Wright brothers

[3][4][5] They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills.In mid-year, Chicago engineer and aviation authority Octave Chanute brought together several men who tested various types of gliders over the sand dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan.Author James Tobin asserts, "it is impossible to imagine Orville, bright as he was, supplying the driving force that started their work and kept it going from the back room of a store in Ohio to conferences with capitalists, presidents, and kings.The death of British aeronaut Percy Pilcher in another hang gliding crash in October 1899 only reinforced their opinion that a reliable method of pilot control was the key to successful – and safe – flight.[14]: 166 The Wright brothers' plan thus differed sharply from more experienced practitioners of the day, notably Ader, Maxim, and Langley, who all built powerful engines, attached them to airframes equipped with untested control devices, and expected to take to the air with no previous flying experience.[14]: 167–168 Some of these other investigators, including Langley and Chanute, sought the elusive ideal of "inherent stability", believing the pilot of a flying machine would not be able to react quickly enough to wind disturbances to use mechanical controls effectively.They adopted the basic design of the Chanute-Herring biplane hang glider ("double-decker" as the Wrights called it), which flew well in the 1896 experiments near Chicago, and used aeronautical data on lift that Otto Lilienthal had published.[52] The "balances" they devised and mounted inside the tunnel to hold the wings looked crude, made of bicycle spokes and scrap metal, but were "as critical to the ultimate success of the Wright brothers as were the gliders.The wind tunnel tests, made from October to December 1901, were described by biographer Fred Howard as "the most crucial and fruitful aeronautical experiments ever conducted in so short a time with so few materials and at so little expense".[56] In their September 1908 Century Magazine article, the Wrights explained, "The calculations on which all flying machines had been based were unreliable, and ... every experiment was simply groping in the dark ... We cast it all aside and decided to rely entirely upon our own investigations.After the shafts were replaced (requiring two trips back to Dayton), Wilbur won a coin toss and made a three-second flight attempt on December 14, 1903, stalling after takeoff and causing minor damage to the Flyer.[citation needed] In Paris, however, Aero Club of France members, already stimulated by Chanute's reports of Wright gliding successes, took the news more seriously and increased their efforts to catch up to the brothers.[82] After Orville suffered a bone-jarring and potentially fatal crash on July 14, they rebuilt the Flyer with the forward elevator and rear rudder both enlarged and placed several feet farther away from the wings.In years to come, Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep.The lack of splashy eyewitness press coverage was a major reason for disbelief in Washington, DC, and Europe, and in journals like Scientific American, whose editors doubted the "alleged experiments" and asked how U.S. newspapers, "alert as they are, allowed these sensational performances to escape their notice.The American military, having recently spent $50,000 on the Langley Aerodrome – a product of the nation's foremost scientist – only to see it plunge twice into the Potomac River "like a handful of mortar", was particularly unreceptive to the claims of two unknown bicycle makers from Ohio.[89] Thus, doubted or scorned, the Wright brothers continued their work in semi-obscurity, while other aviation pioneers like Santos-Dumont, Henri Farman, Léon Delagrange, and American Glenn Curtiss entered the limelight.It was not till May of this year that experiments were resumed at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina ..."The brothers turned their attention to Europe, especially France, where enthusiasm for aviation ran high, and journeyed there for the first time in 1907 for face-to-face talks with government officials and businessmen.Facing much skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a "bluffeur", Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908, at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France.His first flight lasted only 1 minute 45 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Blériot.On October 8 in College Park, Maryland, Wilbur began pilot training for Army officers Frank P. Lahm and Frederick E. Humphreys, joined later that month by Benjamin Foulois.From 1910 until his death from typhoid fever in 1912, Wilbur took the leading role in the patent struggle, travelling incessantly to consult with lawyers and testify in what he felt was a moral cause, particularly against Curtiss, who was creating a large company to manufacture aircraft.[104][113][114] The patent, titled Aërial Locomotion &c, described several engine improvements and conceptual designs and included a technical description and drawings of an aileron control system and an optional feature intended to function as an autopilot.[119] There were not many customers for airplanes, so in the spring of 1910 the Wrights hired and trained a team of salaried exhibition pilots to show off their machines and win prize money for the company – despite Wilbur's disdain for what he called "the mountebank business".[14]: Chapter 31, "The Mountebank Game" The Wright Company transported the first known commercial air cargo on November 7, 1910, by flying two bolts of dress silk 65 miles (105 km) from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio, for the Morehouse-Martens Department Store, which paid a $5,000 fee.Ida Holdgreve, a dress maker, applied for the role and became head seamstress at the Wright Company Factory, sewing the fabric "for the wings, stabilizers, rudders, fins and I don't know what all" of the planes produced there.The Institution did not reveal the extensive Curtiss modifications, but Orville Wright learned of them from his brother Lorin and a close friend of his and Wilbur's, Griffith Brewer, who both witnessed and photographed some of the tests.The agreement reads, in part:[127][128] 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 1903 Wright Aeroplane, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight.If this agreement is not fulfilled, the Flyer can be reclaimed by the heir of the Wright brothers.On April 19, 1944, the second production Lockheed Constellation, piloted by Howard Hughes and TWA president Jack Frye, flew from Burbank, California, to Washington, D.C., in 6 hours and 57 minutes (2,300 mi, 330.9 mph).[141] Orville expressed sadness in an interview years later about the death and destruction brought about by the bombers of World War II:[142] We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth.