On Dec. 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made the first successful controlled powered flight. Unlike countless attempts over thousands of years, the scene over the sand dunes of Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, N.C., was more a product of science than art. Until that date -- 106 years ago today -- such flight was largely a product of the imagination or of daring pilots lacking knowledge and much, if any of an extensive future.
Having the best understanding of the nature and potential of flight starts with an appreciation of the beginnings of flight, including the roles played by realities such as facts, teamwork, imagination and good fortune.
The Wright brothers were sons of a United Brethren Church bishop. Their father was not only a clergyman but was himself interested in scientific invention, like tinkering with a primitive typewriter. Their mother, a college graduate in mathematics, was also interested in science and allowed her young sons to use her kitchen as a laboratory.
Wilbur was the elder of the two brothers, and was born in Millville, Ind., in 1867, which was shortly after the Civil War. The family moved to Dayton, Ohio, where Orville was born in 1871. They grew up there. Each had a high school education. The brothers were very close and shared several enterprises before their history-making flight.
In 1889, they published a four page weekly newspaper, the West Side News. They built their own printing press. Wilbur acted as editor of the paper. It was fairly successful, but after a year they became interested in other work. Orville became interested in bicycling and won prizes in amateur meets. With inventive genius to improve Orville's bicycle for meets, the brothers opened a bicycle repair and sales shop in Dayton in 1892.
Their interest in flying was not a sudden thing. They learned of Otto Lilienthal's flights and read every available source on the problems of aerodynamics, including Octave Chanute's book, a work by L.P. Mouillard written in 1881, and pamphlets from the Smithsonian Institution composed by Samuel Langley, its secretary and also an aviation enthusiast.
This study formed the basis for their careful and logical step-by-step experiments. Because of the closeness of the brothers, no authority is able to state absolutely which brother might have been more responsible for their success or which invented what aspect of their planes. Their bicycle business was totally abandoned for aviation.
The Wrights constructed a Chanute-type glider, then, indicative of their careful planning, wrote to the U.S. Weather Bureau to inquire as to the best possible location to test the glider. The bureau suggested the outer banks of North Carolina, and there the Wrights ventured with their craft to prove or disprove recorded theories and to form theories of their own.
They studied wind and its effects on wing surfaces, the sustaining ability of varied type surfaces, and structure. They tested their glider and various kites. They sought for a sure and adequate means of control and guidance, of maintaining lateral and longitudinal balance. The recommended spot they had chosen was secluded. Although the site is repeatedly named Kitty Hawk, it was actually Kill Devil Hills, a place of high, natural sand dunes, a few miles from the settlement of Kitty Hawk, that the experiments and controlled powered flight first took place.
As the Weather Bureau had declared, its natural winds were ideal for glider experimentation. It was a place rich in private lore. Now it became a scientific source of the future. The Wright brothers worked on the glider for three seasons. They set new glider records during their experiments. In 1901, in a biplane with a vertical tail, they glided 389 feet with proper balance in a 27 mph wind. In 1902, their third glider flew successfully 1,000 times. It, too, was a biplane with a 32-foot wingspread, but now equipped with a movable tail used as a rudder control. The pilot lay prone across the lower wing during flight.
During the winter months, in Dayton, the Wrights worked with a wind tunnel.After their final season at Kill Devil Hills, convinced they were ready with the airframe, they returned to Dayton to build an engine to power the craft.
The Wrights planned to design their own gasoline engine. The names, Daimler, Benz, Rolls and Royce, already prominent in automobile progress and in the success of airships, were also soon to figure in heavier-than-air aviation history.
In September 1903, the Wrights returned to North Carolina to test their powered plane. It was a biplane, the wings slightly warped, with vertical bars and diagonal wire truss supports. It had front and rear rudder controls, and weighed 750 pounds. Its wings were 6 ¬½ feet wide, 6 feet apart, and had a span of more than 40 feet. They had designed and built a 4-cylinder, water-cooled gasoline engine. It had no sparkplugs, but used a fuel injection system, and developed 16 horsepower at 1,200 revolutions per minute. A drive shaft from the cylinder turned a gear, resembling a bicycle sprocket, connected to a second, smaller gear by a bicycle chain. The second gear revolved a flywheel that turned two propellers by a system of revolving belts and pulleys.
Bad weather and mechanical preparations postponed testing until Dec. 14, 1903. The Wright brothers had enlisted the aid of a local lifesaving station to help slide the plane up the highest dune at Kill Devil Hills. With Wilbur as pilot, the plane was catapulted from a launching ramp but rose too rapidly into a fierce wind, stalled, and fell to the ground. Fortunately, the craft and its pilot were only slightly damaged. The Wrights made repairs and early in the morning of Dec. 17 prepared to test the plane again.
There was a north wind of some 25 mph when the brothers and the men from the lifesaving station had the plane in place on the dune. One of the Coastguards Men and the Wrights had cameras to photograph the facts of the flight. At 10:35 a.m. Orville lay in place across the wing. The engine was started, allowed to warm for a few moments, and then the rope anchoring the plane to the ground was released. The plane steadily increased in speed and lifted into the air. It rose to 120 feet in a 12 second flight. Wilbur piloted the second flight, which took place immediately. The plane rose 195 feet in 11 seconds. The third trial, with Orville again the pilot, accomplished 200 feet in 15 seconds.
There was trouble with the rudder control. It was balanced too near the center and turned too far in both directions when the pilot attempted to direct flight. It was this difficulty that shortened the first three flights. The fourth was slightly longer. At noon, Wilbur flew the plane again and managed better control of the rudder so that the plane flew straight and level for 852 feet in 59 seconds. A sharp gust of wind, however, began the pitching antic of the plane again, causing Wilbur to land it. In the landing, only the front rudder frame was slightly damaged. It was a triumphant day for the Wrights and, as it turned out, for mankind.
The Wrights sent a telegram to their father in Dayton, Ohio, telling him to call the newspapers and announce the success of their flights. A few Dayton papers ran the announcement, but without comment. It was not a headline story. Most papers about the country ignored the news, assuming it was a hoax, as other claims had been.
The skepticism of the press and lack of public acclaim didn't discourage the brothers. They took the plane home to Dayton, and continued their experiments. They did not consider their flight of Dec. 17 a final triumph -- only a beginning. They worked constantly for improvement of the plane, for greater knowledge concerning the dynamics of flight, and for a surer system of control.
On March 23, 1903, before the first flight, they had applied to the U.S. Patent Office for a patent on their plane design. The patent had not yet been awarded and, with the lack of public acknowledgement of their achievement, the Wrights feared that someone with knowledge of aircraft design might view the photographs and effectively copy their plane's specifications. Their fears were not ungrounded. Even after the patent was granted in 1906, there was some pirating of their design. This resulted in a series of lawsuits.
In 1904 they built a second airplane. This one had an airframe similar to the first, but was powered by a 17 horsepower engine. They made 105 flights over a distance of approximately 20 miles.
Both remained active in the field until their deaths. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in Dayton in 1912. Orville lived to see the airplane move into a prominent place in modern life as a means of transportation and defense. He was, in fact, commissioned a major during World War I in the infant air force, then part of the United States Army Signal Corps. He died in Dayton in 1948.
Some historians maintain that the twentieth century was, first and foremost, the century of flight, when humanity at last achieved the ability to use the third dimension and the technology of flight for the betterment of society and national defense. The Wright brothers' remarkable achievement transformed reality. Since that chill and blustery morning, Air Force people have circled the globe nonstop and landed on the moon. In war and other conflicts, they have fought for freedom in foreign skies, both for the United States and for the country's allies. Today, they undertake air operations worldwide, thanks to teamwork and the understanding and use of various technologies.
While our Air Force will undoubtedly realize the same change and evolution that has occurred since the creation of the first military aircraft five years after Kitty Hawk, one characteristic will not -- the need for perceptive, dedicated, skilled and courageous men and women to carry on, extending the proud legacy of the past into the future.
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