Today, Wilbur and Orville Wright are as synonymous with the first to achieve powered flight as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are with the first to walk on the moon. But that wasn’t always the case.
In a four-part series called “The real fathers of the flight” which ran monthly from January to April 1929, Popular science writer and editor, John R. McMahon, made an impassioned case for why the Wright brothers deserved to be recognized as the first to achieve powered flight. His unique account included exclusive interviews with Orville Wright (Wilbur died in 1912), as well as access to Orville’s personal diaries and other documents detailing the timeline of their invention, which culminated in the world’s first powered flight on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk. , NC.
From the time of that groundbreaking flight until 1942, the Wright brothers were not given credit for being the first to penetrate the third dimension. All over the world, a long list of aviation pioneersor their lawyers, tried to take credit. Gustave WhiteheadFor example, an immigrant from Germany who moved to Connecticut in the late 19th century claimed to have achieved powered flight as early as 1901 and again in 1902. his claim, but there was never any supporting evidence; rather, there is a relatively strong case that his claim was a fantastic fabrication.
Perhaps the most bitter challenge to the Wright brothers’ crown came from the Smithsonian, which awarded the honor for the first powered flight to one of its own members: the former Smithsonian secretary Samuel Langley. In his 1929 series, McMahon did not shy away from criticizing the Smithsonian’s decision: “I believe that government scientists are as human as anyone, and that those of the Smithsonian were very human in their efforts to bask in the imagined glory of a colleague, the ill-fated Langley whose machine crashed into the Potomac River at Kitty Hawk a few days before the Wrights’ historic achievement.
Indeed, Langley’s Aerodrome took off from the deck of a houseboat piloted by Langley’s assistant, Charles Manley, several days before the Wright brothers’ flight. But it promptly crashed and Manley had to be rescued from the river. Langley never attempted to rebuild his airport, but about a decade later it was renovated by others with ulterior motives to prove that Langley’s design had preceded Wright’s: the Smithsonian’s new secretary, Charles Walcott, who sought to honor his colleague ; and Glenn H. Curtiss, another aviation pioneer, who was found liable for infringing Wright’s patent. Curtiss’ renovated version did manage to fly, but included crucial changes to Langley’s original design, which the Smithsonian ultimately recognized in a detailed report from 1942. The report also recognized the damage the Smithsonian had done to the Wright brothers by supporting Langley’s Aerodrome as the first to conduct powered flight.
What set the Wright brothers’ feat apart from all others that came before them was the combination of the key ingredients naturally found in birds: lift, balance, control and propulsion. Success required a flying machine that could not only leave the ground under its own power (lift) with a human on board (propulsion), but that could also stay in the air without falling over (balance), and could be controlled by the pilot. controlled while in the air. air (control).
In another Popular science story Written four years before his series, McMahon described the Wright brothers’ new contributions to sustainable flight, including the wing warping system, which allowed them to slightly twist and bend the wing tips for balance and control.
McMahon describes an 1899 scene at the Wright brothers’ bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio: “Wilbur held the empty box by the ends while the customer examined the contents. Wilbur’s hands tended to be nervously active. He looked down and suddenly realized what he was doing with an empty box: twisting and warping it. What was this? Can’t the wings hinge? Never. But you can distort them! It was just a great inspiration, just like Newton’s falling apple.”
After spending twenty years in exile at the Science Museum in London, Great Britain, the Wright brothers’ original plane has been recovered on display at the Smithsonian since 1948. As Smithsonian Secretary Charles Abbott wrote in his 1942 report: “If the publication of this article would pave the way for Dr. Wright to bring back to America the Kitty Hawk machine, to which the whole world awards first place, it will be. a source of deep and lasting satisfaction for his countrymen everywhere.” It is a statement that has undoubtedly been made Popular science proud.
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