Their next step was to place a gas-engine on their aeroplane and attempt actual mechanical flight. After many experiments they succeeded, and on December 17, 1903, the first airship made four flights at Kitty Hawk. In the longest flight it stayed in the air fifty-nine seconds, and flew against a twenty-mile wind. It weighed, with the aviator, about 745 pounds, and was propelled by a gas-engine weighing 240 pounds, and having twelve or thirteen horse-power. That test assured them that mechanical flight was possible.
The Wrights had now solved the real problem of aviation, equilibrium. They were ready to try mechanical flights in places where the wind-conditions were less favorable than at Kitty Hawk. They secured a swampy meadow eight miles east of Dayton, and, using that secrecy which they have always believed was necessary to the protection of their interests, began to fly there. Their airship flew well in a straight course, but there was difficulty in turning corners. Sometimes it could be done, but occasionally the plane would lose its balance as it turned, and have to be brought to the ground. In time they remedied this, and on September 20, 1904, they were able to make a complete circle. Later in that same year they made two flights of three miles each around a circular course.
The Wrights’ system of balance, the great original feature of their invention, is attained by what is called the warping of the wings. When they are flying, and some cause, such as a change in their position, or a sudden gust of wind, makes the airship tip, a lever is moved, and the two planes warp down on the end that is canting toward the earth. Simultaneously the two opposite ends of the planes warp up. The lower ends at once gain greater lifting power, the upper ends less. Therefore the airship stops tilting and comes back to an even flight. The lever is instantly moved to keep the machine from tipping to the other side.
WILBUR WRIGHT
ORVILLE WRIGHT
CABLE ADDRESS:
WRIGHTS, DAYTON
WRIGHT BROTHERS
1127 W. THIRD STREET
DAYTON, OHIO
July 22, 1911.
George W. Jacobs & Co.,
Philadelphia.
Gentlemen:—
Replying to yours of June 26th we are herewith enclosing a photograph of our first flight made at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
Yours truly,
[Signature: Wright Brothers.]
The Wright Brothers’ Airship
When the airship came to turn a corner it was apt to “skid.” It slid from its balance, owing to the change in its course against the currents of air. The Wrights overcame this by having the planes of their machine warp at the same instant that the rudder shifts the course, by this raising one wing and lowering the other, so that the aeroplane cants over and makes the circle leaning against the wind, on the same principle that a bicycler takes a curve on an angle instead of riding upright. The problems of balance and of turning corners were therefore both met and solved by warping the planes to meet the conditions of the airship’s contact with the wind.
One of the chief reasons for the Wrights’ success was that they had studied their subject long and faithfully before they tried to fly. They had worked with their gliders several years, and had made new calculations of the changing angles and currents of air. They had been in no hurry, and when they built their first real airship they made use of all the principles of aerodynamics that they had discovered. They knew that their machine would fly before they tried it, because they knew exactly what its various surfaces would do in the air. The propeller was the only part of their airship they had not studied when they began to build. When they found that they could not use the figures that had governed the construction of marine propellers they set to work to solve this problem in the same thoroughgoing way. They mastered it, and their success with their propeller is the feature of their airship in which they take the greatest pride.
The first official statement of their progress in flying was made in letters of the Wrights in the Aerophile in 1905, and to the Aero Club of America in 1906. These declared that they had begun actual flight with a motor-driven aeroplane on December 17, 1903, had then spent the year 1904 in experimenting with flights in circular courses, and had so learned the proper methods of control of the planes by 1905 that they had at last made continuous flights of eleven, twelve, fifteen, twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-four miles, at a speed of about thirty-eight miles an hour, and had been able to alight safely in each instance, ready to fly again as soon as their fuel was replenished.