The Men Who Learned to Fly

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 14, 30 September 1908, Page 51

The Men Who Learned to Fly

EXTRACTS FROM THE WRIGHT BROTHERS’ STORY OF THEIR EXPERIMENTS, THE SENSATIONS OF FLIGHT, AND THEIR ESTIMATE OF THE FU TURE OF THE AEROPLANE.

By

GEORGE KIBBE TURNER

In 1900 the Wright Brothers, two young bicyele-niakel-s, of Dayton, Ohio, started experiments in'air-gliding in'a machine operated on a new principle. In 1903 they added a gasoline-engine to their aeroplane, and began to navigate the air in mechanical flying machines. It is a well-established faet that they have been flying on mechanically driven aeroplanes for the past four years. Exactly how they do this is not known; they are keeping their method secret, in the belief that this is the only way in which they can secure a financial return from their invention. . THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AND THEIR STORY. Before the Wright Brothers sailed abroad last, for the,.demonstrations of their machines before .foreign war departments they discussed.jyitli lift for an entire morning'their invention, the theories and sensations of Hight, and their personal beliefes and ambitions in connection with their discovery—two lean quiet men in a dingy, commonplace little .brick bicycle ehop; pleasant, unassuming, most approachable but shy and silent under the oppression of the greatest secret of the time. Orville, of the more social and conversational temperament, did the greater share of the talking—an amiable, kindly faced man of thirty-five. Wilbur —prematurely ■■ bald, about forty; ■ with the watchful eyes, marked facial lines, and dry, brief speech of a naturally reticent man—corroborated or amplified his brother’s statements. It would be both unnecessary and impossible to divide the story of their invention between the two men exactly as they told ft. Practically their story, like their invention, was the product of pne.mind— : one dual mind. I will tell it as ft simple statement of fact, wit,hqut attempting to reproduce the exact conversation. It is the extraordinary information, and not the method of statement, which is of importance. The Story follows: — Tn >899 we 'saw a little Press' despatch in a newspaper telling of the death of Lilieuthal by a fall from his machine. This, and the reading of the .“.Aeronautical Annual ’’ . for 1897, started our first active interest ft. the problem of aerial navigation. , We have been at .work at it ever since—first as a mere scientific pastime, but ’ for nearly ten ypars as the most serious purpose of.our life. Up. to 1900 We had merely studied and made laboratory experiments; in that year we started actual experiments in flying on our gliding machine. At that time (1900) there was really only one problem remaining to be solved to make a workable flying machine—tho problem of equilibrium. AJen already knew how to make aeroplanes that would support them .when driven through the air at a sufficient speed, and there were engines light enough per horsepower to propel the aeroplane at the necessary speed and to carry their own weight and the weight of an operator. There were plenty of aeroplanes t hu t would fly in still air. What was needed was ah airship that would not capsize when the wind was blowing. THE TURBULENCE OF THE AIR. Nd one who has'not navigated the air can appreciate the real difficulty of mechanical, flight. , To the ordinary person it seems a miracle that a thin solid plane can be driven up into the air by machinery; but for over ten years that miracle has been accomplished. On the other hand, the great problem—the problem qf equilibrium—never occurs to anyone who has. not actually tried flying. THE REAL QUESTION OF THE FLYING MACHINE IS "HOW TO KEEP IT EROM TURNING OVER. The chief, trouble is the turmoil, of tire air. The common impression is that the Atmosphere runs in. comparatively regular •urrento which we call winds. No one

who has not been thrown about-on a gliding aeroplane—rising or falling 10, 20, or even 30 fOet 'in a few seconds—can understand how utterly wrong this . idea is. The air along the surface of the earth, as a matter of fact, is continually • churning. It is thrown upward from every irregularity, like sea breakers on a coast line; every hill and tree and building sends up a wave or slanting current. And it moves, not directly back" and forth upon its coast line, like the sea, but in whirling rotary masses. . Some of these rise up hundreds of yards. ‘ In ,a fairly strong wind, the' air near, the ’.earth-is more disturbed thr.n the' whirlpools of Niagara'.' '

EQUILIBRIUM— THE REAL PROBLEM OF FLYING. The problem of mechanical flight is how to balance in this moving fluid which supports the flying machine; or, technically speaking, how to make tho centre of gravity coincide with the centra of air-pressure. Now, the irregular action of the air is naturally reflected in the movement of this centre of pressure. If a wind should blow against a plane at right angles to it, the centre of pressure would be in the centre of the plane. But an aeroplane must be sailed at a very slight angle to the direction in which it is moving. That means that the centre of air-pressure is well forward on tho, sprfae.es of the machine. Every sudden breeze that blows strikes strongly on the front of the plane and very little on the baek of it. The result is that the force of every gust of wind is multiplied by leverage in its tendency to tip the plane over. The wind often veers several times in a second, quicker than

thought, and the centre of pressure changes with it. It is as difficult to follow this centre of pressure as to keep your finger on the flickering blot of light from a prism swinging in the sun. Lilientlml balanced himself in his gliding machine by shifting his weight; his body hung down below his wings, resting on his elbows. Li Chanute’s machines the operator did nearly the same, swinging below the wings, with his arm-pits supported on little parallel bars.*' In both machines the rapid motion of the body was difficult and exhausting work, and the size of the machine was definitely limited by the weight which the operator could carry on his baek. In our gliding

machine we introduced an entirely new method; we governed the motion of the centre of pressure, not by shifting our weight, but by shifting the rudder and surfaces of the machine against the action of tho air. Before this can be understood there must lie some idea of the wings of om .machine.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARTIFICIAL WINGS. Lilieuthal, in his first flights, copied the wings of soaring birds very closely; later, he used wings in two planes, that is, one above the other. Chanute experimented with wings of as ninny as five pianos, but, like Lilieuthal, secured tlrn best results with the ••double-deckers.'’’ When we took up our gliding experiments we believed that these wings in two •Chanute tested three types of his own, in two of which the wings were automatic-multlple-wlug machine. - was ids first type. • ally readjusted by the wind-pressure. Tha

planes had been shown to lie the best type for ■ the aeroplane; they, were stronger than- any oilier, allowing the principle of the truss-bridge to tie used in -their bracing, and they were more compact and manageable than the singlesurface wings. By Ifititl we had designed our type of gliding machine. It was made of cloth and spruce and steel wire, very much after the style of the Chanute doubledecker—a little larger than his. But in its principle of operation it was entirely different. The operator, instead of swinging below the wings, lay fore and aft across the middle of the lower wing upon his stomach. In front of him—extended out before the machine instead oh behind it—was a horizontal rudder. This guided the gliding machine up and down. But it did much more than that; it counterbalanced the movement of tho centre of pressure backward and forward on the main surfaces, of the machine; that is, it kept the aeroplane from pitching over backward or forward. For steeping and balancing sideways, we turned the outside edgep of the wings against the air-pressure by cords controlled by movements of- the operator's body. The tail used in previous gliding-maeliines was. given up. Our idea was to secure a machine which, with a little practice, could be balanced and steered -semi-automatically, by reflex action, just as a bicycle is. There is no time to be given to conscious thought in balancing an aeroplane; the action of the air is too rapid. The shape of the wings afforded another important problem. Langley and other experimenters had favoured wings set at a dihedral angle—that ft, each slanting .upward from th? centre where they joined. They hoped to secure a, stable equilibrium by this. We believed that this device would work well in still air, but that in the shifting, troubled air of out-of-doors it would add to tho danger of turning over. These wings are made after the style of the wings of a soaring buzzard—a bird which avoids high winds. We curved ours down a little at the tips, after the fashion of a soaring gull—a rougii-w eather bird. Our wings did not approach the exact form of birds* wings so ,e)osely as Lilienthal’s or Pilcher’s. They were'.made of cloth, fixed to tw.o rectangular wooden frames, fastened one above the other by wooden braces and wires. The cloth surfaces were arched by ribs between these frames to'secure the. curved surfaces of birds’ wings, which Lilientlml had shown were essential to the best results in flying. THOSE ANIMATED AEROPLANES, : THE BIRDS. We had also worked out a new method of practice with gliding-machines which we hoped to use. Lilieuthal and Ghftnute had obtained their experience in flying by the operator's launching himself from a hill and gliding down on to lower land. This involved ealiving back their apparatus, after a short flight, to tho top of the hill again.. Because of tho difficulties of this awkward method, although Lilieuthal had made, over two thousand flights, we calculated that in all his live years of experiment he could not have been actually practising flying more than five hours- far too short a time for the ordinary man to learn to ride a bicycle. ’lt was our plan to follow the example of soaring birds, ami find a place where we eould be supported by strong rising winds. A bird is really an aeroplane. The portion of its wings near the body arc used as planes of support, while the more flexible parts outside, when dapped, aet as propellers. Some of the soaring birds arc not much more than animated sailing-machines. A buzzard can be safely kept in an open pen thirty feet across ami ten feet high. He cannot fly out of it. In fact, we know from observation made by ourselves that he. cannot fly for any distance up a grade of one to six. Yet these birds sailing through the air are among the commonest sights through a great section of the country. Every one. who has been outdoors has seen a buzzard or a hawk soaring; every one who has been at sea has seen the gulls sailing after a steamship for hundreds of miles with scarcely a movement of the wings. All of these birds are doing the same thing • —they are balancing on rising currents of air. The buzzards and hawks find the currents blowing upward off tho land; the gulls that follow the steamers from New York to Florida are merely sliding downhill a thousand miles on rta-

ing currents in the w*ke of the steamer in the atmosphere, and on the hot air rising from her smokestacks. A REVOLUTION IN THE ART OF FLYING. In 11*01 we started gliding again at Kitty Hawk, on a machine nearly twice as large as had been counted safe before. This machine had a surface of 308 square feet, whereas Lilienthal’s had had 151, Pilcher's 165, and Chanute’s doubleRecker 134. Our new glider was 82 feet from tip to tip, and the main surfaces were 7 feet across and 6 feet apart. It weighed 100 pounds, 240 or 250 • With its operator. This machine, like the first one, had no tail. Its trials were bo successful that the next year 1(1902) we made another on advanced lines. The main surfaces of this were 32 feet from tip to tip. and only 5 feet across. In addition to the devices in the former gliders, we used a vertical tail ©n this, as an additional method of keeping the lateral balance. We made between seven hundred and one thousand glides with this—the longest of which jvas 622 feet. By the actual tests of Hying, we established many points definitely, and made many changes in the tables of calculation for aerial flight. EIGHTEEN MILES AN HOUR—-THE j RATE WHEN FLIGHT BEGINS. Wo found that at a rate of eighteen tniles an hour through the air would sustain our aeroplane and its operator in Hight. A rate of sixteen miles would sustain it, but at to great an .agle to allow progress through the air. A wind of eighteen miles an hour is a good strong breeze, but it is not extraordinary. -Half our glides in 1902 were made in .winds of twenty miles an hour, and at tone time we were gliding in a wind which measured thirty-seven miles an hour. You .understand' of course, that these gliding 'experiments do not mean the more sliding Sown an inclined plane in the air. In heavy winds the aviator is sometimes lifted above the point he starts from, and bften held soaring in one place. If he had the balancing skill of a soaring bird, lie could remain there as long as there .Mas enough wind to support him. InJfleed. in our experiments we have remained motionless in one position for Pvfr half a minute. I DECEMBER 17, 1903. THE FIRST ! FLYING-MACHINE SAILS. i In these three years of gliding we established enough practical knowledge, we thought, to go on to the next experiment X>f placing a gas-engine upon our aeroplane and starting work on the real object of our research—mechanical flight, in the next year we experimented' in jour workshop with models and machinery for this. On December 17, 1903. our first mechanical flier, in a trial at Kitty Hawk, made four flights, in the longest of jvhich it sustained itself in the air fiftynine seconds, and moved 852 feet against A twenty-mile wind; that is, it actually moved half a mile through the air. After Mhis first experiment we felt assured that mechanical flight was feasible. This first flying-machine, with its opo <ator, weighed about 745 pounds. It waa Fun by a gas-engine which weighed 240 pounds complete with fuel and water, and developed 12 or 13 horse-power. The next year another flier was made, weighing with, ballast, 925 pounds, with an engine giving 16-horse power, but. weighing Jthc same as that of the first flier—24o founds. With thia machine we made he successful experiments in flying of J 904 and 1905, over 150 in number, averaging a mile apiece. tTHE TROUBLE TURNING tWKRS. The problem of the real power-driven flying-machine was exactly what we knew it must be—the question of equilibrium, it was no longer necessary for us to have Ahe peculiar conditions furnished by the grind and hills at Kitty Hawk to make tour experiments with the mechanical machine. We secured the use of a swamitoy meadow eight mites east of Dayton, Dhio. On our tests t here it became olear that the flying-machine would operate ♦veil in a straight line; the difficulty Came immediately upon turning corners, as ib was necessary to do in' the small field. ' dust what the trouMe was we Could not tell. Several turns might be 4(8856- ‘ safely; then, all -at once the machine would begin to its balance, and must Im stopped and brought down Io the fcronnfl. We kept experimenting -to dis-

cover the cause of the trouble and the way of dealing with it, and in the latter part of the year 1904 we made some progress. We accomplished a complete circle on September 20, and two flights of three miles each around the course in November and December. FOR SALE—AN AERIAL WAR SHIP. We feel that it is absolutely essential for us to keep our method of control a secret. We could |>atent many points in the machine, and it is possible that we could make a success of the invention commercially. We have been approached by many promoters on the matter. But we believe that our best market is to sell the machine to some government for use in war. To do this it is necessary foists to keep its construction an absolute secret. We do not believe that this secret can be kept indefinitely by a government, but we believe that the government Which has the secret can hold the lead in the use of the invention for years. It will be able constantly to keep ahead of other nations by developing the special knowledge in its possession. So far as we can learn, we Are able now to give a government five years’ lead in the development of the flying machine. The recent trials of Santos - Dumont’s aeroplane

in France confirm us in this belief. Take ou? point only. He is trying to sustain a fiOO-pouud machine in the air lor short flights with a 50-horse-power engine—; that is, sustaining ten pounds to the horse-power. We are flying and carrying, at a rate of 30 miles an hour, 925 pounds with 16 horse-power—that is, practically sixty pounds to the horsepower. The comparison speaks for itself concerning the relative efficienry of the two machines. LIKE THE BICYCLE, BUT EASIER. It is impossible, under these circumstances, for us to discuss the exact secrets of control and management which are our only asset in our machine. We have not even drawn working plans of our machine, for fear they might fall into other hands. But there are general principles of operating our aeroplane of which we make no secret. It l>een a common aim of experimenters with the aeroplane to solve the problem of equilibrium by some antoma-

tic system of Imlancitig. We believe that the control should be left ia the possession of the operator. The sense of equilibrium is' very delicate and certain. If you lie upon a bed three-quarters of an inch out of true, you know it at onoe. And tihs sense of equilibrium is just as reliable a mile above tile earth as it is on it. The management of our aeroplane, like that of the bicycle, is based upon the sense of equilibrium of the operator. The apparatus for preserving the balance of the machine consists of levers operated by simple uniform movements which readjust the flying surfaces of the machine to the air. The movement of these . levers very soon becomes automatic with the aviator, as does the balancing of a bicycle -rider. In fact, the This. Dear Friends, is “G R A P H I C.” aeroplane is easier to learn and simpler t operate than the bicycle. In all our experiments with gliding and flying machines, we have not even sprained a limb; we have scarcely scratched our flesh. NO DANGER FROM STOPPING ENGINES. The only danger in our aeroplane is of turning over. We have purposely made our machine many times heavier than necessary, so that it cannot break.

There is absolutely no danger—as might appear at first thought—from the stopping of the engine. The aeroplane is supported by its motion through the air, it is true; but. however high it is flying, gravity furnishes it all the potential energy it needs to get safely to the ground. When the power is shut off, it merely scales through the air to its landing. Theoretically, -it is safer at a mile above the earth than at two hundred feet, because it lias a wider choice of places in which to land; you can choose your landing from 256 square miles from a mile above the surface if descending one in sixteen. As a matter of fact, we always shut off the power when we start to alight, and come down by the force of gravity. We reach the ground at so slight an angle and so lightly that it is impossible for the operator to tell by his own sensation within several yards of where the ground ■was first actually touched. We know that we have made the aeroplane a practical machine, but we are not over-sanguine about -its revolutionis-

ing the transportation of the future. It will scarcely displace the railroad or the steamboat; necessarily, its expenditure of fu«f will be too great. In a steamship, it is calculated that the heat from the burning of a sheet of letter-paper will carry a ton a mile; you could scarcely expect such results in an airship. The air-ship, so far as we can see at present, will have its chief value for warfare, and for reaching inaccessible places—for such uses as expeditions into the Klondike, or to Pekin during its siege a few years ago. The value of an air-ship moving faster than a railroad train for reconnoitering or dropping explosives upon an enemy in time of war is now obvious to the entire civilised world. The aeroplane may also be of great value in the near future for service like the carrying of mail. When properly developed, it will be quicker than any means of locomotion now in use for direct journeys between two places—unless against hurricanes. There will be no switches, no stops whatever I and the journey can be made in an airline. The eventual speed of the aeroplane will be easily sixty miles an hour. It will probably be forced up to a hundred miles. Our last machine showed forty miles, and the one we are building now will go considerably faster. At speeds above sixty miles an hour the resistance of the air to the machine will make travel much more expensive of power. Our experiments have shown that a flier designed to carry an aggregate of 7<5 pounds at 20 miles an hour would require only 8 horse-power, and at 30 miles an hour 12 horse-power. At 60 miles 24 would be needed, and at 120 miles 60 or 75 horse-power. It is clear that there is a certain point of speed beyond which tlie air resistance makes- it impossiHe to go. Just what that is, experiment ■will determine. Every year gase-ngines are being made lighter—a fact which will increase the surplus carrying power of the machine available for fuel and Operator, and heavier construction; bat at present sixty miles an hour can be counted on for the flying machine. This, of course, means speed through the air. BETTER WINGS THAN A BIRD’S. There is no question hut'that a man can make a lighter and' more efficient wing than a bird's. A cloth .surface, for instance, can be offering less surface friction than feathers. The reason for this fact is that a bird’s wing is really a' compromise. It is not made for flying only—it must be folded up and gotten out of the way when the bird is on its feet; and efficiency in flying must be sacrificed to permit thia. The wings of tlie aeroplanes will vary in size according to speed. A slow machine will require a large wing; but the faster the speed, the less will be the supporting surface necessary, and wings for high speeds will naturally be very small. Not only will less support be needed, but the size must be reduced to reduce the friction of the air. One difficulty with these fast machines will be in launching them at A high enough speed for their wings to support them. There may also be some difficulty ia landing. We have launched our machines from an .arrangement of wheels, and have landed upon stout skids fastened to the bottom of the machine. The aeroplane will make Us journeys, we believe, £OO or 300 feet above the earth —just high enough to escape the effects of the disturbance of tie sir along the ground-—just out of the surf, so to apeak. Our experiments have been at a considerably lower level—-at some 80 feet or less. Our idea in our experiments has been to produce a strong, practical motor flying-machine. We .have made no great; effort to secure extraordinary machtoeqr to furnish power. We found the gasmotor already developed to « point where it was practically available for ■our purposes. We 'have applied ourselves to the invention of an aeroplane which would balance safely, could he easily steered, and would move with a moderate expenditure of power. -In doing this we have devoted our -ehiet attention to tlie scientific construction of wings and screws sad steering apparatus. SCIENTISTS, NOT MECHANICS. Oar hope 4s, first, to get some adequate financial return from our invention. We are not rich men, and wo have devoted our time and. what money we could command to the problem for nearly ten years. We. do not expect « tremendous fortune from owr discovery.

but we do feel we ehould_have something that would be an ample competence for men with oufl comparatively simple tastes. If we do secure thia, we are anxious—whenever it becomes possible —to give the world the benefit of the scientific knowledge obtained by our experiments. We object to the manner in which we have so far been put before the publie. Nearly every writer upon our work in current publications has characterised us a"s mechanics, and taken it for granted—because of the fact that we are in the bicycle business, no doubt that invention has come from mechanical skill. We object to this as neither true nor fair. We are not mechanics; we are Scientists. We have approached the subject of aerial navigation in a purely scientific spirit. We are not highly educated men, it is true, but the subject of aerial navigation is not so much a problem of higher mathematics as of general principles; it can be approached by anyone possessing a high-school education—which we have had. We have taken up the principles involved in flying, one after another—not only by practical flights, but in constant laboratory experiments in our workshops. We have worked out new tables of the sustaining power of the air. DISCOVERED PRINCIPLES OF SCREW-PROPELLER Besides inventing a practical flyingmachine, we claim to have discovered for the first time the method of calculating in advance the exact efficiency of screw-propellers, which will save the great waste involved in the present practice, by which screws must be made and tested before their efficiency can be accurately learned. This method of ours has been tested in the manufacture of our aeroplanes; our screws were made with only a slight margin of power over what was demanded by our flier, and they have invariably proved successful. We say frankly that we hope to obtain an ample financial return from our invention; but we care especially for some recognition as scientists, and, whenever it becomes possible, we propose to bring out the results of our investigations in a scientific work upon the principles of aerial navigation.