 |
Serial Activities The Invention Problem Solving Flying Machines In The News Online Explorations |
Anticipation builds for December´s Centennial of Flight
By CINDI BROWNFIELDNEWS-JOURNAL EDUCATION WRITER
DAYTONA BEACH — Winds gusted to 27 mph and temperatures were in the 30s the morning the Wright brothers´ dream finally took flight.
It was Dec. 17, 1903. Orville and Wilbur Wright had promised their sister, Kate, they´d be home for Christmas. So they braved the freezing temperatures of North Carolina´s Outer Banks and brought out their homemade airplane.
|
The upcoming centennial of flight is getting a lot of attention at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which is celebrating with this weekend´s Wings & Waves air and sea show.
Longtime ERAU employee Fred Mirgle, a pilot and aviation history buff, plans to give a free public lecture, “The Wright Brothers: From Glider to Flyer,” at 1:30 p.m. today and again at 9 a.m. Saturday. Today´s lecture will be at the Miller Instructional Center on campus, while Saturday´s will be at the Plaza Resort and Spa, Granada Room, 600 N. Atlantic Ave.
A student club at ERAU is building a one-sixth-scale replica of the Wright Flyer to be shown at area schools, and students and instructors are building a replica of the Wrights´ wind tunnel so Embry-Riddle students can replicate the brothers´ original experiments.
The university already has a full-size replica of the Wright Flyer, with a wingspan of more than 40 feet, in the center of its campus. Professor Steve Craft plans to speak on “The History of Embry-Riddle” at 9 a.m. Sunday at the Plaza Resort, Granada Room.
“Aviation history is captivating to me, particularly the early days when people did everything,” said Mirgle, manager of ERAU´s Aircraft Maintenance and Avionics Program. “(The Wright brothers) were pilots; they were engineers; they were craftsmen. They worked with wood. They did all the sewing on the aircraft themselves.”
People had been flying in balloons and gliders for more than 100 years before the Wright brothers took an interest in aeronautics.
The seed was planted when their father, a minister, brought home a toy helicopter with a wind-up propeller, Mirgle said. The mechanically inclined brothers owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, where they manufactured and fixed bikes. There was little information available on flight at the time.
“Wilbur was the thinker and Orville the tinker,” said Bill Corcoran, park ranger at the Wright Brothers National Memorial near Kitty Hawk, N.C., where a weeklong centennial celebration will be held in December. “Those two skills complemented one another. I don´t think either of them could have done it alone.”
The Wrights picked Kitty Hawk, a three-day trip from their home in Ohio, for their 1900-1903 tests because it was known for windy weather. Their failures with gliders the first two years led the brothers to build a 6-foot wind tunnel in Dayton, where they studied drag and lift and developed scientific tables that helped them design their third glider and eventually the Wright Flyer airplane, Mirgle said.
“The wind tunnel is the single-most important piece of equipment they designed and built,” he said.
Charles Taylor, “the first aircraft technician,” did the machining on the first engine and was key to the Wrights´ success, Mirgle said. Taylor was an employee in the bike shop.
The Wright brothers returned to Kitty Hawk in September 1903, but didn´t have their plane ready until Dec. 14. Wilbur won a coin toss to fly first, but he crashed after a brief, unsuccessful flight.
The cold, windy day that changed aviation history -- Dec. 17, 1903 -- arrived after three days of repairs to the flyer.
The brothers completed four flights that morning, taking turns at the controls. After Orville´s initial success, Wilbur flew 175 feet, then Orville flew 200 feet. About noon, Wilbur piloted the fourth flight, which went 852 feet and lasted 59 seconds.
As the Wrights and witnesses were planning a try for an even longer flight, a sudden gust of wind rolled the Wright Flyer over, heavily damaging the plane, Corcoran said.
The Wrights packed up and headed home for the holidays.
Did You Know?
The Wright brothers´ main competitor was Samuel Pierpont Langley, a self-taught engineer.
Langley did most of his experiments on heavier-than-air flight while he was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, funded by $50,000 from the U.S. government.
About a week before Orville and Wilbur Wright´s December 1903 flight in an airplane that cost $1,000 to build, Langley tried to launch his airplane by catapulting it from a houseboat. The plane sank in the Potomac River.
SOURCES: Bill Corcoran, Wright Brothers National Memorial; U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission Web site, www.centennialofflight.gov
Serial Story: UP IN THE AIR -- The 18-part serial story ran in the Daytona Beach News-Journal each Monday from January 13 through May 19 (except for April 14). Text and illustrations for the serial copyright © 2003 by Brian Floca. Sponsored in part by Inventing Flight, Dayton, Ohio. Reprinted by permission of Breakfast Serials, Inc. www.breakfastserials.com.
Copyright © 2009 NIE WORLD (www.nieworld.com). All content copyrighted and may not be republished without permission. The News-Journal has no control over and is not responsible for content on other Web sites. Privacy Policy.