The Wright Brothers and the History of Flight
The Wright Brother
A pair of self-taught engineers working in a bicycle shop, they made
the world a forever smaller place
By BILL GATES
Monday, March 29, 1999
Wilbur and Orville Wright were two brothers from the heartland of
America with a vision as sweeping as the sky and a practicality as
down-to-earth as the Wright Cycle Co., the bicycle business they
founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1892. But while there were countless
bicycle shops in turn-of-the-century America, in only one were wings
being built as well as wheels. When the Wright brothers finally
realized their vision of powered human flight in 1903, they made the
world a forever smaller place. I've been to Kitty Hawk, N.C., and seen
where the brothers imagined the future, and then literally flew across
its high frontier. It was an inspiration to be there, and to soak up the
amazing perseverance and creativity of these two pioneers.
The Wright brothers had been fascinated by the idea of flight from an
early age. In 1878 their father, a bishop in the Church of the United
Brethren in Christ, gave them a flying toy made of cork and bamboo. It
had a paper body and was powered by rubber bands. The young boys
soon broke the fragile toy, but the memory of its faltering flight
across their living room stayed with them. By the mid-1890s Wilbur
was reading every book and paper he could find on the still
earthbound science of human flight. And four years before they made
history at Kitty Hawk, the brothers built their first, scaled-down flying
machine--a pilotless "kite" with a 5-ft. wingspan, and made of wood,
wire and cloth. Based on that experiment, Wilbur became convinced
that he could build an aircraft that would be "capable of sustaining a
man."
While the brothers' bicycle business paid the bills, it was Wilbur's
abiding dream of building a full-size flying machine that inspired their
work. For many years, he once said, he had been "afflicted with the
belief that flight is possible." The reality of that obsession was a
lonely quest for the brothers in the workroom behind their bike shop,
plotting to defy gravity and conquer the wind. Yet that obsessive kind
of world-changing belief is a force that drives you to solve a problem,
to find the breakthrough--a force that drives you to bet everything on
a fragile wing or a new idea. It was a force that led the Wright
brothers to invent, single-handedly, each of the technologies they
needed to pursue their dream.
When published aeronautical data turned out to be unreliable, the
Wright brothers built their own wind tunnel to test airfoils and
measure empirically how to lift a flying machine into the sky. They
were the first to discover that a long, narrow wing shape was the
ideal architecture of flight. They figured out how to move the vehicle
freely, not just across land, but up and down on a cushion of air. They
built a forward elevator to control the pitch of their craft as it nosed
up and down. They fashioned a pair of twin rudders in back to control
its tendency to yaw from side to side. They devised a pulley system
that warped the shape of the wings in midflight to turn the plane and
to stop it from rolling laterally in air. Recognizing that a propeller isn't
like a ship's screw, but becomes, in effect, a rotating wing, they used
the data from their wind-tunnel experiments to design the first
effective airplane props--a pair of 8-ft. propellers, carved out of
laminated spruce, that turned in opposite directions to offset the
twisting effect on the machine's structure. And when they discovered
that a lightweight gas-powered engine did not exist, they decided to
design and build their own. It produced 12 horsepower and weighed
only 152 lbs.
The genius of Leonardo da Vinci imagined a flying machine, but it took
the methodical application of science by these two American bicycle
mechanics to create it. The unmanned gliders spawned by their first
efforts flew erratically and were at the mercy of any strong gust of
wind. But with help from their wind tunnel, the brothers amassed
more data on wing design than anyone before them, compiling tables
of computations that are still valid today. And with guidance from this
scientific study, they developed the powered 1903 Flyer, a skeletal
flying machine of spruce, ash and muslin, with a wingspan of 40 ft.
and an unmanned weight of just over 600 lbs.
On Dec. 17, 1903, with Orville at the controls, the Flyer lifted off
shakily from Kitty Hawk and flew 120 ft. — little more than half the
wingspan of a Boeing 747-400. That 12-sec. flight changed the world,
lifting it to new heights of freedom and giving mankind access to
places it had never before dreamed of reaching. Although the Wright
brothers' feat was to transform life in the 20th century, the next day
only four newspapers in the U.S. carried news of their achievement —
news that was widely dismissed as exaggerated.
The Wright brothers gave us a tool, but it was up to individuals and
nations to put it to use, and use it we have. The airplane
revolutionized both peace and war. It brought families together:
once, when a child or other close relatives left the old country for
America, family and friends mourned for someone they would never
see again. Today, the grandchild of that immigrant can return again
and again across a vast ocean in just half a turn of the clock. But the
airplane also helped tear families apart, by making international
warfare an effortless reality.
The Wrights created one of the greatest cultural forces since the
development of writing, for their invention effectively became the
World Wide Web of that era, bringing people, languages, ideas and
values together. It also ushered in an age of globalization, as the
world's flight paths became the superhighways of an emerging
international economy. Those superhighways of the sky not only
revolutionized international business; they also opened up isolated
economies, carried the cause of democracy around the world and
broke down every kind of political barrier. And they set travelers on a
path that would eventually lead beyond Earth's atmosphere.
The Wright brothers and their invention, then, sparked a revolution
as far-reaching as the industrial and digital revolutions. But that
revolution did not come about by luck or accident. It was vision, quiet
resolve and the application of scientific methodology that enabled
Orville and Wilbur to carry the human race skyward. Their example
reminds us that genius doesn't have a pedigree, and that you don't
discover new worlds by plying safe, conventional waters. With 10
years of hindsight, even Orville Wright admitted that "I look with
amazement upon our audacity in attempting flights with a new and
untried machine."
Now, on the eve of another century, who knows where the next
Wright brothers will be found, in what grade of school they're
studying, or in what garage they're inventing the next Flyer of the
information age. Our mission is to make sure that wherever they are,
they have the chance to run their own course, to persevere and
follow their own inspiration. We have to understand that engineering
breakthroughs are not just mechanical or scientific — they are
liberating forces that can continually improve people's lives. Who
would have thought, as the 20th century opened, that one of its
greatest contributions would come from two obscure, fresh-faced
young Americans who pursued the utmost bounds of human thought
and gave us all, for the first time, the power literally to sail beyond the
sunset.
The 20th century has been the American Century in large part
because of great inventors such as the Wright brothers. May we
follow their flight paths and blaze our own in the 21st century.
Bill Gates is the chairman and CEO of Microsoft
The Wright Brother
A pair of self-taught engineers working in a bicycle shop, they made
the world a forever smaller place
By BILL GATES
Monday, March 29, 1999
Wilbur and Orville Wright were two brothers from the heartland of
America with a vision as sweeping as the sky and a practicality as
down-to-earth as the Wright Cycle Co., the bicycle business they
founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1892. But while there were countless
bicycle shops in turn-of-the-century America, in only one were wings
being built as well as wheels. When the Wright brothers finally
realized their vision of powered human flight in 1903, they made the
world a forever smaller place. I've been to Kitty Hawk, N.C., and seen
where the brothers imagined the future, and then literally flew across
its high frontier. It was an inspiration to be there, and to soak up the
amazing perseverance and creativity of these two pioneers.
The Wright brothers had been fascinated by the idea of flight from an
early age. In 1878 their father, a bishop in the Church of the United
Brethren in Christ, gave them a flying toy made of cork and bamboo. It
had a paper body and was powered by rubber bands. The young boys
soon broke the fragile toy, but the memory of its faltering flight
across their living room stayed with them. By the mid-1890s Wilbur
was reading every book and paper he could find on the still
earthbound science of human flight. And four years before they made
history at Kitty Hawk, the brothers built their first, scaled-down flying
machine--a pilotless "kite" with a 5-ft. wingspan, and made of wood,
wire and cloth. Based on that experiment, Wilbur became convinced
that he could build an aircraft that would be "capable of sustaining a
man."
While the brothers' bicycle business paid the bills, it was Wilbur's
abiding dream of building a full-size flying machine that inspired their
work. For many years, he once said, he had been "afflicted with the
belief that flight is possible." The reality of that obsession was a
lonely quest for the brothers in the workroom behind their bike shop,
plotting to defy gravity and conquer the wind. Yet that obsessive kind
of world-changing belief is a force that drives you to solve a problem,
to find the breakthrough--a force that drives you to bet everything on
a fragile wing or a new idea. It was a force that led the Wright
brothers to invent, single-handedly, each of the technologies they
needed to pursue their dream.
When published aeronautical data turned out to be unreliable, the
Wright brothers built their own wind tunnel to test airfoils and
measure empirically how to lift a flying machine into the sky. They
were the first to discover that a long, narrow wing shape was the
ideal architecture of flight. They figured out how to move the vehicle
freely, not just across land, but up and down on a cushion of air. They
built a forward elevator to control the pitch of their craft as it nosed
up and down. They fashioned a pair of twin rudders in back to control
its tendency to yaw from side to side. They devised a pulley system
that warped the shape of the wings in midflight to turn the plane and
to stop it from rolling laterally in air. Recognizing that a propeller isn't
like a ship's screw, but becomes, in effect, a rotating wing, they used
the data from their wind-tunnel experiments to design the first
effective airplane props--a pair of 8-ft. propellers, carved out of
laminated spruce, that turned in opposite directions to offset the
twisting effect on the machine's structure. And when they discovered
that a lightweight gas-powered engine did not exist, they decided to
design and build their own. It produced 12 horsepower and weighed
only 152 lbs.
The genius of Leonardo da Vinci imagined a flying machine, but it took
the methodical application of science by these two American bicycle
mechanics to create it. The unmanned gliders spawned by their first
efforts flew erratically and were at the mercy of any strong gust of
wind. But with help from their wind tunnel, the brothers amassed
more data on wing design than anyone before them, compiling tables
of computations that are still valid today. And with guidance from this
scientific study, they developed the powered 1903 Flyer, a skeletal
flying machine of spruce, ash and muslin, with a wingspan of 40 ft.
and an unmanned weight of just over 600 lbs.
On Dec. 17, 1903, with Orville at the controls, the Flyer lifted off
shakily from Kitty Hawk and flew 120 ft. — little more than half the
wingspan of a Boeing 747-400. That 12-sec. flight changed the world,
lifting it to new heights of freedom and giving mankind access to
places it had never before dreamed of reaching. Although the Wright
brothers' feat was to transform life in the 20th century, the next day
only four newspapers in the U.S. carried news of their achievement —
news that was widely dismissed as exaggerated.
The Wright brothers gave us a tool, but it was up to individuals and
nations to put it to use, and use it we have. The airplane
revolutionized both peace and war. It brought families together:
once, when a child or other close relatives left the old country for
America, family and friends mourned for someone they would never
see again. Today, the grandchild of that immigrant can return again
and again across a vast ocean in just half a turn of the clock. But the
airplane also helped tear families apart, by making international
warfare an effortless reality.
The Wrights created one of the greatest cultural forces since the
development of writing, for their invention effectively became the
World Wide Web of that era, bringing people, languages, ideas and
values together. It also ushered in an age of globalization, as the
world's flight paths became the superhighways of an emerging
international economy. Those superhighways of the sky not only
revolutionized international business; they also opened up isolated
economies, carried the cause of democracy around the world and
broke down every kind of political barrier. And they set travelers on a
path that would eventually lead beyond Earth's atmosphere.
The Wright brothers and their invention, then, sparked a revolution
as far-reaching as the industrial and digital revolutions. But that
revolution did not come about by luck or accident. It was vision, quiet
resolve and the application of scientific methodology that enabled
Orville and Wilbur to carry the human race skyward. Their example
reminds us that genius doesn't have a pedigree, and that you don't
discover new worlds by plying safe, conventional waters. With 10
years of hindsight, even Orville Wright admitted that "I look with
amazement upon our audacity in attempting flights with a new and
untried machine."
Now, on the eve of another century, who knows where the next
Wright brothers will be found, in what grade of school they're
studying, or in what garage they're inventing the next Flyer of the
information age. Our mission is to make sure that wherever they are,
they have the chance to run their own course, to persevere and
follow their own inspiration. We have to understand that engineering
breakthroughs are not just mechanical or scientific — they are
liberating forces that can continually improve people's lives. Who
would have thought, as the 20th century opened, that one of its
greatest contributions would come from two obscure, fresh-faced
young Americans who pursued the utmost bounds of human thought
and gave us all, for the first time, the power literally to sail beyond the
sunset.
The 20th century has been the American Century in large part
because of great inventors such as the Wright brothers. May we
follow their flight paths and blaze our own in the 21st century.
Bill Gates is the chairman and CEO of Microsoft
History of Flight
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