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edge. It is likely that this informan a chilly North Carolina tion became the basis for the design morning 100 years ago, two of their early gliders. It also led them brothers from Dayton, Ohio, atto contact Octave Chanute, an tempted a feat others considered imAmerican engineer who was possible, and their success changed leading the way for experiments in the world. aeronautics. Today we take air travel for granted, and rarely give a second Three problems thought to our capability to fly literThe Wrights realized from the beally anywhere in the world. But one ginning that they had to solve three hundred years ago, the endeavors problems: of the Wrights and other aeronau Balance and control. tical pioneers were widely viewed Wing shape and resulting lift. as foolhardy. Although some of the Application of power to the worlds most creative minds were structure. converging on a solution to the flight Of the three, they correctly recogproblem, well-respected scientists nized that balance and control were Materials in the Wright Flyer such as Lord Kelvin thought flight the least understood and probably impossible. In fact, Simon Newcomb, proThe flight of the Wright Flyer was the most critical. To solve that fessor of mathematics and as- the first in the history of the world problem, they turned to gliding experiments. tronomy at Johns Hopkins University and vice-president of the in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power The 1900 glider National Academy of Sciences, had After a few preliminary experideclared only 18 months before the into the air in full flight, had sailed successful flight at Kitty Hawk, forward without reduction of speed, ments with small kites, they built Flight by machines heavier than air and had finally landed at a point as their first glider in 1900. It was a biplane with a wingspan of 16 feet, a is unpractical and insignificant, if not high as that at which it started. horizontal elevator in the front, no utterly impossible. Orville Wright tail, and wing tips that could be Sometimes it is important to not warped to provide control. The know what is impossible. Orville Walter M. Griffith glider was essentially a kite with ash and Wilbur Wright, bicycle meMaterials and Manufacturing Directorate ribs, metal connections, and cloth chanics and builders by trade, first Air Force Research Laboratory coverings. The total cost of the glider became seriously interested in flight Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was about $15. in the 1890s. They were aware of the Dayton, Ohio Realizing that they needed a more gliding experiments of German enconstant wind than possible in gineer Otto Lilienthal from pubDayton, they sought guidance from the Weather Bureau lished accounts, some in popular magazines of the day. in Washington, D.C. Based on information about constant They were shocked by his death in 1896 in a gliding accistrong winds, they traveled to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, dent. Also aware of Samuel Langleys experiments in the at the end of the bicycling season. Experiments during this United States, Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian in 1899 for trip convinced them that their wing warping concept was a list of literature references that would further his knowl-

THE WRIGHT STUFF:

Four men, two boys and a dog look on at Kitty Hawk on December 14, 1903, moments before the first unsuccessful flight trial. (Photo courtesy Wright State University Library Special Collections)

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adequate to provide control, but otherwise the gliding results were less successful than they had hoped. The glider wing The brothers returned to North Carolina in the Fall of 1901 with a larger glider of similar design, with a 22-foot wing span, but the poor gliding results made them question the published scientific data on which their wing designs were based. Back in their Dayton bicycle shop in early 1902, they experimented extensively with a

homemade wind tunnel and tested more than 200 wing shapes. The data compiled during these experiments provided the Wrights with more advanced aeronautical understanding than anyone else in history. They realized that the tables of lift and drag coefficients published by Lilienthal were applicable only in special cases. Based on the corrected data, they designed a new wing. It was less curved and had an aspect ratio (wing length:chord length) of 6:1, and wing warping provided more control. The glider maintained a forward elevator, but fixed vertical fins were added in the rear. Excited by the new design, the Wrights left for Kitty Hawk in September 1902, even before the bicycle season ended. The new wing design was validated: the glider flew magnificently. During the following two months, the Wright brothers made almost 1000

glides, some covering more than 600 feet. By the time they returned to Dayton, they had solved the major problems of control in the air. Full of new confidence, all they needed was an engine, a problem they viewed as relatively easy to solve. Engine trouble The brothers wrote to a number of automotive companies in search of an internal combustion engine capable of providing 8 horsepower and weighing less than 180 pounds. To their surprise, no such engine was available (although some believe a few companies did not want to be associated with attempts at manned flight). Not to be denied, they designed their own engine and built it, with the able assistance of their mechanic, Charles Taylor. The engine had four water-cooled cylinders. Cast iron cylinders were fitted into a single cast-aluminum crankcase. Buckeye Iron and Brass Foundry in Dayton cast the crankcase. The Al-9Cu alloy, designated Alloy A, had a tensile strength of 18,000 psi. The radiator was made from lengths of tin speaking tube, like the tubing used in apartment buildings for intercom systems. The crankshaft was rough cut from a slab of high-carbon steel, and lathe-turned to provide precise size and smoothness. Pistons and cylinder barrels were made of cast iron. Taylor did all the machining in the bicycle shop, and completed the basic engine in six weeks. Gasoline was fed by gravity from a small tank just below the upper wing. Two valves in the copper fuel line were used for metering the flow and for shutoff to stop the engine. Raw gasoline entered a chamber next to the cylinders, mixing with incoming air. A coil and four dry-cell batteries provided the initial spark for starting. A twenty-six-pound flywheel drove a low-tension magneto to supply the current while the engine was running. By retarding or advancing the timing of the spark, the speed could be controlled somewhat. The 1903 engine provided 16 horsepower immediately after starting, but that dropped to 12 horsepower after a few minutes. The basic engine weighed about 140 pounds, less than the 180 pounds originally specified. Taking advantage of the extra power and lower weight, they added struc-

The Wright Brothers bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, was the site of most of the experimentation and development of the first airplane. The shop is currently at Greenfield Village in Michigan. On the research done here, Fred Kelly writes in his biography of the Wrights (pp 45-46): it is doubtful if the difficulties and full value of the Wrights scientific researches within their bicycle shop are yet appreciated. The world knows they were the first to build a machine capable of sustained flight and the first to actually fly, but it is not fully aware of all the tedious, grueling scientific laboratory work they had to do before flight was possible. (Photo courtesy Wright State University Library Special Collections)

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tural reinforcement to the air- Summary of materials in the 1903 Wright Flyer frame. Their total investment in White spruce Spars, ribs, struts, rear rudder, forward elevataor, the engine was about $300.
Straight grain and kiln dried engine support, propellers Ash Ribs, end bows (steam bent) Spruce propellers Straight grain and kiln dried The Wrights had assumed that the technology of propellers was Steel wire Wing and truss wire (0.091 inches diameter, #13 W&M well established, since they had Hand drawn gage); Trailing edge wire (0.054 inches diameter, #17 W&M gage) been used in marine applications for a long time. However, a quick Aluminum alloy Al-9Cu Engine crankcase study of the literature, their usual High-carbon steel Crankshaft (machined from a 100 lb block), approach to any problem, miscellaneous hardware showed that the theory was not Connecting rods, 1 1/8 inch with cast bronze ends developed sufficiently. Their re- Steel tubing Contacts in engine cylinders for spark generation search demonstrated that the Platinum problem was more intricate than Tin tubing Radiator originally thought. After months Unbleached muslin Wing covers, Pride of the West trade name, with of calculations and discussions 108 threads per inch with each other, they concluded Note 1: In early experiments, pine was substituted for spruce, but it failed in hard landings. that that propellers were essen- Note 2: Why Spruce and Ash? tially rotary wings generating From a May, 2003, interview with Nick Engler, University of Cincinnati: Mankind had been working wood for thrust aerodynamically. The ac- about 5000 years before the Wright brothers began building airplanes and the relative properties of wood species were well tual calculations were more com- known by the turn of the nineteenth century. The relative hardness, strength, elasticity, and bending properties of spruce plex than those for the lifting sur- and other woods were well known and published. The Wright brothers had access to and probably hands-on experience with this information through their maternal faces, because air speed changes grandfather, a master carriage maker. Mr. Koerner didnt just build buggies, he manufactured them in a ten-building comas a function of distance from the plex on his farm that included a forge and a foundry. Since the Wright brothers mother Susan was the son her father never hub. Based on theory and con- had, he taught her a great deal of the lore, then both she and her father passed it on to Wilbur and Orville. cepts they evolved, the Wrights blocks in between. Each spar and rib that he operated with his left hand. completed a pair of highly efficient floated within stitched fabric pockets, Cash outlay for building the Flyer propellers by June of 1903. making the muslin covering an intewas less than $1000, including travel The two 8-1/2 foot-long propellers gral part of the structure. (The previous expenses to Kitty Hawk. This cost spun in opposite directions to neuglider wings had fabric only on the top compares to over $70,000 that Samuel tralize gyroscopic effects. They were surface, with the rib pockets exposed Langley spent in building his largely made of three laminations of spruce, below.) This ingenious feature made unsuccessful Aerodrome in the same shaped with a hatchet and a the aircraft light, strong, and flexible. timeframe. drawknife. To prevent splitting, the In 1903, they added of a layer of tips were covered with varnished fabric covering to the bottom of the Kitty Hawk, 1903 fabric. wing surfaces, which provided a Orville and Wilbur Wright left To minimize disturbance of the airmuch smoother lifting surface that enDayton for Kitty Hawk in September. flow over the lifting surfaces, the prohanced efficiency. The muslin was They spent over two months assempellers were located behind the again left unsealed to save weight. The bling and testing their new aircraft and wings., and were attached to the enWrights applied the fabric with the dealing with a series of setbacks. Slipgine through an arrangement of weave on the bias to enhance the stiffping bicycle sprockets were fixed with sprockets and chains. To reduce viness of the wings. melted tire cement. Cracking propeller bration, the chains were encased in The wingspan was 40 feet four shafts proved to be a more serious tubes. The Wrights decided on a inches, and the wing chord was six feet, problem, finally requiring Orville to transmission ratio of twenty-three to making the total wing area over 500 travel back to Dayton to manufacture eight, meaning that for every 23 rosquare feet. The elevator on the new a new, more robust set. First rain and tations of the engine, the propeller romachine was a biplane version of the later cold also caused delays. Finally, tated eight times. elliptical surface used in the previous in mid-December they were ready. year. Mounted in front as before, it had A coin flip on December 14 gave The airframe a more substantial spruce framework. the first flight opportunity to Wilbur. With the wing design, engine, and The elevator extended below the wings They invited the people of the propellers completed, they began conto serve as landing skids for the larger, neighborhood to be on hand to be struction of the airframe in midmuch heavier machine. witnesses, but only a few braved the summer. The configuration was simThe movable vertical tail was also chilly December wind. On the first ilar to the canard biplanes of their a double surface. The basic controls, attempt, the machine rose too steepgliders. The 1903 Flyer was constructed similar to the 1902 glider, included a ly, and Wilbur, as yet unfamiliar with of spruce and ash covered with Pride of padded hip cradle in which the pilot the touchy controls, stalled the aircraft the West muslin, also used on the 1901 lay, which actuated the wing warping and it fell back into the sand after a and 1902 gliders. The ribs on the 1903 and the coupled rudder. The pilot little more than three seconds. A wings were built up from two thin controlled the elevator with a lever damaged elevator assembly prevented strips of ash, with small separator

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This short description of the Wright Brothers efforts will no doubt stir curiosity in some. The reader is encouraged to seek additional information in the following, upon which much of this article is based: Tom D. Crouch, The Bishops Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1989. Peter L. Jakab, Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention, Smithsonian-Institution Press, Washington, 1990. Marvin W. McFarland, The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Ayer Company, Salem, NH, 1990. http://www.libraries.wright.edu/ special/wright_brothers/ www.wright-brothers.org

any further attempts that day. Three days later the repairs were complete. The wind was blowing at more than 20 mph. Orville lay face down in the cradle on the lower wing. The engine revved and the Flyer pulled against a restraining wire. When it was released, the Flyer surged forward, down the 60-foot launching track, with Wilbur running alongside. Orville raised the forward elevator and the machine rose and stayed aloft for 12 seconds, finally coming to rest 120 feet from its launching point. It was 10:35 a.m. on December 17, 1903. The age of manned flight had begun. Three additional flights were attempted that morning, the longest of which, with Wilbur at the controls, covered 852 feet in 59 seconds. The wind flipped the Flyer over and damaged it beyond repair before other attempts could be made.

However, the Wrights were delighted with their success, and headed back to Dayton to spend Christmas with their family. Postscript The Wright brothers continued to develop their flying machine, experimenting with improvements in 1904 and 1905 at Huffman Prairie, about eight miles from Dayton. It was not until their 51st flight of 1904 that they exceeded their longest flight in 1903. By the end of 1905, though, the Flyer III, which many call the worlds first practical airplane, was capable of turning and banking, doing figureeights, and flying for astonishing distances. By the end of the summer, they were making flights that ended only when their fuel was exhausted. On October 23, 1906, nearly three years after the first flights, Alberto SantosDumont managed to leave the ground for 200 feet near Paris, becoming the s first man to fly in Europe.

The first flight on December 17, 1903 covered 120 feet in 12 seconds. Orville is piloting and Wilbur is running alongside. John T. Daniels took the photo with Orvilles camera. (Photo courtesy Wright State University Library Special Collections)

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