The Shieber Argument
The Shieber Argument
"The Kremer Prize, established in 1959 by British engineer and industrialist Henry Kremer, provided for an award of £5000 for the first human-powered vehicle to fly a specified half-mile figure-eight course. It was awarded in 1977, less than 20 years later, to a team headed by Paul Macready Jr., for a flight by Bryan Allen in the Gossamer Condor...The success of the Kremer Prize depended on two factors" (Shieber, 1994, p. 74).
"[1] Pursuing a purpose: The goals of the Kremer Prize were clear. At the time of the institution of the prize, there were no active efforts to build human-powered aircraft. The goal of the prize was to provide an incentive to enter the field of human-powered flight. It was tremendously successful at this goal" (Shieber, 1994, p. 74).
."[2] Pushing the envelope. The basic sciences underlying human-powered flight were, by 1959, well understood. These included aerodynamics, mechanics, anatomy and physiology, and materials technology...Overcoming the human difficulties in building a team that had collective mastery in these various fields and the engineering difficulties in creatively combining them were astonishing accomplishments. Nonetheless, as it turned out, no new basic discoveries were required at the time of the founding of the Kremer Prize to win it. The task was just beyond the edge of the current technology" (Shieber, 1994, p. 74)
Source: Shieber, Stuart (1994). "Lessons from a Restricted Turing Test." Communications of the ACM, 37:6.