Pre-Wright Brothers Flights
| Pre-Wright Brothers Flights | |
|---|---|
 The video's poster frame: a positioner controller, a benchtop meter reading -0.50 and a green felt figure with fangs | |
| Production company | EpicQuestBio |
| Running time | 19 minutes 17 seconds |
| Country | United States |
Pre-Wright Brothers Flights is the caption under which the video catalog of Molecular Reality Corporation lists a recording of one of the earliest sliding occlusion experiments of demonpore, inc. The catalog dates the recording to about 2015 or 2016 and says that the current was read out on a benchtop picoammeter.[1] On the company's YouTube channel the same video, 19 minutes 17 seconds long, is titled "best pore data yet".[2]
Contents
The poster frame shows a corner of a bench in low light. Metal posts and a stage stand at the left, and a monitor above the middle of the frame glows orange. Below the monitor a benchtop meter with a red digital display reads -0.50. In front of the meter is a controller with a large knob and a small screen that lists X, Y and Z coordinates, and a hand points at the knob. On top of the controller sits a green felt figure with two fangs that resembles the company's mascot, Keltar.[2]
All the parts of a sliding-occlusion measurement are in the picture, in the order of the signal. A positioner moves one surface across another, so that the opening between them widens, narrows or closes. A fixed voltage drives ions through the opening, and a picoammeter reads the current. A picoampere is a million-millionth of an ampere, about 6.2 million elementary charges per second.[a] The catalog says the current was "read out", and the display in the frame is the readout: one number at a time on a screen. About ten years later the company's streams recorded 200,000 samples per second from an EDR4 amplifier.[1]
The experiments came before the patent application for the method, whose priority date is May 9, 2017.[3]
Title
The video has two names. The company's list of its videos calls it "Pre-Wright Brothers Flights", and YouTube shows "best pore data yet".[1][2] The catalog's name takes its reference point from the history of aviation.
By December 17, 1903, when the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, people had left the ground in gliders for more than a decade. Otto Lilienthal made close to 2,000 brief flights in 16 designs between 1891 and 1896.[4] He steered by shifting his body weight.[5] The Wrights, prompted by his fatal crash, used aerodynamic balance instead: wing tips that could be twisted to bank, a forward surface for climb and descent, and a movable vertical tail.[5] Their first powered flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 36 meters (120 feet). The longest of the four that day, by Wilbur Wright, covered 255.6 meters (852 feet) in 59 seconds.[5]
The company uses the Wrights as a scale for its own hardware. Its catalog describes a second video, "nanotech history, in my mom's basement, March 2017", as footage of early mechanical nanopore "Wright Brothers" hardware experiments.[1] The experiments of the first video, in 2015 and 2016, came before that hardware.
See also
Notes
- ^ One picoampere is 10-12 coulomb per second and one elementary charge is 1.602 × 10-19 coulomb, so the current is 10-12 / (1.602 × 10-19) = 6.24 × 106 charges per second.
References
- ^ a b c d "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ a b c best pore data yet (Video). EpicQuestBio.
- ^ "US10908144B2: Stacks of coaligned nanopores and fabrication and uses thereof". Google Patents. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Lilienthal Glider". National Air and Space Museum. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c "1903 Wright Flyer". National Air and Space Museum. Retrieved October 25, 2026.