AND why shouldn't they patent it? They figured out what others couldn't figure out.
No reason at all why they shouldn't patent it. It just seems that in this case, US Patent law held back progress in the US, which is not what patent law is supposed to do.
But since the glendalegoon will take this as hostile and adversarial anyway, US patent law has always been idiosyncratic (USA used to be a paradise for copyright violators), is much decried by many in the USA now, and seems set to engulf the rest of the world unless we're careful. Perhaps the early history of aviation is a case in point of law baffling talent and resources, of which there were a ton in the US.