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Lawrence Hargrave
(29 Jan 1850 - 6 Jul 1915)
Australian aeronaut and inventor made important studies of wing surfaces for flying-machines, and invented the box kite.
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Science Quotes by Lawrence Hargrave (3 quotes)
The people of Sydney who can speak of my work [on flying-machine models] without a smile are very scarce; it is doubtless the same with American workers. I know that success is dead sure to come, and therefore do not waste time and words in trying to convince unbelievers.
— Lawrence Hargrave
As quoted in Octave Chanute, Progress in Flying Machines (1894), 231.
We must remember that all our [models of flying machine] inventions are but developments of crude ideas; that a commercially successful result in a practically unexplored field cannot possibly be got without an enormous amount of unremunerative work. It is the piled-up and recorded experience of many busy brains that has produced the luxurious travelling conveniences of to-day, which in no way astonish us, and there is no good reason for supposing that we shall always be content to keep on the agitated surface of the sea and air, when it is possible to travel in a superior plane, unimpeded by frictional disturbances.
— Lawrence Hargrave
Paper to the Royal Society of New South Wales (4 Jun 1890), as quoted in Octave Chanute, Progress in Flying Machines (1894), 2226.
Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1,000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition.
— Lawrence Hargrave
As quoted in Octave Chanute, Progress in Flying Machines (1894), 218.
Quotes by others about Lawrence Hargrave (1)
If there be one man, more than another, who deserves to succeed in flying through the air, that man is Mr. Laurence Hargrave, of Sydney, New South Wales.
In Progress in Flying Machines (1894), 218.
See also:
- 29 Jan - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Hargrave's birth.
- Lawrence Hargrave Flying Machine Model Inventions - from Progress in Flying Machines (1894)
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
