The Wright brothers became interested in machinery almost when they were sensible. As an adult, Orville tells almost all stories related to mechanical design whenever he recalls his childhood to others. He often recalls with relish that on his fifth birthday, he took a fancy to a gyro for the first time among a lot of birthday presents. Although it is supported on the blade of a knife-shaped bracket, it can still maintain its own rotation and balance.
The Wright brothers have a natural interest in machinery since childhood, and they like to take it apart to make fun of it since childhood. They are particularly interested in some old clocks and scales. However, Wilbur is four years older than Orville. Wilbur often associates with boys his own age. Orville has friends of his own. At home, the two brothers naturally play together. what are you playing？ Orville will certainly listen to his brother. Wilbur often takes the scrap iron in the street home to "study", while Orville runs before and after, panting to help his little brother move these "treasures" to the small warehouse in the backyard.
1June, 878, Orville was 7 years old and Wilbur 1 1 year old. Their family moved from Dayton, Ohio to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and lived on Adam Street in the city.
17-year-old brother Louis and 15-year-old Lorraine are both in high school. They didn't transfer, but they stayed in Dayton.
Shortly after the Wright family moved to their new house, something happened. This incident not only has a great influence on Wilbur and Orville's future life, but also has far-reaching significance for all mankind.
1878 On Christmas Day, the Wright brothers' father brought them a "butterfly" toy. Dad told them that this is a flying spiral that can fly very high in the air. "Birds can fly! How can it fly! " Wilbur was a little skeptical, and his father performed on the spot. I saw him twist the rubber band on it first. As soon as he let go, it flew into the sky with a loud noise. Only then did the two brothers believe that man-made things can fly into the sky besides birds and butterflies. So, the two brothers took it apart and wanted to explore why it could fly to the sky.
From then on, in their young hearts, things that can fly high in the blue sky will be created in the future. This wish has been affecting them. 1In June, 884, Bishop Wright's job moved back to Dayton from Richman, and the whole family moved back to their hometown, and moved back to the seven-room simple house bought in Hawthorne Street earlier. At this time, the eldest son Louis and the second son Lorraine had graduated from Dayton High School and went to college in Indiana.
If the whole family goes back to Dayton a few days later, Wilbur can graduate from Richman Middle School, attend the graduation ceremony with the whole class and get a high school diploma. 1889 On July 4th, the fourth anniversary of their return to Dayton, Susan finally ran out of oil and lamps, leaving her underage children behind and not leaving this world in a hurry. For a long time, the Wright brothers could not dispel their sadness. They always miss their kind and clever mothers!
After my mother died, my brother and my second brother both graduated from college and got married separately. The Wright brothers read a lot at home in this cold and cheerless day. The library at home is divided into two parts, one is in Bishop Wright's study upstairs, and the other is in the living room downstairs for the whole family to read. Almost all the books in his father's study are "serious", but Wilbur often plunges into the pile of books. Fathers never ask their children to read. The books downstairs are the Wright brothers' favorite books, including the works of Washington Irving. Fairy tales of Gliem and Andersen; Biography of Plutarch; A set of "the spectator"; Addison's prose collection; Boswell's biography of Johnson; Walter Scott's works; The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon; Green's English history; Gizzo's France; Several works of nathaniel hawthorne; Marley's animal machine; There is also a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Chambers. The former is the version of 65438+late 1970s, and the latter is just published. Wilbur is the most active reader, followed by Orville, who has read many books. Almost since he began to learn to read, he has been fascinated by the scientific articles in the encyclopedia.
Wilbur and Orville tried again and again to improve their home facilities and environment. First, the two brothers buried themselves in drawing drawings, and then looked around for materials to repair the house, taking on all the lathe workers who processed the house. Not only did they quickly build a comfortable front porch and decorate both sides of the corridor with flowers, but they also renovated the interior and changed the layout of the room. Bishop Wright, who is busy with church affairs all day and often works outside, is very happy to return home and deeply thanks his son for his concern. Their sister Catherine (1874- 1929) has entered Oberlin University at this time. Although a family without a mother is inevitably deserted, the Wright brothers continue to contribute their strength to this family with practical actions, so the small house has some vitality again. In addition to their determination, wisdom and passion left by their ancestors, perhaps the family they live in is more related to their later achievements. Many years later, Orville expressed his ideas with confidence. One of his friends said to him, "although you have achieved a lot, you have no idea of making money." Facts show that the Wright brothers will always be role models for American youth and can succeed without special conditions. " "But," Orville said seriously, "this is not true, because, you see, we do have special conditions." "What do you mean by special conditions?"
"Simply put, we are lucky to live in such a family environment. At home, adults always enthusiastically encourage children to pursue knowledge and investigate all strange phenomena. In another family environment, our curiosity may have been killed long before bearing fruit. " After graduating from high school, the Wright brothers founded Dayton Weekly. Clever, they make newspapers prosperous, but what they miss so much is machinery. 1894, they pawned the newspaper to a news agency and opened a bicycle shop. From then on, they began to engage in their dream careers. 1885 to 1886 In the winter, Welber was accidentally hit in the face with a hockey stick while playing ice hockey with friends at the ice rink, causing his front teeth to fall off. Prior to this, Welber was energetic and proactive. Although Welber's injury didn't seem so serious at that time, he became withdrawn and silent. He didn't go to Yale University as planned. If Welber enters Yale University, his career will be very different, instead of the extraordinary path he followed Orville later. Instead, in the next few years, he stayed indoors, spent time taking care of his terminally ill mother and studied hard in his father's library. He helped his father deal with the riots in the Christian Association church, but it also expressed his anxiety about his lack of ambition. Orville dropped out of senior three and started his printing career at 1889. With the help of Welber, he designed and built his own printing factory. Welber got rid of years of entanglement and unexpected depression, and joined the printing factory as an editor. 1896, two brothers heard the news that German aviation pioneer Otto Lindauer (also translated as Otto Lilienthal) was killed in a gliding flight. Supposedly, this news is a blow to people who dream of flying, but the Wright brothers, who are familiar with mechanical devices, believe that the foundation of human powered flight is actually mature enough. Li Lindal's problem is that he hasn't had time to discover the trick of operating the plane. After summing up the failure of Li Lindal, the Wright brothers enthusiastically devoted themselves to the study of power flight.
The Wright brothers not only tried to master the previous research results, but also paid great attention to learning directly from the living flying objects-birds. They often lie on their backs, carefully observe eagles flying in the air for hours, and study and think about the mechanism of their take-off, lifting and hovering. Many novel ideas put forward by them in those years have been applied in the aviation industry in the future.
On the basis of learning from predecessors, the Wright brothers began to develop airplanes. Unable to get other people's support, they used the money earned from the bicycle business to develop the plane. The cooperation between the two brothers is perfect. My younger brother Wilbur is diligent and practical, with the care and caution of an engineer; My younger brother Orville is full of the artist's imagination and dares to innovate constantly. Two clever brains work closely together and complement each other, just as Wilbur said, "Orville and I live together, work together and think together, just like one person." The two brothers believe that whether the plane can fly smoothly depends on how to design and control the balance of various forces during the flight. Wilbur wright demonstrated this problem with a piece of paper placed horizontally: if it is allowed to fall freely, we can imagine that it must fall smoothly in an ideal calm air, but there are few ideal conditions, and any airflow will make the paper flip and float. For an airplane, it is not difficult to reach the sky in a perfect air condition, but there is always wind in the sky, which makes the key to realize the flight of the airplane lie in how to adjust the force balance of the airplane in all directions, especially the relationship between the center of gravity of the airplane and the force point of lift. In the early days, we were worried that the wing area would be too large to make the aircraft difficult to operate, so the wing area was generally not too large. For example, the wing area of Jet Li Sal is 15 1 square foot, that of Pichel is 165 square foot, and that of Chalut is 143 square foot. This makes the lift that the aircraft can get insufficient. In contrast, the weight of the pilot accounts for a large part of the lift. In this case, the change of the pilot's own position will seriously affect the center of gravity of the aircraft. At that time, the general design idea was to use this point to control the flight attitude of the aircraft by changing the pilot's body position. But it is this kind of thinking that seriously restricts the improvement of aircraft maneuverability, so the Wright brothers decided to change this technical thinking. They first carefully studied the previous experimental data, and then verified it through a large number of kite, glider and wind tunnel tests, and designed the best wing section shape and angle in order to obtain the maximum lift. Then it was decided to double the average area of the wing to 308 square feet. Most importantly, they designed a mechanism to control the flight attitude of the aircraft by directly controlling the wings. At the same time, after the overall lift of the aircraft increases, the aircraft is not so sensitive to the change of the pilot's own position, which makes the maneuverability of the aircraft not lower than that of the winglet aircraft, although the wing area is greatly increased! The two brothers think that there are three main obstacles in building an aircraft: (1) how to make a lift wing; (2) How to get the power to drive the plane to fly; (3) How to balance and control the plane after taking off. The first two problems have been solved to some extent.
At first, the two brothers tried to make a full-scale glider. For four summers in a row, they went to North Carolina, and the destination was an isolated headland. The meteorological department suggested to them that the headland is a favorable driving range because of its strong wind. Soon after, they made the first unmanned biplane glider and put it into the sky like a kite. They also installed an elevator in front of the plane, which is a kind of swinging rudder and can be used to operate the vertical axis and the horizontal axis.
1900 One evening in June, wilbur wright was lying on the fragile glider skeleton, floating against the sea breeze. He succeeded. Although the flight was only a few seconds, only 1 meter high, the achievements of the Wright brothers surpassed those of Li Lindal who tried to control the flight by moving his body weight. In the second year, the two brothers made a glider after many improvements on the basis of the last one. This autumn, they came to the seaside of Kitty Hawk again. After an experiment, the flying altitude suddenly reached 180 meters.
From 1900 to 1903, they built three gliders and made more than 1000 gliding flights. They also made more than 200 different kinds of wings, made thousands of wind tunnel experiments, corrected some wrong flight data of Li Lindal, and designed the cross-sectional shape of wings with greater lift. During this period, their gliders glided more than 1000 meters many times. At that time, this was no small achievement. After continuous research and improvement, the Wright brothers not only quickly mastered the aircraft manufacturing technology at that time, but also made major breakthroughs in many aspects. From the summer of 1903, the Wright brothers began to build this famous "Voyager I" biplane. Power flight needs an engine first, but there were no aircraft engines on the market at that time, and no company was willing to take the risk of manufacturing aircraft engines. But the two brothers were not discouraged. They hired a mechanic, Charles? Taylor (Charles? Taylor) helped them build a piston engine with about 12 horsepower and a weight of 77.2 kilograms. With the engine, Wilbur and Oliver only hope that windy autumn will come soon. In June 5438+10/mid-October, Voyager was assembled, and Orville was very satisfied with the new plane. "This is the best plane we have ever made. She is very obedient. " Orville's feelings are not difficult to understand. They made every rib of Voyager One.
The miracle happened in 1903 12 17! ! !
This morning, the Kitty Hawk in North Carolina was still sleeping. The cold wind blows hard, and a strange guy with huge wings stops quietly on the empty beach. This is the first plane in human history-"Voyager One". The clearing was deserted, and only five people went to the scene to watch it. 10: 35, everything is ready. In order to be the first to board the plane for a test flight, the two brothers decided to flip a coin to decide who would board the plane first, and Orville, the younger brother, won.
Orville climbed onto the lower wing of Voyager One, crouched behind the joystick, and held the wooden joystick tightly in his hand, while Wilbur started the engine and pushed it to slide. Under the action of the engine, the plane vibrates violently at first. After a few seconds, it slowly slid down from the "magic mound" under the impetus of its own power. When the plane reached a certain speed, Wilbur released his hand and the plane flew off the ground like a bird. Although Voyager 1 flew very unevenly and even stumbled a little, it flew in the air for 12 seconds ***36.5 meters before landing on the beach. Then, they took turns flying three times. On the last flight of the day, Wilbur flew 260 meters in 59 seconds with a wind speed of 30 kilometers. People's dream of manned sustained power flight in the air has finally succeeded! Unfortunately, a few minutes later, a sudden gust of wind overturned "Flying Man" 1, and the plane was seriously damaged, but it has completed its historical mission. Thus began the history of human powered aviation.
Unfortunately, however, the success of the Wright brothers did not immediately get the attention and recognition of the American government and the public. People even doubt the truth of this news, and most newspapers refuse to report it.
"Voyager One"
Voyager 1 is an ordinary biplane. Its two propellers are installed on both sides of the pilot's position and driven by a single engine chain. The control system adopts the duck layout with the elevator in front and the rudder behind, which is the greatest contribution of the Wright brothers to the aviation industry. Li Lindal had to move his body and control the flight of the plane by changing the center of gravity, while the pilot of Voyager 1 achieved the same goal by curling the whole wing tip with a mechanical device. The plane climbed and dived on a pair of biplane elevators installed at the front of the plane; A pair of rudders and wing curling mechanisms are interconnected and installed behind the driver. The main parts of modern aircraft turning and maneuvering can be found on this first aircraft, although it is so primitive.
Voyager 1 never returned to the blue sky, and its replica is kept in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. However, all this did not really attract the attention of the press, and they shelved the invention for two years. Finally, the US military realized its great potential. 1908 At the beginning of the year, when the Wright brothers successfully built the sixth plane, the US War Department expressed its willingness to watch one of their flight shows. At this time, France is also willing to buy their patents. 1908 On August 8, 2008, at Le Mans Racecourse near Paris, France, Wilbur flew around the racecourse for one and a half minutes at a flying height of 10 meter, which surprised the audience present. The news soon spread to all parts of the world by telegraph. London's Daily Mirror exclaimed that this plane is "the most amazing plane ever". Since then, Wilbur has made several flights. Once, he got on a plane with the wife of a French agent and flew in the air for 2 minutes and 3 seconds-France was boiling. For a time, awards and certificates emerged one after another. Some European entrepreneurs also began to scramble to buy his patents. Throughout August, Wilbur performed more than 65,438+000 air shows in France, which set off an aviation boom in Europe.
At the same time, the situation in the United States is also ideal: Orville flew 55 times around the parade ground in Meyer, USA, setting a world flight record of 1 hour continuous flight. Orville also performed an air show, taking off from Fort Myers, Virginia, and crossing the Potomac River in Washington. The crowded crowd cheered for it.
During the period of 1908, the Wright brothers won many honors in Paris, London and Washington. US President Taft praised "outstanding American brothers devoted themselves to aircraft manufacturing". At this point, the Wright brothers became famous in one fell swoop.
1March, 909, the U.S. War Department formally placed an order with the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers added special seats for lookouts and machine gunners on the plane, which laid the foundation for the military application of the plane. 1909 On July 30th, the Wright brothers delivered the first military plane to the War Department. They also helped train the first batch of military pilots. The plane is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Then, many governments began to develop airplanes. The Wright brothers then set up Wright Aircraft Company (namely Wright Company) and signed a contract to set up an aircraft company in France. But as businessmen, they soon found themselves lacking experience in market development. Competitors in aircraft design quickly "referred" to their technology, and the aircraft made by competitors quickly got ahead of them in performance. 19 1 1 year, Wilbur contracted typhoid fever at the age of 44. Orville is shy and not good at publicity. Three years later, he sold his company to a financier in new york and spent the rest of his life in a house in Dayton. 1948, the 77-year-old airplane inventor was dying, still longing to fly high in the blue sky. 1947 winter, the climate is extremely cold. Orville spends most of his time in bed.
Many friends heard the news.
Orville was treated wholeheartedly by the doctor, but after all, he was 77 years old and finally died1948 65438+1October 30th.
A superstar in aviation has fallen. The United States mourned all over the country, and flags were flown at half-mast in many countries. People deeply miss this great pioneer and inventor in aviation history!