Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Jonathan Densil
TDJ201
Mr. Morris
19 December 2014
they ran a printing press and then a bicycle shop. Through these experiences, the
Wright brothers became more curious in how things worked and that eventually led
them to design and experiment with the
physics of air.
The Wright brothers interest in flight
sparked in 1878, when their father brought
home a rubber band powered helicopter that
was designed by Alphonse Penaud, an
aeronautical experimenter. The Brothers began sketching designs of the toy and the
mechanisms of how it worked. This interest was then flared in 1896 when Otto
Lilienthal, the worlds most successful glider pilot, died when his glider crashed near
Berlin. The Wright brothers saw a parallel between cycling and flying. A cycle cannot
balance unless it is moving, similarly, aeroplanes cannot stay afloat unless there is
certain amount of air flowing around its wings. The only reason the wright brothers
succeeded, was because they knew that the controls for the aeroplane had to be
managed by the pilot. Meanwhile, the other pioneers strived to make a fully selfstabilized aircraft.
As the Wright brothers got deeper and deeper into researching flight, they
found that almost nothing was reliable or even noted down. All the research about the
mechanics of flight had to be tested individually because everyone had different
results and methods of experimenting. The brothers started their research by watching
the rulers of the air kingdom, the birds. They found that the buzzard had an efficient
technique in reacting sudden gusts of wind: it would simply twist the tips of its wings
to stay in its fixed position. Wilbur came up with the idea of raising the trailing edge
of the wing while depressing the opposite wing. This became the first use of ailerons
in flight history.
The Brothers first began testing their
plane ideas in the form of kites just as English
pioneer George Cayley done. The kite that the
Wright brothers tested had a wingspan of 5
feet and integrated the wing warping
system by tugging on chords that was
linked to the system allowing the trailing
edge of wing to warp. They found that the wing warping system worked well; this was
the first flying device to be controlled laterally and longitudinally. Soon, the brothers
built bigger and bigger kites until it was big enough to carry the mass of a man.
Once they had a flyer that had the capabilities of carrying a man, Wilbur
started contacting the weather bureau for in request of wind conditions all around the
US. A strong reliable wind was crucial to the success of the flight to be made. The
results came back and revealed that Kitty Hawk, a small village of the barrier beach
in North Carolina. The beach extended one mile (1.6 kilometres) inland, clear of hills
and tress, and stretched 60 miles (96.6 kilometres) across in the same condition. The
on. So, the Wright brothers set to work again to research and to collect their own data
and findings to find the most efficient propeller. They equated their findings to the
physics of the wing; more pressure on the back of the blade than the front of the blade.
Although many other pioneers attempted to add propellers to their design, the Wright
brothers engineered the propellers to be more efficient and to output more power than
their competitors stock propellers. The brothers even founded a revolutionary
concept that they would use contra-rotating propellers so that the torque cancels out.
This idea would only be rediscovered 27 years later in the Lockheed P-38. The Wright
brothers research allowed
them to predict the propellers
behaviour with accuracy.
The 1903 Wright Flyer
was a success. No one in
history until the pivotal year of 1903 had ever achieved powered, controlled, and
sustainable flight. The Wright Flyer was far more advanced than its competitors and
it created a new chapter in the book of history. It revolutionized everything that is
associated with us today. Without aeroplanes, we wouldnt have the food we eat; the
gas to fuel our cars; the products we buy; or even a safe, reliable and relatively short
intracontinental and intercontinental mode of travel. The Brothers really did make the
Wright flyer.
Works Cited
E.C Culick, Fred, and Spencer Dunmore. On Great White Wings. Toronto: Madison, 2001.
175. Print.
"Invention of Wright Flyer." The Wright Flyer. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http://wrightflyer.umwblogs.org/invention-of-wright-flyer/>.
"Wright Flyer13." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Nov. 2014. Web. 13 Nov.
2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer#Specifications_.28Wright_Flyer.2
9>.
"1903 Wright Flyer." Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Home Page. National
Air and Space Museum, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?object=nasm_A19610048000>.
"The 1903 Wright Flyer." Air & Space Magazine. Smithsonian Institution, n.d. Web. 13 Nov.
2014. <http://www.airspacemag.com/how-things-work/the-1903-wright-flyer3867542/?no-ist>.
Jenner, Caryn. First Flight: The Story of the Wright Brothers. New York: DK Pub., 2003. 47.
Print.
Hansen, Ole Steen. The Wright Brothers and Other Pioneers of Flight. New York, NY:
Crabtree Pub., 2003. 32. Print.
Crouch, Tom D., and Peter L. Jakab. The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial
Age. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum, 2003. 240. Print.