Conference thebay::joyoflex

    The exact phrase is "willing suspension of disbelief."  I forget
    its source.  I suspect it's listed in Bartlett's.
    
    					andrew

What Barry is displaying is a willing suspension of
good taste;-}

Larry

    Thanks, Andrew! I don't have Bartlett's so I can't look it up myself. I
    am curious to know its etymology, though.
    
    Larry, didn't you ever read Superman comics? I've only seen the show a
    few times, but so far I like it even more than the comics. It's one of
    the few TV shows that reinforces the concept of good overcoming evil
    without polluting the ethic with sex, violence, bad language, etc.
    Good, wholesome, family entertainment :-)!
    
    	BD�

    "That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes
    poetic faith."
    
    				- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, quoted in T.
    				  Allsop's "Recollection," 1836

    The idea that good can overpower evil requires a permanent suspension
    of disbelief.
    
    However, the idea that a person can fly has been proven wright.

Re .4 (SMURF::BINDER)
    
    Thanks for the exact quote. Do you know what Mr. Coleridge was talking
    about at the time?

Re .5 (JIT081::DIAMOND)

>    The idea that good can overpower evil requires a permanent suspension
>    of disbelief.
    
    I've read the last chapter of the Book - the Good wins :-)!
    
>    However, the idea that a person can fly has been proven wright.
    
    In case you didn't realize it, I'm from Dayton Ohio - the birthplace of
    aviation (well, at least that's what the chamber of commerce
    advertises). If you ever come to town I'll take you to the Wright
    bicycle shop.
    
    	BD�

    re. -1
    
    
>    In case you didn't realize it, I'm from Dayton Ohio - the birthplace of
>    aviation (well, at least that's what the chamber of commerce
>    advertises).
    
    I would have thought that the Montgolfier brothers' birthpace might
    dispute the claim.
    
    Jon
    

    What the Wright Brothers did (in Dayton) was a legitimate achievement
    of engineering.  Many people had been thrown through the air for
    various distances on heavier-than-air craft.  The Wrights, however,
    preceded the invention of the airplane with the invention of the wind
    tunnel.  That is, they knew exactly what they were doing and why in
    worked and wer able to fine-tune their design before taking it to Kitty
    Hawk.
    

    Re .8: Over 10 years before the Wright brothers, Clement Ader did it
    too with his "avion III". The word means "airplane" today in French,
    but that was the name he gave to his aircrafts because, rather than
    inventing a wind tunnel, he had modeled it on the seabirds he had spent
    quite a long time studying ("avis" means "bird" in Latin). Different
    kind of engineering and technique.
    			Denis.

    Were the Wrights not the first to satisfy four important 
    requirements for real flight?
    
    1.	Take off, fly and land without crashing
    2.	Take-off point no higher than the landing point
    3. 	A vehicle heavier than air
    4.	A human pilot
    
    I'm aware of various attempts (but not Ader's), each of which
    failed one of these tests (perhaps this should go to another
    conference...).
    
    		-John Bishop

    They also had a power plant
    
    Nick

    Re .10
    
    There is some amount of documentary evidence that in fact the first
    successful powered HTA flight with a human pilot was made in Australia
    in 1902.  I don't remember where I saw that evidence, though, so you
    are free to write it off as an urban legend.  :-)

    >I don't remember where I saw that evidence, though, so you are free to
    >write it off as an urban legend.  :-)
    
    Somewhere in the TRIVIA conference, as I recall...          

    Re .10: Ader flew the "Avion III" in the 1880's, if I remember well. It
    satisfied all of the four requirements in .10 and had a power plant.
    Its flight was somewhat shorter than that of the Wright brothers,
    though (well under one kilometer, I think). The "Avion III" is still
    today in display in the Mus�e National des Arts et M�tiers in Paris,
    but I made a small mistake in .9: Ader spent quite a while observing
    the birds and other flying animals to design his crafts (as its name
    implies, the one that succeeded was the third one), but the aspect of
    the "Avion III" was much more that of a bat with one propeller on each
    wing than that of a gull or any other seabird.
    			Denis.

    I sense a willing suspension of the basenote topic ...
    
                                                        
                                                  - Rik -
    

    If you want a primary source, Coleridge wrote the words Dick
    cited in chapter 14 of Biographia Literaria. You could find some
    more context there, but I don't have a copy.
    
    b

    The bird approach didn't take off to the degree that the wind-tunnel 
    approach has.