First Powered Flight

[Gus Urtubey]

This is a good day to remember the beginning of powered flight.  Were they first?  Can’t say for sure however their contraption certainly was the spark that lit the flame that became arguably the most significant invention in man’s history.

[Jerry Haupt]

Orville and Wilbur's bicycle shop where it all started is just a few blocks from my home in the wonderful city of Dayton, Ohio. And just to the east is the United State Air Force museum. Dayton has quite a history in aviation along with some pretty good control line pilots over the years.

[RknRusty]

Gus, thanks for reminding us. It would have slipped by me. I have a small plastic Wright Flyer hanging in my shop that came from a gift shop in NC. At first glance, my first temptation was to toss it backwards. I didn't But I was pleasantly surprised that when I did toss it, it glided across the yard. I was thrilled that someone had gone to the trouble to balance a plastic snap-together toy replica.

I need to refresh my memory, but their employee, Charlie Taylor may have flown the longest flight on the first day of success. Don't quote me on that, I need to Wiki it. A good part of their success is that they had been flying kites to test wing designs so much that they developed a real feel for the controls before the first flight.

Thanks, Orville, Wilbur and Charlie.

Rusty

[Will Davis]

We visited the Wright Brothers memorial this summer  during NC outer banks  trip, I  was pleased to see some type of organized kite flying event for the kids of all ages ,   quite a site  and on the same grounds of the  first powered  flight .

I am Sure  Orville and Wilbur would be pleased

[wwwarbird]

 A great day in American History.

 I'm glad it wasn't Edison. 

[Clint Ormosen]

Blah blah blah. Yeah, they were the first to fly an airplane. But then they wanted to sue anybody that built anything after them. They seemed to think they had the market cornered in movable control surfaces. There were 20 other guys almost as far along as they were. As smart as they were, they were also self centered jerks.

Just my opinion based on stuff I've read.

[RknRusty]

Blah blah blah. Yeah, they were the first to fly an airplane. But then they wanted to sue anybody that built anything after them. They seemed to think they had the market cornered in movable control surfaces. There were 20 other guys almost as far along as they were. As smart as they were, they were also self centered jerks.

Just my opinion based on stuff I've read.

Oh well, we have the above mention of Edison to remind us that at least they weren't the biggest jerks of our beloved American inventors. That man was seriously a full blown Dick. If he had accepted that Nickolai was a genius and teamed up to work with him, they could have probably advanced their technology well beyond what either did alone.

Rusty

[Perry Rose]

The latest study has it that Gustave Whitehead was first to fly a couple years before the Wright Bros.

[Chuck Feldman]

I swear to you that we have many nonbeliever's.

[john e. holliday]

Yep, there are always those that argue/debate on who was first at accomplishing anything.   The Wrights were the first to completely document their flights.   If they had teamed up with some of the other people with differing ideas, just imagine what could have been accomplished before war made people improve things faster.   My opinion and I still believe they were first in how they went about flying. 

[Paul Wood]

They were not the first to "fly", but were the first to discover "controlled flight".  They were able to control the plane in all three axis of flight.  Prior to their use of the moveable vertical rudder, no one could prevent a stall/spin when trying to turn or even bank the airplane.  They were true geniuses and it doesn't take a lot of research to prove that fact.

Paul

[wwwarbird]

Oh well, we have the above mention of Edison to remind us that at least they weren't the biggest jerks of our beloved American inventors.

 With the Edison comment I was joking that if the "Flyer" had been built by him the first airplane may have been like, uh, heaven forbid, electric powered.

 But, now that I think about it, that would have been Franklin. Doh!  

[RknRusty]

With the Edison comment I was joking that if the "Flyer" had been built by him the first airplane may have been like, uh, heaven forbid, electric powered.

 But, now that I think about it, that would have been Franklin. Doh!  

Nah, Warbird I got your eJoke. I was just piling on with another opinion.

Rusty

[goozgog]

   I've read just about everything available on the Wrights.
They seemed like hard working but fun loving young men
with a good sense of humor.

   No one who has ever seen their copious calculations
and serious science would ever doubt them. They were
far more than just backyard mechanics.
 
  The genesis of flight couldn't possibly be better even
if Hollywood wrote the script .

Cheers!   ( With a wave to Gustavo  :-)

[Brett Buck]

Blah blah blah. Yeah, they were the first to fly an airplane. But then they wanted to sue anybody that built anything after them. They seemed to think they had the market cornered in movable control surfaces. There were 20 other guys almost as far along as they were. As smart as they were, they were also self centered jerks.

Just my opinion based on stuff I've read.

    OK, lets see. Tomorrow, after decades of work,  you invent time travel, and get a patent on the key features. This has fascinated mankind for a long time, it is an incredible breakthrough. You can get richer than a Saudi prince from this. Someone comes along, see your trick, and then starts selling knock-off time machines. You ask them to pay the license fee, they tell you to go p*ss up a rope. What are your alternatives?

    There were several key breakthroughs they came up with, and no one was close. 5-6 years later, they went to France, to a skeptical group of supposed aviation experts who were calling them liars. They took their 5 year old design, and *blew them out of the water* demonstrating control that had eluded supposed experts for a decade. They were FAR ahead in many technical areas, but in particular, the most profound breakthrough was their realization that you have to have full control over all three axes to fly reliably. This had been missed by absolutely everyone up to that point, almost everyone had a vision of steering the airplane around like a boat. That's how the French supposed experts operated, and they managed hops and gentle skidding turns - because they hadn't thought the problem through. A coordinated turn under full control shown by the Wrights floored them.

   Most of the early experimenters never even bothered to consider the idea that *the pilot might need to know how to fly an airplane*. Samuel Langley plunked Charles Manley into an airplane, said "good luck" and catapulted him into the Potomac. What would have happened had it gotten to 100 feet, was he just supposed to figure it out in a few seconds? Even the Kitty Hawk flier was marginally controllable and definitely unstable. The Wrights were absolute masters to float that thing along with negative pitch stability, hanging on the edge of control, for as long as they did. Ask or watch or  read the reports of people trying to fly the reproductions! That wasn't really fixed until the Wright Model B.

   Their many engineering breakthroughs (like the method of roll control, wing warping that they sued Glenn Curtis over, their generation of accurate lift and drag data that utterly contradicted all previous work, etc) were impressive but their greatest attribute was *knowing what problems to solve*. Gustave Whitehead, Clement Ader, Sir Hiram Maxim, Santos-Dumont, etc were not close to that.

    Brett

[Serge_Krauss]

Blah blah blah. Yeah, they were the first to fly an airplane. But then they wanted to sue anybody that built anything after them. They seemed to think they had the market cornered in movable control surfaces. There were 20 other guys almost as far along as they were. As smart as they were, they were also self centered jerks.

Just my opinion based on stuff I've read.

Sorry, Clint, but you haven't read nearly enough legitimate history and engineering on the Wrights and others of their time. You don't know what they really did. The opinion is unfounded. Brett is absolutely correct. Every year at this time, I'm reminded that you aren't the only one either. You can search under my name here and at SSWF to find out a lot more about what the Wrights actually did. I find it hard to understand why anyone willing to express such a strong opinion would not at least do the research before historical revision and character attacks. For one thing, the wrights' notebooks are available for downloading in their entirety on line. I have posted select pages previously on this forum.

So, in addition to what Brett said...

1) Whitehead may or may not have flown - may well have done so in a limited way. What he did not do was master control and duration.

2) The Wrights deliberately made their flyer "control-configured" because of what happened to Lillienthal. They were the ONLY developers of aircraft with close to reasonable knowledge of c.p. travel, but were stubborn in their delay to switching to the aft tail for philosophical reasons; the pilot had to be in complete control. Nonetheless, before the world's aviators were doing more than uncontrolled hops, they had mastered piloting skills and the physics of flight well enough to remain in the air and flying closed-course paths with multitudinous turns for over an hour at a time.

3) So, there was not one single person in the entire world who was even in the same universe of controlled flight with the Wrights, even five years later.

4) The Wrights also invented the aircraft propeller. They were the first to realize that a propeller had to be a rotating wing, not a paddle or "screw" patterned after water screws. They engineered their very first propellers with efficiencies rivaling those of 50 years later, using high-school trig, their own experimentally determined air density and pressure tables to replace the grossly inaccurate ones accepted by everyone else, and their own extensive tests of wing sections. They even used iterative and summation approaches that somewhat approached an integral calculus solution to their problem, since they did not know calculus. Whatever they did not know, but needed, they learned from books or taught themselves.  Without these props, they would have needed much greater power and accompanying structure and lift. No one else in the world was anything but clueless on this need for an air propeller, nor how to achieve it.

5) After inventing and engineering the aircraft propeller, perfecting 3-axis control (their legitimately patented invention), and creating sufficient lift, they computed and measured their drag and so designed a 4-cylinder IC engine of proper size and HP to meet the drag requirements in lifting their aircraft. Coordinating size, weight, and power was no small accomplishment. Their result was quite close. Charlie Taylor was instrumental in accomplishing the construction and perfection of their engine in the required time.

6) They were probably the most disciplined, methodical, and systematic scientist/engineers in any field up to their time. They tackled each problem in its necessary sequence and refused to be stampeded by anyone else to be first. They would not proceed further, before single-mindedly solving each successive problem. This program took them five years, and then another full year to make it practical, after the Kittyhawk flight (they had taken a step back). They knew that Langley's "Aerodrome" was under-structured and not sufficiently controllable to be practical. Langley relied too much on brute force, without learning in any sense how to fly. His own small steam model was IMO his best contribution.

7) As hinted above, the Wrights borrowed little from others except Charlie's fabricating skills and perhaps George Spratt's wind tunnel design (Spratt was perhaps the only other builder of early aircraft with an original system, but his did not reach near perfection for a number of years). Whatever they found, they tested, often casting it aside and re-engineering. The idea of fixed-wing airfoils from Lillienthal and others was their starting point. They re-wrote the book on air characteristics by doing their own research, and rejected his weight-shift control philosophy, as well as many subsequent ideas from well-meaning people, always developing their own solutions. Nothing went untested after the air pressure table fiasco of accepting what the rest of the world accepted.

8 ) The Wrights did other things besides bicycle mechanics and fabrication. They had written, published newspapers, and investigated a number of things that fascinated them. They were well-read for their time and astute students of nature. Their upbringing gave them high self discipline, family loyalty, and sense of practicality. They (especially Wilbur) were imaginative, and both were resourceful. They respected the efforts of others but were extremely self-reliant. Above all, they were modest and self-effacing. Their characters seem to have been above reproach.

9) That they labored five years not only to solve their problems of flight, but to actually test them and ultimately accomplish their goal is a measure of the great effort, discipline, resourcefulness, and sacrifice that entitled them not only to credit, but some compensation, as intended for all inventors. To think that through their earlier openness with people who visited from Langley's group and A.G. Bell's Aerial Experiment Assoc., people like Glenn Curtiss should profit alone by using their hard earned knowledge is a disservice to anyone who earns something through his own sweat and creativity. A.F. Zahm (a Langley Disciple), was relentless in dogging the Wrights and insisting that defense of their idea and patent were inspired by greed. He and Curtiss are primarily responsible for the tenacity of that belief today. We should remember that Curtiss not only made his initial success through the Wrights' efforts, but attempted to alter history by drastically altering earlier designs to make them fly, in order to weaken the Wright's claims, thus tarnishing his image  for me. There was nothing greedy nor unethical about the Wrights patent defenses. THEY did the work, and it was magnificent.

SK

[Clint Ormosen]

Just to be clear, I never said the Wrights weren't geniuses or the absolute first to control flight. They were. What I said was they thought very highly of themselves and were jerks.

Brett, their decades long court battles with Curtiss was specifically what I was thinking about. Pretty much if your machine had any kind of movable surface, you were going to hear from the Wright bros attorney claiming you violated their wing warping patent.

I'm not going to debate about it. I'm also not going to continue to read every historical document on the subject.
It's just MHO that they were genius a**holes.

[qaz049]

There are large sections of whole text books on innovation dedicated to the Wright Brothers mastery of the "scientific method".

But to my mind the reason that Wilbur had the critical insight into the need for control in the "roll plane" was the fact that they were very experienced bicycle riders and understood the need to roll the machine into corners to maintain stability.


The observation that this was how the large raptors controlled their flight (rather than by shifting their weight as suggested by Otto Lilienthal) was then much easier to make.

Ray
 

[M Spencer]

Oh Dear , this is like the ' who was the first to fly the Atlantic .  





If people were supposed to be nudists , they would have been born without any clothes .  



or we have ' Mad Richard ' ( He thinks he can fly    )

http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html
Note: if you tensioned the No 8 wire under the ribs , you would have the airfoil .
pity they didnt do a decent film on this rather than the Burt Munroe twaddle .



It took a while to perfect THIS :

Adheshives tecnology has improved over the centuries .  

[Serge_Krauss]

Yes, 'have seen the video and read (and own) "History by Contract," a well documented chronicle. 'also am aware of Pearse's efforts. I believe he flew uncontrolled for several hundred feet into trees and/or bushes. Clement Ader also left the ground in 1890 under power. Maxim's machine and other's were able to lift off. Jonathan Livinston Seagull was probably the first to fly the Atlantic - 'probably missed the breakfast flock in the jet stream.

Incidentally, detractor's constant references elsewhere to "only" 852' are silly. Ground speed and distance are not relevant; it's distance and time in the air that counts, and even the Wright Flyer was capable of much greater durations and higher altitudes. Whitehead's was probably the only other creditable attempt, but the history isn't reliable, and sufficient control is questionable. I give him credit, but don't think his mastery of the air was sufficient. As for the references to "jerks" and "assholes" (oh, excuse me, 'a**holes'), there is no evidence of that, and the fact that the Wrights did not capitulate in repeated infringements like good "sports" doesn't merit that kind of hostility.

SK

[M Spencer]

Pearses effort , when you consider his isolation , and that it was almost entirely home made / one man band ,wasnt to bad . Double acting flat twin four chamber pre lube .
He used to make a habit of landing on the hedges , takeing of from the roads .
IF he used the paddock , he often did the same .
But note , the machines comparable to a micro light , ailerons of a fashion .And the top sail panel & C.G. lends stability .

If you consider he WOULD be farting round like Munroe , adjusting& fine tuneing etc , as it didnt come in a box .
The flight path shown , he rolled down the paddock , took off , cleared the hedge which was above the take off hight ,
and turned down the ravine . If he was out of control he would have spun  into the river .
As the old drainpipe motor would falter as it overheated and consumed the lubricant , the ower dropped off .
But its likely at that stage he would have throttled it back to save wrecking it .
He flew down & along the ravine and landed on a gravel bed .
Besides ailerons & elevator , the seat slid - to vary the center of gravity - Like a hang glider . Fine tuneing / adjusting these to workable parameters would have taken some ( earlier ) experiments .
The machine was atop a hedge durring a Snow Storm , as in those years there was only the one severe one , it dates when it had taken off under its on power .

Pity the old geezers who did the replicer arnt entirely on to it and chickened out on test flights as it was ' to windy ' - perhaps the pilots . Im not sure anyone fully understands the machine as yet .
George Bolt , who ran the NewZealand Flying School at Kohimaramara pre W W 1 , dug the ( some ) remains out of Pearses farm tip around 1968 , which was the first evedance that roumours of a madman that flew
had any substance , outside the imediate observors . Bolts flying school ran the first twio Boings Built !

have a read of this : http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html

Was a two part artical in A.A.M. late 60s ? on Whitehead , going into some depth & detail .
Richard Pearse looked at the ' Flying Machine ' as a form of transport , and thought when he was able to fly from say Village to Village , he would have succesfully flown .
He considered his efforts experiments , being shy & retireing he avoided discussing them as he was subject to constant ridicule and considered a lunatic , by the more rustic in the district .Like Munroe at the time .

One way would be to knock together a R. C. version of it , but I consider that the wing was undercambered . There was a pile of debri at M.O.T.A.T. when I was very young . Rusty metal , rotted bamboo & meatal brackets ,
with lengths of rotting No 8 wire attacked to most all fittings , in the manner of stays as well as bindings . Im sure someone with the ability to design & make the engine & aircraft in the back of beyond in a shed on a treadle lathe
observed and handled the odd Hawk & Hawks Wing - analyiseing its characteristics . He was quite well read on Lienthals & others experiments . He thought he haddent flown ( to town & back ) He'd Just ' Got in the Air ' .
No big thing , others had done it often enough by then . As for the powerplant - he was likely embarresed as to its crudety and hardly considered it the hight of development as far as engines went .
However , he had filed various Patents . The one on Ailerons he let lapse .

The machines not entirely disimilar to the later Demoiselle

[Norm Faith Jr.]

Sorry, Clint, but you haven't read nearly enough legitimate history and engineering on the Wrights and others of their time. You don't know what they really did. The opinion is unfounded. Brett is absolutely correct. Every year at this time, I'm reminded that you aren't the only one either. You can search under my name here and at SSWF to find out a lot more about what the Wrights actually did. I find it hard to understand why anyone willing to express such a strong opinion would not at least do the research before historical revision and character attacks. For one thing, the wrights' notebooks are available for downloading in their entirety on line. I have posted select pages previously on this forum.

So, in addition to what Brett said...

1) Whitehead may or may not have flown - may well have done so in a limited way. What he did not do was master control and duration.

2) The Wrights deliberately made their flyer "control-configured" because of what happened to Lillienthal. They were the ONLY developers of aircraft with close to reasonable knowledge of c.p. travel, but were stubborn in their delay to switching to the aft tail for philosophical reasons; the pilot had to be in complete control. Nonetheless, before the world's aviators were doing more than uncontrolled hops, they had mastered piloting skills and the physics of flight well enough to remain in the air and flying closed-course paths with multitudinous turns for over an hour at a time.

3) So, there was not one single person in the entire world who was even in the same universe of controlled flight with the Wrights, even five years later.

4) The Wrights also invented the aircraft propeller. They were the first to realize that a propeller had to be a rotating wing, not a paddle or "screw" patterned after water screws. They engineered their very first propellers with efficiencies rivaling those of 50 years later, using high-school trig, their own experimentally determined air density and pressure tables to replace the grossly inaccurate ones accepted by everyone else, and their own extensive tests of wing sections. They even used iterative and summation approaches that somewhat approached an integral calculus solution to their problem, since they did not know calculus. Whatever they did not know, but needed, they learned from books or taught themselves.  Without these props, they would have needed much greater power and accompanying structure and lift. No one else in the world was anything but clueless on this need for an air propeller, nor how to achieve it.

5) After inventing and engineering the aircraft propeller, perfecting 3-axis control (their legitimately patented invention), and creating sufficient lift, they computed and measured their drag and so designed a 4-cylinder IC engine of proper size and HP to meet the drag requirements in lifting their aircraft. Coordinating size, weight, and power was no small accomplishment. Their result was quite close. Charlie Taylor was instrumental in accomplishing the construction and perfection of their engine in the required time.

6) They were probably the most disciplined, methodical, and systematic scientist/engineers in any field up to their time. They tackled each problem in its necessary sequence and refused to be stampeded by anyone else to be first. They would not proceed further, before single-mindedly solving each successive problem. This program took them five years, and then another full year to make it practical, after the Kittyhawk flight (they had taken a step back). They knew that Langley's "Aerodrome" was under-structured and not sufficiently controllable to be practical. Langley relied too much on brute force, without learning in any sense how to fly. His own small steam model was IMO his best contribution.

7) As hinted above, the Wrights borrowed little from others except Charlie's fabricating skills and perhaps George Spratt's wind tunnel design (Spratt was perhaps the only other builder of early aircraft with an original system, but his did not reach near perfection for a number of years). Whatever they found, they tested, often casting it aside and re-engineering. The idea of fixed-wing airfoils from Lillienthal and others was their starting point. They re-wrote the book on air characteristics by doing their own research, and rejected his weight-shift control philosophy, as well as many subsequent ideas from well-meaning people, always developing their own solutions. Nothing went untested after the air pressure table fiasco of accepting what the rest of the world accepted.

8 ) The Wrights did other things besides bicycle mechanics and fabrication. They had written, published newspapers, and investigated a number of things that fascinated them. They were well-read for their time and astute students of nature. Their upbringing gave them high self discipline, family loyalty, and sense of practicality. They (especially Wilbur) were imaginative, and both were resourceful. They respected the efforts of others but were extremely self-reliant. Above all, they were modest and self-effacing. Their characters seem to have been above reproach.

9) That they labored five years not only to solve their problems of flight, but to actually test them and ultimately accomplish their goal is a measure of the great effort, discipline, resourcefulness, and sacrifice that entitled them not only to credit, but some compensation, as intended for all inventors. To think that through their earlier openness with people who visited from Langley's group and A.G. Bell's Aerial Experiment Assoc., people like Glenn Curtiss should profit alone by using their hard earned knowledge is a disservice to anyone who earns something through his own sweat and creativity. A.F. Zahm (a Langley Disciple), was relentless in dogging the Wrights and insisting that defense of their idea and patent were inspired by greed. He and Curtiss are primarily responsible for the tenacity of that belief today. We should remember that Curtiss not only made his initial success through the Wrights' efforts, but attempted to alter history by drastically altering earlier designs to make them fly, in order to weaken the Wright's claims, thus tarnishing his image  for me. There was nothing greedy nor unethical about the Wrights patent defenses. THEY did the work, and it was magnificent.

SK

10. Precipitation Hardening...still used in the industry today. Kudos to Charlie Taylor

[Serge_Krauss]

Matt-

Thanks for the information on Pearse. I have read everything I could find, but you've presented more than those publications - more food for thought. No one I read mentioned the possiblilty of further control than was immediately evident from pictures.
I'd like to hear more.

SK

[M Spencer]

George Bolt with some ' old rubbish ' .

Wash type D flying Boat 

Walsh Bros Flying School . http://www.google.com/images?q=walsh+bros+flying+school&hl=en&tbm=isch&ei=6k22UpGuCMWFkAX7o4GICA&start=0&sa=N&surl=1
" Bolt was born in Dunedin in 1893.[1] He formed the Canterbury Aero Club in 1910, helping to make and fly gliders on the Cashmere hills. He used these to take aerial photographs in 1912.

In 1916 Bolt was hired by pioneer pilot Vivian Walsh as a mechanic at the Walsh Brothers Flying School at Kohimarama. He learnt to fly the brothers' Curtiss flying boats and the machines of their own design, including the Walsh brothers Type D, as well as the two Boeing and Westervelt floatplanes which were the first machines made by that company."

Infernal Combustion Engine . 



this page is about right : http://www.billzilla.org/pearce.htm

http://www.amazon.com/The-Riddle-Richard-Pearse-ZealandsPioneer/dp/0790003295   10 buck . 

The FLYING Contraption http:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqBTZ4qM2Wc  two

the Movie .

The 10 yr olds do a better rep than the old farts .

  theyve missed a few points  , but well . . . Then What .