The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age

Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the airplane

The original 1903 Wright Flyer is the centerpiece of "The Wright Brothers
& The Invention of the Aerial Age" exhibition at the National Air and
Space Museum's flaship building on the National Mall in Washington.
http://www.nasm.si.edu

Only five bicycles manufactured by the Wright

brothers are known to exist. This one, a
model they called the St. Clair, was built in
1898. Less expensive than the Van Cleve, the
St. Clair sold for $42.50.
Lent by the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn,
Mich.
A reproduction of the 1899 Wright Kite
The Wrights combined their
wing-warping control concept
and the structural design of the
Chanute-Herring glider in their
first aircraft, a biplane kite with a
5-foot wingspan, built in July
1899.

1900 Wright Glider (reproduction)

The 1900 glider was the Wrights' first piloted aircraft. First flight-tested at Kitty
Hawk in the fall of that year, it incorporated the wire-braced biplane structure and
wing-warping control system they developed with their 1899 kite.

1902 Wright glider (reproduction)

Compared to their previous gliders, the Wrights' 1902 glider had a much thinner
airfoil and longer and narrower wings, which their wind tunnel tests had shown
to be more efficient. To improve lateral control, they added a fixed vertical rudder
to the rear of the glider. They retained the reliable forward elevator for pitch
control but made it elliptical in shape.

1903 Wright Flyer

The 1903 Wright Flyer made four flights at

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17,
1903, the best covering 852 feet in 59
seconds. It was the first heavier-than-air,
powered aircraft to make a sustained,
controlled flight with a pilot aboard.
The Wrights used their proven canard biplane
configuration which was rooted in their initial
1899 kite design. Key to the Flyer's success
was its three-axis control system, which
featured wing-warping for lateral balance, a
moveable rudder, and an elevator for pitch
control.
The right wing was four inches longer than the
left to compensate for the engine being
heavier than and mounted to the right of the
pilot. The wings were rigged with a slight
droop to reduce the effects of crosswinds.

To say simply that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane doesn't
begin to describe their many accomplishments. Nor is it especially
accurate. The first fixed-wing aircraft -- a kite mounted on a stick -was conceived and flown almost a century before Orville and Wilbur
made their first flights. The Wrights were first to design and build a
flying craft that could be controlled while in the air. Every successful
aircraft ever built since, beginning with the 1902 Wright glider, has
had controls to roll the wings right or left, pitch the nose up or down,
and yaw the nose from side to side. These three controls -- roll, pitch,
and yaw -- let a pilot navigate an airplane in all three dimensions,
making it possible to fly from place to place. The entire aerospace
business, the largest industry in the world, depends on this simple but
brilliant idea. So do spacecraft, submarines, even robots.

During the winter of 1902-1903, with the help of their mechanic, Charlie
Taylor, the Wrights designed and built a gasoline engine light enough and
powerful enough to propel an airplane. They also designed the first true
airplane propellers and built a new, powered aircraft. Back in Kitty Hawk,
they suddenly found themselves in a race. Samuel P. Langley, Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution, had also built a powered aircraft, patterned
after a small, unmanned "aerodrome" he had flown successfully in 1896.
To add to their frustrations, the Wrights were delayed by problems with
their propeller shafts and the weather, giving Langley time to test his
aircraft twice in late 1903. Both attempts failed miserably, however, and
Langley left the field to the Wrights. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and
Orville Wright made the first sustained, controlled flights in a powered
aircraft.
Back in Dayton, Ohio, the brothers found they had much to do to perfect
their invention. While the 1903 Wright Flyer did indeed fly, it was
underpowered and difficult to control. They established the world's first
test flight facilities at Huffman Prairie, northeast of Dayton (today, the site
of Wright Patterson Air Force Base). For two years they made flight after
flight, fine tuning the controls, engine, propellers, and configuration of
their airplane. At first, they could only fly in a straight line for less than a
minute. But by the end of 1905, they were flying figure-eight's over
Huffman Prairie, staying aloft for over half an hour, or until their fuel ran
out. The 1905 Wright Flyer was the world's first practical airplane.

Wilbur and Orville were the sons of Milton and Susan Wright and members of a
warm, loving family that encouraged learning and doing. Milton was a bishop in
the United Brethren Church, and was often away from home on church
business. But he wrote hundreds of letters home, and often brought back
presents from his trips, exposing his children to the world beyond their horizon.
In 1878, he brought home a rubber band-powered helicopter, and young Wilbur
and Orville immediately began to build copies of it.
In 1884, Bishop Wright moved his family to Dayton, Ohio, the political center of
the United Brethren Church. About the same time, his wife Susan fell ill with
tuberculosis. Wilbur, just out of high school, put off college and nursed his sick
mother. Orville began to lose interest in school and learned the printing
business. Susan Wright died in the summer of 1889, the same year that Orville
dropped out of high school to open his own print shop.

After the 1905 flying season, the Wrights contacted the United States War
Department, as well as governments and individuals in England, France,
Germany, and Russia, offering to sell a flying machine. They were turned
down time and time again -- government bureaucrats thought they were
crackpots; others thought that if two bicycle mechanics could build a
successful airplane, they could do it themselves. But the Wright persisted,
and in late 1907, the U.S. Army Signal Corps asked for an aircraft. Just a
few months later, in early 1908, a French syndicate of businessmen agreed
to purchase another.
Both the U.S. Army and the French asked for an airplane capable of
carrying a passenger. The Wright brothers hastily adapted their 1905 Flyer
with two seats and a more powerful engine. They tested these
modifications in secret, back at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina for the first time
in several years. Then the brothers parted temporarily -- Wilbur to France
and Orville to Virginia.

As their fame grew, orders for aircraft poured in. The Wrights set up airplane
factories and flight schools on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, once they
had demonstrated their aircraft in public, it was easy for others to copy them -and many did. The Wrights were dragged into time-consuming, energy-draining
patent fights in Europe and America. The most bitter legal battle was with Glenn
Curtiss, who, as part of his defense, borrowed Langley's unsuccessful aircraft
from the Smithsonian Institution and rebuilt it to prove that the Aerodrome could
have flown before the Wright Flyer. The ruse didn't work -- Curtiss made too many
modifications to get Langley's aircraft in the air and the courts ruled in favor of
the Wrights. Yet although the case resolved the Wright/Curtiss dispute, it left an
enduring resentment between the Wrights and the Smithsonian.
Outside the courtroom, the world seemed no friendlier to Wilbur and Orville. The
aircraft business was uncertain and dangerous. Most of the money to be made
was in exhibition flying, where the audiences wanted to see death-defying feats or
airmanship. The Wrights sent out teams of pilots who had to fly increasingly
higher, faster, and more recklessly to satisfy the crowds. Inevitably, the pilots
began to die in accidents and the stress began to tell on the Wrights. Additionally,
their legal troubles distracted them from what they were best at -- invention and
innovation. By 1911, Wright aircraft were no longer the best machines flying.
In 1912, Wilbur Wright, worn out from legal and business problems, contracted
typhoid and died. Orville, his heart no longer in the airplane business, sold the
Wright Company in 1916 and went back to inventing.

Patent fights and business troubles behind him, Orville Wright built a small
laboratory in his old West Dayton neighborhood. Here, he worked on anything
that caught his interest. He did some aeronautical work, helping to develop a
racing airplane, guided missile, and "split flaps" to help slow an aircraft in a
dive. But he also worked on an automatic record changer, a toaster, and
children's toys. In short, he tinkered.

A Boeing 747 is 70 metres (232 ft) long, 19 metres

(63 ft) high and needs a runway of 3,2 km (10,500
ft). It weighs a massive 394 625 kg (870,000
pounds) at takeoff. How does it stay in the air?

Replica of Wright Brothers' Wind Tunnel, 5-10-39

My brother Orville and I built a rectangle-shaped open-ended
wind tunnel out of a wooden box. It was 16 inches wide by 16
inches tall by 6 feet long. Inside of it we placed an
aerodynamic measuring device made from an old hacksaw
blade and bicycle-spoke wire. We directed the air current from
an old fan in the back shop room into the opening of the
wooden box.

In fact, we sometimes referred to one of the two

open ends of the wind tunnel as the "goesinta" and
the other end as the "goesouta." An old onecylinder gasoline engine (that also turned other
tools in the shop, such as our lathe) supplied the
power to turn the fan. This was because there was
no electricity in our shop. In fact, even the lights
were gas lights. It took us about a month of
experimenting with the wind tunnel we had built to
learn how to use it effectively. Eventually we
learned how to operate it so that it gave us results
that varied less than one-tenth of a degree.
Occasionally I had to yell at my brother to keep him
from moving even just a little in the room because
it would disturb the air flow and destroy the
accuracy of the test.

Over a two month period we tested more than two hundred

models of different types of wings. All of the models were
three to nine inches long. Altogether we measured
monoplane wing designs (airplanes with one wing), biplanes,
triplanes and even an aircraft design with one wing behind
the other like Professor Langley proposed. Professor
Langley was the director of the Smithsonian Museum at the
time and also trying to invent the first airplane. On each little
aircraft wing design we tested we located the center of
pressure and made measurements for lift and drift. We also
measured the lift produced by wings of different "aspect
ratios." An aspect ratio is the ratio or comparison of how
long a wing is left to right (the wing span) compared to the
length from the front to the back of the wing (the wing
chord). Sometimes we got results that were just hard to
believe, especially when compared to the earlier
aerodynamic lift numbers supplied by the German Lillienthal.
His numbers were being used by most of the early aviation
inventors and they proved to be full of errors. Lillienthal
didn't use a wind tunnel like Orville and I did to obtain and
test our data.

We finally stopped our wind tunnel experiments just before

Christmas, 1901. We really concluded them rather reluctantly
because we had a bicycle business to run and a lot of work to do
for that as well. It is difficult to underestimate the value of that very
laborious work we did over that homemade wind tunnel. It was, in
fact, the first wind tunnel in which small models of wings were
tested and their lifting properties accurately noted. From all the
data that Orville and I accumulated into tables, an accurate and
reliable wing could finally be built. Even modern wind tunnel data
with the most sophisticated equipment varies comparatively little
from what we first discovered. In fact, the accurate wind tunnel
data we developed was so important, it is doubtful if anyone would
have ever developed a flyable wing without first developing this
data. Sometimes the non-glamorous lab work is absolutely crucial
to the success of a project. In any case, as famous as we became
for our "Flyer" and its system of control, it all would never have
happened if we had not developed our own wind tunnel and
derived our own correct aerodynamic data. - Wilbur Wright