William of Malmsbury Quotes
Eilmer ... was a man learned for those times ..., and in his youth had hazarded a deed of remarkable boldness. He had by some means, I scarcely know what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze on the summit of a tower, he flew for more than the distance of a furlong. But, agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by awareness of his rashness, he fell, broke his legs, and was lame ever after. He himself used to say that the cause of his failure was forgetting to put a tail on the back part.
This was made by an Anglo-Saxon monk, Eilmer of Wiltshire Abbey. A Spanish Islamic Moor from Cordoba, Ibn Firnas, was the first to have a successful glider flight.
William of Malmesbury, ~ 1090- ~ 1143, English Chroniclier and Historian, Description of the first Christian glider flight
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Ibn Firnas was an Islamic Moor who first invented the glider and flew. Eilmer’s—see {588974}–achievement came afterward and may have been influenced by Crusader stories brought back about Ibn Firnas’s achievement.
Four years later he flew, but he became pessimistic along the way. See {613169}.
Many people believe that patents—especially in the high technology arena—actually inhibit innovation.
See {43974} for a succinct statement of the objections.
Two years later he flew. That is how fast and dramatic the Wright Brothers work had gone. Once they got on the right track, everything began to fall into place. Two years earlier he had been optimistic. See {613170}.
This is one of the cultural differences between America and England. The former was then and is now much more tolerant of unconventional success, even if it disrupts other entire industries. Google for example became the worlds largest advertising company, destroying many other forms of advertising like newspapers.
Cayley developed the first gliders and envisioned air travel at the same time that Thomas Jefferson was President.
Borden invented some of the basic methods of preserving food and assuring uncontaminated food—especially with dairy products.
Babbage anticipated the digital era when a small number of computer programmers develop a powerful program that can be used by millions of people who have no skill at programming.
The same is true of almost all the inventers, scientists, and creators ot technology. They are more influential in the long run for more people than the Generals and Politicians.
He had just seen demonstrations of new military technology at the German War Games.
William of Malmesbury (c. 1095 – c. 1143) was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. He has been ranked among the most talented English historians since Bede. Modern historian C. Warren Hollister described him as "a gifted historical scholar and an omnivorous reader, impressively well versed in the literature of classical, patristic, and earlier medieval times as well as in the writings of his own contemporaries. Indeed William may well have been the most learned man in twelfth-century Western Europe."
