It was 10:35 a.m. on December 17, 1903, on the hilltop with the disturbing name of Kill Devil Hill outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
The bicycle repair brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright had been testing their machine for several days already, strongly inspired by the glider experiments of the German Otto Lillenthal.
Lillenthal sacrificed his life in the search for air under his wings and died from injuries he sustained as a result of a plane crash in 1896.
An attempt to get into the air on 14 December led to the machine plummeting into the air after only three seconds. “Flyer” needed repair. The biplane (the plane had two sets of wings, journal note) was propelled forward by an engine located in the middle of the creation which sent power to two 2.5 meter long propellers. The engine had 16 horsepower. The wings were made of fabric and wood.
The pilot was lying on his stomach in front of the engine. The plane had no wheels, but was connected to a trolley that was laid out 20 meters with rails. It acted as a kind of catapult. The pilot could control the aircraft using a series of cords and pulleys.
The article continues below the advertisementThe article continues below the advertisement
See video from the archive: How do large planes manage to take off?
“Would fly absolutely beautifully”
Wilbur (tv) and Orville Wright on the front porch of their home in Dayton Ohio in 1909. It was only five or six years after the first flight that the brothers received recognition for their feat. Photo: AFP/NTB
Wilbur, who won the coin toss to be a pilot, sounded hopeful in the messages he sent back to family members, describing the test as “a partial success.”
“The engine power is plentiful, but due to a minor error resulting from little experience with this machine and its starting methods, the machine would have flown perfectly.”
The article continues below the advertisementThe article continues below the advertisement
After the repairs, they were ready again. This time it was little brother Orville who was to be the pilot. With the cold December headwind on December 17, he and the 16 horsepower managed to keep the machine in the air for 12 seconds and made it 37 meters before it made contact with the ground again.
It was more than enough. The brothers remained the first to ever make a successful manned flight in a powered aircraft.
The article continues below the ad
The world sensation no one would believe
Although this in itself was a world sensation, only five people witnessed the event.
The local newspaper, the Dayton Journal, refused to write about the flight, considering it too short to be significant.
It was actually only when people started talking about the news in Paris the following spring that people in their home country also began to understand the significance of the incident. For a long time there was much speculation in the press whether it was all a hoax by the two bicycle repair brothers.
Never flew again
Three more flights were made that day, the longest lasting 59 seconds. Later in the day, the plane was hit by a strong crosswind which overturned it and the plane was so badly damaged that it was not possible to repair it.
The world’s first motorized airplane never flew again.
It is today on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC A small piece of the plane, as well as a piece of the wing fabric of the plane that went to the moon with Neil Armstrong in 1969, while another piece of the wing fabric went with the NASA helicopter Ingenuity on the first flight on Mars in 2021.
The article continues below the advertisementThe article continues below the advertisement
(The article continues below the picture).
In connection with the 100th anniversary of the first flight in 2003, an attempt was made to get a replica of the Wright brothers’ plane to take off at Kill Devil Hills, but although the nose was relieved, the plane never got off the ground. The first plane was so difficult to control that there were probably not many other than the Wright brothers themselves who would have been able to control the machine. Photo: Stringer/usa / Reuters
Silenced the critics
Despite the plane’s short-lived fate, the Wright brothers were on the wings again the very next year with the Wright Flyer II, which became the first plane to fly in a circle and managed to stay in the air for a full five minutes, returning over 4,500 meters. This also had a reinforced engine compared to its predecessor.
It was not until 1908 that the Wright brothers silenced the criticism that they were hoaxers with a flight demonstration in France. Ernest Archdeacon, the head of the Aéro-Club de France went public and regretted that in the years leading up he had cast doubt on the Wright brothers’ milestones. In France, much prestige was attached to the fact that it was here that the world’s first motorized flight was to take place.
“For a long time, the Wright brothers here in Europe have been accused of hoaxing. Today they are being honored in France and I feel an intense joy, to make it right,” he wrote in L’Auto.
The article continues below the ad
By 1907, the American Defense Forces had also, after much trial and error, been convinced of the brothers’ machines and, after rejecting them several times, they entered into an agreement to build aircraft for the American Defense Forces. But there were several requirements, one of which was that there had to be room for at least one observer, so the brothers had to make a plane that had room for passengers.
The world’s first air passenger and fatal accident
Back at Kitty Hawk, the brothers tested out new versions of the flying machine. Flyer IV had room for two people, and local mechanic Charlie Furnas was given the honor of being the first passenger in a motorized plane, ever. He was also the only person to have been a passenger with both brothers.
The article continues below the ad
In 1908, the first fatal accident also occurred, when the Wright Flyer IV crashed during a flight demonstration at Fort Meyer in Virginia.
Then the American officer Thomas Etholen Selfridge (26) had the unfortunate honor of becoming the first person in the world to die after an accident with a motorized aircraft. The 26-year-old, who trained as a pilot himself and was sitting with Orville Wright when the right propeller smoked during the demonstration. Orville was also seriously injured and remained in hospital for seven weeks, but survived the accident.
The article continues below the ad
(The article continues below the picture).
American soldiers raced to the crash site to rescue Orville Wright and Thomas E. Selfridge on September 17, 1908. Wright survived the crash despite serious injuries, while Selfridge had the unfortunate honor of being the first to die in a motorized plane crash. Photo: AP
Become world stars and fly for royalty
By 1909 they were both world stars and royalty from Britain, Spain and Italy came to see Wilbur’s flying demonstrations in France. When they returned to the United States, they were invited to the White House by President Taft. The two flew together only once, in 1910. They had promised their father and each other that they would not fly together to prevent a double tragedy if something were to go wrong. That way, at least one of them would also be able to continue their life’s work.
That same year, they also completed the first commercial air shipment, transporting two rolls of silk 105 kilometers from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio.
From horse and cart to supersonic jet
In 1912, Wilbur Wright died aged 45 after contracting typhus. His brother Orville died first in 1948, aged 76. He managed to see how the invention had changed the way people and goods travel around the world, but also the significance the invention had on warfare, especially during the Second World War.
The article continues below the advertisementThe article continues below the advertisement
Orville Wright lived to see the aviation industry take quantum leaps from the first flight in 1903 to the end of World War II with supersonic aircraft. This photo is from 1946. Photo: AP
“We dared to hope that we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the world. But we were wrong… No, I have no regrets about my contribution to the invention of the airplane, although no one can regret more than I the destruction it has caused. I look at the airplane the same way I look at fire. I am sorry for all the damage the fire has caused, but at the same time I think it is good for humanity that someone found out how to make fire and that we have learned how fire can be used in thousands of important ways”, he told in an interview shortly before his death.
His last flight came in 1944, over 40 years after his first, when Howard Hughes and TWA President Jack Frye took the new Locheed Consteallation passenger plane into Wright Field. Orville got a feel for the flight controls during a final flight and noted that the Lockheed plane “connie” had a longer wingspan than the distance on his first flight.
When Orville Wright died on 30 January 1948, he had experienced how the world had changed from horse and cart transport to supersonic flights.
Sources: ThoughtCo, US Air Force, Wright Brothers National Memorial, Wikipedia.
2023-12-17 17:47:26
#seconds #world
