The Wright Brothers’ first flying machine was a mere toy. “Late in the autumn of 1878” they tell the story, “our father came into the house one evening with some object partially concealed in his hands, and before we could see what it was, he tossed it into the air. Instead of falling to the floor, as we expected, it flew across the room till it struck the ceiling, where it fluttered for a while, and finally sank to the floor. It was a little toy known to scientists as a ‘hélicoptère’ but which we, with sublime disregard for science, dubbed a bat. It was a light frame of cork and bamboo which formed two screws driven in opposite directions by rubber bands under torsion. A toy so delicate lasted only a short time in the hands of small boys, but its memory was abiding.”
The interest of the brothers in aëronautics was awakened. “We began building these hélicoptères ourselves,” their story goes on, “making each one larger than that preceding. But, to our astonishment, we found that the larger the ‘bat,’ the less it flew. We did not know that a machine having only twice the linear dimensions of another would require eight times the power. We finally became discouraged, and returned to kite-flying, a sport to which we had devoted so much attention that we were regarded as experts. But as we became older, we had to give up this fascinating sport as unbecoming to boys of our age.”
PLATE XVII.
An Ingenious Model which Fails to Fly.
The Wrights did not begin their experiments until the summer of 1896. They first prepared themselves thoroughly by reading the literature on aëronautics, making themselves familiar with the results of all the experimental work of the aviators—Langley, Chanute, Mouillard, and others. The Wrights soon decided that the first thing to be solved was to build aëroplanes which would fly and that, until this was solved, it was foolish to waste time building delicate and costly machinery to operate them. They took up the problems of the glider and sought by actual tests what many scientists had been theorizing about for years.
They soon discarded the various forms of gliders then used for experiments. The tests which led up to adopting the now famous Wright model, the basis for all heavier than air machines to-day, occupied very little time. The story of this marvellous discovery which will rank with that of Robert Fulton or Watt, is best told in their own words, which are here somewhat abbreviated.
“The balancing of a flier may seem, at first thought, to be a very simple matter,” say the Wrights, “yet almost every experimenter had found in this the point he could not satisfactorily master. Many different methods were tried. Some experimenters place the center of gravity far below the wings in the belief that the wings would naturally seek to remain at the lowest point. A more satisfactory system, especially for lateral balance, was that of arranging the wings in the shape of a broad V to form a dihedral angle, with the center low and the wing-tips elevated. In theory this was an automatic action, but in practice it had two serious defects; first, it tended to keep the machine oscillating; and, second, its usefulness was restricted to calm air. Notwithstanding the known limitations of this principle, it had been embodied in almost every prominent flying-machine which had been built.
“We reached the conclusion that such machines might be of interest from a scientific point of view, but could be of no value in a practical way. We, therefore, resolved to try a fundamentally different principle. We would arrange the flyer so that it would not tend to right itself. We would make it as inert as possible to the effects of change of direction or speed, and thus reduce the effects of wind-gusts to a minimum. We would do this in the fore-and-aft stability by giving the aëroplanes a peculiar shape; and in the lateral balance, by arching the surfaces from tip to tip, just the reverse of what our predecessors had done. Then by some suitable contrivance, actuated by the operator, forces should be brought into play to regulate the balance.”
“Lilenthal and Chanute had guided and balanced their machines by shifting the weight of the operator’s body. But this method seemed to us incapable of expansion to meet large conditions, because the weight to be moved and the distance of possible motion were limited, while the disturbing forces steadily increased, both with wing area and wind velocity. In order to meet the needs of large machines, we wished to employ some system whereby the operator could vary at will the inclination of different parts of the wings, and thus obtain from the wind forces to restore the balance which wind itself had disturbed. This could easily be done by using wings capable of being warped, and adjustable surfaces in the shape of rudders. A happy device was discovered whereby the surfaces could be so warped that aëroplanes could be presented on the right and left sides at different angles to the wind. This, with an adjustable horizontal front rudder, formed the main features of our first glider.”