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Example chart from this research
Example chart from this research

One premise dating from the inception of this project is that “innovation” is of intrinsic value, or at least of arguable interest. Aviation is treated as quintessentially representative of “innovation”. This is intriguing enough, but it lacks the virtue of solidly objective quantifiability. Patents, for instance, are at least relatively manageable items of quantifiable pertinence, but the degree to which each exemplifies the abstract quality of innovation is highly variable. We attempt to address this by a few means, including by the noted tracking of patents which make reference to earlier patents, the assumption being that a patent given external credit may be more innately and truly “innovative”.

We create pages, and structure them, partially in response to needs we see as they arise. Factors inclusive of internationally and otherwise variable administrative culture will effect the nature of the data which we gather. Such factors will skew, or at least partially characterize, the data. We are presently assessing the nature of overall aero-developments in terms of their being the aggregate product of a “social network”, and we are looking into large transitional phenomena such as Industrialization‎.

This site gathers and analyzes data about the processes leading to the invention of the airplane and the start of the airplane industry around the world. We keep pages on each of many items related to those technologies and the early industry and the people who made it happen. Data is integrated qualitatively and quantitatively, approached from multiple angles, as we draw data from multiple sources, multiple types of sources, antique or modern, analogue or digital, with page functions evolved so as to explicate items as they are quantifiably contextualized relative to other items and as they fall into categories. We keep some items that turn out not to be related, in order to make clear why they are left out of some analyses. We aim for complete coverage of these items up to 1916, and a few thereafter. If you want use or add to the data please cite this wiki as a dataset or contact us -- see About this site.

Most of the pages have a row of structured (table) data on them, and explanatory text.

Here are some of the tables and lists on this site:

Work in progress