{"id":3889,"date":"2018-12-17T23:15:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T04:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/?p=3889"},"modified":"2018-12-17T23:15:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T04:15:24","slug":"wright-brother-achieve-powered-flight-115-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/wright-brother-achieve-powered-flight-115-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wright Brother Achieve Powered Flight 115 years ago Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wright Brother achieve powered flight 115 years ago today! Below is a synopsis of their story. it did not begin at Kitty Hawk.<\/p>\n

Wilbur Wright (left<\/em>) was born two years after the Civil War.\u00a0 Orville (right<\/em>) was born four years later in 1871.\u00a0 They were two of Milton and Susan\u2019s five children.\u00a0 Bishop Milton Wright was a godly man and a bi-vocational pastor.\u00a0 From the bishop, the Wright\u2019s developed a love of reading widely.\u00a0 The Wright\u2019s considerable mechanical prowess inherited from their mother, Susan.<\/p>\n

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Orville began a printing business at the age of 18 and was soon joined by his brother Wilbur.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, they took an interest in the new safety bike and started a thriving business.\u00a0 The bicycle was all the rage having shed its original large front tire.<\/p>\n

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Their attention was soon focused on the possibility of flight \u201clike the birds\u201d.\u00a0 In fact, Wilbur and Orville literally spent hours watching birds fly;\u00a0 Their goal was to determine how they were able to \u201csteer\u201d often without flapping their wings.\u00a0 They also spent hours studying the works of Otto Lilienthal of Germany and French born Octave Chanute, pioneers in the pursuit of flight.<\/p>\n

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After ten years of study, Wilbur determined that the largest obstacles to overcome was how to maneuver the \u201cflying machine\u201d through the air.\u00a0 He noted that birds would slightly raise one wing and lower the other in order to turn in the air.\u00a0 Taking a cardboard box, and collapsing it, he showed Orville and his sister Katharine how by pulling a string connected to the ends of the cardboard he could warp the cardboard like a bird\u2019s wing.\u00a0 The concept of wing warping would be central to the Wright\u2019s ultimate success.<\/p>\n

A letter to the National Weather Bureau inquiring as to the windiest places in the United States was answered with an entry entitled, \u201cKitty Hawk, North Carolina\u201d.\u00a0 It proved to be ideal, with strong, steady winds, dunes from which to launch and soft sand on which to land.\u00a0 Wilbur set out for the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Kitty Hawk in 1900.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Getting there proved to be an expedition in and of itself.\u00a0 Wilbur, later joined by Orville, built a glorified hut as they tested ever increasingly larger gliders over a three-year period.\u00a0 At one point, the brothers realized the aerodynamic information passed down by Lilienthal and Chanute was in error.\u00a0 The constructed a wind tunnel (right<\/em>) in their bicycle shop and developed a completely new (and accurate) table of aeronautical data.<\/p>\n

Back at Kitty Hawk, the brothers endured storms, isolation, but gained the admiration of the few locals as two of the \u201chardest working men\u201d they had ever seen.\u00a0 This was high praise from a group that knew, from experience, hard work as the only way to survive on the Outer Banks.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The year 1903 was their target goal.\u00a0 Unable to coax an established manufacturer to design and build an engine for them, one of their bicycle shop employees, Charlie Taylor, designed an 12 horsepower engine that did the trick.<\/p>\n

On December 14, the Wrights gave powered flight a go with Wilbur at the controls.\u00a0 The flyer takeoff ended in a crash and a heap.\u00a0 Repairs followed for two days.\u00a0 On December 17, 1903, the brothers put out the symbol indicating to the local lifeguards that they needed help in moving the flying machine into position.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

As a result of a coin flip, Orville was at the controls.\u00a0 Wilbur steadying one wing as the flying machine moved down a wooden rail, Orville went airborne at 10:35am while friend John T. Daniels snapped the memorable photo.\u00a0 One hundred twenty feet and 12 seconds later, he touched down on the sands of Kitty Hawk.\u00a0 Thirteen years of word rewarded in 12 seconds.<\/p>\n

Three more flights followed with Wilbur going the longest at 59 seconds and 852 feet.\u00a0 While hauling the flyer back to camp, it was caught by a gust of wing, tumbling several times.\u00a0 The tumble ended the day and the career of the Wright Flyer I.\u00a0 The flying machine never flew again and now hangs in the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Far from an overnight success, the Wright Brothers continued to labor in virtual anonymity for five more years.\u00a0 They built and tested the Wright Flyer II at their banker\u2019s field outside of Dayton, Huffman Prairie (right<\/em>).\u00a0 The Wright Flyer III was another improvement and the Wright\u2019s first truly successful machine.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Success and notoriety finally came five years after the initial flight.\u00a0 The European powers showed much greater interest than the Wright\u2019s home country.\u00a0 The United States rebuffed several efforts by the Wright\u2019s to demonstrate their machine.\u00a0 In Le Mans, France, in the late summer of 1908 Wilbur Wright stunned the world with his seemingly effortless control of the flying machine.<\/p>\n

What lessons can we draw from the Wrights?\u00a0 Simon Sinek, in a very popular TED Talk (https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en<\/a>) rightly points out that the Wright\u2019s were not in the pursuit of powered flight for the money (unlike some of their better-funded rivals like Samuel Langley).\u00a0 He, however, erroneously chalks up the Wright\u2019s success to their team. The Wright\u2019s did not have a team, they had each other.<\/p>\n

I recently finished David McCullough\u2019s excellent biography of the Wright\u2019s.\u00a0 Along with The Bishop\u2019s Boys<\/em>, they are the definitive works on their efforts.\u00a0 What I came away with was the Wright\u2019s amazing ability to focus study and persevere at the task at hand.\u00a0 It was truly remarkable.\u00a0 That, above all else, led to their success 115 years ago today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wright Brother achieve powered flight 115 years ago today! Below is a synopsis of their story. it did not begin at Kitty Hawk. Wilbur Wright (left) was born two years after the Civil War.\u00a0 Orville (right) was born four years later in 1871.\u00a0 They were two of Milton and Susan\u2019s five children.\u00a0 Bishop Milton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":338,"featured_media":3883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[39],"tags":[927,924,76,922,208,212,207,923,926,925,75,213],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Wright Brother Achieve Powered Flight 115 years ago Today - Doctor Aviation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Wright Brother achieve powered flight 115 years ago today! 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