...The Wright brothers' first airplane flight on Dec. 17, 1903,
lasted just 12 seconds and news of the feat made it into only four newspapers
the next morning. Yet, the pioneering, 120-foot (37 meters) flight in a fragile
airplane over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, had an enormous impact on the entire
world...
Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright did not invent flight,
but their craftsmanship skills helped them form the early 20th-century
equivalent of a startup. Their invention of the Flyer, which was the first
crewed, powered, heavier-than-air and (to some degree) controlled-flight
aircraft, brought people and ideas together like never before. In just a few
decades, their ideas led to the creation of new aircraft in warfare, assisted
with the spread of goods and people for globalization, and led to spaceflight —
including putting the first people on the moon, in 1969....
....Humble beginnings
....Interest in aeronautics exploded during the ...19th century, as
the technical how-to finally ..caught up with humanity's centuries-old .interest
in flight. Before airplanes, people flew in balloons, airships and gliders —
but never in something heavier than air. Several scientists tested gliders
throughout the 1800s, filling data tables with information about lift and drag,
but no gliders ran on power other than that provided by the wind. A steam-powered
airship built by Henri Gifford flew successfully in 1852.
..Step 1 for the Wright brothers was to do a literature search
on the state of aeronautical knowledge at the time. In 1899, Wilbur wrote this
letter to the Smithsonian Institution, requesting copies of all the past
research done:
The first flight
Four years after Wilbur's humble letter, the Wrights were
ready to test an aircraft powered by an engine and propeller. The biplane
design was based on Chanute's biplane glider, and the engine was assembled by
Charles Taylor, a mechanic in the Wright's bike shop.
On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville climbed into the primitive
cockpit. The Flyer lifted from the level ground of Kitty Hawk into the air and
flew for 12 seconds before landing with a thud 120 feet (37 m) away. Kitty Hawk
was chosen for its consistent winds, which were good for testing kites and
gliders and also for taking off with an underpowered airplane. While strong
wind gusts could be dangerous, a good, consistent headwind allowed a plane to
take off when its own power might not get it off the ground in windless
conditions.
The brothers made four flights that day, the last one flying
852 feet (260 m) in distance and staying aloft almost a minute, launching the
world into the aviation age for good.
From Kitty Hawk to outer space
When news about their feet at Kitty Hawk reached the news
wires, competitive inventors attempted their own flying machines in cornfields
around the world.
It was the U.S. government that encouraged the first mass
manufacturing of the airplane, seeing the potential of a powerful weapon and
reconnaissance vehicle. When World War I broke out in 1914, there was a new
type of battlefield: the sky. Airplane technology sped up dramatically during
the war and was a pillar of the wartime economy.
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By the 1930s, the U.S. had four airlines delivering millions
of passengers (limited mostly to the upper class) to points across the country,
across the Atlantic Ocean and, by the end of the decade, across the Pacific.
With the dawn of commercial air service, the world opened up in a new way,
allowing people to visit places they'd only read about in books.
Aviation greatly affected the outcome of World War II, too,
and war equally affected aviation. Airplanes carried paratroopers across the
English Channel and dropped the first atomic bomb. By the end of the war, the
manufacturing of planes had helped to put the United States at the forefront of
all the world's postwar economies, where it remained until the 1970s.
The birth of the jet age in the 1950s, American astronauts'
first steps on the moon between 1969 and 1972, and even the dreams of
space-tourist companies like Virgin Galactic and the self-landing rockets of
SpaceX all have their scientific roots in the field of Kitty Hawk. [Amazing
X-Planes from the X-1 to XV-15]
A Wright Flyer is on display at the Smithsonian National Air
and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2003, a replica Wright Flyer attempted
the same flight at Kitty Hawk on the 100th anniversary of the Wrights'
achievement, but it fell into a mud puddle. Conditions were quite calm that
day, and Tom Poberezny, president of the Experimental Aircraft Association,
which helped build the replica, told Wired, "Well, if this were easy, I
guess everyone would do it."
Another challenge in creating a replica was that the Wright
brothers kept the original plans secret, and the famed Wright Flyer was wrecked
shortly after its fourth flight, by a gust of wind. While Orville rebuilt the
Flyer for display, it's unclear if parts of the Flyer were recycled into other
planes, according to the EAA Aviation Museum......In Washington DC.
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