This Date in Aviation History: December 17, 1903

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 12/17/2019 at 11:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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With Orville Wright lying prone at the controls, and his brother Wilbur running alongside, the Wright Flyer makes its first controlled flight from the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. (US Library of Congress)

From the earliest days, earthbound humans envied the birds and their effortless flight. Likely even before the work of 15th-centrury polymath !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , scientists and engineers sought a way to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and soar with the birds. Many tried—and many died. Humans first left the ground in 1783, when the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! took to the air in their hot air balloon. And while that flight, along with future balloon advancements, got aeronauts into the sky, they were still bound to the wind currents, and were unable to turn and soar or control their flight. Other inventors, like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , pioneered gliders that could carry a man from a height, but powered flight was still just a dream. It wasn’t until 400 years after Leonardo that two bicycle builders from Ohio would build and fly the world’s first heavier-than-air, powered, and controllable aircraft. Though they weren’t the first to build and fly an airplane, theirs was the first that could be fully controlled.

Orville and Wilbur Wright, photographed in 1905 (US Library of Congress)

Following in the footsteps of Lillienthal, Wilbur and Orville Wright began with detailed studies involving gliders. They believed that the problems of aerodynamic wings and sufficiently powerful engines were surmountable, and they focused on developing a system of control that would govern movement of the airplane in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! : roll, pitch and yaw. Piggybacking on the work of other aviation pioneers, the Wrights built ever more complex kites and gliders. Beginning in 1900, they carried out their experiments at Kitty Hawk, on the windswept coast of North Carolina, where they could take advantage of the ocean breezes and use the tall sand dunes as a launching point. The relatively remote location was also far away from prying eyes. The gliders used two wings, which the Brothers called “double decker,” and a single forward control surface for pitch.

A comparison of the two gliders. At left is the rudderless 1901 glider. Note the high angle of attack, which comes from poor lift and high drag. Compare that with the 1902 glider on the right, which shows a flatter flying angle. Note that the tether lines are nearly vertical, showing a greatly improved lift-to-drag ratio. (US Library of Congress)

Based on observations of birds, the brothers developed a system of warping the wingtips of their flyer to induce roll, a precursor to the modern aileron. At first, they didn’t feel that a rudder was necessary, that the wing warping would provide sufficient directional control. However, they soon found that this arrangement was not sufficient, and by 1902 they added a steerable rudder behind the pilot to control yaw. In over 700 test flights in September and October of 1902, the brothers developed their wing warping technique and performed longer and longer flights, with the longest lasting 26 seconds and covering 622 feet. A significant breakthrough came with their understanding of how the rudder acts to control the aircraft in a turn. Rather than initiating the turn as one might imagine it would on a boat, the rudder helps aim the aircraft while it is already turning, countering the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! caused by the lifting wing. With this problem solved, it was time to add an engine.

Charlie Taylor, and the four-cylinder aircraft engine he built from scratch for the Wright Brothers. (Smithsonian Institution)

Since no suitably light powerplant could be found, the Wright Brothers decided to build their own. For this, they called on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a mechanic in their Ohio bicycle shop and perhaps the most important yet unknown member of the team. Based on drawings provided by the Wrights, Taylor constructed a simple, four-cylinder engine in just six weeks, with a block cast from aluminum to save weight, and with a rudimentary gravity-fed carburetor. The diminutive engine produced 12 horsepower and weighed 180 pounds, and turned the flyer’s two propellers using heavy-duty automobile chains. With a plane and an engine, what the brothers now needed was a propeller. Common sense dictated a design similar to a boat propeller. After all, air and water are both fluid mediums. But there was no data to support whether or not such a design would work. And here, the Wrights had another critical inspiration: rather than build a propeller like one for a boat that pushes water backwards for propulsion, they constructed the propeller as a rotating wing, one that would push (or pull) the airplane through the air. Their first propellers were eight-feet in diameter, carved from wood, and were mounted behind the pilot. Fully built, the entire Flyer weighed 605 pounds and cost less than $1,000 to build.

Wilbur Wright at the controls of the damaged Flyer after the first unsuccessful attempt at flight on December 14, 1903. (US Library of Congress)

With the aircraft ready to go and favorable winds at their Kitty Hawk site, the brothers flipped a coin to see which would be the first to pilot the Flyer. Wilbur won. The first attempt was made on December 14, but the flight lasted only three seconds before the Flyer landed hard on the ground, causing minor damage. After repairs, and observing a day of rest on Sunday, they made another attempt on December 17, this time with Orville at the controls. At 10:35 am, Orville rode the flyer off of its catapult rails and into a frigid 27 mph headwind, with Wilbur running alonside. The Flyer covered a distance of 120 feet in 12 seconds. Two more flights that day covered ever increasing distances, the third approximately 200 feet. Modern aviation was born.

Orville pilots the Wright Flyer II over the Huffman Prairie in 1904 (US Library of Congress)

The first Flyer was destroyed soon after the first flight when it was flipped by a gust of wind, and the brothers returned to Ohio to continue their experiments at Huffman Prairie outside of Dayton. Their original aircraft was refined into the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! with a redesigned wing and a more powerful engine. With this aircraft, the brothers were able to complete full circle flights that demonstrated the success of their control system. In 1909, they provided the US Army with their first aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which was designated “Signal Corps (S.C.) No. 1.”

Orville Wright demonstrating the Flyer at Fort Myer, Virginia in September 1908 (US Air Force)

Consumed with establishing their patents and trying to keep their designs secret, the Wrights never developed their Flyers much beyond the original basic design. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912, and Orville, who lacked his brother’s business acumen, sold their company to Glenn L. Martin, and made his last flight as a pilot in 1918. However, he continued a life in aviation as a founding member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the predecessor to NASA), and served on the board for 28 years. Others took up the mantle of advancing and refining aircraft design, and those developments proceeded at an astonishing pace. Consider this: In 1903, Orville Wright flew at 27 mph about 10 feet off the ground. A mere 44 years later, on October 14, 1947, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! broke the sound barrier, flying the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! at Mach 1.07 (about 660 mph) at an altitude of 45,000 feet. Amazingly, Orville Wright was still alive. The world had gone from the first hesitant leap into the air to beyond the speed of sound in the span of one man’s lifetime.

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. And if you missed any of the past articles, you can find them all at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You can also find more stories about aviation, aviators and airplane oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 11:38

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Always blows my mind, not just the achievement of flight, but how fast flight developed after that.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 11:49

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I’ve always considered Charlie Taylor to be an unsung hero. “Make us a bespoke engine that doesn’t weigh much” “Okay”. Not a great engine even by 30s power to weight standards, but pretty cracking for 1903 built in a bike shop.

Langley had a good engineer who was properly supported and funded, of course, but failed to be correct about how much his machine could lift under any power.

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 11:54

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Always enjoy this one in particular. Living in Dayton gives the Wright Brothers that ‘home team’ loyalty. 

Tripper > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 12:03

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Woopwoop so much plane history on ma birthday!

ttyymmnn > ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) 12/17/2019 at 12:24

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Have you read David McCullough’s book on the Wright Brothers? It’s quite good, and he speaks very highly of Dayton, saying that the city itself was a big reason why the Brothers could do what they did. 

f86sabre > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 13:19

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Listened to the audio book last summer while on the Power Tour. It’s outstanding. 

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 14:38

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I own it, but I haven’t read it yet. It’s at the top of the list when I make the time. 

Grand Eccentrics is another great read about Dayton being so significant at that time.

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 12/17/2019 at 14:41

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War has a way (metric fuck-tons of $$$)  of super-accelerating the development cycle. Two global conflicts in the span of 40 years also make an impact.

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) 12/17/2019 at 14:43

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3 global conflicts. I would argue that as much or more flight development took place during the cold war than WWII.

Especially with rotary aircraft.  1950+ was the age of the chopper.

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > Tripper 12/17/2019 at 14:43

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Happy birthday!

Tripper > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 12/17/2019 at 14:45

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Hey thanks!

ttyymmnn > ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) 12/17/2019 at 14:45

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I really enjoyed the book, but I felt like the author finished it in a hurry, like he had to make a deadline. As far as describing the brothers and their motivations and, most importantly, their work ethic, it’s fantastic. 

ttyymmnn > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 12/17/2019 at 14:47

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I would say that the wars accelerated development, more so in the Cold War, particularly as electronic technologies evolved. The first chopper entered service in WWII (Sikorsky R-4, IIRC) , but only in a limited way.

ttyymmnn > f86sabre 12/17/2019 at 14:48

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I felt like McCullough wrapped up the book too quickly, as if he had a deadline or a limit on how many pages he wanted to write. Fantastic read, though, and excellent research. An easy read. I liked how he worked in so much about the Wright’s family, and how the city of Dayton itself at that time added to their sense of industriousness. 

ttyymmnn > Tripper 12/17/2019 at 14:48

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Happy Birthday!

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 14:49

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Yeah, like automatic battle rifles or jets, they deployed in limited numbers at the end of WWII but the cold war is where they really took off.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 12/17/2019 at 14:51

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One of the first photographs I took at the USAF Museum was of the bust of Charlie Taylor. He is actually my favorite personality in the story of the Wrights.

Langley’s story was so much one of what could have been. I don’t think Langley has the depth of scientific observation, or intuition, that the Wrights possessed.

Tripper > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 14:53

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Thank you!

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 15:24

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It seems so obvious now, that operating in a compressible fluid would require a different sort of screw, but Langley never so much as considered it - let alone testing airfoils for both wings and props of wildly different profiles in case Canute and others were wrong on the theory . Which they were, and that enabled the Wrights to avoid some of the stall issues that others had had while obtaining enough lift... at last.

The Wright’s testing and experimentation bordering on the manic was what carried them through. If I’m not mistaken, the Wright’s prop was of such high efficiency it wouldn’t be bettered in common use for decades - granted, efficiency gets harder as you have to transmit more and more power, but it was still amazing. They had both inspiration and perspiration, to borrow a turn of phrase.

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 12/17/2019 at 15:27

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Considering that it would take me six weeks to construct a running engine if you gave me a summit racing catalog, this is mighty impressive for a bicycle mechanic.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 12/17/2019 at 16:04

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The finished product produced a maximum efficiency of 66% (Some recent tests achieved 70%). That means that 66% of the horsepower of the small motor was converted by the propellers into thrust. This was far superior to any other inventors who were attempting to fly with engines of much greater horsepower and still couldn’t sustain flight.

This is a excellent synopsis of the Wright’s process in developing a propeller.

f86sabre > ttyymmnn 12/17/2019 at 21:20

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I agree.  There were plenty of interesting stories to tell, but he captured the ones that would interest most people. 

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 12/17/2019 at 23:48

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In less than 15 years from invention of the airplane, the Germans were bombing london

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_strategic_bombing_during_World_War_I#Daylight_Gotha_raids

15 years later, you have metal aircraft doing 300+

15 after that, supersonic bell x1.

i dont’ think from 1910 to 1990 there was ever a drop in the rate of innovation. Maybe 20s, but even then speed more than doubled by the end and commercial aviation started.

Also its a bit unfair comparing 6 years of ww2 to 45 for the cold war