[WalterBright]

> Putting the elevator in front does not necessarily lead to instability if you get the geometry right

The Wrights clearly didn't. Around 1979 a Caltech scientist did a study on it, and determined that the flights of the 1903 Flyer went about as far as they could have due to the instability. At the 100th anniversary, a couple of exacting flying replicas were built, and flew about the same distance.

I'm not sure about this, but the mathematics of stability and control theory had not been invented at the time. These theories were developed alongside electronics.

However, it was still known that one puts the feathers on the back of the arrow, not the front. Just try shooting an arrow with the feathers on the front. It promptly turns around so the feathers are at the back.

[mannykannot]

As intuitively appealing as the arrow analogy is, it is misleading. In any airplane with a separate stabilizer, you have two horizontal surfaces, and in the case of a canard configuration, the larger surface is at the back. Also, in both configurations, they are producing a net upwards force (equal to the weight in unaccelerated flight.)