White Oaks Secondary School

The Wright Flyer

Jonathan Densil
TDJ201
Mr. Morris
19 December 2014

The "Wright" Flyer

"The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their
gruelling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the
birds soaring freely through." (Orville Wright). The story of flight is evolutionary: in
1000 BC, China invented the kite; in 852 BC, King Bladud jumped off a tower and
killed himself in the attempt to fly; from 1485-1500 Leonardo da Vinci designs flying
machines and parachutes; in 1783, Jean Franois Piltre de Rozier and Marquis
d'Arlandes make the first aerial voyage by a hot air balloon; in 1797, Andr Jacques
Garnerin makes the first parachute jump from a hot air balloon; in 1852, Henri
Giffard makes the first steam powered airship; In 1891, Otto Lilienthal makes the
successful gliders. As we can see, the dream of human flight started over 3000 years
ago, but was only realized over 1100 years later when two significant siblings started
tapping into their innovative side.
The story of sustainable, controlled, and powered flight started over 100 years
ago. In 1867 and 1871, the Wilbur and Orville Wright were born in their respective
years in Dayton, Ohio. Although the brothers had 2 older brothers and a sister, the
two "twins" were inseparable. They liked the same things, did the same things, and
even thought the same thoughts at times, they shared everything with each other.
From a very young age, Wilbur showed himself to be decisive and serious with his
studies, while Orville was more curious and bit of a prankster. As the boys grew older,

they ran a printing press and then a bicycle shop. Through these experiences, the
Wright brothers became more curious in how things worked and that eventually led
them to design and experiment with the
physics of air.
The Wright brothers interest in flight
sparked in 1878, when their father brought
home a rubber band powered helicopter that
was designed by Alphonse Penaud, an
aeronautical experimenter. The Brothers began sketching designs of the toy and the
mechanisms of how it worked. This interest was then flared in 1896 when Otto
Lilienthal, the worlds most successful glider pilot, died when his glider crashed near
Berlin. The Wright brothers saw a parallel between cycling and flying. A cycle cannot
balance unless it is moving, similarly, aeroplanes cannot stay afloat unless there is
certain amount of air flowing around its wings. The only reason the wright brothers
succeeded, was because they knew that the controls for the aeroplane had to be
managed by the pilot. Meanwhile, the other pioneers strived to make a fully selfstabilized aircraft.
As the Wright brothers got deeper and deeper into researching flight, they
found that almost nothing was reliable or even noted down. All the research about the
mechanics of flight had to be tested individually because everyone had different
results and methods of experimenting. The brothers started their research by watching

the rulers of the air kingdom, the birds. They found that the buzzard had an efficient
technique in reacting sudden gusts of wind: it would simply twist the tips of its wings
to stay in its fixed position. Wilbur came up with the idea of raising the trailing edge
of the wing while depressing the opposite wing. This became the first use of ailerons
in flight history.
The Brothers first began testing their
plane ideas in the form of kites just as English
pioneer George Cayley done. The kite that the
Wright brothers tested had a wingspan of 5
feet and integrated the wing warping
system by tugging on chords that was
linked to the system allowing the trailing
edge of wing to warp. They found that the wing warping system worked well; this was
the first flying device to be controlled laterally and longitudinally. Soon, the brothers
built bigger and bigger kites until it was big enough to carry the mass of a man.
Once they had a flyer that had the capabilities of carrying a man, Wilbur
started contacting the weather bureau for in request of wind conditions all around the
US. A strong reliable wind was crucial to the success of the flight to be made. The
results came back and revealed that Kitty Hawk, a small village of the barrier beach
in North Carolina. The beach extended one mile (1.6 kilometres) inland, clear of hills
and tress, and stretched 60 miles (96.6 kilometres) across in the same condition. The

brothers knew that this was the right

place. There were no houses nearby, so
they had to build a large tent to double
as a hanger, to assemble to plane, and
a house, to provide some sort of
protection from the wind and the
mosquitos. As the Brothers tested their
kites and occasionally fly them as gliders, the brothers became more and more
familiar with controlling the air. Not before long, the brothers had conducted
approximately 1000 flights. One flight lasted for 26 seconds and covered a distance of
over 600 ft. The Wright Brothers knew that they had surged far ahead of their
competition.
To be the first to win the race for the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air
aircraft, they had to be able to put an engine onto the plane. As soon as the Brothers
came back from Kitty Hawk, they immediately began looking for an engine that will
fit their purposes, but, to their dismay, the engines that existed were too heavy and
didnt deliver the amount of power that was needed to get the aeroplane into the air.
So, as was customary to the brothers, they built their own engine with the help of a
highly talented young mechanic by the name of Charles E. Taylor. The problem was
not in making of the engine, but, the making of the propellers. Propellers have been
used for a long time on ships, but no one had a fixed formulae to base any theories

on. So, the Wright brothers set to work again to research and to collect their own data
and findings to find the most efficient propeller. They equated their findings to the
physics of the wing; more pressure on the back of the blade than the front of the blade.
Although many other pioneers attempted to add propellers to their design, the Wright
brothers engineered the propellers to be more efficient and to output more power than
their competitors stock propellers. The brothers even founded a revolutionary
concept that they would use contra-rotating propellers so that the torque cancels out.
This idea would only be rediscovered 27 years later in the Lockheed P-38. The Wright
brothers research allowed
them to predict the propellers
behaviour with accuracy.
The 1903 Wright Flyer
was a success. No one in
history until the pivotal year of 1903 had ever achieved powered, controlled, and
sustainable flight. The Wright Flyer was far more advanced than its competitors and
it created a new chapter in the book of history. It revolutionized everything that is
associated with us today. Without aeroplanes, we wouldnt have the food we eat; the
gas to fuel our cars; the products we buy; or even a safe, reliable and relatively short
intracontinental and intercontinental mode of travel. The Brothers really did make the
Wright flyer.

Works Cited
E.C Culick, Fred, and Spencer Dunmore. On Great White Wings. Toronto: Madison, 2001.
175. Print.
"Invention of Wright Flyer." The Wright Flyer. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http://wrightflyer.umwblogs.org/invention-of-wright-flyer/>.
"Wright Flyer13." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Nov. 2014. Web. 13 Nov.
2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer#Specifications_.28Wright_Flyer.2
9>.
"1903 Wright Flyer." Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Home Page. National
Air and Space Museum, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?object=nasm_A19610048000>.
"The 1903 Wright Flyer." Air & Space Magazine. Smithsonian Institution, n.d. Web. 13 Nov.
2014. <http://www.airspacemag.com/how-things-work/the-1903-wright-flyer3867542/?no-ist>.
Jenner, Caryn. First Flight: The Story of the Wright Brothers. New York: DK Pub., 2003. 47.
Print.
Hansen, Ole Steen. The Wright Brothers and Other Pioneers of Flight. New York, NY:
Crabtree Pub., 2003. 32. Print.
Crouch, Tom D., and Peter L. Jakab. The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial
Age. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum, 2003. 240. Print.