Paul V. Cochrane
The event (the flight of an airplane) which took place on December 17, 1903, did not just happen as a random event, it began in the “day dreams” of primitive man and has not stopped. Greek mythology tells us of the tragic end of Icarus. Daedalus and Icarus had been imprisoned on an island from which there was no escape, except through the air. Daedalus fashioned wings, using feathers held together by wax. He warned his son (Icarus) not to fly too close to the Sun for its heat would melt the wax and disaster would follow. Icarus did not obey his father and fell to his death. We have stories of kites (made by the Chinese) which were large enough to carry a man.
In early days navigators of the sea had a serious problem. Their ships were of the square rigger variety, to sail you would place your stern to the wind and then you pretty much had to go where it took you. Great for fuel economy but how do you get home to sell your wares? Along about 900 AD this changed with the introduction of the lateen (a triangular sail, fitted to the mast and a movable boom), an airfoil applied to a boat. This type of sail allowed a ship to sail directly into the wind, by executing a series of zig-zag moves. Now you did not have to wait for the trade winds to shift in your favor (every 6 months), and you could sail “both ways” thus doubling your trips and profits.
(figure available in print form)
The next major problem for navigators was that of steering their boats. The stern oar was the device of the day. As commerce grew, boats became ships too big to be controlled by an oar. About 1240 (as shown by a ship which appeared on a coin of the day) the stern rudder made its way to Europe. This device was copied from the Arabs who had copied it from the Chinese. Slowly at first the parts (connections) are beginning to fall into place. Dreams, kites and sail foils, and rudders all contributing to the events at Kitty Hawk.
For a good many years man tried to fly like a bird, flapping his arms and feet and falling like a rock. It took some time for him to realize that this was a “dead end” pursuit. About 1700 hot air balloons became the toys of flight, and after a series of fires (burning straw was the balloon’s heat source and propellant), these ideas went into a temporary “limbo”. In 1776 Henry Cavendish, an English Chemist, isolated inflammable air, hydrogen, which had one-eleventh the weight of an equal volume of air. It is said that a professor at Glasgow University, Scotland, prepared a lesson to show that a vessel of hydrogen could rise from a table, but by the time he located a suitable container he was on a different lecture. So that demonstration was never made (to that class).
Before we can continue with our next “connections” we must mention the work and writings of Archimedes, 300 B.C. The following laws are the ones which interest us the most at this time. Any object suspended in a liquid or gas experiences an upward thrust (loss of weight) equal to the weight of the medium it displaces. A balloon, which contains one thousand cubic feet of air, would be subjected to an upward thrust of eighty pounds. If you can fill the balloon with some gas which is lighter than air then you could (if the quantities are enough to off set the weight of the balloon) achieve “lift off”. This sets the stage for the entrance of the brothers Montgolfier.
Legend has it that one day while drying his wife’s lingerie in front of a fire, Joseph Montgolfier took notice of how the fabric billowed. If this force could be contained in a bag, would it not lift things? He set about to experiment with this idea and he soon realized that this hot air could carry man aloft. Joseph wrote to his brother Etienne, (who had been educated as an architect and a mathematician) and told him to come home for they were going to do some wonderful experiments. These events came to brothers who were prepared to receive them, for their family was in the paper manufacturing business. Another link in a long line of “connections”.
The brothers worked together on researching buoyancy and making light weight frames and paper-lined cloth covering for their hot air balloons. This construction was not done in a random manner; Etienne made these very interesting observations, which were recorded in Gillispie’s
The Montgolfier Brothers And The Invention Of Aviation
, “The weight of an approximately spherical balloon is proportional to its surface and thus increases with the square of its diameter . . . The lifting force is proportional to the difference between the weights of the enclosed gas and of the displaced air. It is a function of the volume and hence the cube of the radius. Thus levity increases exponentially with size”. In June of 1783 the brothers, in full view of the public, launched a paper-lined hot air balloon, its heat source was a container of burning wool. The balloons diameter was 30 feet and it floated up to a height of six thousand feet and landed a mile away. The next launch carried some farm animals: a sheep, a duck and a rooster. Finally on November 21, 1783, two men, Francois Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes, floated into space. All of France rejoiced.
In the wings was one J.A.C. Charles, who was also interested in flight but in a different kind of a balloon. Charles had taken the experiments of Cavendish (chemist who had “discovered” hydrogen, a gas lighter than air) and was busy fashioning a balloon which could contain this new gas. His balloon was to be fabricated of a rubberized silk, through which the new gas could not pass. Ten days after the Montgolfier’s balloon flight, Charles publicly launched his two-man balloon. This balloon floated for two hours and landed twenty-seven miles away. On the second part of the flight, minus one man, this balloon rose to a height of nine thousand feet. Man was in the air to stay. His remaining problem was how to control the direction of the flight.
As a point of interest it should be noted that to generate the necessary amount of hydrogen, to fill a small balloon (12 feet in diameter) Charles had to mix 1000 pounds of iron filings with 498 pounds of sulfuric acid. Later balloons were to need more than ten times this amount.
Combinations of the two types of balloons met with disastrous results. Pilatre attempted to fly one such combination from France across the English Channel. With a crowd watching, the balloon (under hydrogen power) rose to a height of 6,000 feet. Pilatre needed more height so he fired off some straw, to generate hot air lift, there was an explosion and Pilatre’s name was entered into the record books for a second time.
1783—Montgolfier’s Hot-Air Balloon
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1785—Hydrogen and Hot-Air Balloon
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By 1785 two men had crossed the English channel, in a charliere (hydrogen balloon) aided by the wind. One hundred years later the search for a suitable source for powering balloons led us to Karl Benz who made the first practical gasoline engine. Alberto-Dumont took this engine and successfully adapted it to a “reshaped” balloon (a dirigible). On November 13, 1902 this dirigible made its first powered flight. The following year this dirigible made sustained flights of 22 and 38 miles. Man was now in control of one form of flight.
1883—Tissander Airship
(figure available in print form)
Our skies are not filled with balloons but they are filled with airplanes, so we must go back to the days of Sir George Cayley (1796-1855) who earned the title of “The Father of Aerial Navigation”. Cayley was an English gentleman experimenter who was fascinated with ideas of flight and flying. When he was a boy he received a toy helicopter, an old Chinese toy which had been updated by the French, so began a love affair with flight, which was to last his entire life. Mr. Cayley improved on the toy’s design by installing an elastic band to power its propeller. His later contributions to the field of aviation were many. He was first to come up with the concept of a fixed wing craft with a cruciform tail, and an auxiliary propulsion system, tensioned wheels for aircraft. It is said that Sir George constructed a glider which could carry a man (his own coachman, who promptly resigned). His other inventions were, pilot-operated elevators and rudders, and probably the most important thing of all his ideas and experiments were all logged into notebooks and published so that those who came after him could learn from his experiments and knowledge.
If we look into Charles H. Gibbs-Smith’s text on Cayley we can read his long list of achievements or “firsts”. I will list a few more. First to realize that a cambered airfoil provides greater lift than a flat one, first to suggest an internal combustion engine for aircraft, and to publish these ideas. For a complete list I suggest that you read pages 201-204.
Among the many men who followed Cayley was a William Samuel Henson who in 1842 designed an airplane, not unlike Cayley’s design, which featured a vertical rudder, three wheels landing gear, a power-driven propeller, which could be placed in front or the back of the plane. The proposed craft never flew, because the steam engines of the day were just too heavy. By 1857 Felix Du Temple designed a craft whose wings were set in a V shape, this gave greater stability to the glider. This idea was proposed, demonstrated and published in 1808-1810 by Cayley.
In 1872 a brilliant but tragic figure came onto the scene, Alphonse Pénaud. Alphonse Pénaud designed the toy helicopter which one Milton Wright purchased and presented to his sons in the fall of 1878. Pénaud was also famous for designing another experimental model ( I would rather not call it a toy) which had a rubber band propulsion system and two fixed wings, a main wing and a tail wing (which was angled slightly down to give greater stability). In 1876 he designed a “joy stick” for glider which would control both elevation and direction. His next ideas were those of retractable landing gear, glass covering for the cockpit and propellers which were 66% efficient. Today’s propellers have an efficiency rating of about 85%. Pénaud had plans for a sea plane but lacked a suitable source of power. His design and plans were radical, his peers ridiculed him, unable to handle the pressure, at age 30 he put a bullet into his brain.
Pénaud’s Toy Plane
(figure available in print form)
In 1894 Sir Hiram Maxim (inventor of the machine gun) tried his hand at finding a suitable propulsion system for an airplane. He constructed a machine which weighed 3.5 tons, had a wing span of 110 feet, and was powered by steam engines, which generated 360 horse power. This monster ran down a track and became air borne for a moment. In his own mind Sir Hiram Maxim had shown that an engine could cause “lift off”, and there he let the matter lie. He went on to other things.
Our next important contributor was Otto Lillienthal (1848-1896), author of
Bird Flight As A Basis Of Aviation
who was deeply interested in flight. Lillienthal concentrated on how birds control their flight. Not wanting to stay in the abstract, Lillienthal used what he had learned and gave it concrete expression, the hang glider. These hang gliders were mostly monoplanes, with arched wings and a fixed tail. He learned to control flight by shifting his body, as the birds do, while in flight. His flights (over 2000 in number) were documented by photographs which were seen all over the world. Unfortunately Lillienthal’s hang glider stalled and he fell to his death from a height of 50 feet. News of his death sparked two men, who ran a bicycle shop, in America into action. Their name was Wright.
Lilienthal’s Biplane Glider (1895)
(figure available in print form)
Octave Chanute (1832-1910) an engineer from France who spent most of his life in America became interested in aviation and set about to collect all the information he could on the subject, encouraged fellow engineers to study the problems and to submit their studies to him. He became a point of focus for flight information in this country. Chanute published his findings in his book,
Progress In Flight
. At the age of sixty Chanute undertook to work on air frames for gliders. He hired workers and managed to make and test, stable and superior gliders. The Wright brothers became his friends and they exchanged thoughts and ideas and correspondence on flight and its control on air frames (gliders).
Our next distinguished guest was Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906) noted engineer, scientist, and astronomer, head of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Working on a grant from the United States Governmenthe managed to produce two working, powered model airplanes. The first model had a steam engine, was launched from a catapult and flew for three quarters of a mile. The year was 1896. His next experiment was to use a gasoline engine in a model plane (then hopefully in a full-sized plane). He commissioned a Stephen Lytton to produce an engine. When completed it was radical (pistons radiated from center) in design, delivered 53 hp. and weighed 125 pounds. A quarter-size model flew beautifully, so work was begun on a full-size model which would be launched from the top of a house boat. Its pilot had never flown a glider or anything else. Two attempts at flight were made, both failed. Within ten days the Wright brothers would fly at kitty Hawk.
Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright, were two men who ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and who were “turned on to flight” by their father, Milton, who had purchased a toy helicopter, designed by Alphonse Penaud (France). Their mother had great mechanical ability and their father was an avid record keeper. The brothers worked as one unit in all that they did. The news of Lillienthal’s tragic death triggered a renewed interest in flight in them. They searched everywhere for information which could help them learn about flight and flying. Once involved they experimented checked data, constructed instruments to measure flight (wind tunnel, gauges), made kites, gliders, finally gliders which could carry man and engine. These brothers were determined to draw information from any source, check it out, and then test it. If it was applicable it went into their work. They even worked on the gasoline engine which was to power their “glider”. It was no accident that they were the first. They armed themselves with all of the information of the day and then went to work to make that first flight possible. The brothers Wright did come up with some unique invention. They were superb flyers (of gliders) and were able to stabilize the flight of their craft by a process which had come to be known as wing warping. At this point I would like to add this information, Tom Crouch has written a wonderful book,
The Bishop’s Boys
, in which he covers the lives of his most unusual family, it’s a pleasure to read and reflect upon.
As a general wrap-up I would like to list some of the dates and names of the men who developed the power sources which were adapted to the space ships of the past. In 1852 Henri Giffard of France designed a 3.5 hp. engine which powered a 140 foot air ship. In 1872 Paul Haenlin of Germany piloted an airship using a 5.5 hp. hydrogen powered engine, which took its energy from its own balloon. A man named Ritchel invented a foot powered airship in 1878, it was not very good but it was an attempt. In 1883 Albert Gaston Tissandiers invented an electric motor capable of delivering 1.5 hp. to power his balloon. Europe was hard at work looking for a suitable power source for both balloons and gliders.
Warped wing.
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Wright Brother’s Flyer (1903)
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