Anyone have plans for the Centennial of Flight 12/17/03?

[hawk220]

who's going to Kitty Hawk for the Centennial celebration?




http://www.centennialofflight.gov/user/news_releases/press_nps.htm

[straffo]

It's either one year early for centenial flight or a bit late.

[mora]

Do you mean that this French imposter was first?

[straffo]

never implyed anything

(btw i don't think Ader was an imposter)

IMO the 1st controlled flight was  by Otto Lilienthal the Wright made their first controled directional change in september 1904 ...

But for the 1st flight you can choose among Cayley,Ader,Jaho,Ellehamer,Vuia or Herring ... as you like but not the Wright sorry

[midnight Target]

The Wrights followed standard scientific convention of the day. First to publish is first... period! They demontrated flight and proved it before anyone else.

I might also add that they continued to be THE world leaders in heavier than air flight until well past 1911. And that includes all of Europe.

[straffo]

I completly disagree MT.
they didn't made the fist controled flight (with or without engine it's not important) Otto Lilienthal was the first.

They were not world leader till 1911 or you forgot Santos-dumont,Curtiss,Farman,Selfridge,Blériot ,Esnault-Pelterie,fokker,Roland Garros ,Hamilton,Latham etc ...


As some may have noticed this is my favorite period of Aviation history

[Dowding]

That's not strictly true MT - publishing means that anyone who comes after can't claim intellectual rights over your idea. It doesn't mean that idea wasn't demonstrated previously.

The guy who first demonstrated powered flight was born about 2 miles from this computer.

The First Powered Flight - 1848

When I ask people "Who invented the aeroplane?" they usually say "The Wright Brothers." In fact the world's first powered flight took place not in America in 1903, but at Chard in Somerset 55 years earlier, and the man who made it happen was John Stringfellow.

John Stringfellow was born in Attercliffe, Sheffield, on 6 December 1799. When he was a teenager his family moved to Nottingham, and he went into the lace industry. He became a Bobbin and Carriage Maker, and later, when the Luddites began to make trouble, moved south to work in one of the two lace mills in Chard. He developed amazing skill at making steam engines, and in about 1842 he teamed up with William Samuel Henson, who was interested in aeronautics, and had already taken out a patent for a plane. Henson had tremendous ambitions. He not only applied for a patent on a 'Locomotive Apparatus for Air, Land, and Water' but also tried to set up an airline! He made a model of the plane in the patent, and tried to fly it in London, but it was a complete flop - literally.

So Henson came back to Chard, and together they worked on a new plane with a 20-foot wingspan and a wonderful Stringfellow steam engine. But it took two years to build, and by 1845 Henson was losing his enthusiasm. He moved back to London, got married, emigrated to America, and patented a new safety razor.

Stringfellow carried on alone, and when the 20-footer was finished he got workmen to carry it up to Bala Down, located about 1/2 mile west of Chard, for testing. He was so upset by people making fun of his work that he did this secretly, at night, and tried the first flight under cover of darkness. But the silk fabric, wet with dew, drooped and became so heavy the machine could not fly. He tried by day, every day for seven weeks, and finally had to admit defeat.

Then, for the first time, Stringfellow designed his own aircraft from scratch. The wingspan was 10 feet. The spars were of wood and the fabric of silk. The steam engine and boiler, with paper-thin copper walls, was carried in the gondola below the fuselage. The total weight of the craft was probably about 9lbs. By the summer of 1848 she was ready to fly.

The two propellers were huge, with helical pitch, and rotated in opposite directions to give lateral stability. His aircraft had no vertical fin, and he knew it would tend to veer left or right at the slightest disturbance. That is why he flew it inside one of the lace mills, where the air was still.

The space was so narrow - about 17 feet between the wall and the central row of pillars - that he had little room for error; so he launched the aircraft by allowing it to run for ten yards down a wire. This ensured that the machine started flying in exactly the right direction, and at a reasonable speed.

According to his son Fred's eyewitness account, the first flight was a bit of a disaster. The aircraft rose sharply from the end of the wire, stalled, and dropped back on its tail, which broke. But a later flight was a spectacular success; the plane flew for more than 10 yards before punching a hole in the canvas screen at the end of the mill.

In January 1995 we tried to replicate that first powered flight. Model aircraft specialist Charlie Newman built a full-scale model of Stringfellow's aircraft, and we went back to the same mill to try it out. To find out what happened, watch 'Local Heroes' on BBC2 in October.

© Adam Hart-Davis 1995

[midnight Target]

I stand semi-corrected

The Wright brothers never claimed to be the first to fly. In his earliest scientific paper, presented to the Western Society of Engineers in 1901, Wilbur Wright alluded to English inventor Hiram Maxim, who launched a steam-powered biplane with a three-man crew on  an unintentional flight in 1893 with disastrous consequences. The crew survived, but due to the lack of suitable controls, the machine was wrecked.

Wilbur and Orville Wright wished to be remembered for making the first controlled and sustained powered flight. Their greatest contribution to aviation was the development of three-axis aerodynamic controls -- roll, pitch, and yaw -- and the piloting skills needed to use them effectively.

[midnight Target]

More

Even if it could be shown that the Wrights were not the first to achieve controlled flight, this revelation would have little effect on history. It is generally accepted that Robert Fulton was not the first person to build a steamboat, nor was Thomas Edison the first to make an incandescent electric light. History, however, rarely honors inventors just for being first. It is much kinder to those who are the first to effect a change in their world, for it is these people who are the most memorable. Fulton, for instance, demonstrated a practical steamboat to a large audience. News of his accomplishment precipitated the rise of steam-powered navigation. Edison not only designed light bulbs, but also developed the equipment for generating and delivering the electrical power needed to make electric light a practical alternative to gas light.

The same is true of the Wright brothers. As early as 1902, reports of their successful gliding experiments and descriptions of their gliders impressed scientists on both sides of the Atlantic. It positively galvanized the French and led to a flurry of experiments with heavier-than-air flying machines. Type du Wright aircraft -- airplanes whose designs were derived from descriptions of Wright gliders and Flyers -- were the first successful powered flying machines in Europe and America.

By 1908, the Wrights had developed a practical airplane capable of carrying two people and flying for an extended period of time (as long as the gasoline lasted). For the first time, the brothers demonstrated their invention before large audiences, showing the skills they had learned to control their machine in the air. In 1909, they began to teach these skills to students. These two events -- not their first tentative flights in 1903 -- mark the beginning of modern aviation as far as most of the world was concerned.  Within three years, aviators were flying successfully in every part of the globe. Aviation records for speed, altitude, and endurance were shattered almost daily as pilots and engineers took the Wright's basic concepts and added their own ideas. Airplanes evolved quickly and by World War 1 showed only a superficial resemblance to pioneer Wright aircraft. But they all used variations of the Wright control system and pilots used the basic flying skills the Wrights had developed. This remains true even today.

[Ripsnort]

Its safe to say the Wright brothers were the first "Darwin- disqualified" flyers to do it right.

[Dowding]

I didn't see the show where they did a re-construction, GScholz. I've tried to catch repeats of it, but haven't caught that episode.

Maybe there's some on the web.

[Hangtime]

Dayton and the Air Force are getting into this in a big way.. the Wright Brothers Museum is also getting involved. Should be the most spectacular air shows since the golden age of aviation.

The Celebration runs thru July, with the biggest Air Shows scheduled for the 17th-21st.

I expect to be there as part of the AMA Warbirds demonstration team... flying (what else??) my 1/5 scale P51D and will also participate in the 1/4 scale AT-6 racing demo... the model flying events have not been scheduled as of yet, I'll stick up the dates and times as they firm up.

Links:

Air Shows

Wright Bros. Museum

Of Course.. you can also vist the most spectacular Air Museum in America.. Wright Patterson AFB and Museum. This is worth the trip all by itself. And it's free.

In Sept, I'll be going back for the "Dawn Patrol Rendevous" at Wright Patterson, flying a 1/3 scale Sopwith Pup.

Dawn Patrol, USAF Museum

Hope to see some of you bonehaids there.