April 24, 2005

Who Really Invented the Airplane?

Every one knows that the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, invented the airplane.

Or was it the legendary Greek hero Daedalus and his son Icarus?

Or the famous inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell?

Or Secretary of Smithsonian Institution Samuel Pierpont Langley?

We are intrigued with the fictitious account of how Daedalus covered his son with wax, stuck on a lot of feathers and pushed him off a cliff. Icarus flew like a bird. He was so exhilarated he flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, feathers blew away and Icarus fell to his death.

OOPS: Icarus, legendary Greek hero, flew too high - with fatal result.
Picture courtesy of www.LighterThanAir.net

One would have felt this would be a warning not to try and fool Mother Nature. But, no, a succession of day-dreamers persisted.

The first form of an aircraft was the kite designed in the 5th Century, according to the "History of Aviation" by the Global Aircraft Organization.

Roger Bacon, an English Monk, performed studies giving him the idea that air could support a craft just like water supports boats.

In the 16th century, Leonardo Da Vinci studied bird flight and produced the "airscrew" propeller and parachute. He designed three types of heavier-than-air craft to be propelled by muscle power -- helicopter, glider and ornithopter with mechanical wings.

British inventors in the late 1800s advanced the quest.

Sir George Cayuley designed a combined helicopter and horizontally-propelled aircraft.

Francil Herbert Wenham used wind tunnels in his studies and predicted multiple wings atop each other.

John Stringfellow designed an aircraft powered by a steam engine. It provided lift for itself but not climb as necessary for extra weight.

Lawrence Hargrave, a British-born Australian inventor, created an unmanned rigid-wing aircraft with flapping blades operated by a compressed-air motor. It flew 312 feet in 1891.

Alas, a man still could not get any farther off the ground than he could jump.

Thus, the stage was set for a trio of inventors to refine these advancements for an historic break-through.

Who would be first!

Bell

 After inventing the telephone in an effort to help his wife and other deaf people hear, Bell turned his attention to other scientific developments - including controlled, sustained flight.

He became particularly interested in the ability of curved surfaces to lift heavy objects in air and water. He invented several giant kites that would lift a man and other heavy objects aloft with the aid of a gasoline-powered engine. However, they were ponderous, uncontrolled and tethered to the ground.

When a curved blade - now called a hydrofoil -- was attached to the hull of a boat, the vessel could be lifted above water and achieve phenomenal speed. In one test a Bell hydrofoil set a world speed record of 72 miles per hour.

Bell organized the Aerial Experiment Association at Baddeck, Nova Scotia - his summer home - in 1907. Among the engineers were Glenn H. Curtiss, then a motorcycle manufacturer who later would be the leading  U.S. aircraft manufacturer.

The group developed the aileron - tail fin flap - that is the turning device of airplanes today.  

Also with Bell was Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge, official representative of the U.S. government.

Ironically Selfridge was to be killed as a passenger-observer demonstration flight at an Army base with Orville Wright in Oct. 1908.  

Bell's Silver Dart bi-plane made a controlled powered flight in 1909 that embodied all the improvements necessary for commercial aviation. However, public acclaim for priority had already gone to others.

NOT A UFO: Bell designed several powered kites that would lift a man, but they were uncontrollable.
Photo courtesy of GlennHCurtiss.com



AERIAL EXPERIMENT ASSOCIATION: Glenn Curtiss, John (Jack) McCurdy, Alexander Graham Bell, Frederick (Casey) Baldwin and Tom Selfridge, Baddeck, N.S., 1907
Photo courtesy of GlennHCurtiss.com

Langley

Langley, a recognized authority in physics and astronomy, was secretary of the Smithsonian. In Nov. 1896, he built and flew an unmanned "aerodrome" 4,200 feet at about 30 miles per hour.

It was a tandem-wing aircraft that used a lightweight steam engine and clumsy Da Vinci-style propeller for propulsion. Also, it had no means for steering.

Nevertheless, the War Department and the Smithsonian each contributed $50,000 - a large sum  those days -- toward development of a "person carrying machine."

Charles Manley developed an extraordinary radial-cylinder internal-combustion engine for a "Great Aerodrome."

Langley thought it would be safer to fly over water so he spent half his funds for a large houseboat and powerful catapult.

Aerodrome-6 was launched Oct. 7, 1903, on the Potomac River. Unfortunately, the catapult damaged the plane's front wing. Aerodrome-6 dived into the river.

A second launch on Dec. 9, was even more disastrous. The plane's tail and rear wing collapsed at the moment of launch. Again, the craft tumbled into the Potomac.  Manley nearly drowned.

SPLASH: Langley's Aerodrome-6 should have flown, but the plane was damaged at takeoff by a powerful catapult.
Courtesy of www.CenturyOfFlight.gov

A reporter said, "It flew like a handful of mortar." A Congressman was quoted as stating: "You tell Langley, for me, that the only thing he ever made fly was government money."

The War Department concluded: "We are still far from the ultimate goal. It would seem as if years of constant work and study by experts - together with the expenditure of thousands of dollars -- would still be necessary before we can hope to produced an apparatus for practical utility along these lines."

Langley was crushed.

FAILURES: Charles Manley, pilot-mechanic, left, and Samuel Pierpont Langley came close - but no prize.
Courtesy of www.CenturyOfFlight.gov

The Wright Stuff

Just eight days later, the Wright brothers at windy Kitty Hawk beach, North Carolina, took turns flying their carefully designed Flyer plane. It was constructed at a cost of $1,000 in nickels and dimes from their bicycle repair business in Dayton, Ohio.

The plane had stacked, dual wings and a pusher propeller powered by a gasoline engine built to Wright design by their mechanic Charles Taylor. The motor weighed 170 pounds and generated 12 horsepower.

The engine's advantage was the 1200 revolutions per minute necessary to spin the hand-carved propeller blades fast enough to force wind efficiently over the lifting wings.

The Wright brothers had learned this secret from their homemade wind tunnel.

With Orville at the controls -- and Wilbur racing along side to keep their craft level during takeoff - their craft flew 120 feet in 12 seconds.

Orville landed the plane quickly to examine its various parts for possible stress. The flight was 102 feet short of the wingspan of today's C-5 Galaxy.

With Wilbur at the controls that afternoon, their plane flew another test flight of 452 feet. That night, they telegraphed their success to friends in Dayton. They  informed the newspapers.

SUCCESS: The Wright Brothers get their Flyer off the ground in sustained, controlled flight at windy Kitty Hawk Beach, North Carolina.
Courtesy of WikiPedia

Not all their early flights were successful. A demonstration nine months later for Army brass at Ft. Myer, Va., with Orville at the controls and Selfridge a passenger - ended in tragedy.

The tip of a propeller designed by the Wrights - their most important innovation - broke and damaged a wing. The plane pitched to the ground, killing Selfridge and breaking Orville's hip.

Selfridge was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Plot 3 - near where he crashed.

It was discovered that the faulty propeller had been crafted from kiln-dried wood and was too brittle for the enormous stresses encountered in flight. Thereafter, only air-dried woods were used until metal blades were invented.

The Wright brothers sold patent rights to commercial manufacturers like Curtiss for military purposes.

The Wright brothers never married and were always close to each other. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville continued flying until 1915 when he sold his interest in the Wright Company. Then he retired to serve on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Aftermath  

Orville argued for years with officials of the Smithsonian Institution over whether the Wrights or Langley had built the first successful plane.

Historian K.O. Eckland writes that Orville --angered by Smithsonian's insistence of Langley priority  -- loaned Flyer-1 to London's Kensington Museum in 1928.

Smithsonian officials made a public apology in 1942, but it wasn't until after Orville died in 1948 that Flyer-1 was returned for permanent display at what is now the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

There, Flyer-1 hangs in mid-air for everyone to admire.

In truth, many brilliant inventors -- over many years -- contributed to the first airplane.

As usual, the last man standing reaps the glory; but which genius had the "Ah Ha!" that made practical flight possible?

Author: Lindsey Williams

BROTHERS: Orville and Wilbur Wright - after their historic feat -- relax on the front porch of their Dayton, Ohio, home.

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