Plan of Chanute’s movable-wing glider.
Before the death of Lilienthal his efforts had attracted the attention of Octave Chanute, a distinguished civil engineer of Chicago, who, believing that the real problem of the glider was the maintenance of equilibrium in the air, instituted a series of experiments along that line. Lilienthal had preserved his equilibrium by moving his body about as he hung suspended under the wings of his machine. Chanute proposed to accomplish the same end by moving the wings automatically. His attempts were partially successful. He constructed several types of gliders, one of these with two decks exactly in the form of the present biplane. Others had three or more decks. Upward of seven hundred glides were made with Chanute’s machines by himself and assistants, without a single accident. It is of interest to note that a month before the fatal accident to Lilienthal, Chanute had condemned that form of glider as unsafe.
Chanute’s two-deck glider.
In 1897, A. M. Herring, who had been one of the foremost assistants of Octave Chanute, built a double-deck (biplane) machine and equipped it with a gasoline motor between the planes. The engine failed to produce sufficient power, and an engine operated by compressed air was tried, but without the desired success.
In 1898, Lawrence Hargrave of Sydney, New South Wales, came into prominence as the inventor of the cellular or box kite. Following the researches of Chanute, he made a series of experiments upon the path of air currents under variously curved surfaces, and constructed some kites which, under certain conditions, would advance against a wind believed to be absolutely horizontal. From these results Hargrave was led to assert that “soaring sails” might be used to furnish propulsion, not only for flying machines, but also for ships on the ocean sailing against the wind. The principles involved remain in obscurity.
During the years 1900 to 1903, the brothers Wright, of Dayton, Ohio, had been experimenting with gliders among the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a small hamlet on the Atlantic Coast. They had gone there because the Government meteorological department had informed them that at Kitty Hawk the winds blew more steadily than at any other locality in the United States. Toward the end of the summer of 1903, they decided that the time was ripe for the installation of motive power, and on December 17, 1903, they made their first four flights under power, the longest being 853 feet in 59 seconds—against a wind blowing nearly 20 miles an hour, and from a starting point on level ground.
Wilbur Wright gliding at Kitty Hawk, N. C., in 1903.