The Wright Flyer

Once upon a time (mid-late 1800s), in a land not so far away called Ohio, a set of brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, was born. The Wright Brothers would develop a passion for flying during their lifetime that would change the world.

The story says their curiosity for flying took off when they received a gift from their father, a small "helicopter" based on the design of a French inventor. The toy was primitive, but Wilbur and Orville played with it until it broke. When the toy broke, the two brothers decided to build their own.

Thankfully for the travelers of the world, they didn't stop at toys.

Although neither of them finished high school, Wilbur and Orville were very industrious from the start. They ran several newspapers when they were still young and designed their own printing presses. Eventually, they opened their own bicycle shops in Dayton, Ohio. It's actually thanks to their background in bicycle engineering that they were able to solve the puzzle of human flight.

Flying had been man's dream for centuries—even Leonardo DaVinci tried to make a flying machine—but everyone had failed to build a flying machine that was powered, could make a flight last more than thirty seconds, and was also controllable. The inventors of the past focused on power as opposed to control.

Picture a bicycle. Got it? Good.

A bicycle has three axes of motion. It can go up and down hills, it can go around curves by tilting it with respect to the ground, and it can turn from side to side by steering the handlebar. That's 3.

These three axes are what the Wright Brothers realized an airplane needed. Before the Wright Brothers, inventors had tried to design flying machines based on only two axes: up-or-down and side-to-side. Wilbur and Orville added the roll. These axes are illustrated here:

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Yes, that's right. The three axes of flight are called the pitch (up-or-down), the roll, and the yaw (side-to-side). Quirky, isn't it?

The two brothers also looked closely at Bernoulli's equation and used it to devise the most efficient curvature for an airplane wing. This equation relates the velocity of air particles with pressure and explains how an object heavier-than-air can rise above the air.

By adding the roll to the axes of flight, the Wright Brothers were able to devise a flying machine, which they named the Wright Flyer. We'd probably name our plane the Shmoop Jetplane, so we understand their decision to brand the first airplane of history with their names.

Wilbur and Orville Wright were geniuses who argued a lot and were often impatient with one another. Even their ways of arguing were smart: when they disagreed on how to solve an engineering problem, they would often switch sides and force the other to argue from the opposite point of view.

After doing tons of research, studying the flight of birds, experimenting with gliders, the Wright Brothers finally made history on December 17, 1903. They successfully flew their flyer at Kill Devil Hills, NC. The longest flight lasted about 59 seconds and was performed by Wilbur Wright.

While the government was busy throwing money to well-known engineers building monstrous aerodromes, two unknown bicycle engineers from Dayton, Ohio with no formal education, recognition, or funding were able to solve a problem that Leonardo DaVinci himself couldn't solve.

First flight: December 17, 1903, Kill Devil Hills, NC. Wilbur is aboard the Flyer. Orville stands besides it.² 

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