WRIGHT FLYER
MANY PEOPLE
WOULD SAY THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT
MILESTONE IN THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT OCCURRED
ON DECEMBER 17, 1903, WHEN TWO BROTHERS
FROM OHIO FLEW THE FIRST AIRPLANE.
To be specific, it was the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot on board. Many others throughout history had tried to fly, but they hadn't been able to figure out how to control their airplane and stay in the air. Finally, after many people built funny-looking flying machines that didn't work, Orville and Wilbur Wright figured out the components and built one that did work. Every airplane since the 1903 Wright Flyer has incorporated the same basic design elements! Yet the Wright brothers didn't set out to change the world; they just wanted to solve a puzzle.
Orville and Wilbur both had an engineer's mind. They asked lots of questions and were fascinated with how machines work. Between 1899 and 1905 they conducted a program of aeronautical research and experimentation that led to a practical airplane. They began by gathering data from other researchers. They wrote to the Smithsonian Institution requesting reference materials. Then they isolated three specific challenges that needed to be solved:
Lift—what surfaces (wings) would carry the vehicle off the ground and keep it in the air?
Balance and control—how could a person control the vehicle?
Propulsion—what would keep the flight going?
They decided to experiment first with balance and control. Their experience building bicycles, which they sold in their own shop, proved worthwhile. James Howard Means, editor of the journal Aeronautical Annual, published an article in 1896 called "Wheeling and Flying" in which he made a connection between bicycles and flight. He wrote: "It is not uncommon for the cyclist … to remark [that] Wheeling [a term for riding a bicycle] is just like flying! … To learn to wheel one must learn to balance; to learn to fly one must learn to balance." A bicycle was an unstable but controllable machine. Why couldn't an airplane work the same way?
In thinking about control and lift, the Wright brothers realized that if they could figure out how to change the airflow over one of the wings, it would create a difference in lift between the two wings. Control of airflow could both maintain balance and cause the plane to turn. But how could they change the airflow? One day Wilbur was absentmindedly twisting a cardboard box for a bicycle inner tube as he chatted with a customer. He observed that even when he applied a considerable twist, the box retained its stiffness along its length. It occurred to him that the same principle could be applied to a set of wings. He had just invented a concept called "wing warping."
To test their theories about control, the Wright brothers built and flew a biplane kite with a five-foot wingspan. With the successful testing of the kite, they were ready for experimenting with a large glider, complete with a pilot. First they needed to find a place to fly with steady winds, wide-open space, and, ideally, soft landing material. They found this at Kitty Hawk, a small fishing village on the barrier islands of North Carolina. Sand was the perfect surface for a soft landing.
Starting in 1900, they built a series of three gliders over a three-year period. Each year they returned to Kitty Hawk and tested a new one. The gliders helped them test balance and control, as well as learn how to fly. Because gliders have no engine, they rely on gravity and air to stay in the air. Later, in 1901, back in Ohio, the Wrights built a wind tunnel to measure the force of lift and drag acting on a wing. They conducted tests on as many as 200 models of different wing shapes!
After making hundreds of successful flights in their third glider in 1902, the brothers designed and built a larger airplane. They traveled to North Carolina in the fall of 1903 determined to add an engine and fly a powered airplane. By now they had overcome many of the major obstacles through a disciplined engineering process of calculated experimentation.
The first flight took place on December 17, with Orville at the controls. He flew 120 feet in twelve seconds. They made three more flights that day, and on the last one Wilbur flew 852 feet in fifty-nine seconds. Then a wind gust caught them by surprise and flipped the aircraft over while it was on the ground, and it never flew again. The Wright brothers called their first powered airplane the "Flyer."