A History of Aeronautics

by Evelyn Charles Vivian; W. Lockwood Marsh

‘4. That with similar conditions large surfaces may be controlled with not much greater difficulty than small ones, if the control is effected by manipulation of the surfaces themselves, rather than by a movement of the body of the operator.

‘5. That the head resistances of the framing can be brought to a point much below that usually estimated as necessary.

‘6. That tails, both vertical and horizontal, may with safety be eliminated in gliding and other flying experiments.

‘7. That a horizontal position of the operator’s body may be assumed without excessive danger, and thus the head resistance reduced to about one-fifth that of the upright position.

‘8. That a pair of superposed, or tandem surfaces, has less lift in proportion to drift than either surface separately, even after making allowance for weight and head resistance of the connections.’

The Wrights’ first power-driven machine, 1903.

Thus, to the end of the 1901 experiments, Wilbur Wright provided a fairly full account of what was accomplished; the record shows an amount of patient and painstaking work almost beyond belief—it was no question of making a plane and launching it, but a business of trial and error, investigation and tabulation of detail, and the rejection time after time of previously accepted theories, till the brothers must have felt that the solid earth was no longer secure, at times. Though it was Wilbur who set down this and other records of the work done, yet the actual work was so much Orville’s as his brother’s that no analysis could separate any set of experiments and say that Orville did this and Wilbur did that—the two were inseparable. On this point Griffith Brewer remarked that ‘in the arguments, if one brother took one view, the other brother took the opposite view as a matter of course, and the subject was thrashed to pieces until a mutually acceptable result remained. I have often been asked since these pioneer days, “Tell me, Brewer, who was really the originator of those two?” In reply, I used first to say, “I think it was mostly Wilbur,” and later, when I came to know Orville better, I said, “The thing could not have been done without Orville.” Now, when asked, I find I have to say, “I don’t know,” and I feel the more I think of it that it was only the wonderful combination of these two brothers, who devoted their lives together for this common object, that made the discovery of the art of flying possible.’

Beyond the 1901 experiments in gliding, the record grows more scrappy, less detailed. It appears that once power-driven flight had been achieved, the brothers were not so willing to talk as before; considering the amount of work that they put in, there could have been little time for verbal description of that work—as already remarked, their tables still stand for the designer and experimenter. The end of the 1901 experiments left both brothers somewhat discouraged, though they had accomplished more than any others. ‘Having set out with absolute faith in the existing scientific data, we were driven to doubt one thing after another, till finally, after two years of experiment, we cast it all aside, and decided to rely entirely on our own investigations. Truth and error were everywhere so intimately mixed as to be indistinguishable.... We had taken up aeronautics as a sport. We reluctantly entered upon the scientific side of it.’

Yet, driven thus to the more serious aspect of the work, they found in the step its own reward, for the work of itself drew them on and on, to the construction of measuring machines for the avoidance of error, and, to the making of series after series of measurements, concerning which Wilbur wrote in 1908 (in the Century Magazine) that ‘after making preliminary measurements on a great number of different shaped surfaces, to secure a general understanding of the subject, we began systematic measurements of standard surfaces, so varied in design as to bring out the underlying causes of differences noted in their pressures. Measurements were tabulated on nearly fifty of these at all angles from zero to 45 degrees, at intervals of 2½ degrees. Measurements were also secured showing the effects on each other when surfaces are superposed, or when they follow one another.