Into the air: October 1900
The story so far: Wilbur and Orville Wright are testing their glider in the remote town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
? Chapter Ten
Wilbur and Orville planned to kite the glider from a small derrick. That way they could ride it for hours at a time and learn to control it. But the machine proved so difficult to manage, and so frightening to ride, that the brothers abandoned this method. Instead, for two weeks they moved the machine through the air in every way they knew how. They flew it from the ground as a kite. They loaded it with chains, and even with Bill Tate’s son, Tom, to see how it would fly with weight on it.
Finally, they simply hurled the glider from the top of a dune. It floated down, following the slope of the sand. Then, suddenly, the glider’s leading edge pointed up. The glider nosed skyward, hung for a moment in the air, and then fell to the dune with a crack. The brothers scrambled down after it.
“One of the ribs,” said Orville.
“We can splint it,” said Wilbur.
One more splint would hardly be noticed at this point. The past two weeks had brought the glider countless wrecks and repairs. But while the glider was collecting cracks, tears, and stains, Wilbur and Orville were collecting information. The brothers studied everything about the way the glider moved. They used a device called an anemometer to measure wind speed. They rigged up a fish scale to measure the glider’s air resistance. They set up a camera to record their experiments.
“The measurements help us understand what the glider’s doing, and why,” Wilbur explained to Bill Tate.
“Or why not,” said Orville. The glider flew surprisingly well, but there were some confusing problems. For one thing, Wilbur and Orville struggled to find the best arrangement for the machine’s front rudder, called the elevator. They tried it “in front, behind, and every other way,” Orville wrote Katharine. “When we got through, Will was so mixed up he couldn’t even theorize.”
Then there was the problem with lift. “When the wing moves through the air,” Will told Tate, “its shape, the slight curve of it, speeds up the air going over it. That lowers the air pressure above the wing. The combination of high pressure below the wing and lower pressure above it pushes up on the wing. It creates lift. That’s what makes it fly.”
“All right,” said Tate.
“Now,” said Orville, “we’ve got a formula, and information on air pressure, from a man named Otto Lilienthal.”
“Sounds foreign,” said Tate.
“German,” said Orville.
“Go on.”
“We used that formula and those numbers to figure out how much lift our wings would create,” said Wilbur.
“But,” said Orville, “something’s not right. We need a stronger wind to lift this than Lilienthal’s numbers predict.”
“Maybe you should ask this Lilienthal some questions,” said Tate.
“Well,” said Orville, hesitating, “he’s dead.”
Tate, suspicious, leaned in closer. “How’d he die?”
The brothers paused, then answered together, “Gliding.”
Tate began to nod.
“Listen,” Wilbur said, “Lilienthal knew what he was doing. The curvature of our wings is a little different from his. I think that’s the problem.”
“Or the fabric is too loosely knit,” said Orville. “It isn’t catching the wind.”
The brothers had hit upon a problem they couldn’t resolve, but this did not keep them from continuing their tests. By the end of October, Wilbur and Orville were ready for one final experiment. “It’s time,” Will told Orville, “for someone to really fly the machine.”
The brothers and Tate heaved the glider onto their shoulders and walked south to a set of low dunes. At the top of the Kill Devil sand hill, Wilbur stepped into the struts of the glider and inserted himself into a cutout area in the lower wing. He faced forward and wrapped his hands around the uprights. Orville and Bill and Tom Tate lifted the machine at the ends of the wings.
Wilbur paused, remembering the experiments with the derrick. Then nodded at Orville. “Okay,” he said.
The men ran into the wind. It was hard going at first; the machine was heavy, and the sand gave way beneath their feet. Quickly, though, the wind began to lift the wings, and the machine grew lighter. Wilbur kicked off the ground, braced his feet in the T-bar, and took hold of the elevator controls. The three men let go of the wings and ran alongside the glider. Wilbur skimmed low over the beach, sea air rushing against his face, sand rushing by just below him. Seconds later Wilbur brought the glider in for a landing. He climbed out of the machine beaming. “Terrific!” he said.
Again and again Wilbur flew. The glides were quick – the longest lasted fifteen seconds – but they carried Wilbur as far as four hundred feet, and the machine was easier to control than Wilbur could have hoped. Orville and Bill Tate, too, were thrilled.
Soon it was time for the brothers to return to Dayton. Israel Perry carried them back across the Sound. When they were gone, Tate scavenged the wood and the metal joints from their glider. His wife cut the fabric from the wings, scrubbed it clean, and sewed it into dresses for her daughters.
This was fine with Wilbur and Orville; they were done with the machine and not sentimental about it. By the time the Tate girls were trying on their dresses, Wilbur was writing Octave Chanute with news of the remarkable success he and Orville had had with their “soaring machine.” And together, Wilbur and Orville were discussing the machine they would build for 1901.
Confidence and doubt: October 1900 – August 1901