On Aug. 23, most people ignored news of the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the C-130 Hercules airplane. Yet those of us who have flown in or jumped out of this wonderful aircraft read the news with a touch of warm nostalgia.
It may be a guy thing, but certain mechanical devices — the 1957 Chevy, the Model 12 Winchester shotgun, the 4020 John Deere — were so well-designed, so serviceable and so durable that they become legendary. For old geezers like me who also jumped out of the C-119s that preceded the Herky, the mere fact that the newer plane did not have an innate tendency to kill paratroopers was highly endearing.
The C-130’s birthday is more than just an opportunity for nostalgia. That an aircraft remains in production 50 years after it first flew also tells us something about the cycle of technological innovation.
When someone invents a new device, improvements to the initial model come thick and fast. As the technology matures, however, the interval between successive substantial improvements lengthens. This has been true for the airplane just as it was for the sewing machine, locomotives, agricultural tractors and personal computers.
Let’s start with a short history of aviation. The Wright brothers’ successful flights of a few hundred feet occurred a week before Christmas 1903. Six years later, airplanes had improved to the point that Louis Bleriot was able to fly across the English Channel. The discovery that the new invention had military applications brought a torrent of government money to airplane design during World War I. By 1919, the technology had developed to the point that John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown could fly the Atlantic Ocean nonstop.
Improvements in design continued apace between the wars. Development was so rapid that few models of airplanes were produced for more than a few years. The Ryan monoplane that Minnesotan Charles Lindbergh used in his 1927 New York to Paris flight was primitive in comparison to the Lockheed Vega that Wiley Post used in his one-week flight around the world in 1933.
Modern passenger flight began that same year with the Boeing 247 and the Douglas DC-1. The DC-2 followed in 1934, and the famous DC-3 flew in 1935 on the 32nd anniversary of the Wright brothers’ flight. Four years later, on the eve of World War II, more than 200 DC-3s had been produced and carried 90 percent of the world’s commercial passengers.
More than 10,000 were built for military use in that war, but the plane was technologically obsolete and production stopped in 1946. A few hundred remain in service worldwide six decades later.
Only eight years passed between production of the last DC-3 and the first flight of the C-130, but the differences in speed, range and cargo-carrying performance were enormous. Other durable planes were designed at about the same time. The first B-52 bomber flew in 1952. The Boeing 707 passenger jet prototype took off in July 1954, a few weeks before the C-130. All three planes continue in use five decades later even though production of the B-52 ended in 1962 and the 707 in 1991.
It is striking that more than 2,000 C-130s with a 50-year-old basic design continue to fly for more than 65 countries. Yes, engines and electronics are updated. But the basic airframe remains the same. Why was there so much change in aircraft design in the first half-century of flight and so little in the last half-century?
The answer is that similar patterns evolved for many other technologies. A period of intense improvement follows a new breakthrough, but then the technology becomes mature and few substantive changes are made.
Elias Howe patented a lockstitch sewing machine in 1846. Many others had worked on similar devices and a great deal of patent litigation was filed in subsequent decades. Substantial improvements occurred until the mid-1870s, but there has been relatively little change in basic sewing mechanisms since then. Modern electric machines have specialized features, but ones produced 50 or more years ago are quite serviceable. If one goes to developing countries, it is quite easy to find 100-year-old Singers or Pfaffs that continue in daily use.
Younger folks may think of the first Apple computers based on the MOS Technology 6502 chip in 1976 and 1977. Only four years later IBM brought out its PC based on the Intel 8088 chip. Rapid improvements in PCs continued into the 1990s. But while the 2-year-old machine on which I am writing this column is the most capable one we have owned, most of its applications are only marginally better than the first Pentium-based machine I got in 1995.
My children may continue seeing great advances in technology, but I doubt there will be as much change in computer chips during their lives as there has been since they were born in the 1970s.
Steam locomotives, diesel engines, paper machines — one can trace the same pattern again and again. Ingenious people continue to dream up new devices. But the ongoing development of these devices follows regular patterns.
© 2004 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.