The Wrighht Brothers - Wilbur And Orville - Inventing the Airplane

1899 Kite: The First Aircraft Design by the Wright brothers

The 1903 Glider Flyer 1:Design was a One Man Glider piloted by Wilbur Wright

The story of the Wright brothers and their invention will never cease to let any aviation enthusiast or a professional, to think of what a human mind can or can't do if only he/she implies it to perspective.

A Very Unusual Childhood
 

Wilbur and Orville were the sons of Milton and Susan Wright and members of a warm, loving family that encouraged learning and doing. Mr. Milton Wright was a bishop in the United Brethren Church, and would often be away from home on church business. 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 the young Wilbur and Orville immediately began to build copies of it.

In the year 1884, Bishop Milton Wright moved his family to Dayton, Ohio, the political centre of the United Brethren Church. 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, the same year that Orville dropped out of high school to open his own print shop.

Career Choices

In 1890, Wilbur joined Orville in the printing business, serving as editor for The West Side News, a weekly newspaper for their west Dayton neighbourhood. It was modestly successful, and the Brothers began a daily, the Evening Item, in 1891. However, they couldn't compete with larger, more established daily newspapers, and after a few months they went back to being simple job printers.

In 1894, Wilbur and Orville were caught up in the bicycling craze that swept the nation. To augment the income from their printing trade, 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 returned a handsome profit, but the brothers cared little about the money. But they were already thinking about trading their wheels for wings.
 
Inventing the Airplane

In 1896, the newspapers were filled with accounts of flying machines. Wilbur and Orville noticed that all these 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 or "warped" 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 Wright brothers 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. Back in Kitty Hawk, they suddenly found themselves in a race. Samuel P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had also built a powered aircraft, patterned after a small, unmanned "aerodrome" he had flown successfully in 1896. To add to their frustrations, the Wright brothers were delayed by problems with their propeller shafts and the weather, giving Langley time to test his aircraft twice in late 1903. Both attempts failed miserably, however, then Mr. Langley left the field to the Wright brothers. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first sustained, controlled flights in a powered aircraft. Back in Dayton, Ohio, the brothers found they had much to do to perfect their invention. While the 1903 Wright Flyer did indeed fly, it was underpowered and difficult to control. They established the world's first test flight facilities at Huffman Prairie, northeast of Dayton (today, the site of Wright Patterson Air Force Base). 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.

Showing the World

After the 1905 flying season, the Wright brothers contacted the United States War Department, as well as governments and individuals in England, France, Germany, and Russia, offering to sell a flying machine. They were turned down time and time again -- government bureaucrats thought they were crackpots; others thought that if two bicycle mechanics could build a successful airplane, they could do it themselves.  But the Wright brothers persisted, and in late 1907,  the U.S. Army Signal Corps asked for an aircraft. Just a few months later, in early 1908, a French syndicate of businessmen agreed to purchase another.

Both the U.S. Army and the French asked for an airplane capable of carrying a passenger. The Wright brothers hastily adapted their 1905 Flyer with two seats and a more powerful engine. They tested these modifications in secret, back at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina for the first time in several years. Then the brothers parted temporarily -- Wilbur to France and Orville to Virginia. 

In 1908 and 1909, Wilbur demonstrated Wright aircraft in Europe, and Orville flew in Fort Meyer, Virginia. The flights went well until Orville lost a propeller and crashed, breaking his leg and killing his passenger Lt. Thomas Selfridge. While Orville recuperated, Wilbur kept flying in France, breaking record after record. Orville and his sister Kate eventually joined Wilbur in France,  and the three returned home to Dayton to a elaborate homecoming celebration. Together, Orville and Wilbur returned to Fort Meyer with a new Military Flyer and completed the U.S. Army trials. A few months later, Wilbur flew before over a million spectators in New York Harbor -- his first public flight in his native land. All of these flights stunned and captivated the world. The Wright Brothers became the first great celebrities of the twentieth century.  

Source - The Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company