Wright Brothers
Orville left; Wilbur right
As children in the late 1800's, Orville and Wilbur Wright adored flight. They both had their own kites, and for a while they had a balsa wood wind-up plane.
People at that time were trying to fly. The idea of man flying was extremely interesting to many people. The Wright Brothers were in their mid-twenties when they became interested in making their own plane design in 1896.
There were elements of flight being made and changed. The Wright brothers used the tables that showed how much power you needed to lift an amount of weight and helped determine the lift power of each wing shape. After several failures, which should have have worked according to the existing tables the Wright Brothers decided to make their own tables. Another start to their new approach to flight was by using a larger area for the wings, moving it from 165 sq. ft. to 308 sq. ft., a large increase.
At that time in 1901 other scientists were abandoning their work at building airplane-- some of those efforts had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most people decided that it was beyond the reach of man to fly in an airplane.
The predecessors of the Wright Brothers tried to control their airplanes by having the operator lean in the direction that they wanted to go. The Wright Brothers decided that this was too hard to do and it would not be as easy to turn, as if you used a machine to help the pilot turn the plane. They used the design of the rudder that would be used to turn a boat to turn their plane. This was a good idea -- it worked. Then for propulsion they tried using a boat propeller. This wasn't such a great idea. They found that boat propellers had not been around long enough for all the aspects of it to be known well enough that they could adapt it to a plane. So they decided to find out for themselves how a propeller works.
Once they felt that they had found all they needed to know the Wright Brothers built a full plane using everything they learned. They invited (only 5 people besides themselves) to the first flight. When they first flew; the plane flew for 12 seconds, and then fell to the ground.
The second and third flights were a little longer and then the fourth was 59 seconds covering a distance of 852 feet against a twenty mile per hour wind. After the fourth flight they placed the plane in what they thought was a safe place and went to speak about the flights from earlier in the day and how to get longer flights. While they were speaking a gust of wind blew their plane over and broke it. Oops.
Their next plane was heavier and stronger than the one before, but similar to the earlier one. At the flight of their new plane they had a dozen newspaper reporters come. The wind was blowing a mere 3 miles per hour so it would be hard for the plane to get lift because the air would not get under the wing right. Since reporters had come, they decided to try. The engine did not work right either. So when the plane started it just drove off the end of the runway. The next day some reporters came back to see if it would work this time, but the engine still did not work right. So they postponed experiments until the engine could be fixed. By that time the reporters thought that the Wright brothers' plane could not ever fly.
Once Orville and Wilbur fixed the problem with their engine they found more problems with their plane. One of these was that at a certain degree the plane would tip over in a turn, so far that the pilot could not fix the angle and the plane would fall down from the sky. They kept having this problem until September 1905 when their flight length improved. An improved rudder design made the difference.
These long flight experiments continued until October when the number of people attracted to the testing grounds grew too large. In 1906 and 1907 the Wright Brothers spent their time making business negotiations for selling the plane. It was not until May 1908 when the experiments were started again at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina.
The brothers made a contract with the United States to sell their plane. The plane sold to the US government was able to hold two men, carrying them for 125 miles at of 40 miles per hour. This plane was launched using a rail with a cable attached from it to the plane. The engines are turned on. Once they are up to full speed the assistant slips the cable off of the plane. The assistant pushes the plane until he cannot keep up and then he lets go, the pilot then pulls back on a lever and the plane flies into the air. Orville and Wilbur reported in a newspaper article about their experiences that "after the sale to the United States they devoted their time from then on to a plane for practical uses."
Formula 1 Flying Tip:
The Wright Brothers were the first to build a successful plane and they had to find out for themselves for very first time in history; lift, drag, weight, shape and propulsion.