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Wright brothers

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Kara Sundstrom
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« Reply #30 on: December 17, 2007, 02:24:53 am »

The brothers' contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, D.C.

Facing deep skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a "bluffeur," Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908 at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France. His first flight lasted only one minute 48 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Bleriot. In the following days Wilbur made a series of technically challenging flights including figure-eights, demonstrating his skills as a pilot and the capability of his flying machine, which far surpassed those of all other pilot pioneers.

The French public was thrilled by Wilbur's feats and flocked to the field by the thousands. The Wright brothers catapulted to world fame overnight. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. "L'Aérophile" editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights "have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly..." Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, "For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff...They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure...to make amends."

On October 7, 1908, Edith Berg, the wife of the brothers' European business agent, became the first American woman airplane passenger when she flew with Wilbur—one of many passengers who rode with him that autumn.

Orville followed his brother's success by demonstrating another nearly identical flyer to the United States Army at Fort Myer, Virginia, starting on September 3, 1908. On September 9 he made the first hour-long flight, enduring 62 minutes and 15 seconds.

On September 17 Army lieutenant Thomas Selfridge rode along as his passenger, serving as an official observer. A few minutes into the flight at an altitude of about 100 feet (30 m), a propeller split, sending the aircraft out of control. Selfridge was killed in the crash, the first person to die in powered fixed-wing aircraft. Orville was badly injured, suffering a broken left leg and four broken ribs. The brothers' sister Katharine, a school teacher, rushed from Dayton to Washington and stayed by Orville's side for the many weeks of his hospitalization. She helped negotiate a one-year extension of the Army contract. A friend visiting Orville in the hospital asked, "Has it got your nerve?" "Nerve?" repeated Orville, slightly puzzled. "Oh, do you mean will I be afraid to fly again? The only thing I'm afraid of is that I can't get well soon enough to finish those tests next year."

Deeply shocked by the accident, Wilbur determined to make even more impressive flight demonstrations; in the ensuing days and weeks he set new records for altitude and duration. In January 1909 Orville and Katharine joined him in France, and for a time they were the three most famous people in the world, sought after by royalty, the rich, reporters and the public. The kings of England, Spain and Italy came to see Wilbur fly.

The Wrights traveled to Pau, in the south of France, where Wilbur made many more public flights, giving rides to a procession of officers, journalists and statesmen—and his sister Katharine on February 15. He trained two French pilots, then transferred the airplane to the French company. In April the Wrights went to Italy where Wilbur assembled another Flyer, giving demonstrations and training more pilots. A cameraman climbed aboard and made the first motion picture from an airplane.

After their return to the U.S., the brothers and Katharine were invited to the White House where President Taft bestowed awards upon them. Dayton followed up with a lavish two-day homecoming celebration. In July 1909 Orville, with Wilbur assisting, completed the proving flights for the U.S. Army, meeting the requirements of a two-seater able to fly with a passenger for an hour at an average of speed of 40 miles an hour (64 km/h) and land undamaged. They sold the aircraft to the Army's Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps for $30,000 (which included a $5,000 bonus for exceeding the speed specification). Wilbur climaxed an extraordinary year in early October when he flew at New York City's Hudson-Fulton celebrations, circling the Statue of Liberty and making a 33-minute flight up and down the Hudson River alongside Manhattan in view of up to one million New Yorkers. These flights solidly established the fame of the Wright brothers in America.

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Kara Sundstrom
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« Reply #31 on: December 17, 2007, 11:44:11 pm »

On May 25, 1910 back at Huffman Prairie, Orville piloted two unique flights. First, he took off on a six-minute flight with Wilbur as his passenger, the only time the Wright brothers ever flew together. They received permission from their father to make the flight. They had always promised Milton they would never fly together—to avoid the chance of a double tragedy and to ensure one brother would remain to continue their experiments. Next, Orville took his 82-year old father on a nearly seven-minute flight, the first and only one of Milton Wright's life. The airplane rose to about 350 feet (107 m) while the elderly Wright called to his son, "Higher, Orville, higher!"


The patent war

In 1908 the brothers warned Glenn Curtiss not to infringe their patent by profiting from flying or selling aircraft that used ailerons. Curtiss refused to pay license fees to the Wrights and sold a plane to the Aeronautic Society of New York in 1909. The Wrights filed a lawsuit, beginning a years-long legal conflict. They also sued foreign aviators who flew at U.S. exhibitions, including the leading French aviator Louis Paulhan. The brothers' licensed European companies, which owned foreign patents the Wrights had received, sued manufacturers in their countries. The European lawsuits were only partly successful. Despite a pro-Wright ruling in France, legal maneuvering dragged on until the patent expired in 1917. A German court ruled the patent invalid due to prior disclosure in speeches by Wilbur Wright in 1901 and Octave Chanute in 1903. In the U.S. the Wrights made an agreement with the Aero Club of America to license airshows which the Club approved, freeing participating pilots from a legal threat. Promoters of approved shows paid fees to the Wrights.[47] The Wright brothers won their initial case against Curtiss in February 1913, but the decision was appealed.

From 1910 until his death from typhoid fever in 1912, Wilbur took the leading role in the patent struggle, traveling incessantly to consult with lawyers and testify in what he felt was a moral cause, particularly against Curtiss, who was creating a large company to manufacture aircraft. The Wrights' preoccupation with the legal issue hindered their development of new aircraft designs, and by 1911 Wright aircraft were considered inferior to those made by other firms in Europe. Indeed, aviation development in the US was suppressed to such an extent that when the US entered World War I no acceptable American-designed aircraft were available, and the US forces were compelled to use French machines. Orville and Katharine Wright believed Curtiss was partly responsible for Wilbur's premature death, which occurred in the wake of his exhausting travels and the stress of the legal battle.

In January 1914 a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in favor of the Wrights against Curtiss, whose company continued to avoid penalties through legal tactics. Since Orville was planning to sell the Wright company, no follow ups were made after the legal victory. In 1917, with World War I underway, the U.S. government stepped in to supervise a cross-licensing organization in which member companies paid a blanket fee for the use of aviation patents, including the original and subsequent Wright patents. The Wright-Martin company (successor to the Wright company) and the Curtiss company (which held a number of its own patents) each received a $2 million payment. The "patent war" ended, although side issues lingered in the courts until the 1920s. In a twist of irony, the Wright Aeronautical Corporation (another successor) and the Curtiss Aeroplane company merged in 1929 to form the Curtiss-Wright corporation, which remains in business today producing high-tech components for the aerospace industry.

The lawsuits damaged the public image of the Wright brothers, who were generally regarded before this as heroes. Critics said the brothers were greedy and unfair, and compared their actions unfavourably to European inventors, who refused to enforce restrictive patents on this new technology. Supporters said the brothers were protecting their interests and were justified in expecting fair compensation for the years of work leading to their successful inventions. Their long friendship with Octave Chanute collapsed after he publicly criticized their actions.

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« Reply #32 on: December 17, 2007, 11:45:27 pm »

In business

The Wright Company was incorporated on November 22, 1909. The brothers sold their patents to the company for $100,000 and also received one-third of the shares in a million dollar stock issue and a ten percent royalty on every airplane sold. With Wilbur as president and Orville as vice president, the company set up an airplane factory in Dayton and a flying school/test flight field at Huffman Prairie; the headquarters office was in New York City.

In mid-1910 the Wrights changed the design of their airplane, moving the horizontal elevator from the front to the back and adding wheels. It had become apparent by then that a rear elevator would make the airplane easier to control, especially as higher speeds grew more common. This aircraft was designated the "Model B," although the original canard design was never referred to as the "Model A" by the Wrights.

There were not many customers for airplanes, so in the spring of 1910 the Wrights hired and trained a team of salaried exhibition pilots to show off their aircraft and win prize money for the company—despite Wilbur's disdain for what he called "the mountebank business". The team debuted at the Indianapolis Speedway on June 13. Before the year was over, pilots Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxsey died in airshow crashes, and in November 1911 the brothers disbanded the team on which nine men had served (four other former team members died in crashes afterward).

The Wright Company transported the first known commercial air cargo on November 7, 1910 by flying two bolts of dress silk 65 miles (105 km) from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio for the Moorehouse-Marten Department Store, which paid a $5,000 fee. Company pilot Phil Parmelee made the flight—which was more an exercise in advertising than a simple delivery—in an hour and six minutes with the cargo strapped in the passenger's seat. The silk was cut into small pieces and sold as souvenirs.

Between 1910 and 1916 the Wright Company flying school at Huffman Prairie trained 115 pilots who were instructed by Orville and his assistants. Several trainees became famous, including Henry "Hap" Arnold, who rose to Five-Star General, commanded U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, and became first head of the U.S. Air Force; Calbraith Perry Rodgers, who made the first coast-to-coast flight in 1911 (with many stops and crashes) in a Wright Model EX named the "Vin Fiz" after the sponsor's soft drink; and Eddie Stinson, founder of the Stinson Aircraft Company.

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« Reply #33 on: December 17, 2007, 11:47:00 pm »

The Smithsonian feud

Samuel P. Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1887 until his death in 1906, experimented for years with model flying machines and successfully flew unmanned powered model aircraft in 1896 and 1903. Two tests of his manned full-size motor-driven Aerodrome in October and December 1903, however, were complete failures. Nevertheless, the Smithsonian later proudly displayed the Aerodrome in its museum as the first heavier-than-air craft "capable" of manned powered flight, relegating the Wright brothers' invention to secondary status and ironically triggering a decades-long feud with Orville Wright, whose brother had received help from the Smithsonian when beginning his own quest for flight.

The Smithsonian based its claim for the Aerodrome on short test flights Glenn Curtiss and his team made with it in 1914. The Smithsonian allowed Curtiss, in an unsavory alliance, to make major modifications to the craft before attempting to fly it. The Smithsonian hoped to salvage Langley's aeronautical reputation by proving the Aerodrome could fly; Curtiss wanted to prove the same thing to defeat the Wrights' patent lawsuits against him. The tests had no effect on the patent battle, but the Smithsonian made the most of them, honoring the Aerodrome in its museum and publications. The Institution did not reveal the extensive Curtiss modifications, but Orville Wright learned of them from his brother Lorin and a close friend, Griffith Brewer, who both witnessed and photographed some of the tests.

Orville repeatedly objected to misrepresentation of the Aerodrome, but the Smithsonian was unyielding. Orville responded by loaning the restored 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer to the London Science Museum in 1928, refusing to donate it to the Smithsonian while the Institution "perverted" the history of the flying machine. Charles Lindbergh attempted to mediate the dispute, to no avail. In 1942, after years of bad publicity, and encouraged by Wright biographer Fred Kelly, the Smithsonian finally relented by publishing, for the first time, a list of the Aerodrome modifications and recanting misleading statements it had made about the 1914 tests. Orville then privately requested the British museum to return the Flyer, but the airplane remained in protective storage for the duration of World War II and finally came home after Orville's death.

On November 23, 1948 the executors of Orville's estate signed an agreement for the Smithsonian to purchase the Flyer for one dollar. At the insistence of the executors, the agreement also included strict conditions for display of the airplane. The agreement reads, in part, "Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight." If this agreement is not fulfilled, the Flyer can be reclaimed by the heir of the Wright brothers. Some aviation buffs, particularly those who promote the legacy of Gustave Whitehead, now accuse the Smithsonian of refusing to investigate claims of earlier flights.  After a ceremony in the Smithsonian museum, the Flyer went on public display on December 17, 1948, the 45th anniversary of the only day it was flown successfully. The Wright brothers' nephew Milton (Lorin's son), who had seen gliders and the Flyer under construction in the bicycle shop when he was a boy, gave a brief speech and formally transferred the airplane to the Smithsonian, which displayed it with the accompanying label:

The original Wright brothers aeroplane

The world's first power-driven heavier-than-air machine in which man made free, controlled, and sustained flight
Invented and built by Wilbur and Orville Wright
Flown by them at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina December 17, 1903
By original scientific research the Wright brothers discovered the principles of human flight


As inventors, builders, and flyers they further developed the aeroplane, taught man to fly, and opened the era of aviation
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Kara Sundstrom
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« Reply #34 on: December 17, 2007, 11:48:57 pm »

Last years

Wilbur Wright

Neither brother married. Wilbur once quipped that he did not have time for a wife and an airplane. Wilbur, age forty-five, died of typhoid fever on the morning of Thursday, May 30, 1912.


Orville Wright

Orville sold his interests in the company in 1915. He, Katharine and their father Milton moved to a mansion, Hawthorn Hill, Oakwood, Ohio, which the newly wealthy family built. There, they lived quietly. Milton died in his sleep in 1917. Katharine married in 1926, which upset Orville. He cut her off, refusing to meet with or write to her. He finally agreed to see her just before she died of pneumonia in 1929.

On April 19, 1944, the second production Lockheed Constellation, piloted by Howard Hughes and TWA president Jack Frye flew from Burbank, California to Washington D.C. in 6 hours and 57 minutes. On the return trip, the aircraft stopped at Wright Field to give Orville Wright his last plane flight, more than forty years after his historic first flight. He commented that the wingspan on the Constellation was longer than the distance of his first flight. Orville died in 1948, from a heart attack. Both brothers are buried at the family plot at Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio.
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Kara Sundstrom
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« Reply #35 on: December 17, 2007, 11:49:31 pm »

Legacy

The Flyer I is now on display in the National Air and Space Museum, a division of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (See The Smithsonian Issue).

The Flyer III, the only fixed-wing aircraft designated a National Historic Landmark, was dismantled after the 1905 flights, but rebuilt and flown in 1908 at Kitty Hawk, and was restored in the late 1940s with the help of Orville. It is on display at Dayton, Ohio in the John W. Berry Sr., Wright Brothers Aviation Center at Carillon Historical Park. The display space for the aircraft was designed by Orville Wright.

Orville instructed that, upon his death, The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia should receive his collection of airfoils and devices. The Franklin Institute was the first scientific organization to give the Wright brothers credit and ranking for achieving sustained powered flight. Today, The Franklin Institute Science Museum holds the largest collection of artifacts from the Wright brothers' workshop.

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« Reply #36 on: December 17, 2007, 11:50:23 pm »

Competing claims

Numerous claims before the Wrights aspire to the title of first powered, manned, controlled, and self-sustaining heavier than air flight, or variations of this classification—see First flying machine for details. Several claims actually were made after the Wrights' first successful flights, and attempt to discount the achievement due to one or more of the following technical reasons: the takeoff rail, the lack of wheels, ground effect, the need for a headwind, and, beginning in 1904, the use of a catapult. Such criticisms are based on the fact that the Wright Flyer did not operate exactly the way people, then and now, expect of fixed-wing aircraft.

The Flyer certainly did not incorporate all the elements and conveniences of a modern airplane, such as wheels. Criticism, however, while faulting the Flyer on the points listed above, often pays less attention to an additional but essential fact: the Flyer, especially by 1905, was the first heavier-than-air, manned, powered, winged machine to fly successfully under full control, using aerodynamic principles developed by the Wright brothers and applied since then on all practical airplanes. That achievement defines the Wright brothers, in the view of many people, as the inventors of the airplane.

The Wright brothers' December 17, 1903 flight is recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics, as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight".
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« Reply #37 on: December 17, 2007, 11:51:29 pm »

Individual Control Arrangements

Wilbur and Orville devised slightly different flight controls in the airplanes they built separately in France and the U.S. for their 1908 public demonstrations. The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum refers to "The Wilbur Method" and "The Orville Method". In Wilbur's method, the roll and yaw controls were combined on the same lever at the pilot's right hand. A forward-backward movement controlled the rudder, while a sideways or left-and-right motion controlled wing-warping. In the Orville Method, moving the stick controlled wing-warping, while a knob atop the stick controlled the rudder. In both methods the left-hand lever operated the forward elevator to control pitch. Wilbur trained French and Italian pilots using his method, and Orville trained American pilots at the Wright Company flight school using his method.

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« Reply #38 on: December 17, 2007, 11:52:20 pm »

Ohio/North Carolina rivalry

The U.S. states of Ohio and North Carolina both take credit for the Wright brothers and their world-changing inventions — Ohio because the brothers developed and built their design in Dayton, and North Carolina because Kitty Hawk was the site of the first flight. With a spirit of friendly rivalry, Ohio adopted the slogan "Birthplace of Aviation" (later "Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers", recognizing not only the Wrights, but also John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, both Ohio natives), while North Carolina has adopted the slogan "First In Flight".

Each state features these phrases on their standard-issue state automobile license plates, and both states also included an image of a Wright Flyer on their respective 50 state quarters designs.

As the positions of both states can be factually defended, and each played a significant role in the history of flight, neither state truly has an exclusive claim to the Wrights' accomplishment.

While speaking at a presentation at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Neil Armstrong joked that there is enough credit for both states: North Carolina provided the right winds and soft landing material and Dayton provided the know-how, resources and engineering.




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« Reply #39 on: December 17, 2007, 11:53:18 pm »



Ohio 50 State Quarter features the 1905 Wright Flyer III built and flown in Ohio, in another famous photo from Huffman Prairie
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« Reply #40 on: December 17, 2007, 11:54:19 pm »



North Carolina 50 State Quarter features the famous first flight photo of the 1903 Wright Flyer I at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
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« Reply #41 on: December 17, 2007, 11:54:51 pm »

"While up in the air there is but very little to injure or to put any great strain on any part of the machinery. If you run into a tree or a house, of course, there would be a smash-up. No drinking man should ever be allowed to undertake to run a flying-machine." — Amos I. Root
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