Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully made the first four sustained flights of a heavier-than-air machine under the control of the pilot at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, 106 years ago today.
This photograph of the first attempt (click to enlarge) “shows Orville Wright at the controls of the machine, lying prone on the lower wing with hips in the cradle which operated the wing-warping mechanism. Wilbur Wright running alongside to balance the machine, has just released his hold on the forward upright of the right wing.” (Source: Library of Congress)
As with riding a bicycle, the key was control.
While other aviators searched in vain for “inherent stability,” Orville and Wilbur created a method for the pilot to control the airplane. The real breakthrough was their ingenious invention of “wing-warping.” If the pilot wanted to bank a turn to the left, the wings could be warped to provide more lift on the wings on the right side of the biplane. The brothers worked out a system for 3-axis control that is still used today on fixed-wing aircraft: left and right like a car or boat (a rudder), up and down (the 1903 Wright “Flyer” had its elevator in the front), and banking a turn as birds do (or like leaning to one side while riding a bicycle). Working with kites in 1899, the brothers figured out and tested their systems for 3-axis control, and in the next two years did experiments with gliders at Kitty Hawk, and then with their wind tunnel, to find the proper lift. They found that the formula for lift – namely the “Smeaton coefficient” that everybody had been using for over 100 years – was wrong. By the time they built their 1902 glider, they had worked out all the problems and they knew it would fly. The 1902 glider was actually the first fully controlled heavier-than-air craft, and some historians believe it was the main invention – essentially the invention of the airplane – and more important than the 1903 biplane. So it was on March 23, 1903 – nine months before the famous first airplane flight of December 1903 – that Orville and Wilbur Wright filed a patent application for a “Flying Machine.” The patent was awarded May 22, 1906. That’s when the aviation world started to copy the Wright’s designs, and from that point remarkable progress was made in the development of powered flight.
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On Monday, December 14, 1903, when both the Wright flyer and the wind were ready, the brothers decided that Wilbur would take the first turn as pilot for the historic flight. Some readers might suppose that this was because Wilbur was older, or because he had taken the early lead in the project (though later there was an equalization), or perhaps because of some difference in piloting skills. It was none of these. It was decided by flipping a coin.
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Two days later, repairs had been completed, but the wind wasn’t right. The following day, Thursday, December 17, 1903, would be the historic day. They realized it would be better to lay the track on flat ground. That and the strong (22-27 m.p.h.) winds meant that Orville (whose turn it was to pilot) was riding the plane along the track, at a speed that allowed Wilbur to keep up easily, steadying the right wing as Orville had done 3 days earlier. Just after the Wright flyer lifted off the monorail, the famous picture was taken, possibly the most reproduced photograph ever, which Orville had set up (having asked one of the men simply to squeeze the shutter bulb after takeoff). The flight wasn’t much – 12 seconds, 120 feet. But it was the first controlled, sustained flight in a heavier-than-air craft, one of the great moments of the century.
The brothers flew 3 more times that day, covering more distance as they got used to the way the large front “rudder” (the elevator) responded in flight. Orville’s second flight was 200 feet, and Wilbur’s before it nearly as long. But the final flight of the day carried Wilbur 852 feet in 59 seconds.
Source: Wright brothers history: First Airplane Flight, 1903. There’s more.
The Wright Brothers were not romantics taken with the dream of flight. They were entrepreneurs looking to make a buck. They tried a printing business and then bicycles, which at the time were thought to be the transportation mode of the future. When they got into aviation, they took advantage of the idealists around them, writing to others who were farther along in developing aircraft, who generously shared information and data with the Wrights. The brothers shared nothing. One of the reasons they chose Kitty Hawk was that no one would intrude — and copy — their research.
After the first flights, the Wrights locked their airplane where no one could see it and went to work protecting their intellectual property. They patented every aspect of flight, including what are now thought of as basic laws of aerodynamics — for example, that pushing air one way will cause the airplane to move in the opposite direction. They kept their plane locked up long enough that others began to doubt that the Wrights had flown at all. When the patent paperwork was accepted, the Wrights started flying in public. They also lowered the boom on any aircraft developers — including those who had helped the Wrights design the Flyer — who they felt were infringing on their patents.
The Wrights were so strict in their interpretation of their ownership of aviation that they became a threat to national security. At the outset of World War I, American aviation was badly behind the rest of the world. Planes in the US could not be manufactured without the Wright’s permission. Innovations built on the Wright’s basic knowledge could not be put into aircraft. Glen Curtis’s improved system or flaps and ailerons — which is still in use today — ran afoul of the Wright’s patents even though it was completely different from the Wright’s wing warping system because it still involved pushing air in one direction to move the plane in the opposite direction.
To establish an American air corps, the War Department had to buy planes from overseas, beyond the reach of the Wrights’ patents. Because the Europeans were already at war, the United States got the worst planes, and scores if not hundreds of American pilots died as a result.
When the Wrights donated their Flyer to the Smithsonian Institution, they demanded and received guarantees that the Smithsonian would not in any way question the fairly dubious claim that the Wrights had been the first to fly. (It all depends on how you define “flight.”) To this day, the Smithsonian will not in any exhibit mention earlier European flights or even hold a symposium on how flight developed, for fear that the Wright Family will be offended and withdraw the Flyer from the museum.
Wow Tom, fascinating stuff.
All in favor or renaming the blog “Poor Thomas, An Almanack” and giving Tom the keys, raise your hand.
(I joke, because that’s mostly what Tom and I do with each others blogs, but really Tom good stuff. Thank you.)
Wow, Tom doesn’t like the Wright brothers. But his rant isn’t entirely accurate.
The patents weren’t finalized until 1914, more than ten years after their first flights. As businessmen (which, to me, isn’t a pejorative term), of course they tried to patent every aspect of their plane that they could. Why not?
What’s more, I don’t know how you could say they “locked up” their flyer. After the first flight, they worked for a couple of years in Dayton – using a huge pasture just outside town – to develop the Wright II and Wright III. They also participated in public exhibitions of the plane, including one in 1909 where Wilbur flew around the Statue of Liberty.
As for the Smithsonian, Orville’s problem with the museum wasn’t just ego. He had a long-standing fued with the organization because it had earlier refused to acknowledge the Wright’s precedence, giving credit to the developer of another flyer – credit which was eventually disproven. So he had a reason for being persnickety about his place in the museum’s version of history.
Also, you can’t say “the Wrights” when you talk about any of the later developments with the patents, the war, or the museum. Wilbur died in 1912.
Of course, the Smithsonian’s role in all this was not disinterested bystander. The third secretary of the Smithsonian was Samuel P. Langley, the government-supported ($50,000 from the Army) developer of a prototype aircraft — which crashed twice in December 1903.
The Smithsonian gave credit to their man Langley and downplayed the Wrights until 1942, when the Institution eventually “acknowledged the injury caused to the Wrights by the false claims. It also repudiated the claims as to the airworthiness of [Langley’s] aerodrome and it endorsed the claim that the Wrights were the inventors of the airplane.”
It was only when Orville Wright’s will was read in 1948, that the Smithsonian learned its apology had been accepted. A codicil to the will give the Flyer to the Smithsonian, where it can be seen today.
Source: Samuel P. Langley: Aviation Pioneer, Smithsonian Institution.
I like the Wrights just fine and don’t think that saying they got into aviation for the money is an insult. I’ll admit it’s an oversimplification, because people do things for a variety of reasons. Certainly they were also attracted to the engineering problem that flight presented. The fact remains that they got into flight as a business, the same way they got into the printing and bicycle businesses. (They were not so much bicycle mechanics as they were bicycle manufacturers, as manufacturing was understood before Henry Ford’s establishment of the assembly line.)
And they did, in fact, “lock up” their flyer, shielding it from competitive eyes through the winter of 1903-4 while they filed their patent claim, not going public on Huffman Prairie outside Dayton until after the patent had been filed. (The filing date of the patent is what’s important, not the date when the patent is granted.) During this period, while seeking publicity for their flight, they declined to provide even cursory details on the plane itself to the very same people — including Langley — who had so generously shared details of their own experiments with the Wrights and other aspiring aviators.
As for the donation of the Flyer to the Smithsonian, the contract authorizing the transfer includes the following: “Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight.”