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

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What I learned from reading Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:07] The Wright Brothers (Founders #239) [3:47] Avoid any activity that distracts you from improving the quality of your product and the quality of your business. [5:58] Completely self-taught, he made spectacular intellectual leaps to solve a series of intractable problems that had alluded some of history's most brilliant men. [9:46] The Wright-Curtiss feud was at its core a study of the unique strengths and flaws of personality that define a clash of brilliant minds. Neither Glenn Curtiss nor Wilbur Wright ever came to understand his own limits, that luminescent intelligence in one area of human endeavor does not preclude gross incompetence in another. And because genius often requires arrogance, both men continuously repeated their blunders. [13:38] P.T. Barnum: An American Life (Founders #137) [13:49] John Moisant had three failed attempts to overthrow the government of El Salvador. [17:44] Master of Precision: Henry Leland (Founders#128) [19:32] Sacrifi

[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, [00:00:32] have become almost…

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