Orville and Wilbur Wright

Hey everyone,

I assume that almost everyone in the United States will recognize these names, but, in case you don't, they are the first men to build and fly the first successful airplane and complete the first powered, controlled, and heavier than air human flight. This feat was accomplished on December 17th, 1903 in Kill Devil Hills, Kittyhawk, North Carolina. Four flights occurred that day. The first three would all be under 200 feet, but the fourth (flown by Wilbur) was 852 feet and lasted for 59 seconds.

However, it took a significant amount of work to do just this. Neither of these two men attended college, and they started as businessmen and amateur scientists. In 1899, they began to seriously study flying machines and decided after a lot of work that the problem wasn't with the engine or the wings (pretty much) but with control. Their solution was a three-axis control that allowed controlled movement around a vertical axis (yaw) using a rudder, a sideways movement (roll) by warping the wings (pulling one down and lifting the other), and a forward roll (pitch) accomplished with a forward elevator. Early glider tests in Kill Devil Hills proved successful with gliders, and they moved forward on an engine. By the fall of 1903, they had constructed it with the help of their shop mechanic, Charley Taylor. The engine was made of out of aluminum with no carburetor or fuel pump and was fed gasoline by gravity. All of these innovations allowed it to be light to increase the chances of flight. They also calculated the math for lift before they even flew a glider. After correcting for a coefficent, the gliders became more effective and the Wright Flier I was born. This is the plane which would take them into the history books and is now in the Smithsonian. However, their story doesn't end after Kitty Hawk, so I'm going to devote one more post to the Wright Brothers.