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| Wilbur Wright |
Airplane, also called aeroplane or plane,
is a vehicle designed for air
travel that has wings and one or more engines. The plane is heavier than air,
and it has some basic components like: the wing system to sustain it in flight,
tail surfaces to stabilize the wings, movable surfaces to control the attitude
of the plane in flight, and a power plant to provide the thrust necessary to
push the vehicle through the air. Wright brothers were the inventors and aviation
pioneers.
Wilbur Wright and his brother Orville were born in Dayton. Wilbur was
the older brother (he was born in 1867). Orville was born in 1871. The Wrights
were first to design and build a flying craft that could be controlled while in
the air.
Wilbur and Orville were the sons of Milton and Susan Wright and members
of a warm, loving family that encouraged learning and doing. Milton was a bishop in the United Brethren
Church, and was often away from home on church business. But he wrote hundreds
of letters home, and often brought back presents from his trips, exposing his
children to the world beyond their horizon. In 1878, he brought home a rubber
band-powered helicopter, and young Wilbur and Orville immediately began to
build copies of it. In 1884, Bishop Wright moved his family to Dayton, Ohio.
About the same time, his wife Susan fell ill with tuberculosis. Wilbur, just
out of high school, put off college and nursed his sick mother. Orville began
to lose interest in school and learned the printing business. Susan Wright died
in the summer of 1889.
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| Orville Wright |
In 1890, Wilbur joined Orville in the printing business, serving as
editor for The West Side News, a weekly newspaper for their west Dayton
neighborhood. It was modestly successful, and the Brothers began a daily, the
Evening Item, in 1891. After that, they began repairing and selling bicycles.
This soon grew into a full-time business, and in 1896 they began to manufacture
their own bikes. The Wright Cycle Company was quiet popular, but they were
already thinking about trading their wheels for wings. So, in 1896, Wilbur and
Orville noticed that all the primitive aircraft lacked suitable controls. They
began to wonder how a pilot might balance an aircraft in the air, just as a
cyclist balances his bicycle on the road. In 1899, Wilbur devised a simple
system that twisted the wings of a biplane, causing it to roll right or left.
They tested this system in a kite, then a series of gliders.
They made their first test flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on the
shores of the Atlantic where the strong winds helped to launch the gliders and
the soft sands helped to cushion the fall when they crashed. Their first two
gliders, flown in 1900 and 1901, failed to perform as the Wrights had hoped.
The gliders did not provide enough lift nor were they fully controllable. So during
the winter of 1901-1902 Wilbur and Orville built a wind tunnel and conducted
experiments to determine the best wing shape for an airplane. This enabled them
to build a glider with sufficient lift, and concentrate on the problem of
control. Toward the end of the 1902 flying season, their third glider became
the first fully controllable aircraft, with roll, pitch, and yaw controls. During
the winter of 1902-1903, with the help of their mechanic Charlie Taylor, the
Wrights designed and built a gasoline engine light enough and powerful enough
to propel an airplane. They also designed the first true airplane propellers
and built a new, powered aircraft. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville
Wright made the first sustained, controlled flights in a powered aircraft. Back
in Dayton, they decided to perfect their invention. For two years they made
flight after flight, fine tuning the controls, engine, propellers, and
configuration of their airplane. At first, they could only fly in a straight
line for less than a minute. But by the end of 1905, they were flying
figure-eight's over Huffman Prairie, staying aloft for over half an hour, or
until their fuel ran out. The 1905 Wright Flyer was the world's first practical
airplane.
Every successful aircraft ever built since, beginning with the 1902
Wright glider, has had controls to roll the wings right or left, pitch the nose
up or down, and yaw the nose from side to side. These three controls -- roll,
pitch, and yaw -- let a pilot navigate an airplane in all three dimensions,
making it possible to fly from place to
place. The entire aerospace1 business depends on this simple but brilliant
idea. Also, Wrights invention made possible the creation of other machines like
spacecraft, submarines and robots.
More important, the Wright Brothers changed the way we view our
world. Before flight became commonplace,
people could only traveled in two dimensions, north and south, east and west,
crossing the lines that separate town from town, nation from nation. Nowadays, the world seems grander and more
interconnected. This three-dimensional vision has revealed a universe of
promises and possibilities. The world economy, our awareness of our
environment, and space exploration are all, to some degree, the results of the
inventive minds of the Wilbur and Orville Wright.
When they verified their invention, they changed the world
forever!
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