Thank You Wright Brothers...

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Thank you Orville and Wilbur Wright for inventing the airplane and teaching the world to fly 114 years ago...


On this day in 1903 the Wright Brothers are credited with inventing 3 axis
controlled heavier than air powered flight... between 1903 and
1908 they were the *only* humans on this planet up in the air flying
on a daily bases... they were up to the duration of 1.2 hours and
could fly figure 8s... the Wrights wanted to sell airplanes over seas
but when the French read their claims they challenge those braggart
Wrights to prove their claims... because in 1908 the best French
flyers were only hopping a couple of hundred feet in a straight
line... any attempt at a turn was met with a crash... well the Wrights
not only proved their claims they taught the French all about 3 axis
controlled flight... Bleriot bought into the Wright Brothers wing
warping patent and crossed the English channel with in 6 months... the
aileron ( French for little wing) was invented to side set the Wrights
wing warping patent... you could not have 3 axis control flight
without some form of lateral control be it warp or aileron... it was
all going to be settle in court in the Wrights favor but with the
advent of WW1 meant all patent rights were pooled for National
Security... the Wrights got nothing for their discovery but the world
learn to fly from their idea...


The day Wilbur Wright demonstrates, to the skeptical French, 3 axis control
flight in 1908... not to mention a working catapult and how to carry passengers
 
Thank you for starting this thread.

My wife and I are members at The Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village and I always enjoy "feeling the vibes" when I walk through their home and shop:
HFM_Greenfield_Wright_Brothers_Shop.jpg
 
Let's not also forget that their creation sealed the date of the internal combustion engine as the dominant powerplant from there on out.

Those guys were really something. To think, one of the brothers lived long enough to see supersonic aircraft. Must have been mind blowing to see that amount of development of their idea in his lifetime.
 
Likewise, my grandmother remembers seeing the newspapers with the news from Kitty Hawk. She died 9 years after Apollo 11.

Also, it's funny to me that Chrysler's boyhood home looks like the white house at the left.
 
And don't forget that the Wright Model "B" Flyer an early two-seater killed almost every pilot that flew it. It was responsible for the first fatal aviation accident in America, Lt Thomas Selfridge, a passenger and nearly killed the pilot, Orville Wright who took years to recover his health and suffered the rest of his life from lingering problems. It was a self-propelled death machine and would never have received any kind of airworthy certificate if there was such a thing, then. Several pilots did survive including Wilber Wright and claimed to have few problems with the Model "B" Flyer and seldom crashed but they were a rare and small group and none of them flew the Model "B" Flyer more than a year including Wilber Wright.
 
My great grandfather was the first person to receive the Wright Award. He also started the aeronautical engineering department at Stanford. And founding member of NACA which was the precursor to NASA.
 
Originally Posted By: CT8
It is still amazing at what the Wright Brother did.


And to think it was a rubber band powered toy helicopter that sparked their
interest in human flight a gift from a great parent Milton...

"Milton would also bring things home from his trips, intended not just
to make them feel appreciated, but also to capture his children's
interest and imagination. Some were as simple as an odd stone or a
fossil; others were more elaborate. Returning from one of his trips,
he brought his two youngest sons a rubber band-powered toy helicopter.
Orville later recalled that the helicopter – which he called a "bat" –
was based on a design by French inventor Alphonse Penaud, whose work
in aeronautics he and his brother would study as grown men. Although
these toys are commonplace today, they were rare and marvelous wonders
in 1878. Penaud had invented the "rubber torsion motor" in 1870, and
these toys were just now making their way to the Wright brothers side
of the Atlantic. Wilbur and Orville played with the helicopter until
they wore it out, then later built their own copies of this toy – this
was the first powered aircraft they built together."

"Once Orville was caught by his Cedar Rapids teacher, Ida Palmer, while
working on one of these models when he should have been studying. He
explained that he and Wilbur planned to build a craft large enough to
carry both of them. Their early experiments with large aircraft were
unsuccessful, however. They found that the larger they made the
helicopter, the worse it flew. Not until many years later would they
discover that when you double the size of an aircraft, you must
increase the available power eight times to keep it aloft."

 
Gosh!
So this early two place aircraft wasn't as safe as a C152?
Who would have thought it?
 
Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
And don't forget that the Wright Model "B" Flyer an early two-seater killed almost every pilot that flew it.



Negative Jack... Selfridge was killed in a Wright model A flyer not the Wright
model B and the crash was not due to pilot error or a stability flaw rather it
was a mechanical...

When Orville Wright came to Fort Myer to demonstrate the Wright Flyer
for the US Army Signal Corps division, Selfridge arranged to be a
passenger while Orville piloted the craft. On September 17, 1908, the
Wright Flyer circled Fort Myer 4½ times at 150 feet. Halfway through
the fifth circuit, at 5:14 in the afternoon, the right propeller
broke, losing thrust. This set up a vibration, causing the split
propeller to hit a guy wire bracing the rear vertical rudder. The wire
tore out of its fastening and shattered the propeller; the rudder
swiveled to the horizontal and sent the Flyer into a nose-dive.
Orville shut off the engine and managed to glide to about 75 feet, but
the Flyer hit the ground nose first.

Orville later described the accident that killed Selfridge in a letter
to his brother, Wilbur:

On the fourth round, everything seemingly working much better and
smoother than any former flight, I started on a larger circuit
with less abrupt turns. It was on the very first slow turn that
the trouble began. ... A hurried glance behind revealed nothing
wrong, but I decided to shut off the power and descend as soon as
the machine could be faced in a direction where a landing could be
made. This decision was hardly reached, in fact I suppose it was
not over two or three seconds from the time the first taps were
heard, until two big thumps, which gave the machine a terrible
shaking, showed that something had broken. ... The machine
suddenly turned to the right and I immediately shut off the power.
Quick as a flash, the machine turned down in front and started
straight for the ground. Our course for 50 feet was within a very
few degrees of the perpendicular. Lt. Selfridge up to this time
had not uttered a word, though he took a hasty glance behind when
the propeller broke and turned once or twice to look into my face,
evidently to see what I thought of the situation. But when the
machine turned head first for the ground, he exclaimed 'Oh! Oh!'
in an almost inaudible voice.

Wright Model B... 1910 to 1914
1910_Model%20B_flying.jpg


The Wrights add another first... First aircraft fatality in a Model A flyer...
Fort_Meyer_Accident-660x463.jpg


Wright A Flyer was good enough to race at the 1909 Great Air Meet Rhiems...
 
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The Wright "A" was the direct precursor to the "B". Wilber referred to it as the "Government Model" and promised an improved model which became the "B". Name a pilot that survived the "B" besides Wilber and Orville.
 
Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
Name a pilot that survived the "B" besides Wilber and Orville.


Mercy Jack... the Wright Model B was the most technical advance aircraft for sale in 1911...

Head-on view of Harry N. Atwood in flight over the south lawn of the
White House in a Wright Model B biplane; 14 July 1911. Harry lived to
the ripe old age of 83 and died in 1967...


The cockpit of the Model B. The pilot is Marjorie Stinson, an early
American aviatrix who learned to fly at the Wright Flying School. The
Wrights used the Model B extensively for flight training. She died in 1975



The US Navy''s first airplane was a Model B on pontoons. Here, one of
the flight crew swims out to the Model B to tow it to dock...


The first military radio-equipped airplane was a Wright Model B.



The 1916 Model B on display at the United States Museum of the Air
Force was last flown by Lt. John A. Macready at the 1924 International
Air Races in Dayton, Ohio. Macready won the MacKay Trophy three times:
once for the altitude flight, once for the transcontinental flight,
and once for an endurance flight of 36 hours, 4 minutes and 32
seconds. He died September 15, 1979 (aged 91)


I could go on and on...
 
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