Carol L. Cook
The Wrights used a motor. Then, they designed some propellers. Slowly, the new machine began to take shape, and in November 1903, it was shipped to Kitty Hawk for assembly at the test site.
On December 17, Orville was at the controls of their machine. The machine rose from the track and covered 120 feet in about 12 seconds. Several other flights were made. Then, a gust of wind upset the machine and it was damaged severely. Not much press was given their efforts.
The Wrights made or attempted 105 flights during 1903, the largest of which was 5 minutes and included more than 3 complete circles of the field. It was not until 1906, nearly three years after the first Kitty Hawk flights, that important articles began to appear telling of the Wright’s achievements.
When the Wrights attempted in 1905 to offer their invention to the United States government, the response they received was almost unbelievable. They wrote to their congressmen, describing their flights thus far, and asked whether the government was interested either in purchasing flying machines or in acquiring the information they had accumulated. Their letter was sent to the War Department, which evidently didn’t believe their story.
Several times, the Wright Brothers wrote to the U.S. government, and they continually failed. Then, President Theodore Roosevelt set the machinery in motion to change this indifference. His administration took steps to invite the Wrights to make a proposal for supplying an airplane to the government. The first demonstration flight of the first military airplane in history took place at Fort Myers, Virginia, on September 5, 1908. Orville Wright flew for just over a minute.
As the need for more engine power grew, larger radial engines were designed with a double tow of cylinders. Engines of this type were used on American World War II bombers such as the B-17, B-24, and B-29. Large commercial transports by these engines carried airline passengers all over the world, before being replaced by jet powered airliners.
In 1922, a a new idea called jet propulsion had appeared in a report published by the United States Bureau of Standards. Because it was predicted that this engine would use four times as much fuel as a good engine-propeller system at 250 miles per hour, no one was very interested in jet propulsion at that time.
The steady progress in aeronautics has given us not only faster airplanes, but a great variety of airplanes that can do very special things. The job of the earliest airplanes was simply to get off the ground and fly, somehow.
The helicopter is able to land anywhere. The jet transport carries passengers for a great distance at high speed. The supersonic fighter is designed to travel at faster than the speed of sound. Small private airplanes are designed to be easy to fly, operate economically, land at big or small airports and to provide comfortable transportation.
On May 15, 1918, the U.S. Army Air Service began mail flights. A young pilot named Charles Lindbergh wanted to win a prize of $25,000 for flying from New York to Paris. He succeeded at this and became a symbol of the pioneer who pointed the way to mass air transportation
The air war, prophesied by H. G. Wells in 1908, began its growth and by the 1930’s, advance in aviation had become so rapid that there were 150 aircraft manufacturers, each with a different model plane. In July 1936, the Douglas DC-3 made its first flight from Chicago to New York. After the airplane had reached a safe level of inherent stability, the constant goal was speed.
Hitler, who had several thousand combat planes, miscalculated the aircraft production capacity of his enemies, which reached 300,000 in the United States alone.
In spite of the devastation wrought by airplanes, their engineers could truly claim a proud record. No machine in the history of civilization to that time had ever made so many advances so quickly. During the war, the entire world of technology had concentrated on the flying machine without regard to cost.
Toward the end of the war, the U.S. had the fastest propeller plane, one that accelerated to just beyond 500 miles per hour. Then, the Germans sprang a surprise with an airplane that had no propeller. It took air at the front, mixed it with fuel, and ejected it in the rear in a roaring blast. The jet age had opened up for modern man.
The jet engine was invented by Frank Whittle. In 1930, he applied for his first patent on his gas turbine. After further study in the mechanical sciences at Cambridge University and serving as test pilot for the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at Felixstowe, Whittle joined Power Jets, Ltd. to continue his experiments, and a jet propulsion turbine was built to his design. In May 1941, the first flight using the Whittle jet engine was successfully made. While an officer of the Royal Air Force, he refused to claim any remuneration for his work or inventions; however, in 1948, he was awarded a sum of money and recognition for his achievements.
Jet and rocket engines had an almost parallel development. Both gave a forward push to the front end of a tube as the hot gases exit from the rear. An American Professor of Physics, Robert H. Goddard, transformed mathematical equations into engineering hardware. He was granted two patents on rocketry in 1914.
By 1956, the supersonic speed of bombers and fighters made them practically indistinguishable, each with about the same weight and the same operational ceiling. Both bombers and fighters could breeze along at 2,000 miles per hour.
DeHavilland was the first of the modern giants of aviation to foresee that a pressurized cabin far above the weather zone could provide a pleasant ride for everyone. In 1949, he decided to gamble his fortune on a jet passenger liner. In May 1952, one was available with 48 passengers going 490 miles per hour and flying 42,000 feet.
Today, almost every country has airliners and most countries fly jets. In few places of the world is the huge shape of the jet liner unfamiliar, so interwoven has air travel become in the daily life of man.
Aviation is one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. It has increased yearly at the rate of at least fourteen percent.