Airplanes

Orville Wright (1871-1948) and Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) requested a patent application for a "flying machine" nine months before their successful flight in December 1903, which Orville Wright recorded in his diary. As part of the Wright Brothers' systematic practice of photographing every prototype and test of their various flying machines, they had persuaded an attendant from a nearby lifesaving station to snap Orville Wright in full flight. The craft soared to an altitude of 10 feet, traveled 120 feet, and landed 12 seconds after takeoff. After making two longer flights that day, Orville and Wilbur Wright sent this telegram to their father, instructing him to "inform press."Earlier in 1900, Wilbur Wright wrote to French aviation pioneer Octave Chanute (1832-1910) and expressed the belief that "flight is possible to man...[and] I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life". More on the Wright Brothers' invention of the airplane.The story of the invention of the airplane is a Puritan fairy tale. It is the story of how two honest, straightforward, hard-working Americans accomplished something fantastic and magical -- creating a craft of stick and fabric that mounted the air like the chariots of the gods, opening the skies to all humankind. Their success came so suddenly and from such an unexpected quarter that their contemporaries could not believe the Wrights had done what they claimed. After all, if prominent scientists and engineers the world over had been confounded in their efforts to invent the airplane, how could two common men from rustic America have succeeded' Like many fairy tales, the story also has a dark and unhappy ending. Around the turn of the century, dozens of people were working to invent the airplane. The period of active experimentation begins in 1891, when noted German engineer Otto Lilienthal began experimenting with hang gliders. Lilienthal took seriously the ideas advocated by Sir George Cayley almost a hundred years earlier. Through an extensive study of birds and bird flight, Cayley realized that the lift function and the thrust function of bird wings were separate and distinct, and could be imitated by different systems on a fixed-wing craft. Lilienthal began his work on heavier-than-air craft not by developing a complete airplane, but instead by focusing his efforts on a fixed-wing glider. Lilienthal brought a much-needed respectability to the enterprise of inventing an airplane. Up to that point, efforts to invent airplanes were considered to be the province of crackpots and wild-eyed dreamers. But when a hard-headed German engineer entered the game, other respectable people were soon to follow. In addition to the respectability he brought to the field, Lilienthal made two more important contributions to the nascent field of airplane invention: the style of perfecting a glider before attempting powered flight (which Gibbs-Smith refers to as the 'airman' approach), and a table of the lift provided by curved wings. Lilienthal was killed in a gliding accident August 10, 1896. Following in Lilienthal's footsteps, efforts to invent an airplane became commonplace in the 1890's. The majority of the efforts were in Europe, including Captain F. Ferber, Henri Robart, Solirene, Levavasseur, Clement Ader, Percy Pilcher, and Sir Hiram Maxim. In the U.S., prominent attempts were made by Octave Chanute and Samuel Pierpont Langley. The blue points in Figure 1 depict the progress made during the period 1894 to 1905. Although an occasional craft flew farther than 100 meters (about the length of a football field), this level of performance was exceptional. Unfortunately, inventors at the time were unable to capitalize on their success. Often times a new generation craft did not perform as well as its predecessor. Thus, the blue regression line in Figure 1 is essentially flat. This tendency is usually true for individual inventors as well as the field as a whole.