Flyer
On October 20, 1902, Wilbur Wright flew the 1902 glider after linking the rudder to the wing-warp, the first machine to be controllable in three axes, and found it no longer tended to slide into a spin on turns. After this the Wrights knew that powered flight meant only adding an engine and propellers. The controllable linked rudder allowed the wing to be picked up by opposite rudder as well as opposite aileron (wing-warp).
The Wrights owed the knowledge that large curved aerofoil surfaces could lift the weight of a man to the hang-gliding experiments of Otto Lilienthal. To Octave Chanute they owed the concept of the strength attained by using the Pratt Truss as Chanute had used in bridges and his own gliders which never stayed aloft for more than seconds. No one else contributed at all, except possibly Dr Spratt who insisted that excessive curvature at the leading edge of a wing was dangerous. The story of the Wrights should be known to all, for sheer persistence the like has been seldom seen. When a machine crashed they were relieved to find "It would only take about five days to repair!" When theory failed, they derived new theory. What is now everyday terminology "Lift, thrust, angle of attack, drag (they called it "drift") all came from the Wrights. They built their own windtunnel, designed and built the first workable propellers, they, with the help of machinist Charlie Wright, designed and built a relatively light weight 16hp engine when none other was available.
On Dec 17, 1903 Orville flew the worlds first powered ultralight for 12 seconds (shown). The same day, Wilbur raised this to 1 minute. The next year(1904) at Huffman's Pasture, near Dayton, Ohio, on Sept 20th this became 1.05 minutes, and the first circle was flown. On Oct. 14th the distance was raised to >1 mile; on Nov.9th >3 miles in 5 min and again on Dec 1. In 1905 the record was raised to 18 min and 11 miles on 26th Sept; and on the 28th a different solution to the problem of stalling the inner wing while turning was discovered, they found that a brief dive raised enough speed to prevent the problem. On Oct 4 they achieved 20 miles in 38min. The US government were still totally uninterested and foreign governments were more interested in seeing how it was done in order to get there own designs working. Chanute's published reports and descriptions of the Wright Flyer began a flurry of attempted look-alikes in France, but the necessity for three axis control was still not appreciated. Near Paris in 1908 Wilbur flew for 2 min on Aug 8 and 4 min later the same day. In Dec he broke the altitude record of 300ft and flew for 1 hr 30 min, raising this to 2 hrs 20min. and 90 miles on Dec 31. Only three years later the altitude record became 11,000ft by Lincoln Beachey flying a Curtiss "Headless". Meanwhile, Orville, at Fort Myer near Washington had flown 57 min on Sept 9, then for an hour and put up a record of 6 min with a passenger, before the disastrous crash with Lt Selfridge as passenger. We owe the development of the tractor propeller and the aileron to the French, especially Bleriot and leVavasseur. The exploration of the performance envelope of the aeroplane cost the lives of some very fine young men, Walt Brooking, Arch Hoxey, Lincoln Beachey and scores of others, but the basic aeroplane is pure Wright. Though "Flyer" is on display at Smithsonian, details of construction are hard to get. The cross section of the main spars seems far too little to take the compression of the upper plane. Did they use turnbuckles to tension rigging? The Smithsonian refuses to reply to questions. Read the "Wrights Papers" (which have no details of construction). Try: EAA's Countdown to Kitty Hawk |
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