Bikes, cars, and airplanes

In OTL safety bikes, motorcycles, cars, and airplanes all developed around the same time. Is there a technological reason for that? Seems like commons sense that a world would invent the bike, then throw a motor on it, then a four wheeled enclosed version, then throw wings on it (obviously exagerating the steps). Instead is it that once you have an internal combustion engine you slap it in and on anything?
 
The reason is the technological heritage. Carriages had the longest history of any of the unpowered predecessors, obviously. Four wheels (or two wheels and a horse) are simply more stable. Making an unpowered bicycle was a challenge, particularly one a person could power themself, and hence there was a lot of active development between 1817 and about 1870 or so, when versions started to get good enough to be popular. Unpowered glider aircraft evolved at about the same time. The unpowered glider, the unpowered bicycle, and the unpowered carriage were all thus sitting at a high state of development when the internal combustion engines came along...and so people stuck them to everything pretty much all at once.
 
You have the 'nexus' where the Wright Brothers, back-story in bicycle repair & building, had that passion for powered flight. They built their own mini wind-tunnel and aero-foil comparison system from bicycle-grade tech, incidentally proving prior wing theory and design were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Crucially, they had a very, very ingenious engineer who 'evolved' a remarkable I/C engine. His contribution was singular as he some-how squeezed enough power/weight out of the tech to 'enable' the famous brothers' later air-craft designs.

IIRC, his route to that engine is poorly documented...

Also, the brothers had the wit and local knowledge to work at a location where seasonal weather provided enough 'free' wind that they could experiment with sub-scale kited gliders while riddling the rest of the tech.

Don't forget there were a bunch of other people playing with flight. There'd been man-carrier kites for some time. The ground-breaking German glider guy who later 'ate a hill'. The Big Science team who built a steam-powered monster which, technically, flew but certainly crashed. etc etc.
 
You have the 'nexus' where the Wright Brothers, back-story in bicycle repair & building, had that passion for powered flight. They built their own mini wind-tunnel and aero-foil comparison system from bicycle-grade tech, incidentally proving prior wing theory and design were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Crucially, they had a very, very ingenious engineer who 'evolved' a remarkable I/C engine. His contribution was singular as he some-how squeezed enough power/weight out of the tech to 'enable' the famous brothers' later air-craft designs.

IIRC, his route to that engine is poorly documented...

Also, the brothers had the wit and local knowledge to work at a location where seasonal weather provided enough 'free' wind that they could experiment with sub-scale kited gliders while riddling the rest of the tech.

Don't forget there were a bunch of other people playing with flight. There'd been man-carrier kites for some time. The ground-breaking German glider guy who later 'ate a hill'. The Big Science team who built a steam-powered monster which, technically, flew but certainly crashed. etc etc.
I too read McCullough's book.
 
Top