How the World Learned the Wright way to Fly

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 12, 2000 | by Robert G. Jr. Robinson

Although Wilbur and Orville Wright were largely self-taught, they were blessed with first-rate minds. Piloting gliders prepared them to fly the world's first airplane 100 years ago.

One hundred years ago, Wilbur Wright and his kid brother, Orville, embarked on one of the most enthralling adventures of all time: uncovering the mysteries of powered human flight. Starting with a series of letters in May 1900, working part time and using their own meager funds, the Ohio brothers took less than

four years to accomplish their goal -- four successive flights, each longer than the last, on a bitter-cold December day.

The rest is history, as aviation quickly shrank the globe, tying together nations and states in a matter of hours, instead of days and weeks. Today, flying has become an unquestioned fact of life.

That the brothers were able to solve assorted aeronautical problems in such a short period of time is a wonder of the early 20th century. Other men also were at work, in America as well as Europe, and many had far more funds at their disposal. In fact, the Wrights' successful flights came only nine days after Samuel Langley's Aerodrome, launched from a barge in the Potomac River, broke up and fell into the water -- to the amusement of watching newspapermen. Langley's machine was paid for, in part, with $50,000 in federal funds. The Wrights spent only about $1,000 on their own flimsy craft.

While their success can be attributed to a number of factors, old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity has to rate high. They saw early that the engine was not the key to successful air travel. In fact, their clanky four-cylinder engine produced only 12 horsepower, about one-fourth that of Langley's unsuccessful airplane. Instead, the Wrights concentrated on acquiring practical knowledge of gliding, learning how to control an aircraft in three-dimensional space. "What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery" Wilbur said in a May 13, 1900, letter to Octave Chanute, a civil engineer who became one of the Wrights' early cheerleaders.

In fact, the Wrights were engineers and scientists of uncommon ability. Their work is filled with sophisticated mathematical calculations used to determine gliding angles and rectangular pressures on wing surfaces. When they found that their 1901 glider had much less lift than they expected, they designed a homemade wind tunnel and, after hundreds of experiments, proved that much of the current scientific literature contained glaring errors. They started over, using their own formulas and calculations.

The Wrights also brought immense appreciation for practical knowledge to their task as well. When the first airplane's two propellers kept loosening the nut bolts on the sprockets, the brothers found a ready remedy -- Arstein's hard cement, which Orville Wright said "will fix anything from a stopwatch to a threshing machine." The heated cement was poured into the threads and the sprockets were screwed onto the shafts. The bolts held.

Taciturn and modest about their accomplishments, the brothers were model young Victorians, the youngest of four Wright brothers. (The lone Wright sister, Katherine, was the baby of the family and remained close to the two youngest brothers all her life.) Their father, Milton Wright, was an Ohio flatlands bishop in the United Brethren Church. Their mother, Susan Koerner Wright, was the "handy-woman" around the house in which they were reared. Bishop Wright was all thumbs about mechanical things.

When the brothers decided to build a flyable airplane, they began looking for a suitable site at which to test their gliders. They found it on North Carolina's Outer Banks near Kitty Hawk, a desolate place complete with man-eating mosquitoes. They built their own small cabin at the site, and photographs of the kitchen show a quiet fixation for order. Every canned good is neatly stacked with its label turned toward the front, and every kitchen tool had its place on the rustic board walls.

For four years in succession, Wilbur and Orville traveled to Kitty Hawk in the fall to conduct their glider experiments. Autumn was the slow season at their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop. At Kitty Hawk, the brothers flew hundreds of times, learning to maneuver their craft and constantly making improvements until they were ready to add their own engine and propellers, fitted to bicycle sprockets, in 1903.

On Dec. 17,1903, the brothers made their historic flights at Kitty Hawk, a remote place where they had been patiently improving their crafts. Wilbur was 32 years old, Orville, 28. The first flight, with Orville at the controls, lasted a mere 12 seconds as the aircraft traveled some 120 feet. The fourth, with Wilbur piloting, was 59 seconds long and covered nearly 800 feet.

Despite their penchant for secrecy, the Wrights were smart enough to have a local man, John T. Daniels, photograph their first flight for posterity. There, the lean-muscled Wilbur can be seen running alongside the aircraft as it slowly lifts offthe ground. The Wright flyer did not have wheels. It used sled-like skids to take off and land.