The Invention of the Airplane

Wilbur, the elder of the two Wright brothers, was born in April, 1867 in Millville, Indiana USA. Orville was born in Dayton, Ohio USA, on the August of 1871.

In 1893 the Wright brothers opened a small bicycle rental and repair shop. Their knowledge of bicycles improved and soon they were manufacturing and selling their own bikes in 1895. These skills would help them in later life to construct their airplane.

Between 1899 and 1905 the brothers began to study aeronautical research. They started by designing gliders. The brothers built a small wind tunnel and tested well over 200 wing types. They also developed their own lift tables. To improve the design they changed the fixed tails that they had used on their old models and replaced it with a single rudder. Consequently they made the first glider with three axis control, roll, pitch and yaw (shown below). This was the most important contribution to the secret of flight that they made.

Pitch: the raise and lower the nose of the craft.

Roll: Rotation of the long axis.

Yaw: Horizontal rotation around the vertical axis using the rudder.

This lead to the first powered flight of “Flyer 1” in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, America on 17 December. The plane flew for about 12 seconds, reached a height of about 3 meters and travelled for 37 meters. This plane could only fly in a straight line. The brothers knew that to market their product they had to give the airplane the ability to turn round and round. It also had to be able to amass a much greater altitude so that it could fly over trees.

To build their plane they used two basic principals that are the foundations needed for flight. These are that the aircraft must have a lighter than air motion and a way of controlling the craft in the air. The reason the planes of the time could not fly was because the steam engines being used were very heavy and not powerful enough to hoist a plane into the air. The Wright brothers used a small petrol engine to drive two pusher propellers. The pilot lay on the lower wing of the biplane. To launch the plane it ran on tracks which were used to keep the plane straight. Kitty Hawk was chosen as the location of the flight because of its strong continuous winds of up to 30 mph. He controlled ascent and descent using the elevator, the small front wing. To roll the aircraft the Wright brothers observed the aecia of bird wings. If the edges of the wings were twisted in opposite directions the plane would bank. They achieved this with a series of pulleys and tethers connecting the wing to a harness worn by the pilot. If the wind blew right he could pull his shoulder down (like a bike rider) to lose lift and maintain a steady flight. The Wright brothers called this wing warping. The wings of the plane were curved more on the top than on the bottom. This caused the air particles to space out all along the top of the wing at a lower density than the bottom, creating lift.

Flyer 1: flew in December 1903.

The original flyer was underpowered and hard to control, but over the next two years they improved their design. By 1905, “Flyer 3” could do figure of eights around a park until the fuel ran out. By 1909 their design improved further and they began making military flyers.

The plane changed our lives forever. Now we don’t just wander the land and sea but now we can explore the skies. The worlds planes have improved a lot but everything can be traced back to the Wright brothers glider which is the granddad of the modern motorized plane. Rockets and passenger planes are just a few examples of what the Wrights invention has become.