Aviation inventor Paul MacCready dies at 81

Get a great movie about MacCreadyHere’s a guy who really embodied the essence of the inventor; someone who makes fact from fiction, and creates real, amazing, working things from nothing more than daydreams.

Dr. MacCready seemed a genuine free spirit — a friend noted his “innocent sense of wonder” in a Time magazine interview — empowered by a quirky, darting intellect. His fascination with aerodynamics came from watching butterflies and moths as a boy, and his dreams for the future included animal-powered flight.

“You can do all kinds of things if you just plunge ahead,” he said in an interview with Science in 1986. “It doesn’t mean you’re any good at them, but you can be good enough.”

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