But it's just astounding. It's like how many times that people have to die. Did somebody say, hey, we should, you know, maybe stay, maybe attach the pilot to the seat. So let's go back to the Wilbur-Curtis conflict. Wilbur, or the Wright-Curtis conflict. So not only is Glenn Curtis having to fight the Wright brothers, he's also having to fight his partner. He realizes, hey, I partnered up with a scam artist. So he's got two battling lawsuits, one from his former partner, one from his most formidable adversaries this is a quick paragraph about that Wilbur and Curtis continued to battle each other the puncher stalking the boxer Wilbur attempting to land a crushing body blow to a weakened opponent and Curtis his resources depleted dodging feigning and trying to survive Curtis relied almost solely on revenues garnered by the exhibition company why is that because he could

Starting point is 01:11:59 not even use the factory that he had built with his own hands again going back to that it's so important to think about that you cannot make a good deal with a bad person he had built with his own hands. Again, going back to that, it's so important to think about that. You cannot make a good deal with a bad person. This guy built up his own factory, this scumbag, weaseled his way in there through a series of lies, and now the business, the factory that Curtis gave his life energy to, he can't even access until the bankruptcy proceedings are finished. So it says, a factory he built with his own hands without permission of the receiver

Starting point is 01:12:24 until the Herring-Curtis bankruptcy was resolved. So it says, And so while Wilbur Wright is viciously attacking anybody that dares infringe on his patents, he's going to run up against people that are not Glenn Curtis. And this is really a lesson that there are a series of formidable adversaries out there that you're better off avoiding. And if you choose to compete in industries like this especially the birth of something that's going to be extremely valuable you're going to run up against people not only are they super intelligent they have a lot of access to a lot of assets they have very sharp elbows and what i'm about to read to you so one of my favorite movies probably my favorite movie is the godfather there is a scene where

Starting point is 01:13:01 michael corleone uh his his father's already died so he's the godfather there is a scene where michael corleone uh his his father's already died so he's the godfather and he has a senator that is trying to squeeze him essentially blackmail him they're like oh you want a gaming license to run casinos that's fine that normally this is the price it's going to be much larger than that and if you've seen the movie you realize the senator is making a gigantic mistake and it's one of the best scenes in movie history because michael says well you know the senator's about to leave he's like i want the money i want your answer on the money by tomorrow and michael's like you can have my my offer now he's like what's your offer my offer is nothing not even the fee for the gaming license which i'd appreciate it if you put up yourself

Starting point is 01:13:35 and so the rights are going to be hit with like a michael coleone offer right here so it says harold fowler mccormick was the youngest son of cyrus mccormick and thus a scion of one of the richest families in america to add even more heft to his bank balance he was married to edith rockefeller the daughter of john d rockefeller the mccormicks were used to making terms not acquiescing to them and so they want to put on, the McCormick's are going to put on the world's largest flying exhibitions ever seen. And once the Wright brothers realize what they're doing, they say, hey, like they hit them with like, you got to pay us 20%. We want the profits. You need all this written permission. And McCormick's like, okay, you can have my offer now,

Starting point is 01:14:19 which is nothing. And so Orville's the one having to deal with this. And it says the McCormick's were used to making terms, not acquiescing to them. And the committee rejected the right proposal out of hand. I then asked I asked I then asked the committee if I was to understand that the committee refused to pay the right company, our company, a license. And the reply was made by their attorney. That's what it looks like. McCormick's committee then made a counter offer this is the michael corleone aspect of it wilbur and orville could join as competitors just like everyone else

Starting point is 01:14:52 it gets worse and it says lest there be any doubt of our resolve they leveled the mccormick's leveled an ultimatum to their own so remember at this point the right brothers are used to filing lawsuits to everybody winning the lawsuits they're like go ahead and sue us and then we'll ruin your entire now we'll ruin your entire business so they said they leveled an ultimatum of their own they told me that the Wright company could bring suit if they saw fit and in that case and in case they did the members of the committee all very wealthy men would finance whatever the cost would be to fight against such an action and then make every effort to invalidate all of the Wright brothers patents. They didn't stop there. This

Starting point is 01:15:32 is why it's just better in life to go around collecting friends instead of enemies because you're going to run against people that don't play. And the Wright brothers just ran up against people that don't play. And we'll see again. It keeps getting worse. They did not stop there. This committee is composed of the heads of the various newspapers in this city. And if the Wright brothers should bring any action, these newspapers will publish all facts in the case and do everything within their power to embarrass the Wright company in such proceedings. So let's review. Not only are we not going to pay you, if you decide to continue this, we're going to, we're extremely rich. We're going to use all of our resources and

Starting point is 01:16:10 we're going to invalidate all our patents. And if we invalidate all your patents, that means your company goes bye-bye. And if you want to press this, guess what? Not only do we have a ton of money, but we also run all the newspapers. And so we have media attention and we will drag you in the press. So Orville obviously agrees it's like oh crap okay here's the problem Wilbur gets back I think he was in Europe or something like that and he disagrees and so then the author says this is like this is what I was mentioning earlier how stubbornness can be both an asset and a liability so Orville agrees Wilbur overturns that decision and so it says of all the rights legal actions this one seemed the most ill-considered. The defendants were wealthy, powerful, and influential men being sued in their own backyard.

Starting point is 01:16:49 Orville's initial willingness to enter Wright Aviators, which he said, okay, I'll agree to your terms, would work against them as well. What's more, seeking a share of the proceeds, so they're suing to get a percentage of the profits, right? That's what Wilbur's doing because that's what he feels is his right to do as the patent holder. What's more, seeking a share of the proceeds were pointless. These are rich dudes. They're already independently wealthy. They put it on for attention and prestige to their city, not because they were trying to make money. And so their point was you're suing them for a share of the profit was pointless because there is no profit the meat had brought in 150 000 in revenue

Starting point is 01:17:25 against let's say 200 000 in expenses leaving only red ink for the rights and so what is the point there like you're not going to get any money then you just created more enemies like you it he wilbur had like this religious zeal to defend his work and like his life's work and there's not like that in and of itself is not negative, but you have to pick your spots. Like, this was not a smart move. And when you think about this, like, it's, he lost, Wilbur Wright lost the point of all this, right? Because this is happening about a year before he's going to die. And so I write on this page, because we're a few pages later, and this is a year before he dies.

Starting point is 01:18:03 We want to avoid this fate. Although Wilbur continued the fight with unbroken ferocity, he was beginning to despair of the business. And so he's writing, he's like, I hate my life, I want out of this. My position for the past six months, he wrote, has been that if I could get free from the business with the money we already have in hand, I would do it rather than continue in a business at considerable profit.

Starting point is 01:18:23 So he's like, if I could just take the money I've already made and not have the headache, I would do that instead of having this fight just in the hopes of making a vast sum in the future. Only two things lead me to put up with the responsibility and annoyances. First, the obligations we are under to the people who put money into our business. So now it's not just him and his brother's business. They got a ton of investors, right? And second, the reluctance a man naturally feels to allow a lot of scoundrels and thieves to steal his patents. Yes, I don't think you should let people steal your work, whatever the case is, but at the detriment of your health and the foreclosure of multiple decades of your life as a result of that.

Starting point is 01:18:59 And I don't mean that like he could have predicted he was going to die, but if you're completely miserable, you're exhausted, you're sick this like what is the point of running your own business and so the the author hits the punch line right here perfectly Wilbur and this is really says it better words than I was trying to grasp at Wilbur never seemed to grasp that his crusade to destroy his nemesis could destroy him as well and so he's writing this letter right before he dies and think about how crazy this is. This is kind of eerie what he says. But so far as making money is concerned,

Starting point is 01:19:29 I'm going to quit worrying myself to death in order to get more than I've already got. And this is why reading biography is so powerful because you find very, very smart people making very, very dumb mistakes over and over and over again. It's foolish to think that we are not prone to do this as well. And so reading these stories is learning from their other, their experiences. I'm going, I'm going to avoid this in my life.

Starting point is 01:19:53 I love what, um, what Steve Jobs said. And this is something that I use in my life. And I think other people should look, he's like, I've looked, this is Steve Jobs talking. I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. So imagine if Wilbur Wright knew that. He's been saying no for years up until this point. And there's no way he would have made that mistake if he knew he was literally in the last months of his life there's no way and so why we can't predict if we're in the last months of our life so let's act as we are so this is what i mean about a very smart person making a very dumb mistake wilbur's frustrations had begun to gnaw at his health he had by his own admission worked harder and and for longer hours

Starting point is 01:20:37 pursuing the case against glenn curtis than he had in developing the right flyer he drove himself to exhaustion and grew so thin as to appear cadaverous. Family members began to express concern about the crushing pace he insisted on maintaining. Wilbur wrote a letter saying, most of my time has been taking up with lawsuits, expressing a hope that he could be freed from this kind of work

Starting point is 01:20:57 and that it was more pleasant to go to Kitty Hawk for experiments than to worry over lawsuits. That is one of the last letters he wrote, and that is where Wilbur departs this story, because this is when he dies in bed at the age of 45 from typhoid fever. And then I want to bring something to your attention that has happened over and over again. At this point, where I got to the point, this is like the fourth time I read a situation like this. I was like, all right, there's some kind of weird dark side to human nature that is causing this to happen over and over again so there's a ton of these exhibitions where people where the pilots are going to die right the response by the spectators is almost always the

Starting point is 01:21:34 same and so it says as had been customary spectators rushed to the crash scene the crash the scene of the crash to fight for souvenirs a few minutes, the field was cleared of every bit of wreckage. Eli's collar, tie, gloves, and cap disappeared. So they go even before the body is removed from the wreckage. They'll grab pieces from the plane. They take off their gloves. They'll take the guy's watch. In one case, there's like a piece of wood that broke off from the plane and is inside of one of the bodies of the pilots.

Starting point is 01:22:09 And somebody yanks it out of the body while the blood's still dripping and takes it home as a souvenir. What is that? Explain that to me. What, why were people doing this? And so the chapter I'm in is all about just death after death after death of these pilots. Really, I'm trying to figure out the lessons that you and I could take away from this and that overconfidence can be deadly. In the games that we play, it can obviously cause business failure, which is catastrophic, but it could also cause the death, like physical death.

Starting point is 01:22:36 And so it says, Rogers had become known for his reckless flying, ignoring friends who urged him to be more cautious. And this is what he said, the air is nothing to me now. I've conquered it. So he gets in his plane. He says at one point he saw a flock of seagulls. Rogers turned and dived down into them, scattering the birds in all directions.

Starting point is 01:22:54 He then immediately went into a steep descent. He was seen desperately trying to pull back from the descent. The airplane did not respond, and Rogers, who just said he'd conquered the air, crashed into the ocean and was crushed beneath the engine they found the body so they they wind up they wind up taking the um looking at the plane to see what went wrong and they found a body of a seagull tightly wedged between the tail and the rudder of his airplane the goal had rendered the body of the seagull had rendered the rudder immovable and snapped the control wire.

Starting point is 01:23:26 He's literally into a descent. A bird that he went out of his way to run into literally snaps the wire. It's essentially like driving a car if your steering wheel doesn't work. And so once Wilbur dies, Orville keeps the stuff for a little bit, but then he winds up selling the company. Essentially, what I kept trying to describe to you is you have the rights and a position of power, Curtis in not a position, but Curtis keeps going, he keeps persevering, and eventually these rules switch. Orville never had the intensity that Wilbur did, so he winds up selling the company, but even before he did this, this is a perfect question. Moreover, Orville was showing signs of wearing down. Curtis was not.

Starting point is 01:24:03 He pressed on with his counterattack. And so that reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. It's the Shackleton family motto, by endurance we conquer. Curtis just absolutely refused to give up. He kept pushing. He kept innovating. At this point, he designs one of the most successful planes for World War I. He designs the world's first airplane that could take off and land on the water. He's designing all kinds of things. And Orville's just distracted. He doesn't have the love and the fire and the push that his brother did. And so Orville cashes out. He makes about $1.5 million. I think in today's dollars, it'd be like 10, somewhere between 10 and 15 million. And it says Orville's departure effectively ended

Starting point is 01:24:39 the patent wars. Although the litigation continued, it was largely on its own momentum and bore little resemblance to the ferocious legal wrangling of previous years that's in 1919 10 years later the the two companies actually merge and then curtis has this huge tailwind of world war one that winds up causing his company to just completely surpass the right company mint him a fortune a fortune much larger than than Wilbur and Orville were able to accumulate. It says the war, this is World War I, was a boon to Curtis. Orders came in from all over the world in much volume. Curtis opened a second factory and then took on a group of financiers. The two factories hummed along, turning out more than 10,000 planes before the end of the war.

Starting point is 01:25:25 By this time, Curtis employed an entire engineering department to put his ideas to paper and then test them out. He created the NC-4. It was the first aircraft to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. The NC-4 was Curtis's finale in aviation. The following year, he liquidated his interest and then retired and moved to Florida, leaving behind an extraordinary record. The list of his inventions and achievements is immense and includes the seaplane, retractable landing gear, twist grip throttles for motorcycles, the enclosed cockpit, the airboat, and a number of machines to manufacture airplane components. He created the first civilian flying school and the first military flying school, conducted both the first simulated bombing run and first use of firearms from an aircraft, and delivered the first radio communication from the skies. Curtis may not have been an intuitive genius, but he was a prolific innovator, and he would constantly improve any product. Wilbur Wright was a visionary architect, but Glenn Curtis was a master builder. Progress, unquestionably, demands both. love the book. I highly recommend reading it. Take your time with it. There's just so many amazing stories in the book. If you want to buy the book and support the podcast at the same time,

Starting point is 01:26:48 there's a link in the show notes in your podcast player. You can also go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash founders podcast and buy the book there or buy any of the books. You can actually see all the books I've done in reverse chronological order at that link. If you want to further support the podcast and give a gift subscription to a friend or a co-worker, that link is down below and it's also available at founderspodcast.com. That is 241 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #241 The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies

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