First flown in service in 1949, the MiG-15 was one of the earliest successful swept-wing aircraft. It is also, in my opinion, a beautifully-proportioned aircraft. So I made one.

I like aviation for several reasons.  For one, the history of aviation is a fascinating entanglement of history, technological change, and cultural transformation.  The century following the first powered flight in 1903 was one of immense change on many levels:  the development and growth of aviation articulated with economics, politics, conflict, communication, science, and many other aspects of that change.  Powered flight was and is a big deal.

That is my analytical interest.  On a more visceral level, flying and the technologies we use to fly exert an emotional gravity on me.  I just like airplanes.  Period. 

This weekend I went to the annual air show held at Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The “war bird” show at Willow Run traditionally leans toward World War II-era combat aircraft (both flying and on static display).  There were a lot of interesting things to see and think about at this show, both in terms of the aircraft that were present and the cultural dimensions of what was going on.   I can think of a few other kinds of events where large numbers of people gather to look at examples of obsolete technology (car shows come to mind first), but it is kind of an odd practice if you think about it.  Why does this happen?  What attracts us to celebrate specific classes of technological artifacts but not others?  It clearly isn’t just “impact factor:” the rise of computer/digital technology has had an astounding impact on the world, but we don’t gather annually to watch a TRS-80 saving a file to cassette tape or to listen to the hum of a Commodore 64 booting up (or maybe "we" do but I don't -- I'm prepared to be proven wrong on this).

Based on the conversations that I heard around me, many people at the air show weren’t there because they knew a lot of aviation history or cared about the technical specifics of what made a particular aircraft “interesting” or "significant." Sure, many people (myself included) probably were there at least partially because of some technical or historical interest.  But I think that air shows exist as a cultural phenomenon because people connect with something that is kinetic, dynamic, and beautiful in these machines.  Or at least some of these machines.  I’ll try to illustrate my point with a comparison of what I saw in the reaction of the crowd to two different aircraft: a B-17 (beautiful) and a B-24 (not beautiful).

The B-17 “Flying Fortress” (top schematic) and the B-24 “Liberator” (bottom schematic) were large, four-engine heavy bombers of World War II.  Both were very important in the narrative arc of the war.  I would say the B-17 is the better known of the two. One could argue, however, that the B-24 was more “important:” it was produced in significantly greater numbers than the B-17, was faster, and had a greater range. It was used in both theaters of the war.  The B-24 is an especially significant aircraft in terms of the cultural heritage of southeastern Michigan: the plant created to build the bomber at Willow Run was the largest industrial manufacturing facility in the world at the time and helped shaped the history and identity of this region.  This is the land of Rosie the Riveter and key elements of the Arsenal of Democracy.

Of over 18,000 built, there are only two remaining airworthy B-24s. One of them was at this year’s air show at Willow Run.  Seeing it fly was one of the reasons I went.  It flew. I saw it.  I expected to be thrilled, but I was not.  It was kind of boring.  I think many of those around me felt the same way. No matter how much excitement the announcer tried to drum up, it seemed to a lot of the crowd like a good time to visit the port-o-john or fetch more lemonade. Why?  Why did the sight of one of the last surviving examples of this immensely important aircraft produce such a big collective yawn?  I’ll tell you what I think:  I think it’s because it is ugly.  This aircraft is a collage of mismatched features that, while perhaps important to its functional characteristics, make it an aesthetic nightmare.  The long, slender wing (which helped the B-24 achieve its great range) is married to a fuselage that looks like a cement truck.  Somehow the aircraft appears both clunky and fragile, like it could break apart at any moment just from the stresses imposed by its own homeliness. It's ugly.

The B-17, in contrast, is a beautiful aircraft.  First flown in 1935, it is to aviation what the Chrysler Building is to architecture:  a bold Art Deco icon that exudes power, grace, solidity, symmetry, unity, modernity, purpose.  The aircraft that is flown by the Yankee Air Museum out of Willow Run is meticulously restored and polished, gleaming like a diamond.  The four large radial engines (each with 9 cylinders of 202 cubic inch displacement and 0 mufflers) produce a fantastic rumble that is audible from miles away.  The aircraft played an important role in history, but it is a crowd-pleaser because of the way it looks and sounds.  Because of the way it makes you feel.  Because it is beautiful. (Here is some video I put on YouTube  - it doesn't do the sound justice; you just have to hear it live).

I’m guessing many people have thought/written about the emotional connections (or lack thereof) between human cultures and their technologies, so I would be surprised if I’m saying anything new here.  It would be interesting to try to understand why we connect emotionally with some machines and not others, why some machines emerge as icons or symbols and some do not, and how that affects technological change.  It isn’t all in the historical significance or the minutia of what constitutes innovation or improvement.  Those things may play a role, but there are aspects of human cultural affection that I don’t think you can ignore.  Technological development is a human enterprise.

Finally, I’m sorry if I offended anyone by saying the B-24 is ugly.  But that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.  If it makes you feel any better, I think the Bell P-63 Kingcobra is even uglier.  There are only four of those left flying, one of which was at Willow Run this weekend.  Interesting aircraft with an interesting history; emotional appeal of concrete.

As I touched on in my discussion of this short paper in World Archaeology, I think the model-based study of patterns of change in historically-documented technologies can offer a lot of potential insight into patterns of change that we can identify in archaeological assemblages.  What, you might ask, can we possibly learn from the history of steam engines, cameras, microprocessors, and batteries that will help us understand changes in pre-industrial technologies?

My short answer is that we can: (1) look for common patterns of change and variability among these historically-documented  technologies; (2) attempt to understand the mechanisms underlying those patterns; and (3) try to develop expectations that will help us identify the mechanisms underlying technological change in prehistoric cases where we do not have documentary evidence.  The idea that the details of a particular system (e.g., a technological system) are often not as important to understanding the behavior of the system as one might guess is central to complex systems theory, and it is an idea that I subscribe to.  I think it’s a mistake to assume that technologies that we can observe in archaeological cases follow fundamentally different rules of change than those we can observe in the present or document historically (more on all that later when I finally get around to working on the Technological Change part of this website).

I’m currently reading George Basalla’s (1988) book entitled The Evolution of Technology.  One of the basic premises of this book is that “Any new thing that appears in the made world is based on some object already in existence” (Basalla 1988:45).  He is making an argument that technological change is fundamentally a continuous phenomenon and also asking the age-old question “where does innovation come from?”  I’m not deep into the book yet, but I’m finding it very satisfying so far.

Some of my favorite examples of technological change are related to aviation.  Since 1903 (the advent of powered flight) there has been an incredible amount of change in the design and performance of both aircraft and aircraft powerplants.  This change has been entangled with political, economic, and social change, global conflicts, and change in numerous “other” technologies.  As I’ve had time over the last few years, I’ve been collecting a large, dense dataset on aircraft and aircraft engines that I will be able to use as empirical example of technological change.   Up to now I’ve gathered data on over 1600 military aircraft (mostly fighters and bombers) and over 7000 engines.  I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m going to do any real analysis.  Eventually (as I publish) I’ll make those datasets freely available.

What does all this have to do with reverse-engineering of alien technology? As anyone who is paying attention to what passes for “history” on television these days will tell you, suggestions abound about extraterrestrial intervention in numerous aspects of human culture, history, technology, and biology.  In many cases these claims point to the “sudden appearance” of something as evidence of an extraterrestrial origin.  Contrary to Basalla’s (1988) continuity argument, the alien crowd asserts that (1) discontinuities in technology (i.e., the sudden appearance, without antecedent, of “advanced” technologies) can be identified and that (2) the most plausible explanation for those discontinuities is an extraterrestrial origin.  As an anthropologist and archaeologist, I get peeved by the ease with which people seem to swallow this nonsense.  The volume of “aliens” programming these days suggests that many people are watching, and, presumably, believing the garbage.   That’s a shame.  It is often fairly simple to debunk the “alien” claims using basic, easily available information.  This is especially true when the claim for extraterrestrial origin involves technology.  These are testable claims: showing continuity of technological development/change destroys the claim for discontinuity, and, consequently, the basis for asserting an alien origin.  And it's also fun.  And educational.

The B-2 bomber, a “flying wing” aircraft unveiled to the public in the late 1980s, is a modern machine which is said to incorporate alien technology: its unusual shape and the secrecy surrounding both its development and the technology used to make it a viable aircraft underlie those claims.   If the shape of the B-2 doesn’t look to you like any other “conventional” aircraft you’ve seen, you’re right.  It is one of only a small number of “flying wing” designs that have actually reached the flying stage.  The B-2 is clearly an outlier on a plot of the ratio of wingspan : length of over 600 bombers produced since World War I:  its wingspan is over twice its length, unlike any other contemporary fighter or bomber aircraft.   It also lacks a vertical tail surface.

Although the B-2 looks very different from other contemporary aircraft (as well as the vast majority of aircraft that preceded it), a quick look at aviation history shows that it did not simply arise out of nothing.  The history of “flying wing” aircraft designs, in fact, goes back to the very early years of powered flight.  J.W. Dunne was producing operational, swept wing, tail-less aircraft within just a few years of the Wright Brothers’ first flights (see this story in a 1910 issue of Flight and the photo at the top of this post).  The Horten brothers experimented with powered and unpowered “flying wing” aircraft during the 1930s and 1940s and produced a flying prototype (the Ho-229) that may have been produced in quantity if World War II had continued.  Northrop Grumman, maker of the B-2, produced numerous experimental and prototype “flying wing” aircraft during the 1940s.  If one were to plot the dimensions of these and other “flying wing” aircraft on the chart with the B-2, continuity would be apparent back to the early 1900s, when the proportions of Dunne’s aircraft fell within the range of variability of what was “conventional” at the time (see figure above). 

The proliferation of a technology or a technological system has practical, social, economic, cultural, and political dimensions, all of which may affect how it is perceived, used, developed, or perpetuated.  If “flying wing” designs are practical and have been studied and understood, why have "flying wing" aircraft never become commonplace?  Good question: from what I can tell, the answer involves a mixture of the factors listed above.  Understanding the interplay of those factors is an interesting problem.  We know for certain, however, that the B-2 does not represent a technological discontinuity.  It is one chapter in a history of human experimentation with “flying wing” aircraft that predates the advent of powered flight.  If we want to attribute the shape of the B-2 to a non-human origin, we have to go at least all the way back to Dunne to do it (maybe the aliens came down and told him to create a tail-less, swept-wing biplane).  Or (see this source) to the gliding properties of the seed pod of the Zanonia macrocarpa (a kind of gourd).  Aliens or gourd seeds . . .  Aliens or gourd seeds . . . hmmm, that really makes you think.