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Comment by globalise83 | Hacker News Reader

I often wonder the same. As someone with a hobby of making unpowered gliders from balsa wood and laminating sheets, I often wonder why such simple contraptions (I can make very nice gliders with around 20 pieces of wood and one sheet) weren't discovered using easily available woods and paper many centuries ago and extrapolated to bigger machines with fabric and wooden struts. Seems that the raw materials would have been available in Roman times and only very minimal amounts of theory (as opposed to trial and error tinkering) are required. Truly remarkable that gliding firebombs and the like were never invented for warfare.

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> Truly remarkable that gliding firebombs and the like were never invented for warfare.

What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite#Military_applications

Steering is important though, you need to a) go up, b) go the right place, not back at you, c) come down, again not where you are.

I wonder how much people tried to develop ballistae projectiles, perhaps once they had bolts/darts they were good enough and longer range just wasn't necessary?

In most cases if your goal is just to get some explosives over a tall wall, a trebuchet or siege tower is probably sufficient. On the other hand, if you have a lot of gunpowder, a cannon is also pretty fine on its own without any need to go up-and-over.

Maybe because trial an error improvement isn't possible if you're actually flying the vehicle? Just a guess.

Solution: send your butler up in it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley

Yeah, I used to build toy gliders too - it's really easy, though with balsa of course, which would not have been available in western Europe during the Renaissance (so tough shit Leonardo) but there are other light-weight materials, which is what sparked my question.

Spruce was used in aviation through WWII.

Boeing was located in Seattle to be near wood supplies needed in aircraft fabrication. (Well, that and its founder was already in the lumber business.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Boeing

Aeroplanes rely on light and strong materials with a high power to weight ratio energy source. Without that it is difficult to make the physics work. The internal combustion engine made it more possible.

Those "simple contraptions" probably were invented, many times, at different places all over earth. Just for fun and as a hobby. No records were made because no one considered those things worthy. People just never thought big or never had the opportunity to.

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