Don’t get your sequined panties in a bunch, Elvis…
True, no one else had come up with it yet, but that does not mean no one else was trying.
From the OP: “Do you think that if Orville and Wilbur never existed that someone else would have come along to prove to the world that flight with control was a profitable endeavour in time for us to fly in the style that we are presently accustomed to?”
Yes, I do. And the evidence at hand suggests so, even on the one website that one would expect would have a vested interest in spinning the story in a particular direction. The Wrights were not by any means alone in the quest for controlled powered flight. They were in a race, and won handily. Kudos to them. Doesn’t mean no one else would have finished had they not been running.
As for turning flight from a technological accomplishment to a long-distance service for the masses, that took many further engineering advances, which the Wrights themselves hardly participated in, preferring instead to engage in countless patent lawsuits over their control mechanism, which was eventually surpassed in quality.
A great description of the developments from Kitty Hawk to the early days of commercial passenger flight is found in Scott Berg’s excellent biography, Lindbergh.
So, are you saying that if a technology, such as the Railroads, was so firmly entrenched in the economy, that a new technology, such as the automobile, could not displace it?
It’s a trifle whimsical to suggest that the Wrights had a preference for lawsuits over flying or aircraft development. They hated the whole business, but felt it was forced on them.
And they eventually prevailed. Bishop Wright (their father) felt the strain contributed to Wilbur’s early death.
Obviously, everything they developed was eventually surpassed. To asperse pioneers because they weren’t as advanced as those who took up the work later seems very strange.
But I think you are quite correct that even without the Wrights, heavier than air flight would have been along in a matter of years, not decades. The French were hard at work and making reasonable progress. They learned just how far ahead the Wrights were when Wilbur flew in France in 1908, and they received a big boost from this. But it’s implausible that they would not have caught on sooner or later.
I’m a bit puzzled here. Are you saying that if something that took a number of years to learn had been learned early, then LTA (lighter than air) transport would have become as practical as HTA transport now is? Or is it some yet-to-be-discovered breakthrough that will accomplish this?
A book called The Simple Science of Flight by Henk Tennekes highlights an important consideration in human transportation: passenger miles per day. This is what pays the bills (with a premium for speed). And this is where LTA transport is so far behind HTA. A huge and fast HTA craft could possibly carry 150 passengers at 120 mph. Existing HTA craft carry 3 times that many passengers at 5 times that speed. That’s a big difference.
I think I may have sold the Wrights a bit short in a previous post. Though the details of how they achieved it have been far surpassed, their 3-axis control system has not. It has been essential to 99.7% of manned flight in the ensuing century, and nothing is in view to supplant it.
I’d say it’s remarkable for early pioneers to exercise that much influence on a branch of technology.
hhmm… I am no expert in this subject… but the common accusation is that the Wright Brothers got the credit for the first flight when in fact they “took off” going down slope and powered initially by a catapult.
I didn't know about their further exploits thou....
It was just a matter of who would get all the "pieces" together. Who would figure the right balance of things to fly for real. It was bound to be Santos Dumont, Wright Bros. or someone else pretty soon anyway. I warrant the dozens of wounded and killed pioneers before them were the ultimate risk takers.
No. For the four flights of 17 Dec 1903 they took off from a level track with no catapault. They used a catapault (but not a slope) in 1904 when they were flying from Huffman Prairie near Dayton – there wasn’t enough room or wind there to take off without a push.
This is one commoly expressed view - a bunch a people in the race, and a couple of skillful and lucky brothers manage to put their noses in front at the end.
But I don’t think the facts support this. The Wrights were way ahead of the others in developing full control, and a look back suggests that this was the essential step.
Perhaps. But isn’t it more commendable to take the risks without getting yourself killed?
You seem to be saying that the Zeppelin is a superior method of transportation to the modern aircraft, and that the only reason we don’t live in a world filled with Zeppelins is because the airplane got their first or something.
This is a bizarre belief. There is one, and only one reason why Zeppelins aren’t more popular: Because when all operational factors are considered (safety, speed, turnaround time, maintenance, hangarage, weather capability, ground crew requirements, parking space, etc), the Zeppelin simply lost the competition.
Now, it may be that Zeppelins will make a comeback. It’s always worthwhile to re-evaluate old solution in light of advances in materials, control systems, availability of fuels, etc. But the Zeppelin died because it wasn’t competitive, and it will only come back if it becomes competitive.
That is contrary to everything I’ve read (note where I live). The Wright Brothers were not interested in building an engine and only did so because they couldn’t buy one to their specifications. I couldn’t find the weight of the engine but the whole plane weighed only 605 lbs. A 12 hp engine was pretty impressive back then. You also have to remember that gasoline was not widely available at the turn of the century. Engines that burned it were still a handmade item.
And Xema is correct. The Wrights would have said their big discovery was 3-axis control. Their gliders were totally unstable in any type of cross-wind until they added a vertical tail surface and finally a rudder. This is what makes an airplane stable and the concept of 3-axis control exists in every aircraft made.
As for the players:
Glenn Curtis was an exceptional mechanic but a lousy scientist. If he did exceed in beating the Wright Brothers he would not be able to explain what he built in scientific terms. He was known for his early engines including his version of the OX-5. He also discovered the need for a “step” in seaplanes. He even incorporated a port in the step to help break the vacuum. You see that today in most, if not all seaplanes.
Bleriot was on top of things and would have been my guess as the next person to discover 3 axis control. His model XI was a marvel of simplicity and the general layout of his plane can be seen in every tail-dragger made. His 1911 flight over the English Channel was a significant achievement in aviation history.
Santos-Dumont was an early pioneer of note (dirigibles) but I wouldn’t say his planes had any technical innovations.
Langley’s plane might have gotten airborne but it wasn’t a stable design.
Right… and the canard was largely abandoned until Rutan revived them in the 1970’s… long after the Wrights. Canards are still a valid approach to design, and weight shift is still a valid means of controlling an aircraft. In both cases, further developments were required after their initial invention to make them truly practical, and in both cases those innovations occurred decades later than the initial creation. Doesn’t make either inherently inferior.
Let’s be real here - if it was an emergency there’s no way I’d restrict myself to “normal range of motion”. If required, I’d unbuckle, climb into the back seat, and fly from there. If required.
I’ve done the weight-shift demonstration in smal airplanes. This is much more effective than people expect. Not as efficient as the designed and intended control systems, but if you consider that pilot+passenger in a C150 can be 25% of maximum gross weight, you really are shifting a significant portion of the total weight. In some of the ultralights/lightplanes I’m familar with, the weight of people can be up to 50% of total weight. That’s substantial percentage!
Start playing games like shifting seats forward or backward, tossing loose items into the tail or up on the panel… the further you get from the CG the greater the moment generated by the weight and the greater the effect. Think of levers and their balance points. If it’s me and someone else I could, potentially, have someone climb into a back seat and achieve a very significant change in attitude. Or you could have one person sit in another’s lap to change the weight balance along the lateral axis.
It’s pretty rare to have all three axes go out at once - but knowing about weight shift can help you compensate for a failure in one axis, or a jammed control. Which is why this technique has a spot in training for very small aircraft. The smaller the aircraft the more practical it is. How often is it used? I don’t know, I haven’t searched the accident databases for the information.
Another nit-pick - you don’t need 3-axis control to fly a fixed wing aircraft. There are perfectly valid designs in use that have only a 2-axis control system, specifically rudder and elevator. A large positive dihedral is used to maintain stability in the roll. (For you non-flyers, positive dihedral is the upward “V” shape of the wings when viewed from the front or rear) The Ercoupe had no rudder control for the pilot - the guy in front controlled only the ailerons and elevator. There’s a guy at my airport who is still flying one on a weekly basis.
One of the defects of the 1903 Flyer is that it has a negative dihedral, which makes it less stable.
What some of this comes down to is that size matters in aircraft. You can’t weight-shift control a 747 by running up and down the main corridor - your weight is too small a percentage of the total weight of the aircraft. But you CAN weight-shift a 300 lb lightplane, or a hang-glider where the pilot outweighs the aircraft (sometimes by a factor of 2). The Wright technique of wing-warping for roll control as opposed to ailerons IS used - in very small and lightweight model aircraft. Not practical for larger ones.
Speed also counts - the shape of a J-3 cub that never exceeds 100 mph (if that much) is quite different from that of a supersonic jet. Duct tape will also make a good wing patch for a Cub - try that with even a regular passenger jet the tape just won’t stay stuck on in the airstream.
All of which is why aircraft come in so many different shapes and sizes and configurations - different “missions” impose different requirements which have different solutions.
Maxim’s aircraft was not particularly stable, but it was probably controllable. It used twin pusher propellers, and was controlled in yaw by differential thrust. Because the props were behing the Cg, it also would have had some directional stability.
A lot of people think that if Maxim’s plane hadn’t crashed during trials, he might have achieved controlled flight. In fact, several people have built scale models of the plane and flown them controllably. That doesn’t mean the full-sized model would be controllable, but it’s certainly intriguing.
And the Wright Flyer was no great shakes for controllability either. It was at best marginally unstable, and close to being unflyable.
Agreed. But it’s an understatement to say that aviation whould not be where it is today if weight shift control was the state of the art. For control of anything large (and in 1900, of anything large enough to carry both a person and an engine) weight shift control was not merely inferior, but wholly inadequate.
That would probably mean giving up the chance to manipulate the normal flight controls, which would be unlikely to improve your chances. No one would argue with the idea that in an emergency you do whatever works. It would be a rare emergency indeed where weight shift would work better than “stick and rudder as necessary” – as a supplement, it might help.
Right, but these aircraft are not designed to allow the weight of the occupants to shift through any significant distance – indeed, they are designed to pretty well keep that weight in one place.
You are right. And in 1908, that’s pretty much what the French were using. The Wrights then showed what 3-axis control could do, and it quickly eclipsed the other systems. It would be quite wrong to say it’s the only method in use today. It would probably be correct to say that 99+% of manned flight uses this.
It’s true that anhedral presents stability issues in flight, but quite debatable whether it was a defect in the Flyer. The Wrights were well aware of its effect, and chose it deliberately. They were surprisingly sophisticated - they understood that thay were obliged to do their flying very close to the ground, which implied some special design constraints.
As noted, the issue is both weight and the distance through which it can be moved. If a small plane is designed for weight-shift, it can work fine. If it isn’t, the fact that it’s light and the pilot is heavy will not avail much.
Right, but the Wright patent covered changing the relative angles of attack of the two wings, which the courts (and essentially all subsequent aerodynamic theory) held to include the use of ailerons. It’s perhaps significant that in the Flyer and subsequent Wright designs, the wings were trussed so that the only part that warped was the outboard trailing edges.
Don´t want to sound repetitive, but seems that my first post went completely ignored, here´s the LINK again; the Wright brothers didn´t invent the 3-axis control system, they just built a functional one. Look at the picture of the Planophore, let´s review the stability issues
Horizontal stabilizator, check
Vertical stabilizator (rudder), check
Dihedral, check (it´s not very visible in the picture, however the original Planophore had elliptical dihedral)
Letters I´ve read from Penaud indicate to the people who had purchased the model how to correct the flight of the plane, using rudder, stab incidence and wing differential incidences to control the flight path, in short a three axis system of control, albeit a fixed one. Besides, since the Planophore was a free flight model (no Radio Control yet!) the fact that it was capable of flying on it´s own proves that the design was stable. And to add one more thing, honest, the model looks much more like a plane than the Flyer ever did
Having said that I do recognize the great contribution of the WB to flight, through their methodical experimentation and mechanical ingenuity.
For magiver: The Wright-Taylor 1903 engine. Why does it seem odd that a chunk of iron would account for a third of the weight a the thin wood and cloth airplane?
[The Langley-Manly engine.](www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/ Prehistory/Last_Decade/PH5.htm).
Perhaps. But directional control by differential thrust has had little to no importance in subsequent aircraft design. And I’ve never come across any reference to anyone making use of anything Maxim developed (for his aircraft). So I think it is, to a reasonable standard of proof, irrelevant to the development of manned flight.
I’d say that’s accurate. But two guys with just a few hours of flight experience were in fact able to fly it. And in 1904 they built an improved version in which they were eventually able to make some fairly impressive flights.
There can’t be too many cases where, from the perspective of a century later, the first-ever model of a complicated machine looks like a paragon of design.
Ale, this is not meant to denigrate Penaud, but the aircraft in your link does not demonstrate controllability, only stability. There are no means shown to make it change direction in any axis, only built-in means to prevent that. It does not seem to represent an advance beyond Cayley’s work, much earlier. But thanks for the interesting info.
Little has been said so far about the advantage of the Wrights’ experience controlling other inherently-unstable machines. Bicycles, that is.
I agree, but then, neither did wing warping. As you said, the first prototype of any new technology is bound to be pretty rough.
The Wrights definitely made major breakthroughs in control, and advanced the state of the art. I don’t think anyone is arguing that. The question in the OP is whether or not controlled flight would have happened soon without the Wright’s involvement. That answer is clearly yes.
