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Archive Section: History
Of Flight
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Learning to Fly in 1912
The Wright brothers owned a flying school at Nassau Boulevard, Long Island,
New York. This is a true story of James, who was undergoing pilot training at
the school. His instructor was Kellum, who was a former star pilot for the
Wrights’.
James and Kellum arrived at the flying field early in the morning to begin
the day’s training. They started early because the morning air is calmer and
thus easier to fly in. Also, there were fewer spectators and therefore less
danger of running them down when they ran onto the field, as they were apt to
do.
James jumped into the pilot’s seat, grasped the controls rather
theatrically and shouted to the mechanicians, "All right, start her
up!"
Two men in blue overalls took hold of the wooden propellers.
Others grasped the tail of the machine and dug their heels in the grass with
the evident intent of holding it a captive.
The instructor, Kellum, put his hands to his mouth and shouted:
"Remember James, don’t leave the ground? Just cross the field and
shut off your engine at the other end." He then nodded his head to the
figures in overalls.
Instantly they twisted the propellers, casually at first, as if expecting no
result. Then they whirled them harder, and a feeble coughing emanated from the
engine.
Harder, and harder, and the cough grew into a grumble, a snarl; an angry
roaring. Then the motor began to explode freely and the two propellers slashed
through the air.
Now, the machine was trembling --- an inanimate thing, suddenly given life,
swaying slightly, eager to spring forward.
Behind the propellers the grass was blown flat; the men were clinging to the
tail, pulling as one does in a tug of war.
The explosions increased in volume; a bluish smoke drifted between the
planes.
The instructor waved his hands to signal the men to release their hold and
some of them fell face forward as the machine jumped across the grass.
Down the field it hopped, gathering speed with every turn of the propellers.
Kellum explained, "That is what we call grass cutting. After
they teach a fledgling the principles of the aeroplane and his mechanical
knowledge is perfect, they let him drive over the grass."
"The purpose of grass cutting is to give the student the instinct for
control and to accustom him to the feel of the machine. Before the student
acquires these things any attempt to fly would be dangerous and
foolhardy."
"The student spends days at this and later weeks at simply lifting a
few feet and coming down. James, for instance, would no more attempt to leave
than a spectator would."
"Some day soon I will tell him he is equipped to fly and then he will,
but not before."
Kellum looked to see what had become of James, the grass cutter, and was
shocked to observe that the biplane was headed for a fence. The motor was
roaring and James was apparently making no attempt to shut it off.
Kellum exclaimed, "Oh! He is going up!"
Vividly against the spreading gold of the eastern sky you could make out the
silhouette of the aeroplane as it rose from the ground. Farther and farther it
went. Soon, all you could see was a black dot in the sky apparently headed for
Garden City.
Then James tipped his wings one above the other and the machine banked and
turned level with the horizon, and turning again came flying back toward the
airfield.
Louder and louder grew the droning of the engine and all of the sudden he
was over the airfield.
Kellum shouted: "Come down! Come down!" He forgot that he
couldn’t be heard over the noise of the engine.
The machine turned and swooped down the field, crossing the horizon as it
had done before and soaring back toward the airfield. Again the circuit was
completed.
James’s mastery of the biplane was perfect; the turns were wonderfully
executed; a level keel was kept.
The mechanicians were talking excitedly and gesticulating, marveling at the
superb driving.
Kellum was not so happy. He knew that James was unfitted to be swooping
above the field. Only kind Providence must be guiding the machine. It was a
serious breach of the discipline of the school. Other students seeing James’s
success, might venture into the air and possibly kill themselves
"We will have to expel James."
James had turned and he was waving frantically with his left hand as if it
was a sign of triumph as he flew overhead and down the field.
Suddenly one of the mechanicians darted to his side. "Hurry!"
He shouted. "Run down the field. He’s trying to tell us that he wants
to come down, and he wants us over there to stop him."
Already the figures in blue were swarming over the grass. The biplane was
descending.
"Shut off your motor!" somebody yelled. The cylinders
continued rumbling, however, swooping down, the machine dashed across the
grass. The mechanicians threw themselves on the tail and with their weight
managed to bring the machine to a halt.
Still the engine was roaring and the propellers hacking.
"Shut off the engine! Shut off!" yelled Kellum.
Then one of the mechanicians reached in and moved the throttle, and the mad
whirling of the propellers ceased.
James rose stiffly in his seat, and, stepping out, he sank to the ground
exhausted.
People were congratulating him for his wonderful flight when Kellum,
scowling, shouldered himself through the crowd. "What did you go up
for?"
"I couldn’t stop the motor when I got to the other end of the
field," said James weakly. "I broke the throttle cord. If I
hadn’t gone up, I would have smashed into the fence. It was my only
chance."
"Nonsense!" said Kellum, "If you’d simply pressed
your foot against the brake it would have cut of the magneto and the engine
would have stopped!"
James looked at him in wide-mouthed amazement. "So I could,"
he grinned, sheepishly. "I never thought of that."
Whereupon Kellum cast his hands overhead in a gesture of helplessness.
Such was one event at the flying school.
Student pilots paid $500 tuition. But that was just the beginning. Any item
broken, including a whole machine had to be paid for by the student. The
machines were valued at $5,000. Students also had to pay their own medical
bills, if injured.
The instructors were often paid as much as $200 a week. They also received a
special fee every time they left the ground in an airplane.
Reference: Harper’s Weekly, 1912.
The Parachute
The Wright brothers didn’t use parachutes although parachutes existed long
before the Wright brothers introduced the airplane to the world. Leonardo da
Vinci designed a parachute centuries ago and dare devils jumped out of balloons
with parachutes in more recent years.
The introduction of the parachute to airplane pilots occurred during WW I
when it became apparent that lives could be saved. German pilots were the first
to use them. The Germans designed a chute that could be harnessed on the pilot’s
back and could be deployed safely after bailing out of an airplane airplane.
The pilot was saved to fly again.
The Americans had chutes but were poorly designed and often became tangled
with the airplane while exiting.
General William Mitchell, commander of the U.S. Air Corps in France,
observing the success of the Germans, was influential in establishing a
parachute center at the Air Force’s Engineering Center at McCook Field in
Dayton, Ohio in 1918.
 Earlier, Captain Albert Berry was the first pilot to make a successful jump
from a moving airplane in March 1912 at an U.S. Army Base located just outside
St. Louis. He jumped at 1,500 feet while flying at 55 mph. His chute opened
after a fall of 500 feet.
The parachute he used was too bulky to be strapped to his back, instead it
was carried in an iron cone fastened to the airplane’s undercarriage. Two
ropes connected to a trapeze-like bar hung out of the mouth of the cone. Two
leg loops were provided at the end of the bar.
Berry had to climb down the fuselage to the axle while steadying himself
with the trapeze bar, slide a belt around his waist and then cut himself away.
All this time the pilot had to fly the biplane as level as he could. One rapid
movement in any direction would be fatal to Berry.
Despite the difficulty involved, Berry reached the ground safely.
Nine days later he decided to repeat the feat, this time before the public.
This time the airplane flew lower at 800 feet to assure that the crowd had a
good view of him.
All did not go well this time and the lower altitude almost cost Berry his
life. The parachute somehow got below him and was seconds away from becoming
tangled in the canopy. Fortunately, he was able to right the chute with enough
time to reach the ground safely. Berry decided that was enough parachuting for
him and he never tried it again.
On December 17, 2006 the First Flight Society enshrined Albert Berry in the
Wright Brothers Memorial visitor’s center in Kitty Hawk, NC.
Berry’s two jumps were admirable, but not practical. The Army Air Corps
needed something that didn’t require a circus act for pilots to use in an
emergency.
 As noted earlier, the Engineering Division at McCook Field was given the job
and they developed a parachute that was lightweight while retaining great
strength. It was made of Japanese silk, attached to a harness of linen webbing
with dimensions 24 feet high and 19 ½ feet in diameter in the open position.
With hinges attached, the weight of the parachute was 17 ½ pounds yet it
withstood a tensile strain of approximately 10,000 pounds. Metal fittings were
of drop forged nickel steel, subjected to a pull test of 2,500 pounds each
before assembly into the harness. These strengths were designed to withstand
the forces met when a pilot is forced to leave his airplane going at a high
speed.
On October 19, 1922 Lt. Harold Harris was the first pilot to jump from a disabled
airplane with a manually operated parachute that saved his life. At the time he
was flying a test flight over Dayton, Ohio.
His Loening W-2A fighter plane had been outfitted with new ailerons that
were supposed to be more aerodynamic with improved maneuverability. He was
participating in a mock dogfight when his ailerons whipped up and down, tearing
the wing’s fabric surfaces and sending his plane plunging toward the earth.
The windblast scooped Harris out of the cockpit. He was able to manually
activate his parachute and save his life. The parachute had been tested under
experimental conditions, but never before in an actual emergency situation.
After Harris’ jump the Army required airmen to wear parachutes on all
flights.
References: "Albert Berry's
Leap of Fate," Aviation History, March 2007
"A Little Journey to the Home of the Engineering Div. Army Air Service, McCook
Field," undated.
Dinosaur
Upstages Wright Brothers
The ancestors of ancient birds may have resembled the Wright brother’s
1903 biwing airplane. So wrote scientist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech
University. A new study of the bones of a 125 million-year-old Chinese dinosaur
suggests that they had upper and lower set of wings much like the biplanes of
the Wright brothers.
The dinosaur called Microraptor gui used a two-level wing configuration that
permitted the small 2-pound creature to glide from tree to tree. The 6-inch
dinosaur had feathers on its legs that it folded under its body in flight,
creating two staggered wing sections one slightly behind the other.
It appears that the dinosaur was tree-dwelling and took advantage of gravity
to glide from tree to tree.
The Wrights observed birds to learn insights about flight. They concluded
that control, particularly the roll component, was the key to man-flight. Birds
mastered roll by twisting their wings. And like birds, a pilot could twist the
wings of an airplane using a technique they named wing warping.
The Wrights used the biwing structure as a practical design for wing
warping. Wilbur got the idea while twisting a bicycle tube box talking to a
customer in their bicycle shop.
The dinosaur called "Microraptor gui" used
a two-level wing configuration that permitted the small 2-pound creature to
glide from tree to tree. The 6-inch dinosaur had feathers on its legs that it
folded under its body in flight, creating two staggered wing sections one
slightly behind the other.
It appears that the dinosaur was tree-dwelling and took advantage of gravity
to glide from tree to tree.
The Wrights observed birds to learn insights about flight. They concluded
that control, particularly the roll component, was the key to man-flight. Birds
mastered roll by twisting their wings. And like birds, a pilot could twist the
wings of an airplane using a technique they named wing warping.
The Wrights used the biwing structure as a practical design for wing
warping. Wilbur got the idea while twisting a bicycle tube box talking to a
customer in their bicycle shop.
Alberto Santos-Dumont - Aviation Pioneer
The Brazilian inventor and aviation
pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont is popular this year in the United States. A
replica of his 1906 airplane, the 14-bis, visited the Oshkosh AirVenture 2006.
In September, a replica of Dumont’s
1907 Demoiselle make public flights at the Dayton-Wright Brothers airport
in Miamisburg, Ohio south of Dayton.
In 1904 after visiting the U.S. and
learning of the Wright brothers success ,
Santos-Dumont
returned to Paris to build his own
machine.
He originally moved to France to study engineering in
the late 1800s.
In 1906 he created his 14-bis machine so named because it was first
tested under his Airship (balloon) No. 14. On September 13, 1906 he achieved a
"hop" flight of 23 ft in 7 seconds.
 After
repairs to the machine resulting from a crash landing on the previous flight,
and the addition of a 50-hp engine, he flew 198 feet in seven seconds on Oct.
23. This flight won the Aero club of France’s Archdeacon Prize. The flight
was recognized by the French as the first self-propelled heavier-than-air
machine to take off in public and was greeted with enormous enthusiasm
and coverage in the newspapers.
Then on Nov.
12, the bis-14 was fitted with primitive ailerons and achieved several flights,
the longest being 722 feet in the time of 21 seconds at an altitude of 20 feet.
The machine,
however, was impractical and Santos-Dumont flew it only one more time.
Octave Chanute
wrote to the Wright brothers telling them about Santos-Dumont flights. Wilbur
responded in 1906 with the following remarks: "When
we see men laboring year after year on points we overcame in a few weeks, we do
not believe there is one chance in a hundred that anyone will have a machine of
the least practical usefulness within five years."
In 1910 the
Wrights brought suit against Santos-Dumont for infringement on the Wright’s
French patents.
 Santos-Dumont’s
next machine was the 1907 Demoiselle (meaning dragonfly). It was the world’s
first light plane. The pilot sat below the wing just to the rear of the engine.
The engine powered a two-blade wooden propeller rotating just ahead of the
leading edge of the wing.
Flight
demonstrations of a replica of this machine were
conducted during its stay
in Dayton.
Santos-Dumont
was born in Brazil on July 20, 1873 to a family made wealthy by the coffee
business. He had multiple
sclerosis that caused him to retire from flying in 1910. He returned to Brazil
and committed suicide on July 23, 1932.
Santos-Dumont
was a popular man as an aerial showman even though he contributed little to
aeronautical engineering. When the hometown Dayton Herald carried the story of
"first flight" on Dec 17, 1903, it carried the headline: Dayton
Boys Emulate Great Santos-Dumont. The Herald made the mistake of comparing
balloon flights with the first flight of a flying machine.
In
2007 Amanda Wright Lane, great-grandniece of Wilbur and Orville
Wright visited with Mario Villares, grandnephew of Santos-Dumont
in Brazil. Lane said that she admires Santo-Dumont's passion for
flight. She said that he saw flying in so many ways.
Fly Like A Bird
 On
July 8, 2006 a manned, engine powered airplane with flapping wings took-off and
flew for the first time. It went for a distance of about 1,000 feet in 14
seconds at a height up to four feet before crash landing.
Man has dreamed about flying like a bird
throughout history. Daedalus and Icarus are famous in Greek history for trying
to fly like a bird and weren’t successful. Leonardo da Vinci designed a
machine to mimic a bird but never flew it. On July 8, 2006 two guys from Ohio
were finally successful.
No, their names were not Orville and
Wilbur Wright. They names are Jim DeLaurier and Jeremy Harris. They met at
Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, located across the street from
Ohio State University. DeLaurier is an Aeronautical Engineer and Harris is a
mechanical engineer.
They are both retired now although
DeLaurier, who in recent years was a professor of aeronautical engineering at
the University of Toronto’s Aerospace Institute, still maintains his
laboratory and advises students, some of who helped build the ornithopter.
The machine weighs 760 pounds and is
powered by a small jet engine that produces 60 pounds of thrust.
On the fateful day the pilot Jack
Sanderson, tried several times to get off the ground but failed. On the fourth
attempt, with the wings flapping, the machine rose, touched down a couple of
times and then rose and flew.
Harris envisioned 38 years ago building
an ornithopter, an airplane that has flapping wings like a bird. DeLaurier, a
colleague at Battelle, joined him in the endeavor that became an obsession for
both men.
The Wright brothers flew with fixed wings
that could be warped over a hundred years ago. Their longest flight was 852
feet in 59 seconds on their fourth flight of the day. Their Flyer served as the
model that became the modern airplane of today.
It is not expected that a flapping
machine will experience similar success. It does represent what creative
engineering can achieve. Da Vinci would be proud of Harris and DeLaurier.
The ornithopter, appropriately named
Flapper, will be placed in the Aerospace Museum at Downsview Park, Toronto.
Lost Dayton Wright Brothers History
The Wright Brothers were not always revered in
Dayton as they are now. Here are some examples:
First Flight News: When Loren Wright presented the
telegram from Orville and Wilbur describing their first flight on Feb. 17,
1903, the editor of the Dayton paper didn’t publish the news because he didn’t
he didn’t see anything significant enough to publish.
The City of Dayton didn’t get around to publicly
honoring the Wrights until it held a homecoming celebration on June 17, 1909,
six years after the first flight.
The Wright Family Homestead, 7 Hawthorne St.,
where Orville was born, was sold to Henry Ford in 1936, then dismantled and
moved to Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Wright Cycle Shop, 1127 West Third St., the
Wright brothers’ fifth bicycle shop, where the Kitty Hawk Flyer was built
also ended up in Greenfield Village.
Orville Wright’s Laboratory, 15 N. Broadway was
demolished in 1976 for a gas station that was never built. A nice park
containing a statue of Orville and a false front of the laboratory has been
built in recent years. It also contains an operating ATM machine.
Hawthorn Hill in Oakwood was the home of Orville,
Katharine and the bishop beginning in 1913. The National Cash Register Company
bought the house after Orville’s death in 1948. That action saved the house
but it is not open to the public except for rare occasions.
The first Wright Aircraft Company manufacturing building was built in 1910 on West Third St., further west of the fifth
bicycle shop. A second building was built a year later. It was in these two
buildings that the American aviation industry was born. Delphi now owns them and Delphi is currently in serious financial
trouble. The buildings, pictured below, are still in use and in good condition.
The Wright buildings are not open to the public and were not even during the
Wright centennial celebration in 2003. Will the city be able to save these
historic buildings if Delphi puts them up for sale?
 Lawrence
Blake, Superintendent of the Dayton Heritage National Historical Park provided
the latest information on this question.
The National Park Service in 1992 studied
the Wright Company Factory buildings for inclusion within the Dayton Aviation
Heritage Historical Park. The study concluded that the buildings were
outstanding examples of a particular type of resource and potentially, they
offer exceptional value in illustrating and interpreting cultural themes of our
nation's heritage. However, the Park Service did not recommend inclusion in the
park primarily because the buildings were inaccessible to the public.
Note: Delphi would not let me in the gate
to photograph the buildings during the Centennial. The picture above was taken
on Sunday through the chain link fence while no was there.
Since 1992, ownership of the property has
shifted from General Motors to the Delphi Corporation. It is currently part of
a complex of manufacturing buildings still in operation. Delphi has not made
commitments for the future of the plant, which includes the Wright Company
buildings, but has indicated a strong interest in the preservation of these
buildings.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of
2005 (P.L 108-447) included a provision directing the National Park Service to
update the previous study, and to specifically include an analysis of
alternatives for incorporating the Wright Company factory buildings as a unit
of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.
The National Park Service initiated a
Special Resource Study/Environmental Assessment of the Wright Company factory
buildings in January 2005 with the active participation of Delphi and the
Aviation Heritage Foundation. A draft Special Resource Study/Environmental
Assessment is scheduled for release and a 30-day public review in January 2006.
A public meeting will be held in Dayton during the public review period.
The Special Study/Environmental
Assessment of the Wright Company Factory buildings will be completed later in
2006.
Community organizations and individuals
in Dayton have been actively supporting this 5th site of Dayton Aviation
Heritage National Historic Park.
Hidden Images
If you have seen the classic Wright brothers’ photographs, the chances are
you didn’t see everything revealed in those pictures. Now you can see them in
an exciting new book by Larry Tise, Hidden Images: Discovering Details in
the Wright Brothers Photographs, Kitty Hawk, 1900-1911.
This unique illustrated history brings to the reader previously unseen vivid
images that allow a much more comprehensive understanding of the trials and
errors endured by the Wright brothers during the historic years of early
aviation.
Orville and Wilbur were skilled amateur photographers who had their own
photo lab in their home in Dayton. They documented their aeronautical
experiments and their surroundings with a profusion of pictures reflecting
their serious tasks as well as their enjoyment of taking a vacation.
Now, through advances in technology, readers can see many details of their
first cautious flights as well as a glimpse into the lives and the people who
surrounded the Wright brothers during their stay at Kitty Hawk.
I have seen most of these pictures before, but I never noticed the hidden
images contained in them. Here are a few examples:
The basic 1900 picture of their Kitty Hawk camp shows a tent on a lunar–like
landscape. The hidden images that Tise brings out lets you see inside the front
opening of the tent to reveal a neat cot piled high with folded blankets.
Details of the outside of the tent reveal the tent reinforcements including
diagonals on top, beams along the base on the side and a rope to a tree.
A long-range shot from their 1900 camp of buildings around the Kitty Hawk
Lifesaving Station reveals hidden images of the many details of the lifesaving
station, including a dog house, and the weather station where a telegram was
sent home in 1903 of the Wrights’ success.
 Another
great photo is the 1902 glider flying off Big Kill Devil Hill with the Kill
Devil Hills Life Saving Station complex barely seen on the horizon.
 A hidden photo of an enlargement of the life saving station reveals a group
of buildings around the station.
These are only a few examples. All together, there are over 100 pages of
photographs with hidden images.
Tise also includes brief narratives introducing each year of photos. I was
pleasantly surprised to find new information that I hadn’t read before in
some of these narratives.
Some examples are:
I knew that Orville didn’t make speeches but I didn’t know that he
stopped giving them in 1914. His last one was at the Franklin Institute in
Philadelphia.
I knew the Wrights weren’t entirely pleased on the occasion of being
awarded the Langley Medal by the Smithsonian Institution for achievement in
aerodynamic investigation and its application to aviation. The Smithsonian gave
Langley priority over them for his role in developing flight. Tise provides the
following commentary:
"The Smithsonian’s declaration about Langley’s priority drove
Wilbur and Orville to total distraction. They bit their tongues and made
brotherly eyebrow-raising and winking gestures of disrespect when they received
the first Langley Medal awarded by the Smithsonian on 10 February 1909, for
advancing the science of aerodromes (Langley’s word) in its application to
aviation by their successful investigations and demonstrations of the
practicality of mechanical flight by man."
During the visit to Kitty Hawk during 1908, only a few of the many
photographs the Wrights’ shot came out. It seems that a hole was punctured in
the bellows of the camera and was not discovered until their return to Dayton
when they developed the pictures.
The author, Dr. Larry E. Tise, is an historian and authority on the Wright
brothers. He is currently the Wilbur and Orville Visiting Distinguished
Professor at East Carolina University. He also served as consulting historian
for the NC First Flight Centennial Commission.
Born in Winston-Salem, NC, he has degrees from Duke University (AB, 1965;
MDiv, 1968) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (PhD, 1974).
This is his third book.
Orville has Nine Cat Lives
Flying early gliders and aircraft was dangerous business and Orville Wright
survived a number of crashes. Had he been a cat, one could say that he came
close to losing all of his nine lives.
Orville’s first crash occurred on September 23, 1902 at Kitty Hawk.
Wilbur, looking after the welfare of his younger brother, didn’t permit
Orville to learn to fly until 1902. It wasn’t until then that Wilbur believed
that they had a glider safe enough for Orville to learn to fly on.
Orville and Wilbur made a few short glides on Little Hill in the morning and
then moved to the steeper slope of Big Hill (site of the current Wright
Memorial). Orville made a couple of glides without any problems and then on
either his third or fourth glide, he noticed that one wing was too high.
He became so absorbed in making a correction by shifting the hip cradle that
controls wingwarping, that he failed to notice he had forgotten to adjust the
rudder. The result was the nose of the glider pointed up at a sharp angle and
initiated a steep stall.
Dan Tate and Wilbur shouted a warning but they couldn’t be heard over the
noise of the wind.
By the time that Orville noticed his predicament, he was 30 feet over the
hill and rapidly slipping backward toward the sand. Orville reported the crash
in his diary as, "a heap of flying machine, cloth, and sticks in a
heap, with me in the center without a bruise or a scratch."
Plenty of sand to provide a soft landing was one of the reasons they had
picked Kitty Hawk. It was a decision that saved Orville from injury that day.
Orville’s second crash was on August 24, 1904 at Huffman Prairie outside
Dayton. Orville and Wilbur were using Huffman Prairie as a test ground as they
were developing the Flyer into a practical airplane.
They had flown 23 times during the month without incurring any serious
crashes. The 24th flight, flown by Orville, would end in a crash
that could have caused serious injury.
Orville had just taken off when a sudden gust of wind caused the flyer to
dive toward the ground. Instead of moving the lever to turn the elevator up, he
moved it down. The flyer hit the ground with the tail sticking up in the air.
Orville ended up lying on the ground with a splintered front spar from the
upper wing across his back. Fortunately, the impact of the crash created a
two-foot gap in the center of the spar. Otherwise his back may have been
broken. He ended up with nothing worse than a scratched hand and bruises.
This incident caused the Wrights to develop the catapult launching system as
an assist for take-off.
Orville’s third accident occurred on November 1, 1904 at Huffman Prairie.
He started the engine and was in the process of conducting a preflight
inspection when the stake to which the restraining wire was anchored pulled out
of the soft ground. The flyer started down the track without Orville. He leaped
onto a skid and managed to depress the elevator lever. That stopped the Flyer
and limited damage to a few broken struts. Orville sustained a sprained
shoulder.
The fourth accident occurred on July 14, 1905 at Huffman Prairie. Orville
was making a test flight. Both Wilbur and Orville had been having trouble with
the control system and were making design modifications. He was only in the air
23 seconds when the machine started wobbling and undulating and as a result
Orville lost control of the elevator. The flyer hit the ground while moving at
30-mph, bounced three times down the field and upended on the front edges as it
slid to a stop.
Orville was catapulted out of the wingwarping cradle and through a broken
section of the upper wing. He emerged dazed and bruised but otherwise without a
scratch.
Orville’s fifth accident was his worse. It occurred during U.S. Army
qualification tests at Fort Myer, VA on September 17, 1908.
Orville was on the fourth circuit of the parade grounds before some 2,000 spectators at
around 5:00 p.m. with Lt. Tom Selfridge as a passenger
when he
heard a strange
tapping sound in the rear. He was flying at an altitude of at least 100 feet at
the time. He turned and saw nothing, but thought it best to immediately prepare
to land.
Suddenly, there were two loud thumps and the machine began to shake. Orville
shut off the engine but found that the control levers didn't work. The machine
turned to the left, paused a moment, made a complete turn and went into a dive.
About 25 feet from the ground it seemed that he had regained some control and
the plane started to right itself, but it was too late.
The Flyer hit the ground with a terrific force near the gate in the cemetery
wall. Orville and Selfridge were pinned under the wreckage, unconscious, with
their faces buried in the dust. Soldiers and spectators ran across the field
and assisted in lifting Orville and Selfridge from under the tangled mass of
machinery, wires and shreds of muslin.
At the hospital it was found that Orville had fractured several ribs,
fractured his left thigh including a dislocation, and suffered a scalp wound.
While serious, miraculously, it was not life threatening, although it left him
with frequent back pain for the rest of his life and his left leg 1/8-inch
shorter than the other.
Unfortunately, Lt. Selfridge died of his injuries.
Orville’s sixth accident was also at Fort Myer the following year on July
2, 1909. Wilbur and he had returned to complete their qualification
requirements that had been interrupted by the previous year’s accident.
Orville had been in the air less than eight minutes when the engine stopped.
He was gliding for a routine landing when he hit a small dead thorn tree at the
south end of the parade ground. The tree ripped through the fabric, broke
several ribs and two skids were also broken when the Flyer hit the ground hard.
Orville was shaken but uninjured.
The crowd ran to the site and began ripping off branches of the tree as
souvenirs. Wilbur spotted a photographer taking a picture of the damaged Flyer
and became incensed. He picked up a piece of the Flyer’s broken frame and
threw it at him while demanding the photographic plate. This was the second
incident like this for Wilbur. He had done the same thing in France after his
second flight in 1908.
In the fall of 1911 Orville returned to Kitty Hawk with a glider to test an
automatic-stabilizer he had designed. Accompanying him were his brother Lorin,
Lorin’s son and an Englishman, Alexander Ogilvie.
They soon observed that photographers were around so they flew for sport
only.
On October 17, Orville had his seventh accident. He flew the glider straight
into the side of a sand hill. The left side of the glider was smashed but
Orville was not injured.
Just six days later on October 23, Orville had his eighth accident. Just
after Lorin and Ogilvie released the glider for Orville, it reared up and
flipped over on its back. The glider was badly damaged but Orville emerged
without injury.
By this time Orville had used up eight of his nine "cat lives." He
didn’t have any more airplane accidents, but he did have one on a train.
On January 16, 1909 Orville was involved in a train wreck in France. Orville
and his sister Katharine were in France to be with Wilbur. They were traveling on the train from Paris to Pau where Wilbur was flying
exhibitions when the
wreck occurred.
Orville and his sister were in a sleeper car of an express train when
30-miles from Pau it collided with a slower local train. Many people were
injured and two were killed. Orville and Katharine emerged without injury.
Orville "nine lives" were now used up. He rarely flew as he got
older because the vibration bothered his back - a legacy of his tragic accident
at Ft. Myer in 1908.
He must have thought that his days of high-risk travel were over because he
didn’t bother to have insurance on his automobile even though he often broke
the posted speed limit in the city of Oakwood where he lived.
A heart attack in 1948 did take Orville's
life. His funeral was held on January 30, 1948, at the First Baptist Church in
Dayton. Burial was held in Woodland Cemetery. The pastor Dr. Charles Seasholes
proclaimed, "Orville Wright: Simple Man of Genius."
References: Bishops Boys by Tom Crouch, Wilbur and Orville by Fred Howard
Few Know that the Airplane was Invented in Dayton,
Ohio
Recent survey of a sample of the U.S. population found that 80 % of the
people questioned knew that Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the airplane,
but only 14 % knew that they did it in Ohio. Half of the people that knew about
Wilbur and Orville thought that they invented the first powered airplane in
North Carolina.
Surprisingly, only 20 % of the respondents from the five states surrounding
Ohio knew that the airplane was invented in Ohio.
The facts are that the Wrights conceived of and built the first airplane in
Dayton, Ohio and flew it for the first time at Kitty Hawk, NC., in 1903. They
transported their Flyer to NC to take advantage of the better winds, the soft
sand and the privacy that Kitty Hawk provided.
The survey was conducted by Visual Marketing Associates, a Dayton firm, and
paid for by the nonprofit Aviation Heritage Foundation of Dayton. The national
survey was conducted by telephone over a three-day period.
Dayton’s centennial celebration committee (Inventing Flight) spent some $2
million on national advertising. Apparently it wasn’t that effective.
The Heritage Foundation, a recently formed organization that has combined a
number of organizations interested in the Wright brothers, plans to launch a
new aggressive image-building and marketing effort to position Dayton as the
home of the Wright brothers. The survey was the first step.
The Dayton area and neighboring counties have recently been designated as a
National Aviation Heritage area. As a result the Foundation will receive
$165,000 in federal funds this year and has raised some $250,000 in private
funds. They hope to receive a total of federal and private funds of at least
$500,000 in 2006.
The Kitty Hawk Flyer was an experimental airplane that demonstrated that a
heavier-than-air powered flight was possible. But, it was far from being a
practical airplane.
After the Wrights returned to Dayton, they devoted two years to
experimentation and design changes at Huffman Prairie, now a part of
Wright-Patterson Air Force. The 1905 Flyer, during its final flight over
Huffman Prairie on October 5, 1905, flew over 24 miles in almost 39 minutes at
a speed of 38-mph. The local newspaper wrote that they were making sensational
flights every day. The Wrights were pleased that they now had a practical
airplane that they could market.
The 1905 airplane is one of the prized possessions on display in Dayton.
Validity of 2003-2005 Wright Flights in Question
Many scientific people around the world,
including the US Government, doubted the Wrights’ claim that they flew an
airplane.
The prestigious Scientific American
published an editorial in 1906 questioning the validity of the 1903-1905
flights.
Wilbur and Orville, fighting for proper
recognition sent a letter outlining their experiments to the Aero Club of
America on March 12, 1906. Their letter was the first public announcement in
the United States that they had flown distances up to 24 miles.
The club in turn passed a resolution
congratulating the Wrights for successfully developing a practical man-carrying
flying machine.
As a result, The editor of the Scientific
American decided to take another look at the Wrights claim to success by
sending questionnaires to the alleged witnesses to the flights in Dayton.
The questionnaires were sent to 17
witnesses and eleven of them filled out the questionnaires and returned them.
The positive response convinced the editor that the Wrights did do what they
claimed.
The April 7, 1906 issue of the Scientific
American withdrew their original story and included the Wrights’ letter to
the Aero Club. The article included a letter from Charles Webbert, the Wrights
bicycle shop landlord, who was a creditable eyewitness to a number of Wright
flights at Huffman Prairie.
The David Beard family lived closest to
the Huffman Prairie flying field and observed most of the activities that were
going on. Whenever Mrs. Beard observed a hard landing of the flying machine,
she would send one of her children over to the prairie with a bottle of
liniment.
Other neighbors observing the activities
in 1904 were the Harshmans, Millers, and Amos Stouffer, all of which had
visited and talked with Wilbur and Orville.
Amos Root of Medina, Ohio, stayed with
the Beards and observed Wilbur make the first complete circle in an airplane on
September 20 1904. Root accurately described the flight in his
publication, Gleanings in Bee Culture.
On November 9, Mr. Brown and Mr. Read,
two supervisors with the interurban railroad, ordered their crew of the
inspection train to hold up at Simms station so that they could watch Wilbur
fly four complete circles of the field.
Webbert and C.S. Billman and his son,
Charley, witnessed the October 4, 1905 flight in which Wilbur flew for 33
minutes without stopping. Billman was a West Dayton neighbor and the Secretary
of the West Side Building and Loan Company.
Charley, 3 years old, ran around the
house for weeks afterward with arms outstretched making a sound like an
airplane. One skeptic who visited the home after observing Charley remarked, "I’m
about convinced. That boy could not be a paid witness."
 Wilbur
flew his longest flight the next day, October 5th. He flew 29
circles for a distance of 24 1/5-miles.
Amos Stauffer, a tenant farmer on the
Huffman property who was cutting corn at the time said to a helper, "the
boys are at it again." He walked down to the fence to watch
commenting, "I thought the
flight would never end."
Also on that day, William Huffman
accompanied his father, Torrence, out to the flying field on the interurban
train. Torrence owned Huffman Prairie and permitted the Wrights to use the land
free of charge as long as they moved the cows and horses out of the way.
William Huffman and David Beard’s son
sat on a farm wagon and made a mark on the wagon floor after each circle of the
prairie.
The next day the Dayton Daily News
reported that the Wrights were making spectacular flights. John Tomlinson of
the paper, offered $50 to Henry Webbert to keep him informed when the Wrights
would be flying.
The Wrights now had the practical
airplane they were working for and so they began decreasing the number of times
they flew as the increasing crowd of spectators made them nervous that they
might compromise their secrets of flight.
Then they decided to stop altogether
until they had a contract in hand. Their last flight was on October 16, 1905.
They would not fly again for the next 31 months. This made marketing their airplane more
difficult, but it was a price that they chose to pay to protect what they had
invented.
The word of their success was beginning
to spread. In Paris, Frank Lahm, a representative for Remington Typewriter Co.
and a native of Ohio, was interested in aeronautics and wanted to know more
about the Wrights' activities. He asked a relative of his in Ohio to
investigate.
Henry Weaver visited the Wrights in
Dayton on Dec. 3rd. Orville took him to Huffman Prairie and visited
with David Beard and Amos Stouffer. They also met with William Fouts, who
operated a drugstore near the Wrights bicycle shop and who had witnessed Wilbur’s
record breaking flight on Oct 5th at Huffman Prairie.
That evening Weaver met the rest of the
Wright family at their home.
Weaver was convinced that the Wrights had
flown even though he had not winnessed a flight and sent a favorable report to
Lahm.
A steady stream of visitors followed
Weaver.
The French Government sent a commission
to Dayton. They interviewed witnesses, examined photographs and were convinced
of the Wrights’ claims, but nothing more came of it.
The British sent their military attaché
in Washington, LtCol. A. E. Count to Dayton. He left impressed, but nothing
came of it because the British thought the price was too high.
Finally, contracts were signed on two
continents at almost the same time. The US War Department contract was awarded
on Feb. 8, 1908.
Three weeks later a contract was signed
with Lazare Walker of France.
Wilbur wowed the French and captured the
imagination of the world at Les Hunaudieres on August 8th. Orville
flew at Ft. Myer, Va. on September 3rd.
Reference: What Dreams We Have: The
Wright Brothers and Their Hometown of Dayton Ohio by Ann Honious.
The
French Competition
The French considered themselves
the world leaders in flying. The Montgolfier brothers were the
first to fly in a balloon filled with hot air in 1783. The French
followed that up a hundred years later with the first successful
dirigible. They even claimed six years later to be the first
to fly a manned, heavier-than-air machine.
Their high-flying balloon
of superiority was punctured and their national pride wounded
when they learned of the Wright Brothers success in 1903.
Even their claim of being
the first to fly a manned, heavier-than-air machine was an exaggeration.
In actuality, Clement Ader’s steam-powered, bat-wing shaped
machine made an uncontrolled hop in 1890. He tried again in
1897 with an improved machine, but it never got off the ground.
Frustrated, most French
experimenters lost interest in flying machines and concentrated
their efforts on balloons and dirigibles. There was one Frenchman,
however, who maintained an avid interest in flying machines.
He was Captain Ferdinand Ferber.
Ferber followed with interest
the glider experiments of Octave Chanute, American French born
internationally known aeronautical experimenter. From Chanute,
Ferber learned of the activities of the Wrights in 1901. Subsequently,
he began a correspondence directly with Wilbur Wright.
Ferber tried unsuccessfully
to build some gliders based on what he had learned, but they
performed poorly.
Ferber was not one who was
easily discouraged and he continued to advocate through lectures
and articles that the French should direct more attention to
heavier-than-air flying machines.
Ernest Archdeacon, a wealthy
attorney and a founder of the Aero Club of France heard the
message. He added his influence to publicize the urgent need
for the French to develop a flying machine. "The airplane
must not be allowed to reach successful development in America,"
he emphatically stated.
In April 1903, Chanute,
a friend of the Wrights and their guest at Kitty Hawk during
the glider experiments in 1901 and 1902, was invited to give
a lecture to the Aero Club of France. In his illustrated lecture,
he provided a summary of the Wrights gliding experiments, including
how they were able to execute controlled turns of their glider
using wingwarping.
While not understanding
all of the fine points of the lecture, the audience now knew
that the Wrights were way ahead of them in the race to fly.
Ferber, who was present
at the lecture, fired off an urgent letter to Archdeacon pleading
for increased financial support for French experimentation.
It was too late, the word
came in December 1903 that the Wrights were successful and had
flown.
Archdeacon responded by
commissioning the construction of a flying machine based on
the information that Chanute had provided in his lecture and
articles such as in the Aerophile that included drawings of
the Wright gliders.
Further, as a incentive
to others, he and a wealthy industrialist, Henry Deutsch de
la Meurthe each contributed 25,000 francs ($5,000) to establish
a prize to be awarded to the first powered flight around a course
of one kilometer (.62 miles) long.
Archdeacon was skeptical
of whether the Wrights actually flew. A newspaper reporter for
L’ Auto was dispatched to visit Dayton to find out. The Wrights
wouldn’t show him their machine, however, based on his interview
of witnesses, he reported that "it was impossible to
doubt the success of their experiments."
Archdeacon still refused
to believe they had flown. He challenged the Wrights through
the French press to come to France and try for the 50,000-franc
award that he and Deutsch had established. "It will
assuredly not tire you very much to make a brief visit to France
to collect this little prize."
The Wrights did not respond.
The French, including Archdeacon,
Santos-Dumont, Delagrange, Voisins, Kapferer, Bleriot and Farman
tried hard to develop a machine that would fly by trying versions
of the Wright design instead of doing their own basic research.
The problem with their approach
was that the Wrights revealed few of their secrets in their
drawings. Chanute, although a close friend of the Wrights,’
didn’t understand the subtleties of the Wright design, particularly
wingwarping, enough to explain them in his lectures to the French.
The French couldn’t figure it out even after the printing of
the Wright patent and the publication of numerous pictures of
the Wright machines in the Scientific American in 1906.
Still, the French regarded
the Wrights as "bluffeurs." "Fliers
or Liars," said the headline of the Paris edition of
the New York Herald on February 10, 1906.
It wasn’t until January
13, 1908, that the French managed to fly a heavier-than air-machine
over a one-kilometer circuit. On that date Henry Farman won
the Archdeacon 50,000 francs cup in a flight lasting one minute
and 28 seconds. The flight was far from perfect. His turn at
the halfway point was awkward and the machine wobbled as it
performed the wide flat turn.
In contrast, the Wright
brothers had flown 39 times that distance (24 miles) two years
earlier at Huffman Prairie in Dayton, Ohio.
In June 1908, Wilbur finally
made the trip to France after a group of French businessmen
promised to manufacture the Wright machine contingent upon a
successful demonstration in France.
The Wright machine was severely
damaged during the French custom inspection, requiring Wilbur
to spend seven weeks to rebuild the machine while in France.
Finally on August 8, Wilbur was ready for a demonstration flight
of his Wright Model A Flyer at the Hunaudieres racetrack near
Le Mans.
Wilbur was dressed in his
usual suit, a visor cap set backwards and starched collar. The
engine started and quickly died when Wilbur’s back collar stud
caught on the control wires.
Soon after, the weight dropped
from the launching derrick, propelling the machine into the
air.
 French
aviation reporter, Francois Peyrey, describes what happened:
"We beheld the great white bird soar above the racecourse
and pass over and beyond the trees. We were able to follow easily
each movement of the pilot, note his extraordinary proficiency
in the flying business, perceive the curious warping of the
wings in the process of circling and the shifting and position
of the rudders. After one minute and 45 seconds of flight, Wright
returned to the ground, descending with extraordinary buoyancy
and precision."
The crowd cheered loudly.
"Well, we are beaten!" exclaimed one spectator.
Another said, "We are as children compared with the
Wrights."
Wilbur wrote Orville on
August 15, "In the second flight, I made an "eight"
and landed at the starting point. The newspapers and the French
aviators went wild with excitement. Blenot and Delagrange were
so excited they could scarcely speak, and Kapferer could only
gasp and could not talk at all. You would have almost died of
laughter if you could have seen them."
Wilbur, between August 1908
and January 1909, made more than a 100 demonstration flights
in France and took up 60 passengers, astounding spectators and
bringing on instant fame.
The
Turkey Buzzard
Many people associate the name of Gatling with the famous Gatling
Machine Gun, but few associate the name with a flying machine.
However in 1873 another Gatling flew a heavy-than-air machine
on the family farm near Murfreesboro, North Carolina.
James Henry Gatling, the older brother of Richard of Gatling
Gun fame, took flight on a Sunday afternoon and according to
witnesses' flew up to 100 feet before crashing into a tree.
Some of the amazed witnesses dubbed the machine, "The Turkey
Buzzard," a vulture that resembles a common turkey.
The machine was 18 feet long and had a wingspan of 14 feet.
It had features that are prescient of the Wright Brothers machine.
It had a vertical elevator in front for vertical control and
a tail in the rear for yawl control. Both were connected to
a lever in the cockpit. A built-in wooden chair was provided
for the pilot in a cockpit within a fuselage made of a light
popular wood.
The monoplane wings were made of 1/8-inch thick woven white-oak
splits in a triangular shape. They were hinged to the fuselage
and could be adjusted up and down while flying by a lever connected
to wires attached to the wing tips.
Twin blowers propelled the machine, one under each wing. Air
was drawn into the curved blower casings containing paddle wheels
and blown out under each wing to provide lift. The pilot used
muscle power to turn the fans by cranking a hand wheel in the
cockpit.
The machine had a tricycle landing gear. The wheels were cut
from logs. The
solid front wheels were 2 1/2-feet in diameter and the solid
rear wheel was 18-inches in diameter.
Henry had many of the same interests and characteristics of
the Wright Brothers. As a youth, he was interested in mechanical
things and enjoyed taking them apart and putting them back together
again to find out they worked. He made and flew kites and wooden
model airplanes and dreamed of flying while observing buzzards.
At the age of 57, he decided to realize his long held dream
by designing and constructing his flying machine. His plan was
to take off from a 12-foot high platform protruding from his
cotton gin, fly east to a point some 400 yards from his farm
near Como, NC, and fly back.
On a Sunday afternoon he had 6 bystanders push the machine off
the platform while he cranked the blowers as fast as he could.
The machine reportedly flew over a 4-foot fence, turned to the
left and hit an elm tree with a wing. The force spun the machine
around and it crashed, with Henry escaping somewhat dazed, but
with only minor injuries.
 The
original machine was destroyed in a fire. Now, some 20 hard
working volunteers have invested 1700 man-hours in building
a full-size replica of the machine. The accompanying picture
shows some of them as well as yours truly.
The machine is located in the historic district of Murfreesboro
in a temporary site. They plan to build a permanent residence
once they raise the money.
They hope to attract visitors on their way to Kitty Hawk to
stop in and see the Turkey Buzzard. While there they can see
magnificent historical homes, some of them dating back to the
18th century, and visit their impressive museums.
Did the Turkey Buzzard really fly? That depends on whom you
talk to. Some say that it rapidly descended to the ground, others
say it flew as far as 100 feet. One witness said it flew very
well but had difficulty landing.
Henry himself realized that muscle power alone was insufficient
to generate the lift to overcome the weight of his machine.
He was examining the possible use of an electric motor at the
time of his death.
He asked his younger brother, Richard, for his ideas, but unlike
the Wright Brothers, apparently Richard didn't think much of
his brother's attempt to fly and was of little help.
Another problem was that Henry's idea of blowing air on the
underside of the wings was not aerodynamically sound. He apparently
was unaware of the Bernoulli principle whereby lift is created
by the pressure differential of airflow over the wings.
Also, the machine was unstable and uncontrollable. The problem
of control was not solved until the Wright Brothers developed
their system for dealing with pitch, roll and yaw that made
flight possible.
However, Henry's use of a vertical tail was innovative in that
most gliders at the time did not use this feature. Also, his
insight in the employment of a front elevator, fuselage, monoplane
wings with twin engines, tricycle landing gear and the ability
to change the shape of the wings in flight were innovative for
his time.
Henry met an untimely end on September 2, 1879. He was shot
in the head over a minor dispute by a neighbor with a shotgun.
Henry never flew more than the one time.
The Turkey Buzzard is an historic machine worth noting in the
long history of man's attempt to fly.
"Darius
was clearly of the opinion,
That the air is also man's dominion,
And that, with paddle of fin or pinion,
We soon or late
Shall navigate
The azure as now we sail the sea."
"Darius
Green and his Flying Machine" by John T. Trowbridge, (1870).
The Turkey Buzzard may not have flown in the 1800s, but it
has now become a modern tourist attraction. Four volunteers
drive a trailer containing the machine to sites such as regional
airports. The machine stays on the trailer during display. One
of the volunteers turn the pedals to show how it was supposed to
work.
The charge is a dollar per mile between Murfreeboro and the
place of destination with a minimum charge of $200. There is no
charge for the display.
References: First to
Fly, North Carolina and The Beginning of Aviation, Thomas
C. Parramore. "The Roanoke-Chowan Story," F. Roy Johnson.
Editorial, "A Useful Invention," Goldsboro News-Argus,
Mike Rouse.
Attempts
to Fly Before The Wrights
"The desire to fly,"
wrote Wilbur Wright, "is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors
who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric
times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through
space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway
of the air."
Daedalus and Icarus
One of the earliest tales
of flying comes from the Greek myth that tells of Daedalus and
his son, Icarus. They sought to escape imprisonment by King
Minos on the island of Crete by flying from captivity using
wings made of feathers held together by wax. Daedalus warned
his son not to fly too close to the sun, but he ignored his
father's warning and the wax in his wings melted and he plunged
into the sea and drowned.
Leonardo da Vinci
 Early
attempts to fly were made by trying to mimic the birds by flapping
wings. Human arms are too weak to flap wings for long so machines
were designed to aid arms or legs to perform flapping. Such
machines are known as "ornithopters."
Some of the earliest ornithopter designs were made by Leonardo
da Vinci from the early 1480s until almost his death in 1519.
Leonardo sketched many different designs in his notebooks based
on his scientific studies on the mechanism by which a bird flies.
As far as is known, he never built any of his machines. It is
just as well because his designs lacked in aerodynamic qualities.
Although he was not successful in designing a successful flying
machine, his heritage for those to follow was in his approach
of using the scientific method. The inscription, "There Shall
Be Wings" on the Wright Memorial at Kitty Hawk, N.C. is a quotation
from da Vinci.
Sir George Cayley
 Cayley,
a baronet and engineer who lived on an estate in Yorkshire,
England, was the first to advance the concept of the modern
airplane. "The whole problem," Cayley wrote, "is confined
within these limits - to make a surface support a given weight
by application of power to the resistance of air."
He published three articles during 1809-10 on his aeronautical
research entitled "Aerial Navigation" in which he correctly
concluded that (1) lift is generated by a region of low pressure
on the upper surface of the wing and (2) cambered wings generate
lift more efficiently than a flat surface.
He used his findings to design a model glider in 1804 with an
up-angled front fixed wing and a stabilizing tail.
A serious deficiency of his design was the use of "flappers"
as the means of propulsion. This feature was useless.
In 1853, at the age of 80, he built a full-size glider that
carried his reluctant coachman in a flight across a small valley.
William Henson
Henson, a contemporary of
Cayley tried to use Cayley's ideas to design a practical airplane
propelled by a steam engine. It was known as the "Aerial Steam
Carriage" and he received a patent for it in 1842. His design
was the first to provide for the use of airscrews to power a
fixed-wing monoplane. His structural design and bracing system
anticipated modern design.
His design employed a separate tail and elevator and cambered
wings with a 20-foot wing span. He added two vertical fan wheels
back of the fixed wings that were powered by a lightweight steam
engine to propel the machine through the air. A small model
was built of the machine and tested without success.
John Stringfellow
 Stringfellow,
another contemporary, built an improved model in 1848. He launched
it by running it down a sloping wire for 33 feet and then released
it with the engine running. Allegedly, the model demonstrated
true powered flight by climbing a little before it hit a wall.
The steam engine was simply too heavy for the power it produced.
Powered flight would have to wait until the invention of a compact
gas engine. The Smithsonian has in its possession a Stringfellow
small one-horsepower steam engine.
Alphonse Penaud
 Penaud,
a Frenchman, was the first to use twisted rubber bands as motive
power in a model helicopter. The helicopter would rise easily
to the ceiling when operated and became a popular toy for children,
including the Wright Brothers.
In 1876, he patented an airplane design that was remarkably
similar to modern aircraft. The design included a "joy-stick"
for the purpose of controlling horizontal and vertical rudders,
a feature that anticipated the control system used by the Wright
Brothers. Failing to obtain the financing to build his aircraft,
he became depressed and committed suicide at the young age of
30.
Francis Wenham
Wenham, another Englishman,
designed, built and used the first wind tunnel in 1871. His
tunnel consisted of a long wooden box with a steam-driven fan
at one end.
His studies demonstrated that a cambered wing was more effective
for lift than a flat wing and that a wing's leading edge provided
most of the lift. As a result, a long narrow wing would create
more lift than a short stubby one.
He further advocated the use of several wings on top of each
other and obtained the first patent on a flying machine that
used superposed planes. From his work he became known as the
"father of the biplane," a design used by the Wrights.
Horatio Phillips
 Phillips
was the second Englishman to build and use a crude wind tunnel
to explore the curvature of wing airfoil shapes. He used steam
to observe the movement of air along various surfaces. He wrote,
"The particles of air struck by the convex upper surface…are
deflected upward…thereby causing a partial vacuum over the greater
portion of the upper surface."
In 1892, Phillips designed
a machine with 50 wing slats called a "multiplane."
It looked like a flying Venetian blind. It managed to fly for
a short hop, but didn't impress anyone.
He received a number of patents on his wing shapes in 1884 and
1891.
Otto Lilienthal
 Lilienthal
designed and flew the first successful gliders in history. They
resembled today's hang gliders.
He started his flying experiments about 1867 as a young boy
in Germany. With the help of his brother, Gustav, he built a
series of small gliders and successfully flew controlled flights
with them.
In his home he built a whirling arm device that he used to collect
the amount of pressure on a wing that would be obtained at various
angles of incidence. In 1889 he published a classic in aeronautical
literature, "Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation." The
Wright Brothers used data from the book in designing their 1900
and 1901 gliders.
Subsequently, the Wrights found inaccuracies in the data and
based their successful 1902 glider and the 1903 Wright Flyer
on data they derived from their own wind tunnel experiments
During the period 1891-1896, Lilienthal made over 2,500 successful
glider flights. He would support himself on his forearms and
control the glider by swinging his legs to shift its center
of gravity. He believed that success in gliding was a necessary
prerequisite before considering adding an engine for powered
flight. The Wright Brothers took this advice to heart.
While gliding on August 9, 1896, Lilienthal was hit by a sudden
gust of wind that tossed his glider upward to an altitude of
50 feet at an acute angle.
Lilienthal immediately threw his weight forward and tried to
bring the nose down. It was too late. The glider stalled, its
left wing dipped sharply and plunged to the ground. He died
the next day of a broken spine at the age of 48.
The incident was read with interest by the Wright Brothers and
is credited with awaking their interest in the solving the riddle
of successful flight by man. Wilbur called Lilienthal "the greatest
of the precursors."
Octave Chanute
 Chanute,
a well to do businessman, civil engineer and railroad bridge
builder, was well beyond middle age when he became interested
in aviation. He conducted flights with multi-wing gliders on
the shores of Lake Michigan in 1896 searching for a design that
would provide automatic stability. The experiments convinced
him that it was possible to develop an inherently stable airplane.
He carried on correspondence with airplane experimenters all
over the world and was soon regarded as an expert on the history
of aviation. In 1894 he published, "Progress in Flying Machines."
It was considered the reference book for anyone interested in
flight.
The Wright Brothers became aware of the book after Wilbur's
inquiry to the Smithsonian in May 1899. Wilbur wrote, "I have
been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight
ever since as a boy I constructed a number of bats of various
sizes after the style of Cayley's and Penaud's machines." Wilbur
continued, "I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense
that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction
of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already
known and then if possible add my mite to help on the future
worker who will attain final success."
Wilbur wrote Chanute on May 13, 1900 to introduce himself saying,
"For some years I have been inflicted with the belief that flight
is possible to man." It was the beginning of a ten-year close
relationship between Chanute and Wilbur. Chanute was forty-five
years older than Wilbur was, but the age difference was not
apparent in the several hundred letters between the two. Chanute
also visited the Wrights at their home in Dayton and at Kitty
Hawk during their glider experiments.
Wright Brothers
After the Wrights completed
their review of the literature, they were struck by the realization
that there was really little known about the subject of flying.
Orville wrote, "So many attempts to solve the flying problems
started with the same idea and stopped at the same point. Most
of them resulted in little or no advance over what had been
done before. To my mind Sir George Cayley was the first
of the important pioneers. Leonardo da Vinci was a wonderful
genius, but I cannot think of anything he contributed to the
art of human flight."
Wilbur and Orville were particularly surprised to find that
no one had successfully solved the basic problem of flight control.
From the beginning of their research, the Wrights knew they
had to control rolling and not just pitching as their contemporaries
had emphasized.
Orville wrote, "When we went to Kitty Hawk in 1900 we thought
the fore-and-aft balance the difficult problem of equilibrium.
We got this idea from reading Lilienthal, Chanute, and others.
They gave very little space in their writings to lateral equilibrium."
Many of the aviation pioneers had been injured and even died
because of control problems. The Wrights did not think that
controlling flight by body movements or a self-stabilizing design
was going to lead to a solution.
Wilbur, while watching buzzards fly along the banks of the Miami
River in Dayton, noticed that the birds regained their lateral
balance by a slight twisting of their wing tips. That idea lead
to the Wrights' concept of wing-warping (twisting the wings).
They experimented with the idea using Chanute-type gliders at
Kitty Hawk and found hat the idea worked.
The twisting of the wings along with the coordinated movement
of the tail solved the control problem of flight and enabled
the Wright Brothers to fly the first successful powered, heavier
than air, manned, airplane.
The Wrights acknowledged those who went before them, but they
owed them little, for their success came from their own painstaking
work. It was they who had tested each idea derived from their
own scientific imagination and invented the means to test. They
replaced the trial and error approach of their predecessors
with the scientific method and in so doing founded the profession
of modern aeronautical engineering.
Earlier experimenters had failed because their machines were
not aeronautically sound, but they did keep the dream of man's
quest to fly alive. It took the genius of the Wright Brothers
to fulfill that dream.
Da
Vinci's Aerodynamics
Leonardo da Vinci,
one of the most creative genius of the Renaissance, had an enduring
infatuation with flying during the period between 1488 to 1514,
a time when Columbus discovered America. His obsession
drove him to write a collection of manuscripts with over 500
sketches on the topic. Many of his ideas were a precursor of
the modern airplane.
His
most famous flying machine designs were ornithopters, or machines
that were to be powered by man by flapping bat-like wings like
a bird.
In one of his best
known designs, a man lies face down on the body of the machine
and flaps the wings by pumping the stirrups with his legs much
like modern pedal powered airplanes.
Just as the Wright
Brothers, da Vinci based his ideas on the study of bird flight.
He observed that: "A bird is an instrument working according
to mathematical law, an instrument which is within the capacity
of man to reproduce with all its movements."
Implicit in his statement
is that da Vinci was searching for the governing laws upon which
bird flight is made possible. Knowing these laws, he could then
use them to design a machine.
He was the first person
to understand the mechanics of bird flight. From his observations
he came to realize that the up-and-down flapping of the bird’s
wings did not contribute much to lift. What the flapping did
do was provide thrust for propulsion.
Da Vinci was the first
to consider the scientific concept of lift, the force that enables
a flying machine to fly.
His initial concept
of lift was wrong. He thought that a high-pressure, high-density
region of air was formed under a lifting surface that in turn
exerted an upward force on that surface.
Later in life he changed
his ideas on lift to the correct modern concept that lift is
created primarily because the pressure over the top of a wing
is less that the pressure on the bottom of the wing as air flows
over it.
He invented the first
barometer and anemometer to use in his studies.
Da Vinci also concluded
correctly that a flying machine could have fixed wings and have
a separate mechanism for propulsion, a thoroughly modern idea.
Additionally, He understood
the phenomenon of drag, the resistance that a body incurs when
moving through air. He postulated that both lift and drag were
proportional to the surface area of the body and velocity of
the wind over the body.
He was partially correct
on the relationships. The velocity function is actually "velocity
squared."
He further understood
that streamlining the shape of a body would reduce drag. In
this regard he said that the streamlined shape of fish aids
them in maneuvering in water.
His sketches of various
flow patterns of airflow around a body represent the first qualitative
understanding of experimental aerodynamics.
Da Vinci was the first
to recognize that when studying the flow of air over a body,
it didn’t make any difference whether the body was moving through
still air or whether the air was moving over a stationary body
as long as the relative velocity was the same in both cases.
This insight provided the basis for the use of wind tunnels
as a tool in the of study aerodynamics.
Safety of the pilot
was a concern of da Vinci. He invented the first parachute using
the model of a kite. The kite is an old technology, having been
invented in China around 1000 BC.
It is obvious that
da Vinci made significant contributions to the state of the
art of aerodynamics. Unfortunately, after his death in 1519,
his contributions were not available for use by others until
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By that time it was
too late to add to what others had discovered.
The problem was that
he never published his work nor constructed or flew any of his
machines. All of his ideas were in his notes and these were
difficult to interpret because he wrote in a reverse mirror-like
fashion. After his death the notes were dispersed and essentially
became lost from view. Most people know of him for his famous
paintings of the Last Supper and the Mona
Lisa.
Sir George Cayley
did not rediscover da Vinci’s ideas on lift and drag and the
concept of a fixed-wing airplane until three centuries later
in 1809. Cayley did not have the benefit of da Vinci’s notes.
By the time the Wright
Brothers began construction of their 1900 glider, they had researched
the available aerodynamic data of the day. It is not known whether
they had in their extensive library any information on da Vinci.
The work of their
predecessors did not furnish the Wrights with many answers but
it did help them focus on the problems to be solved.
The Wrights, using
a wind tunnel they constructed, contributed to the advancement
of engineering knowledge on calculating lift and drag and design
of airfoils.
Their most revolutionary
contribution was the concept of wing warping for lateral control
of a flying machine. Wilbur’s inspiration for this idea came
from watching birds; much as da Vinci had done centuries before.
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