Return to Old News home pageWilbur and Orville Wright first became interested in flying machines when they were 11 and 7 years old, in 1878. “Our father came into the house one evening with some object partly concealed in his hands,” they later remembered, “and before we could see what it was, he tossed it into the air. Instead of falling to the floor, as we expected, it flew across the room till it struck the ceiling, where it fluttered awhile, and finally sank to the floor. It was a little toy.... a light frame of cork and bamboo, covered with paper [and driven] by rubber bands under torsion. A toy so delicate lasted only a short time in the hands of small boys, but its memory was abiding.”
Intrigued by the flying toy, the brothers began copying it, building increasingly larger versions until the energy provided by rubber bands became insufficient to power them. “We finally became discouraged,” Wilbur wrote, “and returned to kite-flying, a sport to which we had devoted so much attention that we were regarded as experts.”
The two brothers were only average school students, and as they grew older they became more interested in tinkering with machinery than in furthering their educations. While still teenagers, they built their own printing press and began to publish a small newspaper. After graduating from high school they started a successful bicycle-building business in their home town of Dayton, Ohio.
At that time the only successful flying machines were balloons and gliders. The idea of building a heavier-than-air, self-propelled flying machine was considered preposterous by most people. In both America and Europe, oddball inventors occasionally built and flew small gliders, in which they frequently crashed and were killed. In 1896 Wilbur Wright read about the death of a famous German glider pilot. The article revived his childhood interest in flying. In 1899, he wrote to the Smithsonian Institution for information about aeronautics.
Orville Wright soon joined his brother in reading everything that could be found about aeronautical experiments. The brothers eagerly contacted a noted expert in the field, a retired engineer named Octave Chanute, who encouraged their interest and sent them detailed plans of small gliders he had successfully built and flown.
In the summer of 1900, the Wright brothers decided to try to build a glider of their own. Worried about the inherent dangers of flight, Wilbur originally proposed building a one-hundred fifty foot tall tower from which a glider could be hung from a rope, to practice steering and balancing. Octave Chanute discouraged this plan. Instead, he advised the brothers to find a place with sandy terrain for soft landings and steady prevailing winds. Wilbur contacted the U.S. Weather Bureau for information on the windiest parts of the country. Finally, he chose a beach along the Outer Banks of North Carolina called Kitty Hawk, where constant winds averaged 13 m.p.h.
The Wright brothers’ first glider weighed 50 pounds. With the help of some friends, the brothers took their glider to Kitty Hawk in October, 1900. There, they succeeded in flying it off of the top of some large sand dunes called the Kill Devil Hills. Living in a tent on the beach for several weeks, the brothers started by flying their glider as a kite at the end of strong ropes. The glider flew perfectly, but because of its size and the lift generated by its canvas-covered wings, two men were needed to hold onto it. After gaining confidence, Wilbur and Orville took turns climbing aboard the glider while the others flew it in the stiff wind. After this, a few attempts were made to launch the glider into free flight from the top of the hill. With a pilot aboard, two men would run wildly down the sand dunes holding onto the glider’s wings, letting go when it took flight. Free flights of up to 400 yards were achieved.
"Although the hours of practice we had hoped to obtain finally dwindled down to about two minutes,” Wilbur later wrote, “we were very much pleased with the general results of the trip, for setting out as we did, with almost revolutionary theories on many points, and an entirely untried form of machine, we considered it quite a point to be able to return without having our pet theories knocked in the head by the hard logic of experience, and out own brains dashed out in the bargain."
The Wright brothers returned to the Kill Devil Hills the next summer, in 1901. With them they brought a new glider, which was an enlarged version of the 1900 glider.
Wilbur wrote:
“The machine was completed and tried for the first time on the 27th of July in a wind blowing about 13 miles an hour. The operator having taken a position where the center of pressure was supposed to be, an attempt at gliding was made, but the machine turned downward and landed after going only a few yards.... In the second attempt the operator took a position several inches farther back, but the result was much the same. He kept moving farther and farther back with each trial, till finally he occupied a position nearly a foot back of that at which we had expected to find the center of pressure. The machine then sailed off and made an undulating flight of a little more than 300 feet. To the onlookers this flight seemed very successful, but to the operator it was known that the full power of the rudder had been required to keep the machine from either running into the ground or rising so high as to lose all headway.... It was apparent that something was radically wrong, though we were for some time unable to locate the trouble. In one glide the machine rose higher and higher till it lost all headway.... [The] machine then, in spite of his greatest exertions, manifested a tendency to dive downward almost vertically and strike the ground head on with frightful velocity. In this case a warning cry from the ground caused the operator to turn the rudder to its full extent and also to move his body slightly forward. The machine then settled slowly to the ground, maintaining its horizontal position almost perfectly, and landed without any injury at all.”
Having reasoned that a larger glider might tend to fly farther once it got into the air, the Wright brothers were disappointed when the new model performed no better than its predecessor, with a maximum sustained flight of only 389 feet.
Wilbur wrote:
“When we left Kitty Hawk at the end of 1901, we doubted that we would ever resume our experiments. Although we had broken the record for distance in gliding, and although Mr. Chanute, who was present at that time, assured us that our results were better than had ever before been attained... when we looked at the time and money which we had expended, and considered the progress made and the distance yet to go, we considered our experiments a failure. At this time I made the prediction that men would sometime fly, but that it would not be within our lifetime.”
Going over the test results of their first two gliders, Orville and Wilbur Wright realized that there was something wrong with their calculations. The enlarged glider had not generated the increased lift they had computed it should.
The idea of trying to build another new glider without any guarantee that it would fly better than their first efforts was financially unacceptable. To save money and better understand the forces they were dealing with, the Wright brothers decided to build a wind-tunnel in the back room of their Dayton bicycle shop, where they could test scale models of new glider designs. After many experiments, they discovered that a longer, narrower wing shape worked better than the short, broad wings on their first two gliders.
In 1902 the Wrights built a larger, refined version of their 1901 glider, based on the results of their wind-tunnel experiments. Testing it at Kitty Hawk in October, 1902, they met with success, gliding a record distance of 620 feet. Encouraged, the brothers decided to go one step farther and add an engine with a propeller to their glider.
They calculated that they would need an engine weighing less than 200 pounds, which would generate eight horsepower. They discovered that no such engine existed. All existing engines were either too heavy or two weak.
Orville Wright wrote:
“Finally we decided to undertake the building of the motor ourselves. We estimated that we could make one of four cylinders with 4 inch bore and 4 inch stroke, weighing not over two hundred pounds, including all accessories.... In just six weeks from the time the design was started, we had the motor on the block testing its power.”
Confident that their new engine was strong and light enough to power a glider, the brothers next had to design a propeller. No data on air propellers was available, so the Wright brothers found themselves working in a theoretical vacuum.
Orville wrote. “It was apparent that a propeller was simply an aeroplane traveling in a spiral course. As we could calculate the effect of an aeroplane traveling in a straight course, why should we not be able to calculate the effect of one traveling in a spiral course? At first glance this does not appear difficult but on further consideration it is hard to find even a point from which to make a start; for nothing about a propeller, or the medium in which it acts, stands still for a moment. The thrust depends upon the speed and the angle at which the blade strikes the air; the angle at which the blade strikes the air depends upon the speed at which the propeller is turning, the speed the machine is traveling forward and the speed at which the air is slipping backward depends upon the thrust exerted by the propeller, and the amount of air acted upon. When any one of these changes, it changes all the rest, as they are all interdependent upon one another.... Our minds became so obsessed with it that we could do little other work. We engaged in innumerable discussions, and often after an hour or so of heated argument, we would discover that we were as far from agreement as when we started, but that both had changed to the other's original position in the discussion. After a couple of months of this study and discussion, we were able to follow the various reactions in their intricate relations long enough to begin to understand them. We realized that the thrust generated by a propeller when standing stationary was no indication of the thrust when in motion. The only way to really test the efficiency of propeller would be to actually try it on the machine.”
The Wright brothers left Dayton and arrived at their camp at the Kill Devil Hills on September 25, 1903. They were joined by Octave Chanute, who was keenly interested in the brothers’ chances of achieving flight. the team spent several weeks putting finishing touches on their airplane, and assembling a portable monorail track, on which the aircraft could glide smoothly down the sides of the sand dunes.
Orville wrote:
“Just as the machine was ready for test, bad weather set in. It had been disagreeably cold for several weeks, so cold that we could scarcely work on the machine some days. But now we began to have rain and snow, and a wind of 25 to 30 miles blew for several days from the north.... On November 28, while giving the motor a run indoors, we thought we again saw something wrong with one of the propeller shafts. On stopping the motor, we discovered that one of the tubular shafts had cracked!
“Immediate preparation was made for returning to Dayton to build another set of shafts.... Wilbur remained in camp while I went to get the new shafts. I did not get back to camp again till Friday, the 11th of December. Saturday afternoon the machine was again ready for trial, but the wind was so light, a start could not have been made from level ground.”
On Monday, December 14th, was another calm day, and the brothers decided to attempt a flight from the side of the highest of the Kill Devil Hills. Five members of the nearby Kill Devil Life Saving Station helped the brothers push their flying machine a quarter mile from their campsite to the top of the hill.
The Wright brothers laid a monorail track 150 feet up the side of the hill on a nine degree slope. By launching their machine downhill on the track, with its twin propellers racing, they expected to get up to flying speed.
Orville wrote, “When the machine had been fastened with a wire to the track, so that it could not start until released by the operator, and the motor had been run to make sure that it was in condition, we tossed a coin to decide who should have the first trial. Wilbur won. I took a position at one of the wings intending to help balance the machine as it ran down the rack. But when the restraining wire was slipped, the machine started off so quickly I could stay with it only a few feet. After a 35- to 40-foot run, it lifted from the rail. But it was allowed to turn up too much. It climbed a few feet, stalled, and then settled to the ground near the foot of the hill, 105 feet below. My stop watch showed that I had been in the air just 3 l/2 seconds. In landing the left wing touched first. The machine swung around, dug the skids into the sand and broke one of them. Several other parts were also broken, but the damage to the machine was not serious.... On the whole, we were much pleased.”
Two days were consumed in making repairs, then another flight was attempted. According to Orville Wright:
“Wilbur, having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the 14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. After running the motor a few minutes to heat it up, I released the wire that held the machine to the track, and the machine started forward in the wind. Wilbur ran at the side of the machine, holding the wing to balance it on the track. Unlike the start on the 14th, made in a calm, the machine, facing a 27-mile wind, started very slowly. Wilbur was able to stay with it till it lifted from the track after a forty-foot run. One of the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet. The slow forward speed of the machine over the ground is clearly shown in the picture by Wilbur's attitude. He stayed along beside the machine without any effort.
“The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic, partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine. The control of the front rudder was difficult on account of its being balanced too near the center. This gave it a tendency to turn itself when started; so that it turned too far on one side and then too far on the other. As a result the machine would rise suddenly to about ten feet, and then as suddenly dart for the ground. A sudden dart when a little over a hundred feet from the end of the track...ended the flight. As the velocity of the wind was over 35 feet per second and the speed of the machine over the ground against this wind ten feet per second, the speed of the machine relative to the air was over 45 feet per second, and the length of the flight was equivalent to a flight of 540 feet made in calm air. This flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.”
Three more flights were made that day, with Orville and Wilbur taking turns as pilot. After the fourth flight, the Wright brothers and their assistants took a break. “While we were standing about discussing this last flight, a sudden strong gust of wind struck the machine and began to turn it over. Everybody made a rush for it. Wilbur, who was at one end, seized it in front, Mr. Daniels and I, who were behind, tried to stop it by holding to the rear uprights. All our efforts were in vain. The machine rolled over and over. Daniels, who had retained his grip, was carried along with it, and was thrown about head over heels inside of the machine. Fortunately he was not seriously injured, though badly bruised in falling about against the motor, chain guides, etc. The ribs in the surface of the machine were broken, the motor injured and the chain guides badly bent, so that all possibility of further flights with it for that year were at an end.”
In the following years, the Wright brothers completed thousands of flights in improved versions of their airplane. Although they held patents on several of their innovations, drawn out legal battles ensued when other inventors began stealing their ideas to build newer airplanes. Wilbur Wright died of a typhoid infection on May 30, 1912, at the age of 45. Orville went on to negotiate an agreement with the U.S. Government to build airplanes for military use during World War I, and died of natural causes in 1948, aged 77.
SOURCES:
The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Edited by Marvin W. McFarland. 2 volumes. McGraw Hill,1953.
To Fly is Everything. by Gary Bradshaw. World Wide Web: http://hawaii.cogsci.uiuc.edu/Invent/airmuseum.html
Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Online. World Wide Web: http://hfm.umd.umich.edu/
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