Sir Frank Whittle OM, KBE, CB, FRS, FRAeS
Born	1 June 1907 (1907-06) Earlsdon, Coventry, England
Died	9 August 1996 (1996-08-10) (aged 89) Columbia, Maryland, United States
Cause of death	Lung cancer
Resting place	Cranwell, England
Nationality	British
Education	Peterhouse, University of Cambridge
Occupation	RAF Engineer Officer
Employer	Royal Air Force
Known for	Development of the jet engine
Title	Sir
Spouse	Dorothy Lee (1930–1976) Hazel Hall
Children	2 sons
Military career
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	Royal Air Force
Years of service	1923–1948
Rank	Air Commodore
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1948) (CBE-1944) Companion of the Order of the Bath (1947) Louis E. Levy Medal (1956) Order of Merit (1986) Fellow of the Royal Society (1986)[1] Honorary Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (1986) Commander of the Legion of Merit (1946) Charles Stark Draper Prize
Other work	BOAC technical advisor, Shell Oil engineer, engineer for Bristol Aero Engines, NAVAIR Professor at the US Naval Academy

Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS,^[1] Hon FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air Force (RAF) engineer officer. He is credited with independently inventing the turbojet engine (some years earlier than Germany's Dr. Hans von Ohain) and is regarded by many as the father of jet propulsion.^[2]

From an early age Whittle demonstrated an aptitude for engineering and an interest in flying. Determined to be a pilot, he overcame his physical limitations to be accepted into the RAF, where his abilities earned him a place on the officer training course at Cranwell. He excelled in his studies and became an accomplished pilot. While writing his thesis there he formulated the fundamental concepts that led to the creation of the turbojet engine, taking out a patent on his design in 1930. His performance on an officers' engineering course earned him a place on a further course at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with a First.^[3]

Without Air Ministry support, he and two retired RAF servicemen formed Power Jets Ltd to build his engine with assistance from the firm of British Thomson-Houston. Despite limited funding, a prototype was created, which first ran in 1937. Official interest was forthcoming following this success, with contracts being placed to develop further engines, but the continuing stress seriously affected Whittle's health, eventually resulting in a nervous breakdown in 1940. In 1944 when Power Jets was nationalised he again suffered a nervous breakdown, and resigned from the board in 1946.^[4]

In 1948 Whittle retired from the RAF and received a knighthood. He joined BOAC as a technical advisor before working as an engineering specialist in one of Shell Oil's subsidiaries followed by a position with Bristol Aero Engines. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1976 he accepted the position of NAVAIR Research Professor at the United States Naval Academy from 1977–1979. In August 1996, Whittle died of lung cancer at his home in Columbia, Maryland.^[2]

Early life[link]

Whittle's birthplace in Earlsdon, Coventry, England. (photo 2007)

Whittle was born in a terraced house in Newcombe Road, Earlsdon, Coventry, England on 1 June 1907, the eldest son of Moses Whittle and Sara Alice Garlick.^[5] When he was nine years old, the family moved to the nearby town of Royal Leamington Spa where his father, a highly inventive practical engineer and mechanic,^[6] purchased the Leamington Valve and Piston Ring Company, which comprised a few lathes and other tools and a single-cylinder gas engine, on which Whittle became an expert.^[2][3] Whittle developed a rebellious and adventurous streak, together with an early interest in aviation.^[5]

After two years attending Milverton School, Whittle won a scholarship to a secondary school which in due course became Leamington College, but when his father's business faltered there was not enough money to keep him there. He quickly developed practical engineering skills while helping in his father's workshop, and being an enthusiastic reader spent much of his spare time in the Leamington reference library, reading about astronomy, engineering, turbines, and the theory of flight.^[6] At the age of 15, determined to be a pilot, Whittle applied to join the RAF.^[3]

Entering the RAF[link]

In January 1923, having passed the RAF entrance examination, Whittle reported to RAF Halton as an aircraft apprentice. He lasted only two days: just five feet tall and with a small chest measurement, he failed the medical.^[3] He then put himself through a vigorous training programme and special diet devised by a physical training instructor at Halton to build up his physique, only to fail again six months later, when he was told that he could not be given a second chance, despite having added three inches to his height and chest.^[5] Undeterred, he applied again under an assumed name and presented himself as a candidate at the RAF Cranwell apprentice school instead. This time he passed the physical, and in September that year, 364365 Boy Whittle, F started his three-year training as an aircraft mechanic at the No. 4 Apprentices Wing, No. 1 School of Technical Training.^[6]

Whittle hated the strict discipline and, convinced there was no hope of ever becoming a pilot, at one time seriously considered deserting.^[6] However, throughout his early days as an aircraft apprentice, first at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell, and later at RAF Halton, he maintained his interest in the Model Aircraft Society, where he built replicas. The quality of these attracted the eye of his commanding officer, who felt that Whittle was also a mathematical genius. He was so impressed that in 1926 he recommended Whittle for officer training at Cranwell.^[3]

For Whittle, this was the chance of a lifetime, not only to enter the commissioned ranks but also because the training included flying lessons on the Avro 504.^[3] While at Cranwell he lodged in a bungalow at Dorrington. Being an ex-apprentice amongst a majority of ex-public schoolboys, life as an officer cadet was not easy for him, but he nevertheless excelled in the courses and went solo in 1927 after only 13.5 hours instruction, quickly progressing to the Bristol Fighter and gaining a reputation for daredevil low flying and aerobatics.^[6]

A requirement of the course was that each student had to produce a thesis for graduation: Whittle decided to write his on potential aircraft design developments, notably flight at high altitudes and speeds over 500 mph (800 km/h). In Future Developments in Aircraft Design he showed that incremental improvements in existing propeller engines were unlikely to make such flight routine. Instead he described what is today referred to as a motorjet; a motor using a conventional piston engine to provide compressed air to a combustion chamber whose exhaust was used directly for thrust – essentially an afterburner attached to a propeller engine. The idea was not new and had been talked about for some time in the industry, but Whittle's aim was to demonstrate that at increased altitudes the lower outside air pressure would increase the design's efficiency. For long-range flight, using an Atlantic-crossing mailplane as his example, the engine would spend most of its time at high altitude and thus could outperform a conventional powerplant.^[3]

Of the few apprentices accepted, only about one percent normally completed the course, and Whittle graduated in 1928 at the age of 21, being commissioned as a Pilot Officer in July.^[7] He ranked second in his class in academics, won the Andy Fellowes Memorial Prize for Aeronautical Sciences for his thesis, and was described as an "exceptional to above average" pilot.^[3] However, his flight logbook also showed numerous red ink warnings about showboating and overconfidence,^[3] and because of dangerous flying in an Armstrong Whitworth Siskin he was disqualified from the end of term flying contest.^[6]

Development of the turbojet engine[link]

Whittle continued working on the motorjet principle after his thesis work but eventually abandoned it when further calculations showed it would weigh as much as a conventional engine of the same thrust. Pondering the problem he thought: "Why not substitute a turbine for the piston engine?" Instead of using a piston engine to provide the compressed air for the burner, a turbine could be used to extract some power from the exhaust and drive a similar compressor to those used for superchargers. The remaining exhaust thrust would power the aircraft.^[8]

On 27 August 1928 Pilot Officer Whittle joined No. 111 Squadron, Hornchurch, flying Siskin IIIs. His continuing reputation for low flying and aerobatics provoked a public complaint that almost led to his being court-martialled.^[9] Within a year he was posted to Central Flying School, Wittering, for a flying instructor's course. He became a popular and gifted instructor, and was selected as one of the entrants in a competition to select a team to perform the "crazy flying" routine in the 1930 Royal Air Force Air Display at RAF Hendon. He destroyed two aircraft in accidents during rehearsals but remained unscathed on both occasions. After the second incident an enraged Flight Lieutenant Harold W. Raeburn said furiously, "Why don't you take all my bloody aeroplanes, make a heap of them in the middle of the aerodrome and set fire to them – it's quicker!"^[9]

Whittle showed his engine concept around the base, where it attracted the attention of Flying Officer Pat Johnson, formerly a patent examiner. Johnson, in turn, took the concept to the commanding officer of the base. This set in motion a chain of events that almost led to the engines being produced much sooner than actually occurred.^[3]

Earlier, in July 1926, A. A. Griffith had published a paper on compressors and turbines, which he had been studying at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE). He showed that such designs up to this point had been flying "stalled", and that by giving the compressor blades an aerofoil-shaped cross-section their efficiency could be dramatically improved. The paper went on to describe how the increased efficiency of these sorts of compressors and turbines would allow a jet engine to be produced, although he felt the idea was impractical, and instead suggested using the power as a turboprop. At the time most superchargers used a centrifugal compressor, so there was limited interest in the paper.

Encouraged by his Commanding Officer, in late 1929 Whittle sent his concept to the Air Ministry to see if it would be of any interest to them. With little knowledge of the topic they turned to the only other person who had written on the subject and passed the paper on to Griffith. Griffith appears to have been convinced that Whittle's "simple" design could never achieve the sort of efficiencies needed for a practical engine. After pointing out an error in one of Whittle's calculations, he went on to comment that the centrifugal design would be too large for aircraft use and that using the jet directly for power would be rather inefficient. The RAF returned his comment to Whittle, referring to the design as being "impracticable".^[3]

Pat Johnson remained convinced of the validity of the idea, and had Whittle patent the idea in January 1930. Since the RAF was not interested in the concept they did not declare it secret, meaning that Whittle was able to retain the rights to the idea, which would have otherwise been their property. Johnson arranged a meeting with British Thomson-Houston (BTH), whose chief turbine engineer seemed to agree with the basic idea. However, BTH did not want to spend the ₤60,000 it would cost to develop it, and this potential brush with early success went no further.^[3]

In January 1930, Whittle was promoted to Flying Officer.^[10] In Coventry, on 24 May 1930, Whittle married his fiancée, Dorothy Mary Lee, with whom he later had two sons, David and Ian.^[9] Then, in 1931, he was posted to the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at Felixstowe as an armament officer and test pilot of seaplanes, where he continued to publicize his idea. This posting came as a surprise for he had never previously flown a seaplane, but he nevertheless increased his reputation as a pilot by flying some 20 different types of floatplanes, flying boats, and amphibians.^[6] Every officer with a permanent commission was expected to take a specialist course, and as a result Whittle attended the Officers’ Engineering Course at RAF Henlow, Bedfordshire in 1932. He obtained an aggregate of 98% in all subjects in his exams, completing the course in 18 months instead of the more normal two years.

His performance in the course was so exceptional that in 1934 he was permitted to take a two-year engineering course as a member of Peterhouse, the oldest college of Cambridge University, graduating in 1936 with a First in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos.^[3] In February 1934, he had been promoted to the rank of Flight Lieutenant.^[11]

Power Jets Ltd[link]

Still at Cambridge, Whittle could ill afford the £5 renewal fee for his jet engine patent when it became due in January 1935, and because the Air Ministry refused to pay it the patent was allowed to lapse. Shortly afterwards, in May, he received mail from Rolf Dudley-Williams, who had been with him at Cranwell in the 1920s and Felixstowe in 1930. Williams arranged a meeting with Whittle, himself, and another now-retired RAF serviceman, James Collingwood Tinling. The two proposed a partnership that allowed them to act on Whittle's behalf to gather public financing so that development could go ahead.^[3]

The agreement soon bore fruit, and in September 1935 the pair introduced Whittle to two investment bankers at O.T. Falk & Partners, Sir Maurice Bonham-Carter and Lancelot Law Whyte.^[3] The firm had an interest in developing speculative projects that conventional banks would not touch. Whyte was impressed by the 28-year-old Whittle and his design when they met on 11 September 1935:

Falk & Partners financed an independent engineering review that was favourable,^[13] and with that the jet engine was finally on its way to becoming a reality.

On 27 January 1936, the principals signed the "Four Party Agreement", creating "Power Jets Ltd." The parties were O.T. Falk, the Air Ministry, Whittle and, together, Williams and Tinling. Falk was represented on the board of Power Jets by Whyte as Chairman, and Bonham-Carter as a director.^[14] Whittle, Williams and Tinling retained a 49% share of the company in exchange for Falk and Partners putting in £2,000 with the option of a further £18,000 within 18 months.^[4] As Whittle was still a full-time RAF officer and currently at Cambridge, he was given the title "Honorary Chief Engineer and Technical Consultant". Needing special permission to work outside the RAF, he was placed on the Special Duty List and allowed to work on the design as long as it was for no more than six hours a week.^[15]

The Air Ministry still saw no value in the effort, and having no production facilities of its own, Power Jets entered into an agreement with steam turbine specialists British Thomson-Houston to build an experimental engine facility at a BTH factory in Rugby, Warwickshire.^[16] Work progressed quickly, and by the end of the year the prototype detail design was finalised and parts for it were well on their way to being completed, all within the original £2,000 budget.^[4]

Financial difficulty[link]

Earlier, in January, when the company formed, Henry Tizard, the rector of Imperial College London and chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee (ARC), had prompted the Air Ministry's Director of Scientific Research to ask for a write-up of the design. The report was once again passed on to Griffith for comment, but was not received back until March 1937 by which point Whittle's design was well along. Griffith had already started construction of his own turbine engine design and, perhaps to avoid tainting his own efforts, he returned a somewhat more positive review. However, he remained highly critical of some features, notably the use of jet thrust. The Engine Sub-Committee of ARC studied Griffith's report, and decided to fund his effort instead.^[4]

Given this astonishing display of official indifference, Falk and Partners gave notice that they could not provide funding beyond £5,000.^[4] Nevertheless the team pressed ahead, and the W.U. (Whittle Unit) engine ran successfully on 12 April 1937. Tizard pronounced it "streets ahead" of any other advanced engine he had seen, and managed to interest the Air Ministry enough to fund development with a contract for £5,000 to develop a flyable version.^[17] However, it was a year before the funds were made available, greatly delaying development.

In July, when Whittle's stay at Cambridge was over, he was released to work full-time on the engine. On 8 July Falk gave the company an emergency loan of £250, and on the 15th they agreed to find £4,000 to £14,000 in additional funding. The money never arrived and, entering into default, Falk's shares were returned to Williams, Tinling and Whittle on 1 November. Nevertheless, Falk arranged another loan of £3,000, and work continued.^[4] Whittle was promoted to Squadron Leader in December.^[18]

Testing continued with the W.U., which showed an alarming tendency to race out of control. Because of the dangerous nature of the work being carried out, development was largely moved from Rugby to BTH's lightly used Ladywood foundry at nearby Lutterworth in Leicestershire in 1938, where there was a successful run of the W.U. in March that year. BTH had decided to put in £2,500 of their own in January, and in March 1938 the Air Ministry funds finally arrived. This proved to be a mixed blessing – the company was now subject to the Official Secrets Act, which made it extremely difficult to gather more private equity.

The Gloster E.28/39, the first British aircraft to fly with a turbojet engine

These delays and the lack of funding slowed the project. In Germany, Hans von Ohain had started work on a prototype in 1935, and had by this point passed the prototype stage and was building the first flyable design, the Heinkel HeS 3. There is little doubt that Whittle's efforts would have been at the same level or even more advanced had the Air Ministry taken a greater interest in the design. When war broke out in September 1939, Power Jets had a payroll of only 10 and Griffith's operations at the RAE and Metropolitan-Vickers were similarly small.

The stress of the continual on-again-off-again development and problems with the engine took a serious toll on Whittle.

He suffered from stress-related ailments such as eczema and heart palpitations, while his weight dropped to nine stone (126 lb / 57 kg). In order to keep to his 16-hour workdays, he sniffed Benzedrine during the day and then took tranquillizers and sleeping pills at night to offset the effects and allow him to sleep. Over this period he became irritable and developed an "explosive" temper.^[20]

Changing fortunes[link]

By June 1939 Power Jets could barely afford to keep the lights on when yet another visit was made by Air Ministry personnel. This time Whittle was able to run the W.U. at high power for 20 minutes without any difficulty. One of the members of the team was the Director of Scientific Research, David Randall Pye, who walked out of the demonstration utterly convinced of the importance of the project. The Ministry agreed to buy the W.U. and then loan it back to them, injecting cash, and placed an order for a flyable version of the engine.^[17]

Whittle had already studied the problem of turning the massive W.U. into a flyable design, and with the new contract work started in earnest on the "Whittle Supercharger Type W.1". It featured a reverse-flow design; compressed air from the outer rim of the compressor was fed into the burners and ignited, then piped back towards the front of the engine, reversing again, then finally into the turbine area. This design allowed the flame cans to be folded in length, reducing the length of the engine, and the length of the drive shaft connecting the compressor and turbine, thus reducing weight.

In January 1940, the Ministry placed a contract with the Gloster Aircraft Company for a simple aircraft specifically to flight-test the W.1, the Gloster E.28/39. They also placed a second engine contract, this time for a larger design that developed into the otherwise similar W.2. In February work started on a third design, the W.1A, which was the size of the W.1 but used the W.2's mechanical layout. The W.1A allowed them to flight test the W.2's basic mechanical design in the E.28/39. Power Jets also spent some time in May 1940 drawing up the W.2Y, a similar design with a "straight-through" airflow that resulted in a longer engine and (more critically) driveshaft but having a somewhat simpler layout. To reduce the weight of the driveshaft as much as possible, the W.2Y used a large cylindrical shaft almost as large as the turbine disc, "necked down" at either end where it connected to the turbine and compressor.

In April the Air Ministry issued contracts for W.2 production lines with a capacity of up to 3,000 engines a month in 1942, asking BTH, Vauxhall and the Rover Company to join. However, the contract was eventually taken up by Rover only.^[21] In June, Whittle received a promotion to Wing Commander.^[22]

Rover[link]

Meanwhile work continued with the W.U., which eventually went through nine rebuilds in an attempt to solve the combustion problems that caused the engines to race and surge. On 9 October the W.U. ran once again, this time equipped with Lubbock ("Shell" type) atomizing burners which solved the racing problems,^[23] but surging continued.

By this point it was clear that Gloster's first airframe would be ready long before Rover could deliver an engine. Unwilling to wait, Whittle cobbled together an engine from spare parts, creating the W.1X ("X" standing for experimental) which ran for the first time on 14 December 1940. On 10 December Whittle suffered a nervous breakdown, and left work for a month.^[24] This engine powered the E.28/39 for taxi testing on 7 April 1941 near the factory in Gloucester, where it took to the air for two or three short hops of several hundred yards at about six feet from the ground.^[2]

The definitive W.1 of 850 lbf (3.8 kN) thrust ran on 12 April 1941, and on 15 May the W.1-powered E.28/39 took off from Cranwell at 7:40 pm, flying for 17 minutes and reaching a maximum speed of around 340 mph (545 km/h). At the end of the flight, Pat Johnson, who had encouraged Whittle for so long said to him, "Frank, it flies." Whittle replied, "Well, that's what it was bloody well designed to do, wasn't it?"^[3][25]

Within days the aircraft was reaching 370 mph (600 km/h) at 25,000 feet (7,600 m), exceeding the performance of the contemporary Spitfires. Success of the design was now evident; the first example of what was a purely experimental and entirely new engine design was already outperforming one of the best piston engines in the world, an engine that had five years of development and production behind it, and decades of basic engineering. Nearly every engine company in Britain then started their own crash efforts to catch up with Power Jets.

The W2/700 engine, or W.2B/23 as it was known to the Air Ministry. The W2/700 was the first British production jet engine, powering early models of the Gloster Meteor.

In 1941 Rover set up a new laboratory for Whittle's team along with a production line at their unused Barnoldswick factory, but by late 1941 it was obvious that the arrangement between Power Jets and Rover was not working. Whittle was frustrated by Rover's inability to deliver production-quality parts, as well as with their attitude of engineering superiority, and became increasingly outspoken about the problems. Rover decided to set up secretly a parallel effort with their own engineers at Waterloo Mill, Clitheroe. Here Adrian Lombard started work developing the W.2B into Rovers own production quality design, dispensing with Whittle's "reverse-flow" burners and developing a longer but simpler "straight-through" engine instead. This was encouraged by the Air Ministry, who gave Whittle's design the name B.23, and Rover's became the B.26.

Work on all of the designs continued over the winter of 1941–42. The first W.1A was completed soon after, and on 2 March 1942 the second E.28/39 reached 430 mph (690 km/h) at 15,000 feet (4,600 m) on this engine. The next month work on an improved W.2B started under the new name, W2/500. In April Whittle learned of Rover's parallel effort, creating discontentment and causing a major crisis in the programme. Work continued, however, and in September the first W2/500 ran for the first time, generating its full design thrust of 1,750 lbf (7.8 kN) the same day. Work started on a further improvement, the W2/700.

Rolls-Royce[link]

Earlier, in 1940, Whittle had met with Stanley Hooker of Rolls-Royce, who in turn introduced Whittle to Rolls-Royce board member, Ernest Hives at a subsequent meeting. Hooker led the supercharger division at Rolls-Royce, which was naturally suited to jet engine work. Hives agreed to supply key parts to help the project and it was Rolls-Royce engineers who helped solve surging problems experienced in the early engines. In early 1942 Whittle contracted Rolls-Royce for six engines, known as the WR.1, identical to the existing W.1.

The problems between Rover and Power Jets became a "public secret" and late in 1942 Spencer Wilks of Rover met with Hives and Hooker at the Swan and Royal pub, in Clitheroe, near the Barnoldswick factory. They decided to trade the jet factory at Barnoldswick for Rolls-Royce's tank engine factory in Nottingham, sealing the deal with a handshake. The official handover took place on 1 January 1943, although the W.2B contract had already been signed over in December. Rolls-Royce closed Rover's secret parallel plant at Clitheroe soon after; however, they continued the development of the W.2B/26 that had begun there.

Testing and production ramp-up was immediately accelerated. In December 1942 Rover had tested the W.2B for a total of 37 hours, but within the next month Rolls-Royce tested it for 390 hours. The W.2B passed its first 100-hour test at full performance of 1,600 lbf (7.1 kN) on 7 May 1943. The prototype Meteor airframe was already complete and took to the air on 12 June 1943. Production versions of the engine started rolling off the line in October, first known as the W.2B/23, then the RB.23 (for Rolls-Barnoldswick) and eventually became known as the Rolls-Royce Welland. Barnoldswick was too small for full-scale production and turned back into a pure research facility under Hooker's direction, while a new factory was set up in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Rovers W.2B/26, as the Rolls-Royce Derwent, opened the new line and soon replaced the Welland, allowing the production lines at Barnoldswick to shut down in late 1944.

Despite lengthy delays in their own program, the Luftwaffe beat the British efforts into the air by nine months. A lack of cobalt for high-temperature steel alloys meant the German designs were always at risk of overheating and damaging their turbines. The low-grade alloy production versions of the Junkers Jumo 004, designed by Dr. Anselm Franz, would typically last only 10–25 hours (longer with an experienced pilot) before burning out, and sometimes exploded on their first startup. Whittle's designs were primitive, though more reliable because of the availability of better materials by comparison. The equivalent British engine would run for 150 hours between overhauls and had twice the power-to-weight ratio and half the specific fuel consumption. By the end of the war every major engine company in Britain was working on jet designs based on the Whittle pattern, or licensed outright. Nevertheless, German axial-flow designs were influential on designs after 1945.

Continued development[link]

A cutaway General Electric J31 (I-16) turbojet engine based on the W.1/W.2B

With the W.2 design proceeding smoothly, Whittle was sent to Boston, Massachusetts in mid-1942 to help the General Electric jet programme. GE, the primary supplier of turbochargers in the U.S., was well-suited to starting jet production quickly. A combination of the W.2B design and a simple airframe from Bell Aircraft flew in autumn of 1942 as the Bell XP-59A Airacomet.

Whittle's developments at Power Jets continued, the W.2/700 later being fitted with an afterburner ("reheat" in British terminology), as well as experimental water injection to cool the engine and allow higher power settings without melting the turbine. Whittle also turned his attention to the axial-flow (straight-through) engine type as championed by Griffith, designing the L.R.1. Other developments included the use of fans to provide greater mass-flow, either at the front of the engine as in a modern turbofan or at the rear, which is much less common but somewhat simpler.

Whittle's work had caused a minor revolution within the British engine manufacturing industry, and even before the E.28/39 flew most companies had set up their own research efforts. In 1939, Metropolitan-Vickers set up a project to develop an axial-flow design as a turboprop but later re-engineered the design as a pure jet known as the Metrovick F.2. Rolls-Royce had already copied the W.1 to produce the low-rated WR.1 but later stopped work on this project after taking over Rover's efforts. In 1941, de Havilland started a jet fighter project, the Spider Crab — later called Vampire — along with their own engine to power it; Frank Halford's Goblin (Halford H.1). Armstrong Siddeley also developed an axial-flow design, the ASX but reversed Vickers' thinking and later modified it into a turboprop instead, the Python.

Nationalisation[link]

During a demonstration of the E.28/39 to Winston Churchill in April 1943, Whittle proposed to Stafford Cripps, Minister of Aircraft Production, that all jet development be nationalised. He pointed out that the company had been funded by private investors who helped develop the engine successfully, only to see production contracts go to other companies. Nationalisation was the only way to repay those debts and ensure a fair deal for everyone, and he was willing to surrender his shares in Power Jets to make this happen. In October, Cripps told Whittle that he decided a better solution would be to nationalise Power Jets only.^[4] Whittle believed that he had triggered this decision, but Cripps had already been considering how best to maintain a successful jet programme and act responsibly regarding the state's substantial financial investment, while at the same time wanting to establish a research centre that could utilise Power Jets' talents, and had come to the conclusion that national interests demanded the setting up of a Government-owned establishment.^[26] On 1 December Cripps advised Power Jets' directors that the Treasury would not pay more than £100,000 for the company.^[4]

In January 1944 Whittle was awarded the CBE in the New Year Honours.^[27] By this time he was a Group Captain, having been promoted from Wing Commander in July 1943.^[28] Later that month after further negotiations the Ministry made another offer of £135,500 for Power Jets, which was reluctantly accepted after the Ministry refused arbitration on the matter. Since Whittle had already offered to surrender his shares he would receive nothing at all, while Williams and Tinling each received almost £46,800 for their stock, and investors of cash or services had a threefold return on their original investment.^[29] Whittle met with Cripps to object personally to the nationalisation efforts and how they were being handled, but to no avail. The final terms were agreed on 28 March, and Power Jets officially became Power Jets (Research and Development) Ltd, with Roxbee Cox as Chairman, Constant of RAE Head of Engineering Division, and Whittle as Chief Technical Advisor. On 5 April 1944, the Ministry sent Whittle an award of only £10,000 for his shares.^[4]

From the end of March, Whittle spent six months in hospital recovering from nervous exhaustion, and resigned from Power Jets (R and D) Ltd in January 1946. In July the company was merged with the gas turbine division of RAE to form the National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE) at Farnborough, and 16 Power Jets engineers, following Whittle's example, also resigned.^[30]

After the war[link]

Frank Whittle speaking to employees of the Flight Propulsion Research Laboratory (Now known as the NASA Glenn Research Center), USA, in 1946

Long a socialist, Whittle's experiences with nationalisation changed his mind and he later campaigned for the Conservative Party (especially for his friend Dudley Williams, who was Managing Director of Power Jets and became the Conservative Member of Parliament for Exeter).

In 1946 Whittle accepted a post as Technical Advisor on Engine Design and Production to Controller of Supplies (Air); was made Commander, the U.S. Legion of Merit; and was awarded the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1947. During May 1948 Whittle received an ex-gratia award of £100,000 from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in recognition of his work on the jet engine, and two months later he was made a Knight of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).^[3]

During a lecture tour in the U.S. he again broke down and retired from the RAF on medical grounds on 26 August 1948, leaving with the rank of Air Commodore.^[3] He joined BOAC as a technical advisor on aircraft gas turbines and travelled extensively over the next few years, viewing jet engine developments in the United States, Canada, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He left BOAC in 1952 and spent the next year working on a biography, Jet: The Story of a Pioneer.^[31] He was awarded the Royal Society of Arts' Albert Medal that year.

Returning to work in 1953, he accepted a position as a Mechanical Engineering Specialist in one of Shell Oil's subsidiaries, where he developed a new type of self-powered drill,^[31] driven by a turbine running on the lubricating mud that is pumped into the borehole during drilling. Normally a well is drilled by attaching rigid sections of pipe together and powering the cutting head by spinning the pipe, but Whittle's design removed the need for a strong mechanical connection between the drill and the head frame, allowing for much lighter piping to be used. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1954 on The Story of Petroleum.

Whittle left Shell in 1957 to work for Bristol Aero Engines who picked up the project in 1961,^[31] setting up "Bristol Siddeley Whittle Tools" to further develop the concept. In 1966 Rolls-Royce purchased Bristol Siddeley, but the financial pressures and eventual bankruptcy because of cost overruns of the RB211 project led to the slow wind-down and eventual disappearance of Whittle's "turbo-drill". The design eventually appeared only in the late 1990s, when it was combined with a continuous coiled pipe to allow uninterrupted drilling at any angle. "Continuous-coil drilling" has the ability to drill straight down into a pocket of oil and then sideways through the pocket to allow the oil to flow out faster.

In 1967, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath.^[32]

Later life[link]

Whittle received the Tony Jannus Award in 1969 for his distinguished contributions to commercial aviation.

In 1976, his marriage to Dorothy was dissolved and he married American Hazel S Hall ("Tommie"). He emigrated to the U.S. and the following year accepted the position of NAVAIR Research Professor at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis, Maryland).^[31] His research concentrated on the boundary layer before his professorship became part-time from 1978 to 1979. The part-time post enabled him to write a textbook entitled Gas turbine aero-thermodynamics: with special reference to aircraft propulsion, published in 1981.^[3] Having first met Hans von Ohain in 1966, Whittle again met him at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1978 while von Ohain was working there as the Aero Propulsion Laboratory's Chief Scientist. Initially upset because he believed von Ohain's engine had been developed after seeing Whittle's patent, he eventually became convinced that von Ohain's work was, in fact, independent.^[33] The two became good friends and often toured the U.S. giving talks together.

In 1986 Whittle was appointed a member of the Order of Merit (Commonwealth). He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Royal Aeronautical Society,^[3] and in 1991 he and von Ohain were awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize for their work on turbojet engines.

Whittle died of lung cancer on 9 August 1996, at his home in Columbia, Maryland. He was cremated in America and his ashes were flown to England where they were placed in a memorial in a church in Cranwell.^[2]

Von Ohain stated^[where?] that if the RAF had taken Whittle's design seriously when it was first submitted, there would have been no World War II.^{[citation needed]} As it was found later in the war the fighter superiority over Europe was key to winning the war in Europe.^{[original research?]}

Styles and Promotions[link]

Air Commodore Frank Whittle at his desk

• 1907–1923: Frank Whittle
• 1923–1926: Apprentice Frank Whittler
• 1926–1928: Officer Cadet Frank Whittle
• 1928–1930: Pilot Officer Frank Whittle
• 1930–1934: Flying Officer Frank Whittle
• 1934–1938: Flight Lieutenant Frank Whittle
• 1938–1940: Squadron Leader Frank Whittle
• 1940–1943: Wing Commander Frank Whittle
• 1943–1944: Group Captain Frank Whittle
• 1944–1946: Group Captain (Actg. Air Commodore) Frank Whittle, CBE
• 1946–1947: Group Captain (Temp. Air Commodore) Frank Whittle, CBE
• 1947–1948: Group Captain (Temp. Air Commodore) Frank Whittle, CB, CBE
• 1948–1986: Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, KBE, CB
• 1986–1996: Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, FRAeS

Memorials[link]

Statue of Sir Frank Whittle under the Whittle Arches, Coventry

Whittle Arches and statue, Coventry

Coventry, England[link]

• The "Whittle Arch" statue is a large double wing-like structure situated outside the Coventry Transport Museum, Millennium Place, Coventry City Centre.
• A statue of Whittle by Faith Winter is situated under the Whittle Arch. It was unveiled on 1 June 2007 by his son, Ian Whittle, during a televised event. It shows Whittle at RAF Cranwell looking towards the sky observing the first test flight of a Whittle-powered Gloster E.28/39 on 15 May 1941.
• A school is named after Whittle in the Walsgrave suburb of Coventry. It was first called Frank Whittle Primary, then renamed in 1997 as Sir Frank Whittle Primary School. A jet engine replica sits in the reception area of the school, donated by Whittle himself during his life.
• A commemorative plaque marks the house in Newcombe Road, Earlsdon, Coventry, in which he was born and lived until age nine.^[2]
• On Hearsall Common, near Whittle's Coventry birthplace, a plaque commemorates where Whittle gained inspiration when he saw an aircraft land.
• Coventry University named a building after him.
• The main hangar at the Midland Air Museum is called The Sir Frank Whittle Jet Heritage Centre.
• Whittle house was one of the four "houses" at Finham Park School until they were renamed in 2008.

Whittle memorial at Lutterworth

Lutterworth, England[link]

• Lutterworth Museum hold a very large unrivalled collection of original papers including the 1936 Patent, Power Jets Autograph book from 1945 and the Champagne bottle signed by everyone at a party at RAF Cranwell on the night of the first flight plus many more artifacts and displays. Also Luttrworth Museum give talks and put on displays all over the country.
• A memorial has been erected in the middle of a roundabout outside Lutterworth and a bust of Frank Whittle has been erected in Lutterworth, where much of Whittle's development on the jet engine, was carried out.
• A bust of Sir Frank Whittle near the war memorial on the corner of Church and George street.
• The Sir Frank Whittle Public House is situated on the Greenacres estate in Lutterworth (opened in 2010)
• 'Whittle Road' in Lutterworth was named after Sir Frank Whittle.

Elsewhere[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

• A full-scale model of the Gloster E28/39 Whittle has been erected just outside the northern boundary of Farnborough Airfield in Hampshire, UK.
• The Sir Frank Whittle Medal is awarded annually by the Royal Academy of Engineering to an engineer, normally resident in the UK, for outstanding and sustained achievement which has contributed to the well-being of the nation.^[34]
• Two roads in Derby are named Sir Frank Whittle Road and Sir Frank Whittle Way, as a tribute to his work at Rolls-Royce.

Sir Frank Whittle's memorial at Farnborough Aerodrome

• Whittle Parkway in Burnham is named after him.
• One of the main buildings at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell is called Whittle Hall. It houses the Officer & Aircrew Cadet Training Unit and the Air Power Studies Division of King's College London.
• Cambridge University Engineering Department has a Whittle Laboratory.
• A road in Shaw, Oldham, is named Whittle Drive.
• A road in Rugby is named Whittle Close.
• Whittle Close in Clitheroe is named after him.
• Sir Frank Whittle Way, a new road in Blackpool Business park, Blackpool.
• The Jet public house in Leamington Spa, known as The Jet and Whittle until recent times, is named in honour of Whittle.
• The Whittle Gas field in the Southern North Sea operated by BP.^{[citation needed]}
• The Whittle Inn near the Gloster Aircraft Company's former test runway in Hucclecote, Gloucestershire is named after Whittle; the nearby Tesco has a picture of a Gloster Meteor incorporated in part of its glass frontage.
• The bar/restaurant in Royal Mail's management college at Coton House, Churchover is named the Whittle Bar.
• A memorial stone was placed in the Royal Air Force Chapel in Westminster Abbey in his memory. The inscription on the stone reads: "Frank Whittle. Inventor & Pioneer of the Jet Engine. 1907–1996".
• Sir Frank Whittle's national and international honours, medals, and awards (including the Order of Merit), are displayed in the Royal Academy of Engineering, London.
• A building at Aero Engine Controls in Birmingham, UK has been named 'The Whittle Building' (1994)
• Whittle Hangar is One of the main Hangars at HMS SULTAN and is used to house Navy marine gas turbines. The gas turbines are fully operational and used to train Royal Navy and foreign officers and sailors in gas turbine technology.
• A plaque has been placed at the Port of Felixstowe to honour his link with the town (August 2010)
• A plaque commerating Whittle resides inside the hall of Binswood Sixth Form centre in Leamington Spa, formerly Leamington Boys College

See also[link]

• Timeline of jet power

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Frank Whittle

• Whittle Archive
• News report – Memorial for University of Cambridge Student who Invented the Jet Engine
• More about Frank Whittle
• More about Frank Whittle and the jet age at the Royal Air Force History website
• Flight, October 1945 – "Early History of the Whittle Jet Propulsion Gas Turbine" by Air Commodore Frank Whittle abstract
• Early History of the Whittle Jet Propulsion Gas Turbine by Frank Whittle Full text of the first James Claydon lecture
• Air of Authority - Sir Frank Whittle

Hans von Ohain
Hans von Ohain in the 1970s
Born	(1911-12-14)December 14, 1911 Dessau, Germany
Died	March 13, 1998(1998-03-13) (aged 86) Melbourne, Florida, United States
Education	University of Göttingen
Work
Significant advance	jet propulsion

Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain (December 14, 1911 – March 13, 1998) was a German engineer, one of the inventors of jet propulsion. His first design ran in March 1937, and it was one of his engines that powered the first all-jet aircraft, the prototype of the Heinkel He 178 in late August 1939. In spite of these early successes, other German designs quickly eclipsed von Ohain's, and none of his engine designs entered widespread production or operational use.

von Ohain independently developed the first jet engine during the same period that Frank Whittle was doing the same in the UK, and the two projects were often within weeks of meeting the same milestones. von Ohain's Heinkel HeS 1 ran only weeks before Whittle's WU, but did not run on its own power until six months later. von Ohain's design flew first in 1939, followed by Whittle's in 1941. Operational jet aircraft from both countries entered use only weeks apart. After the war the two men met, and became friends.

Early life and jet development[link]

Born in Dessau, Germany, he earned a Ph.D. in Physics and Aerodynamics from the University of Göttingen, then one of the major centers for aeronautical research, and was lectured by Ludwig Prandtl.^[1] During his studies, in 1933 he conceived of "an engine that did not require a propeller." After receiving his degree in 1935, Ohain became the junior assistant of Robert Wichard Pohl, then director of the Physical Institute of the University.

In 1936, while working for Pohl, von Ohain earned a patent on his version of jet engines, Process and Apparatus for Producing Airstreams for Propelling Airplanes.^{[citation needed][2]} Unlike Frank Whittle's design, von Ohain's design used a centrifugal compressor and turbine placed very close together, back to back, with the flame cans wrapped around the outside of the assembly.

While working at the University, von Ohain often took his sports car to be serviced at a local garage, Bartles and Becker. Here he met an automotive engineer, Max Hahn, and eventually arranged for him to build a model of his design for around 1,000 ℛℳ. The completed model was even larger in diameter than Whittle's 1937 fully working engine, although much shorter along the thrust axis. Von Ohain took the model to the University for testing but ran into serious problems with combustion stability. Often the fuel would not burn inside the flame cans and would be blown through the turbine sending shooting flames out the back and overheating the electric motor powering the compressor.

Heinkel[link]

In February 1936, Pohl wrote to Ernst Heinkel telling him of von Ohain's design and its possibilities. Heinkel arranged a meeting between his engineers and von Ohain during which he argued that the current "garage engine" would never work but that the concept upon which it was based was sound. The engineers were convinced and in April von Ohain and Hahn began working for Heinkel at the Marienehe airfield outside Rostock, in Warnemünde.

A study of the model's airflow resulted in several improvements over a two month period. Encouraged by these findings, von Ohain produced a new prototype that would run on hydrogen gas supplied by an external pressurised source. The resulting Heinkel-Strahltriebwerk 1 (HeS 1), German for Heinkel Jet Engine 1, was built by hand-picking some of the best machinists in the company, much to the chagrin of the shop-floor supervisors. Hahn, meanwhile, worked on the combustion problem, an area in which he had some experience.

The engine was extremely simple, made largely of sheet metal. Construction started late in the summer of 1936, and completed in March 1937. It ran two weeks later on hydrogen, but the high temperature exhaust led to considerable "burning" of the metal. The tests were otherwise successful, and in September the combustors were replaced and the engine was run on gasoline for the first time. Von Ohain had at last, albeit 5 months after Whittle, run a self-contained turbojet. Running on gasoline proved to clog up the combustors, so Hahn designed a new version based on his soldering torch, which proved to work much better. Although the engine was never intended to be a flight-quality design, it proved beyond a doubt that the basic concept was workable. Von Ohain had caught up with Whittle at last. From now on, with vastly more funding and industry support, Von Ohain would soon overtake Whittle and forge ahead.

While work on the HeS 1 continued, the team had already moved on to the design of a flight-quality design, the HeS 3. The major differences were the use of machined compressor and turbine stages, replacing the bent and folded sheet metal, and a re-arrangement of the layout to reduce the cross-sectional area of the engine as a whole by placing the flame cans in an extended gap between the compressor and turbine. The original design proved to have a turbine area that was simply too small to work efficiently, and increasing the size of the turbine meant the flame cans no longer fit in the gap correctly. A new design, the HeS 3b was proposed, which moved the flame cans out of the gap and modified their shape to allow the widest part of the cans to lie in front of the compressor's outer rim. In the 3b, compressed air was piped forward to the combustion chambers, and from there the now-hot air flowed rearward into the turbine inlet. While not as small as the original HeS 3 design, the 3b was nevertheless fairly compact. The 3b first ran July 1939 (some references say May), and was air-tested under the Heinkel He 118 dive bomber prototype. The original 3b engine soon burned out, but a second one was nearing completion at about the same time as a new test airframe, the Heinkel He 178, which first flew on August 27, 1939, the first jet-powered aircraft to fly by test pilot Erich Warsitz.

Work started immediately on larger versions, first the HeS 6 which was simply a larger HeS 3b, and then on a new design known as the HeS 8 which once again re-arranged the overall layout. The 8 separated the compressor and turbine, connecting them with a long shaft, placing a single annular combustion chamber between them, replacing the individual flame cans. It was intended to install the engine on the Heinkel He 280 fighter, but the airframe development progressed much more smoothly than the engine, and had to be used in gliding tests while work on the engine continued. A flight-quality HeS 8 was installed in late March 1941, followed by the first flight on April 2. Three days later the aircraft was demonstrated for a party of Nazi and RLM officials, all of whom were impressed. Full development funds soon followed.

By this point there were a number of turbojet developments taking place in Germany. Heinkel was so impressed by the concept that he had brought on Adolph Müller from Junkers, who was developing an axial compressor-powered design, renamed as the Heinkel HeS 30. Müller had left Junkers after they purchased the Junkers Motoren company, who had their own project under way, which by this time was known as the Junkers Jumo 004. Meanwhile BMW was making good progress with their own design, the BMW 003.

By early 1942 the HeS 8, officially the 109-001 (HeS 001), was still not progressing well. Meanwhile Müller's HeS 30, officially the 109-006 (HeS 006), was developing much more quickly. Both engines were still some time from being ready for production, however, while the 003 and 004 appeared to be ready to go. In early 1942 the director of jet development at the RLM, Helmut Schelp, refused further funding for both designs, and ordered Heinkel to work on a new "pet project" of his own, eventually becoming the Heinkel HeS 011. Although this was the first of Schelp's "Class II" engines to start working well, production had still not started when the war ended. Work continued on the HeS 8 for some time, but it was eventually abandoned in the spring of 1943.

After the war[link]

In 1947 von Ohain was brought to the United States by Operation Paperclip and went to work for the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. In 1956 he was made the Director of the Air Force Aeronautical Research Laboratory and by 1975 he was the Chief Scientist of the Aero Propulsion Laboratory there.

During his work at Wright-Patterson, von Ohain continued his own personal work on various topics. In the early 1960s he did a fair amount of work on the design of gas core reactor rockets which would retain the nuclear fuel while allowing the working mass to be used as exhaust. The engineering needed for this role was also used for a variety of other "down to earth" purposes, including centrifuges and pumps. von Ohain would later use the basic mass-flow techniques of these designs to create a fascinating jet engine with no moving parts,^[3] in which the airflow through the engine created a stable vortex that acted as the compressor and turbine.

This interest in mass-flow also led von Ohain to research magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) for power generation,^[4] noting that the hot gases from a coal-fired plant could be used to extract power from their speed when exiting the combustion chamber, remaining hot enough to then power a conventional steam turbine. Thus an MHD generator could extract further power from the coal, and lead to greater efficiencies. Unfortunately this design has proven difficult to build due to a lack of proper materials, namely high-temperature non-magnetic materials that are also able to withstand the chemically active exhaust. Ohain also investigated other power related concepts.^[5]

He also invented^[6] the idea of the "jet wing", in which air from the compressor of a jet engine is bled off to large "augmented" vents in the wings to provide lift for VTOL aircraft. A small amount of high-pressure air is blown into a venturi, which in turn sucks a much larger volume of air along with it, thus leading to "thrust augmentation". The concept was used in the Rockwell XFV-12 experimental aircraft, although the market interest in VTOL aircraft was short-lived. He participated in several other patents.^[7]

Ohain was the influence in shifting the mind of his student at WP-AFB Paul Bevilaqua from math to engineering,^[8] which later gave Paul the ability to invent the Rolls-Royce LiftSystem for the JSF F35B STOVL: "in school I learned how to move the pieces, and Hans taught me how to play chess".^[9] Ohain also showed Bevilaqua "what those TS-diagrams actually mean".^[10]

During his career, von Ohain won many engineering and management awards, including (among others) the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Goddard Astronautics Award, the United States Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Award, Systems Command Award for Exceptional Civilian Service, the Eugene M. Zuckert Management Award, the Air Force Special Achievement Award, and just before he retired, the Citation of Honor. In 1984–85, Ohain served as the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History, a competitive senior fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum.^[11] In 1991 von Ohain and Whittle were jointly awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize for their work on turbojet engines.

He retired from Wright-Patterson in 1979 and took up an associate professor position at the nearby University of Dayton. He later moved to Melbourne, Florida with his wife Hanny, where he died in 1998. He is survived by four children.

See also[link]

• German inventors and discoverers

References[link]

• Neufeld, Jacob; George M. Watson, Jr., David Chenoweth (1997). Technology and the Air Force: A Retrospective Assessment. DIANE Publishing. pp. 7–8. ISBN 1-4289-1358-0. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l-cjq0nIJEsC&pg=PA6&dq=scroll+supercharger. 

External links[link]

• Hans von Ohain, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.

Orville Wright
Photo: 1903
Born	(1871-08-19)August 19, 1871 Dayton, Ohio
Died	January 30, 1948(1948-01-30) (aged 76) Dayton, Ohio
Ethnicity	German, Dutch, English
Occupation	Printer/publisher, bicycle retailer/manufacturer, airplane inventor/manufacturer, pilot trainer
Spouse	none
Signature

Wilbur Wright
Photo: 1903
Born	(1867-04-16)April 16, 1867 Millville, Indiana
Died	May 30, 1912(1912-05-30) (aged 45) Dayton, Ohio
Ethnicity	German, Dutch, English
Occupation	Editor, bicycle retailer/manufacturer, airplane inventor/manufacturer, pilot trainer
Spouse	none
Signature

The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were two Americans credited^[1][2][3] with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.

The brothers' fundamental breakthrough was their invention of three-axis control, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and to maintain its equilibrium.^[4] This method became standard and remains standard on fixed-wing aircraft of all kinds.^[5][6] From the beginning of their aeronautical work, the Wright brothers focused on developing a reliable method of pilot control as the key to solving "the flying problem". This approach differed significantly from other experimenters of the time who put more emphasis on developing powerful engines.^[7] Using a small homebuilt wind tunnel, the Wrights also collected more accurate data than any before, enabling them to design and build wings and propellers that were more efficient than any before.^[8][9] Their first U.S. patent, 821,393, did not claim invention of a flying machine, but rather, the invention of a system of aerodynamic control that manipulated a flying machine's surfaces.^[10]

They gained the mechanical skills essential for their success by working for years in their shop with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and other machinery. Their work with bicycles in particular influenced their belief that an unstable vehicle like a flying machine could be controlled and balanced with practice.^[11] From 1900 until their first powered flights in late 1903, they conducted extensive glider tests that also developed their skills as pilots. Their bicycle shop employee Charlie Taylor became an important part of the team, building their first aircraft engine in close collaboration with the brothers.

The Wright brothers' status as inventors of the airplane has been subject to counter-claims by various parties. Much controversy persists over the many competing claims of early aviators.

Childhood[link]

Orville (left) and Wilbur (right) in 1876.

The Wright brothers were two of seven children born to Milton Wright (1828–1917) of English and Dutch descent and Susan Catherine Koerner (1831–1889) of German-Swiss descent.^[12] Wilbur was born near Millville, Indiana, in 1867; Orville in Dayton, Ohio, in 1871. The brothers never married. The other Wright siblings were named Reuchlin (1861–1920), Lorin (1862–1939), Katharine (1874–1929), and twins Otis and Ida (born 1870, died in infancy). In elementary school, Orville was given to mischief and was once expelled.^[13] In 1878 their father, who traveled often as a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, brought home a toy "helicopter" for his two younger sons. The device was based on an invention of French aeronautical pioneer Alphonse Pénaud. Made of paper, bamboo and cork with a rubber band to twirl its rotor, it was about a foot long. Wilbur and Orville played with it until it broke, and then built their own.^[14] In later years, they pointed to their experience with the toy as the initial spark of their interest in flying.^[15]

Early career and research[link]

Wright brothers' home at 7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton about 1900. Wilbur and Orville built the covered wrap-around porch in the 1890s.

Both brothers attended high school, but did not receive diplomas. The family's abrupt move in 1884 from Richmond, Indiana to Dayton (where the family had lived during the 1870s) prevented Wilbur from receiving his diploma after finishing four years of high school.

In the winter of 1885–86 Wilbur was accidentally struck in the face by a hockey stick while playing an ice-skating game with friends, resulting in the loss of his front teeth. He had been vigorous and athletic until then, and although his injuries did not appear especially severe, he became withdrawn, and did not attend Yale as planned. Instead, he spent the next few years largely housebound, caring for his mother who was terminally ill with tuberculosis and reading extensively in his father's library. He ably assisted his father during times of controversy within the Brethren Church,^[16] but also expressed unease over his own lack of ambition.^[17]

Orville dropped out of high school after his junior year to start a printing business in 1889, having designed and built his own printing press with Wilbur's help. Wilbur shook off the lingering depression caused by his accident and joined the print shop, serving as editor while Orville was publisher of the weekly newspaper the West Side News, followed for only a few months by the daily Evening Item. One of their clients for printing jobs was Orville's friend and classmate in high school, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who rose to international acclaim as a ground-breaking African-American poet and writer. The Wrights printed the Dayton Tattler, a weekly newspaper that Dunbar edited for a brief period.^[18]

Capitalizing on the national bicycle craze (spurred by the invention of the safety bicycle and its substantial advantages over the penny-farthing design), the brothers opened a repair and sales shop in 1892 (the Wright Cycle Exchange, later the Wright Cycle Company) and began manufacturing their own brand^[19] in 1896. They used this endeavor to fund their growing interest in flight. In the early or mid-1890s they saw newspaper or magazine articles and probably photographs of the dramatic glides by Otto Lilienthal in Germany. The year 1896 brought three important aeronautical events. In May, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Langley successfully flew an unmanned steam-powered model aircraft. In the summer, Chicago engineer and aviation authority Octave Chanute brought together several men who tested various types of gliders over the sand dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan. In August, Lilienthal was killed in the plunge of his glider.^[20] These events lodged in the consciousness of the brothers. In May 1899 Wilbur wrote a letter^[21] to the Smithsonian Institution requesting information and publications about aeronautics.^[22] Drawing on the work of Sir George Cayley, Chanute, Lilienthal, Leonardo da Vinci, and Langley, they began their mechanical aeronautical experimentation that year.

The Wright brothers always presented a unified image to the public, sharing equally in the credit for their invention. Biographers note, however, that Wilbur took the initiative in 1899–1900, writing of "my" machine and "my" plans before Orville became deeply involved when the first person singular became the plural "we" and "our". Author James Tobin asserts, "it is impossible to imagine Orville, bright as he was, supplying the driving force that started their work and kept it going from the back room of a store in Ohio to conferences with capitalists, presidents, and kings. Will did that. He was the leader, from the beginning to the end."^[23]

Ideas about control[link]

Despite Lilienthal's fate, the brothers favored his strategy: to practice gliding in order to master the art of control before attempting motor-driven flight. The death of British aeronaut Percy Pilcher in another hang gliding crash in 1899 only reinforced their opinion that a reliable method of pilot control was the key to successful—and safe—flight. At the outset of their experiments they regarded control as the unsolved third part of "the flying problem". They believed sufficiently promising knowledge of the other two issues—wings and engines—already existed.^[24] The Wright brothers thus differed sharply from more experienced practitioners of the day, notably Ader, Maxim and Langley who built powerful engines, attached them to airframes equipped with unproven control devices, and expected to take to the air with no previous flying experience. Although agreeing with Lilienthal's idea of practice, the Wrights saw that his method of balance and control—shifting his body weight—was fatally inadequate.^[25] They were determined to find something better.

Wright 1899 kite: front and side views, with control sticks. Wing-warping is shown in lower view. (Wright Brothers drawing in Library of Congress)

On the basis of observation, Wilbur concluded that birds changed the angle of the ends of their wings to make their bodies roll right or left.^[26] The brothers decided this would also be a good way for a flying machine to turn—to "bank" or "lean" into the turn just like a bird—and just like a person riding a bicycle, an experience with which they were thoroughly familiar. Equally important, they hoped this method would enable recovery when the wind tilted the machine to one side (lateral balance). They puzzled over how to achieve the same effect with man-made wings and eventually discovered wing-warping when Wilbur idly twisted a long inner-tube box at the bicycle shop.^[27]

Other aeronautical investigators regarded flight as if it were not so different from surface locomotion, except the surface would be elevated. They thought in terms of a ship's rudder for steering, while the flying machine remained essentially level in the air, as did a train or an automobile or a ship at the surface. The idea of deliberately leaning, or rolling, to one side seemed either undesirable or did not enter their thinking.^[28] Some of these other investigators, including Langley and Chanute, sought the elusive ideal of "inherent stability", believing the pilot of a flying machine would not be able to react quickly enough to wind disturbances to use mechanical controls effectively. The Wright brothers, on the other hand, wanted the pilot to have absolute control.^[29] For that reason, their early designs made no concessions toward built-in stability (such as dihedral wings). They deliberately designed their 1903 first powered flyer with anhedral (drooping) wings, which are inherently unstable, but less susceptible to upset by gusty sidewinds.

Flights[link]

Toward flight[link]

In July 1899 Wilbur put wing warping to the test by building and flying a biplane kite that had a five foot wingspan. When the wings were warped, or twisted, one end of the wings produced more lift and the other end, less lift. Unequal lift made the wings tilt, or bank: the end with more lift rose, while the other end dropped, causing a turn in the direction of the lower end. Warping was controlled by four cords attached to the kite. The cords led to two sticks held by the kite flyer, who tilted them in opposite directions to twist the wings.

In 1900 the brothers journeyed to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to begin their manned gliding experiments. In a reply to Wilbur's first letter, Octave Chanute had suggested the mid-Atlantic coast for its regular breezes and soft sandy landing surface. Wilbur also requested and scrutinized U.S. Weather Bureau data, and decided on Kitty Hawk after receiving information from the government meteorologist stationed there. The location, although remote, was closer to Dayton than other places Chanute had suggested, including California and Florida. The spot also gave them privacy from reporters, who had turned the 1896 Chanute experiments at Lake Michigan into something of a circus. Chanute visited them in camp each season from 1901 to 1903 and saw gliding experiments, but not the powered flights.

Gliders[link]

Chanute's hang glider of 1896. The pilot may be Augustus Herring.

The Wrights based the design of their kite and full-size gliders on work done in the 1890s by other aviation pioneers. They adopted the basic design of the Chanute-Herring biplane hang glider ("double-decker" as the Wrights called it), which flew well in the 1896 experiments near Chicago, and used aeronautical data on lift that Lilienthal had published. The Wrights designed the wings with camber, a curvature of the top surface. The brothers did not discover this principle, but took advantage of it. The better lift of a cambered surface compared to a flat one was first discussed scientifically by Sir George Cayley. Lilienthal, whose work the Wrights carefully studied, used cambered wings in his gliders, proving in flight the advantage over flat surfaces. The wooden uprights between the wings of the Wright glider were braced by wires in their own version of Chanute's modified "Pratt truss", a bridge-building design he used for his biplane glider (initially built as a triplane). The Wrights mounted the horizontal elevator in front of the wings rather than behind, apparently believing this feature would help to avoid, or protect them, from a nosedive and crash like the one that killed Lilienthal.^[30] When Brazilian aviation pioneer Santos-Dumont flew his 14-bis in Paris in 1906, French newspapers dubbed the tail-first arrangement a "canard", because of the supposed resemblance to a duck in flight.^[31] Wilbur incorrectly believed a tail was not necessary,^[32] and their first two gliders did not have one. According to some Wright biographers, Wilbur probably did all the gliding until 1902, perhaps to exercise his authority as older brother and to protect Orville from harm.^[33][34]

* (This airfoil caused severe stability problems; the Wrights modified the camber on-site.)

1900 Glider[link]

The brothers flew the glider only a few days in the early autumn of 1900 at Kitty Hawk. In the first tests, probably October 3, Wilbur was aboard while the glider flew as a kite not far above the ground with men below holding tether ropes.^[36] Most of the kite tests were unpiloted with sandbags or chains (and even a local boy) as onboard ballast.

The 1900 glider. No photo was taken with a pilot aboard.

They tested wing-warping using control ropes from the ground. The glider was also tested unmanned while suspended from a small homemade tower. Wilbur (but not Orville) made about a dozen free glides on only a single day. For those tests, the brothers trekked four miles (6 km) south to the Kill Devil Hills, a group of sand dunes up to 100 feet (30 m) high (where they made camp in each of the next three years). Although the glider's lift was less than expected (causing most tests to be unmanned), the brothers were encouraged because the craft's front elevator worked well and they had no accidents. However, the small number of free glides meant they were not able to give wing-warping a true test.

The pilot lay flat on the lower wing, as planned, to reduce aerodynamic drag. As a glide ended, the pilot was supposed to lower himself to a vertical position through an opening in the wing and land on his feet with his arms wrapped over the framework. Within a few glides, however, they discovered the pilot could remain prone on the wing, headfirst, without undue danger when landing. They made all their flights in that position for the next five years.

1901 Glider[link]

Orville at Kitty Hawk with the 1901 glider, its nose pointed skyward; it had no tail.

Wilbur just after landing the 1901 glider. Glider skid marks are visible behind it, and marks from a previous landing are seen in front; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Hoping to improve lift, they built the 1901 glider with a much larger wing area and made 50 to 100 flights in July and August for distances of 20 to 400 ft (6 to 122 m).^[37] The glider stalled a few times, but the parachute effect of the forward elevator allowed Wilbur to make a safe flat or "pancake" landing, instead of a nose-dive. These incidents wedded the Wrights even more strongly to the canard design, which they did not give up until 1910. The glider, however, delivered two major disappointments. It produced only about one-third the lift calculated and sometimes failed to respond properly to wing-warping, turning opposite the direction intended—a problem later known as adverse yaw. On the trip home after their second season, Wilbur, stung with disappointment, remarked to Orville that man would fly, but not in their lifetimes.

The poor lift of the gliders led the Wrights to question the accuracy of Lilienthal's data, as well as the "Smeaton coefficient" of air pressure, which had been in existence for over 100 years and was part of the accepted equation for lift.

Replica of the Wright brothers' wind tunnel at the Virginia Air and Space Center

The Wrights—and Lilienthal—used the equation to calculate the amount of lift that wings of various sizes would produce. On the basis of measurements of lift and wind during the 1901 glider's kite and free flights, Wilbur believed (correctly, as tests later showed) that the Smeaton number was very close to 0.0033, not the traditionally used 60 percent larger 0.0054, which would exaggerate predicted lift.

Back home, furiously pedaling a strange-looking bicycle on neighborhood streets, they conducted makeshift open-air tests with a miniature Lilienthal airfoil and a counter-acting flat plate, which were both attached to a freely rotating third bicycle wheel mounted horizontally in front of the handlebars. Because the third wheel rotated against the airfoil instead of remaining motionless as the calculations predicted, the Wrights confirmed their suspicion that published data on lift were unreliable, and they decided to expand their investigation. They also realized that trial-and-error with different wings on full-size gliders was too costly and time-consuming. Putting aside the three-wheel bicycle, they built a six-foot wind tunnel in their shop and conducted systematic tests on miniature wings from October to December 1901.^[38] The "balances" they devised and mounted inside the tunnel to hold the wings looked crude, made of bicycle spokes and scrap metal, but were "as critical to the ultimate success of the Wright brothers as were the gliders."^[39] The devices allowed the brothers to balance lift against drag and accurately calculate the performance of each wing.^[40] They could also see which wings worked well as they looked through the viewing window in the top of the tunnel. Prior to beginning their wind tunnel experiments, Wilbur, at Chanute's invitation, traveled to Chicago to give a speech to the Western Society of Engineers on September 18, 1901. Wilbur's speech consisted of detailed accounts of his and Orville's glider experiments at Kitty Hawk up to the fall of 1901 and was complemented by a lantern slide show of photographs. Wilbur's speech was the first public account of the brothers' experiments.

1902 Glider[link]

A Big Improvement
At left, 1901 glider flown by Wilbur (left) and Orville. At right, 1902 glider flown by Wilbur (right) and Dan Tate, their helper. Dramatic improvement in performance is apparent. The 1901 glider flies at a steep angle of attack due to poor lift and high drag. In contrast, the 1902 glider flies at a much flatter angle and holds up its tether lines almost vertically, clearly demonstrating a much better lift-to-drag ratio.

Lilienthal had made "whirling arm" tests on only a few wing shapes, and the Wrights mistakenly assumed the data would apply to their wings, which had a different shape. The Wrights took a huge step forward and made basic wind tunnel tests on 200 wings of many shapes and airfoil curves, followed by detailed tests on 38 of them. The tests, according to biographer Howard, "were the most crucial and fruitful aeronautical experiments ever conducted in so short a time with so few materials and at so little expense".^[41] An important discovery was the benefit of longer narrower wings: in aeronautical terms, wings with a larger aspect ratio (wingspan divided by chord—the wing's front-to-back dimension). Such shapes offered much better lift-to-drag ratio than the broader wings the brothers had tried so far.

With this knowledge, and a more accurate Smeaton number, the Wrights designed their 1902 glider. Using another crucial discovery from the wind tunnel, they made the airfoil flatter, reducing the camber (the depth of the wing's curvature divided by its chord). The 1901 wings had significantly greater curvature, a highly inefficient feature the Wrights copied directly from Lilienthal. Fully confident in their new wind tunnel results, the Wrights discarded Lilienthal's data, now basing their designs on their own calculations.

Wilbur Wright pilots the 1902 glider over the Kill Devil Hills, October 10, 1902. The single rear rudder is steerable; it replaced the original fixed double rudder.

With characteristic caution, the brothers first flew the 1902 glider as an unmanned kite, as they had done with their two previous versions. Rewarding their wind tunnel work, the glider produced the expected lift. It also had a new structural feature: a fixed, rear vertical rudder, which the brothers hoped would eliminate turning problems.

By 1902 they realized that wing-warping created "differential drag" at the wingtips. Greater lift at one end of the wing also increased drag, which slowed that end of the wing, making the aircraft swivel—or "yaw"—so the nose pointed away from the turn. That was how the tailless 1901 glider behaved.

The improved wing design enabled consistently longer glides, and the rear rudder prevented adverse yaw—so effectively that it introduced a new problem. Sometimes when the pilot attempted to level off from a turn, the glider failed to respond to corrective wing-warping and persisted into a tighter turn. The glider would slide toward the lower wing, which hit the ground, spinning the aircraft around. The Wrights called this "well digging".

Orville apparently visualized that the fixed rudder resisted the effect of corrective wing-warping when attempting to level off from a turn. He wrote in his diary that on the night of October 2, "I studied out a new vertical rudder". The brothers then decided to make the rear rudder movable to solve the problem.^[42] They hinged the rudder and connected it to the pilot's warping "cradle", so a single movement by the pilot simultaneously controlled wing-warping and rudder deflection. Tests while gliding proved that the trailing edge of the rudder should be turned away from whichever end of the wings had more drag (and lift) due to warping. The opposing pressure produced by turning the rudder enabled corrective wing-warping to reliably restore level flight after a turn or a wind disturbance. Furthermore, when the glider banked into a turn, rudder pressure overcame the effect of differential drag and pointed the nose of the aircraft in the direction of the turn, eliminating adverse yaw.

In short, the Wrights discovered the true purpose of the movable vertical rudder. Its role was not to change the direction of flight, but rather, to aim or align the aircraft correctly during banking turns and when leveling off from turns and wind disturbances.^[43] The actual turn—the change in direction—was done with roll control using wing-warping. The principles remained the same when ailerons superseded wing-warping.

Wilbur makes a turn using wing-warping and the movable rudder, October 24, 1902.

With their new method the Wrights achieved true control in turns for the first time on October 8, 1902, a major milestone. During September and October they made between 700 and 1,000 glides, the longest lasting 26 seconds and covering 622.5 feet (189.7 m). Hundreds of well-controlled glides after they made the rudder steerable convinced them they were ready to build a powered flying machine.

Thus did three-axis control evolve: wing-warping for roll (lateral motion), forward elevator for pitch (up and down) and rear rudder for yaw (side to side). On March 23, 1903, the Wrights applied for their famous patent for a "Flying Machine", based on their successful 1902 glider. Some aviation historians believe that applying the system of three-axis flight control on the 1902 glider was equal to, or even more significant, than the addition of power to the 1903 Flyer. Peter Jakab of the Smithsonian asserts that perfection of the 1902 glider essentially represents invention of the airplane.^[44][45]

Adding power[link]

First flight of the Wright Flyer I, December 17, 1903, Orville piloting, Wilbur running at wingtip.

In 1903 the brothers built the powered Wright Flyer I, using their preferred material for construction, spruce,^[46] a strong and lightweight wood, and Pride of the West muslin for surface coverings. They also designed and carved their own wooden propellers, and had a purpose-built gasoline engine fabricated in their bicycle shop. They thought propeller design would be a simple matter and intended to adapt data from shipbuilding. However, their library research disclosed no established formulas for either marine or air propellers, and they found themselves with no sure starting point. They discussed and argued the question, sometimes heatedly, until they concluded that an aeronautical propeller is essentially a wing rotating in the vertical plane.^[47] On that basis, they used data from more wind tunnel tests to design their propellers. The finished blades were just over eight feet long, made of three laminations of glued spruce. The Wrights decided on twin "pusher" propellers (counter-rotating to cancel torque), which would act on a greater quantity of air than a single relatively slow propeller and not disturb airflow over the leading edge of the wings.

Wilbur made a March 1903 entry in his notebook indicating the prototype propeller was 66% efficient. Modern wind tunnel tests on reproduction 1903 propellers show they were more than 75% efficient under the conditions of the first flights, and actually had a peak efficiency of 82%. This is a remarkable achievement, considering that modern wooden propellers have a maximum efficiency of 85%.^[48]

A Wright engine, serial number 17, circa 1910, is on display at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Connecticut.

The Wrights wrote to several engine manufacturers, but none met their need for a sufficiently lightweight powerplant. They turned to their shop mechanic, Charlie Taylor, who built an engine in just six weeks in close consultation with the brothers. To keep the weight low enough, the engine block was cast from aluminum, a rare practice for the time. The Wright/Taylor engine was a primitive version of modern fuel-injection systems, having no carburetor or fuel pump. Gasoline was gravity-fed into the crankcase through a rubber tube from the fuel tank mounted on a wing strut.

The propeller drive chains, resembling those of bicycles, were actually supplied by a manufacturer of heavy-duty automobile chain-drives.^[49] The Flyer cost less than a thousand dollars, in contrast to more than $50,000 in government funds given to Samuel Langley for his man-carrying Great Aerodrome.^[50] The Flyer had a wingspan of 40.3 ft (12.3 m), weighed 605 lb (274 kg)^[51] and sported a 12 horsepower (8.9 kW) 180 lb (82 kg) engine.^[52]

In camp at Kill Devil Hills, they suffered weeks of delays caused by broken propeller shafts during engine tests. After the shafts were replaced (requiring two trips back to Dayton), Wilbur won a coin toss and made a three-second flight attempt on December 14, 1903, stalling after takeoff and causing minor damage to the Flyer. (Because December 13, 1903, was a Sunday, the brothers did not make any attempts that day, even though the weather was good.) In a message to their family, Wilbur referred to the trial as having "only partial success", stating "the power is ample, and but for a trifling error due to lack of experience with this machine and this method of starting, the machine would undoubtedly have flown beautifully."^[53] Following repairs, the Wrights finally took to the air on December 17, 1903, making two flights each from level ground into a freezing headwind gusting to 27 miles per hour (43 km/h). The first flight, by Orville, of 120 feet (37 m) in 12 seconds, at a speed of only 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) over the ground, was recorded in a famous photograph. The next two flights covered approximately 175 feet (53 m) and 200 feet (61 m), by Wilbur and Orville respectively. Their altitude was about 10 feet (3.0 m) above the ground.^[54] The following is Orville Wright's account of the final flight of the day:

Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just about 12 o'clock. The first few hundred feet were up and down, as before, but by the time three hundred ft had been covered, the machine was under much better control. The course for the next four or five hundred feet had but little undulation. However, when out about eight hundred feet the machine began pitching again, and, in one of its darts downward, struck the ground. The distance over the ground was measured to be 852 feet; the time of the flight was 59 seconds. The frame supporting the front rudder was badly broken, but the main part of the machine was not injured at all. We estimated that the machine could be put in condition for flight again in about a day or two.^[55]

Orville's notebook entry of December 17, 1903

Five people witnessed the flights: Adam Etheridge, John T. Daniels (who snapped the famous "first flight" photo using Orville's pre-positioned camera) and Will Dough, all of the U.S. government coastal lifesaving crew; area businessman W.C. Brinkley; and Johnny Moore, a teenaged boy who lived in the area. After the men hauled the Flyer back from its fourth flight, a powerful gust of wind flipped it over several times, despite the crew's attempt to hold it down. Severely damaged, the airplane never flew again. The brothers shipped it home, and years later Orville restored it, lending it to several U.S. locations for display, then to a British museum (see Smithsonian dispute below), before it was finally installed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1948, its current residence.

The Wrights sent a telegram about the flights to their father, requesting that he "inform press." However, the Dayton Journal refused to publish the story, saying the flights were too short to be important. Meanwhile, against the brothers' wishes, a telegraph operator leaked their message to a Virginia newspaper, which concocted a highly inaccurate news article that was reprinted the next day in several newspapers elsewhere, including Dayton.^[56] The Wrights issued their own factual statement to the press in January. Nevertheless, the flights did not create public excitement—if people even knew about them—and the news soon faded. (In Paris, however, Aero Club of France members, already stimulated by Chanute's reports of Wright gliding successes, took the news more seriously and increased their efforts to catch up to the brothers.)

Modern analysis by Professor Fred E. C. Culick and Henry R. Jex (in 1985) has demonstrated that the 1903 Wright Flyer was so unstable as to be almost unmanageable by anyone but the Wrights, who had trained themselves in the 1902 glider.^[57]

Trouble establishing legitimacy[link]

Orville in flight over Huffman Prairie in Wright Flyer II. Flight #85, approximately 1,760 feet (536 m) in 40 1/5 seconds, November 16, 1904.

In 1904 the Wrights built the Flyer II. They decided to avoid the expense of travel and bringing supplies to the Outer Banks and set up an airfield at Huffman Prairie, a cow pasture eight miles (13 km) northeast of Dayton. They received permission to use the field rent-free from owner and bank president Torrance Huffman. They invited reporters to their first flight attempt of the year on May 23, on the condition that no photographs be taken. Engine troubles and slack winds prevented any flying, and they could manage only a very short hop a few days later with fewer reporters present. Some scholars of the Wrights speculate the brothers may have intentionally failed to fly in order to cause reporters to lose interest in their experiments.^[58] Whether that is true is not known, but after their poor showing local newspapers virtually ignored them for the next year and a half.

The Wrights were glad to be free from the distraction of reporters. The absence of newsmen also reduced the chance of competitors learning their methods. After the Kitty Hawk powered flights, the Wrights made a decision to begin withdrawing from the bicycle business so they could devote themselves to creating and marketing a practical airplane.^[59] The decision was financially risky, since they were neither wealthy nor government-funded (unlike other experimenters such as Ader, Maxim, Langley and Santos-Dumont). The Wright brothers did not have the luxury of giving away their invention; it was to be their livelihood. Thus, their secrecy intensified, encouraged by advice from their patent attorney, Henry Toulmin, not to reveal details of their machine.

Wilbur flying almost four circles of Huffman Prairie, about 2 and 3/4 miles in 5 minutes 4 seconds; flight #82, November 9, 1904.

Wilbur's logbook showing diagram and data for first circle flight on September 20, 1904

At Huffman Prairie, lighter winds and lower air density than in Kitty Hawk (because of Ohio's higher altitude and higher temperatures) made takeoffs very difficult, and they had to use a much longer starting rail, stretching to hundreds of feet, compared to the 60-foot (18 m) rail at Kitty Hawk. During the spring and summer they suffered many hard landings, real crackups, repeated Flyer damage, and bodily bumps and bruises. On August 13, making an unassisted takeoff, Wilbur finally exceeded their best Kitty Hawk effort with a flight of 1,300 feet (400 m). Then they decided to use a weight-powered catapult to make takeoffs easier and tried it for the first time on September 7. On September 20, 1904, Wilbur flew the first complete circle in history by a manned heavier-than-air powered machine, covering 4,080 feet (1,244 m) in about a minute and a half. Their two best flights were November 9 by Wilbur and December 1 by Orville, each exceeding five minutes and covering nearly three miles in almost four circles. By the end of the year the brothers had accumulated about 50 minutes in the air in 105 flights over the rather soggy 85-acre (340,000 m²) pasture, which, remarkably, is virtually unchanged today from its original condition and is now part of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, adjacent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Despite progress in 1904, the Flyer was still frequently out of control.^[60] The Wrights scrapped the battered and much-repaired airplane, but saved the engine, and in 1905 built a new Flyer III, which included an important design change. The brothers installed a separate control for the rear rudder instead of linking the rudder to the wing-warping "cradle" as before. Each of the three axes—pitch, roll and yaw—now had its own independent control. Nevertheless, this Flyer offered the same marginal performance as the first two. Its maiden flight was June 23 and the first several flights were no longer than 10 seconds.^[61] After Orville suffered a bone-jarring and potentially fatal crash on July 14, they rebuilt the Flyer with the forward elevator and rear rudder both enlarged and placed several feet farther away from the wings. These modifications greatly improved stability and control, setting the stage for a series of six dramatic "long flights" ranging from 17 to 38 minutes and 11 to 24 miles (39 km) around the three-quarter mile course over Huffman Prairie between September 26 and October 5. Wilbur made the last and longest flight, 24.5 miles (39.4 km) in 38 minutes and 3 seconds, ending with a safe landing when the fuel ran out. The flight was seen by a number of people, including several invited friends, their father Milton, and neighboring farmers.^{[N 1]}

Wright Flyer III piloted by Orville over Huffman Prairie, October 4, 1905. Flight #46, covering 20 and 3/4 miles in 33 minutes 17 seconds; last photographed flight of the year

Reporters showed up the next day (only their second appearance at the field since May the previous year), but the brothers declined to fly. The long flights convinced the Wrights they had achieved their goal of creating a flying machine of "practical utility" which they could offer to sell.

The only photos of the flights of 1904–1905 were taken by the brothers. (A few photos were damaged in the Great Dayton Flood of 1913, but most survived intact.) In 1904 Ohio beekeeping businessman Amos Root, a technology enthusiast, saw a few flights including the first circle. Articles he wrote for his beekeeping magazine were the only published eyewitness reports of the Huffman Prairie flights, except for the unimpressive early hop local newsmen saw. Root offered a report to Scientific American magazine, but the editor turned it down. As a result, the news was not widely known outside of Ohio, and was often met with skepticism. The Paris edition of the Herald Tribune headlined a 1906 article on the Wrights "FLYERS OR LIARS?"

In years to come Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep. James M. Cox, publisher at that time of the Dayton Daily News (later governor of Ohio and Democratic presidential nominee in 1920), expressed the attitude of newspapermen—and the public—in those days when he admitted years later, "Frankly, none of us believed it."^[63]

The Dayton Daily News reported the October 5 flight on page 9, with agriculture and business news.^{[N 2]}

A few newspapers published articles about the long flights, but no reporters or photographers had been there. The lack of splashy eyewitness press coverage was a major reason for disbelief in Washington, D.C. and Europe and in journals like Scientific American, whose editors doubted the "alleged experiments" and asked how U.S. newspapers, "alert as they are, allowed these sensational performances to escape their notice."^[65]

The Wright brothers were certainly complicit in the lack of attention they received. Fearful of competitors stealing their ideas, and still without a patent, they flew on only one more day after October 5. From then on, they refused to fly anywhere unless they had a firm contract to sell their aircraft. They wrote to the U.S. government, then to Britain, France and Germany with an offer to sell a flying machine, but were rebuffed because they insisted on a signed contract before giving a demonstration. They were unwilling even to show their photographs of the airborne Flyer. The American military, having recently spent $50,000 on the Langley Aerodrome—a product of the nation's foremost scientist—only to see it plunge twice into the Potomac River "like a handful of mortar", was particularly unreceptive to the claims of two unknown bicycle makers from Ohio.^[66] Thus, doubted or scorned, the Wright brothers continued their work in semi-obscurity, while other aviation pioneers like Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont, Henri Farman, Leon Delagrange and American Glenn Curtiss entered the limelight.

European skepticism[link]

In 1906, skeptics in the European aviation community had converted the press to an anti-Wright brothers stance. European newspapers, especially in France, were openly derisive, calling them bluffeurs (bluffers).^[67] Ernest Archdeacon, founder of the Aéro-Club de France, was publicly scornful of the brother's claims in spite of published reports; specifically, he wrote several articles and in 1906, stated that "the French would make the first public demonstration of powered flight".^[68]

The Paris edition of the New York Herald summed up Europe's opinion of the Wright brothers in an editorial on February 10, 1906:

The Wrights have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars. It is difficult to fly. It's easy to say, 'We have flown.'^[67]

Alberto Santos-Dumont´s public flight in October 1906 was the first certified by the Aéro-Club de France and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).^{[N 3]} In 1908, after the Wrights' first flights in France, Archdeacon publicly admitted that he had done them an injustice.^[68]

Contracts and return to Kitty Hawk[link]

The Wright brothers made no flights at all in 1906 and 1907. They spent the time attempting to persuade the U.S. and European governments that they had invented a successful flying machine and were prepared to negotiate a contract to sell such machines. They also experimented with a pontoon and engine setup on the Miami River (Ohio) in hopes of flying their airplane from the water. These experiments proved unsuccessful. In May 1906 they were finally granted a patent for their flying machine.

The modified 1905 Flyer at the Kill Devil Hills in 1908, ready for practice flights. *Note there is no catapult derrick, all takeoffs were used with the monorail alone.

Replying to the Wrights' letters, the U.S. military expressed virtually no interest in their claims. The brothers turned their attention to Europe, especially France where enthusiasm for aviation ran high, and journeyed there for the first time in 1907 for face-to-face talks with government officials and businessmen. They also met with aviation representatives in Germany and Britain. Before traveling, Orville shipped a newly-built Model A Flyer to France in anticipation of demonstration flights.

In France Wilbur met Frank P. Lahm, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Aeronautical Division. Writing to his superiors, Lahm smoothed the way for Wilbur to give an in-person presentation to the U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification in Washington, D.C. when he returned to the U.S. This time, the Board was favorably impressed, in contrast to its previous indifference. With further input from the Wrights, the U.S. Army Signal Corps issued Specification #486 in December 1907, inviting bids for construction of an airplane under military contract.^[70] The Wrights submitted their bid in January.^{[N 4]} In early 1908 the brothers also agreed to a contract with a French company. In May they went back to Kitty Hawk with their 1905 Flyer to practice in private for their all-important public demonstration flights, as required by both contracts. Their privacy was lost when New York newspapers heard about the tests and sent several reporters to the scene.

Soaring flight, Kitty Hawk, Oct., 1911 "Arrows indicate 50-Mile Wind, Showing How Machine Was Sustained in a Stationary Position"^[71]

Their contracts required them to fly with a passenger, so they modified the 1905 Flyer by installing two seats and adding upright control levers. After tests with sandbags in the passenger seat, Charlie Furnas, a helper from Dayton, became the first fixed-wing aircraft passenger on a few short flights May 14. For safety, and as a promise to their father, Wilbur and Orville did not fly together. However, several newspaper accounts at the time mistakenly took Orville's flight with Furnas as both brothers flying together. Later that day after flying solo seven minutes, Wilbur suffered his worst crash when—still not well-acquainted with the two new control levers—he apparently moved one the wrong way and slammed the Flyer into the sand between 40 miles (64 km) and 50 miles (80 km) an hour. He emerged with only bruises and a cut nose, but the accident ended the practice flights—and the aircraft's flying career.

Return to Glider Flights[link]

In October 1911, Orville Wright returned to the Outer Banks again, to improve the aircraft and conduct tests for safety and stabilization with a new glider. On October 24, he soared for nine minutes and 45 seconds, a record that held for almost 10 years, when Gliding as a sport began in the 1920s.^[72]

Public showing[link]

Orville demonstrating the flyer to the U.S. Army, Fort Myer, Virginia September 1908. Photo: by C.H. Claudy.

Hart O. Berg (left), the Wrights' business agent, and Wilbur at the flying field near Le Mans.

The brothers' contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, D.C.

Facing a lot of skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a "bluffeur," Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908 at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France. His first flight lasted only one minute 45 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Bleriot. In the following days, Wilbur made a series of technically challenging flights, including figure-eights, demonstrating his skills as a pilot and the capability of his flying machine, which far surpassed those of all other pilot pioneers.

The French public was thrilled by Wilbur's feats and flocked to the field by the thousands. The Wright brothers catapulted to world fame overnight. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. L'Aérophile editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights "have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly...."^[73] Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, "For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff... They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure...to make amends."^[74]

On October 7, 1908, Edith Berg, the wife of the brothers' European business agent, became the first American woman passenger when she flew with Wilbur—-one of many passengers who rode with him that autumn.^{[75][N 5]} Wilbur also became acquainted with Léon Bollée and his family. Bollee was the owner of an automobile factory where Wilbur would assemble the Flyer and where he would be provided with hired assistance. Bollee would fly that autumn with Wilbur. Madame Bollee had been in the latter stages of pregnancy when Wilbur arrived in LeMans in June 1908 to assemble the Flyer. Wilbur promised her that he would make his first European flight the day her baby was born which he did, August 8, 1908.^[76]

Orville followed his brother's success by demonstrating another nearly identical Flyer to the United States Army at Fort Myer, Virginia, starting on September 3, 1908. On September 9, he made the first hour-long flight, lasting 62 minutes and 15 seconds.

Fort Myer crash. Photo by C.H. Claudy.

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Fatal fall of Wright airship

On September 17, Army lieutenant Thomas Selfridge rode along as his passenger, serving as an official observer. A few minutes into the flight at an altitude of about 100 feet (30 m), a propeller split and shattered, sending the aircraft out of control. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull in the crash and died that evening in the nearby Army hospital, becoming the first airplane crash fatality. Orville was badly injured, suffering a broken left leg and four broken ribs. Twelve years later, after he suffered increasingly severe pains, X-rays revealed the accident had also caused three hip bone fractures and a dislocated hip.^[77] The brothers' sister Katharine, a school teacher, rushed from Dayton to Virginia and stayed by Orville's side for the seven weeks of his hospitalization. She helped negotiate a one-year extension of the Army contract. A friend visiting Orville in the hospital asked, "Has it got your nerve?" "Nerve?" repeated Orville, slightly puzzled. "Oh, do you mean will I be afraid to fly again? The only thing I'm afraid of is that I can't get well soon enough to finish those tests next year."^[78] Deeply shocked by the accident, Wilbur determined to make even more impressive flight demonstrations; in the ensuing days and weeks he set new records for altitude and duration. In January 1909 Orville and Katharine joined him in France, and for a time they were the three most famous people in the world, sought after by royalty, the rich, reporters and the public. The kings of England, Spain and Italy came to see Wilbur fly.

Wright Model A Flyer flown by Wilbur 1908–1909 and launching derrick, France, 1909

The Wrights traveled to Pau, in the south of France, where Wilbur made many more public flights, giving rides to a procession of officers, journalists and statesmen—and his sister Katharine on February 15. He trained two French pilots, then transferred the airplane to the French company. In April the Wrights went to Italy where Wilbur assembled another Flyer, giving demonstrations and training more pilots. An Italian cameraman Federico Valle climbed aboard and filmed the first motion picture from an aircraft.

After their return to the U.S., the brothers and Katharine were invited to the White House where President Taft bestowed awards upon them. Dayton followed up with a lavish two-day homecoming celebration. In July 1909 Orville, with Wilbur assisting, completed the proving flights for the U.S. Army, meeting the requirements of a two-seater able to fly with a passenger for an hour at an average of speed of 40 miles an hour (64 km/h) and land undamaged. They sold the aircraft to the Army's Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps for $30,000 (which included a $5,000 bonus for exceeding the speed specification). Wilbur climaxed an extraordinary year in early October when he flew at New York City's Hudson-Fulton celebrations, circling the Statue of Liberty and making a 33-minute flight up and down the Hudson River alongside Manhattan in view of up to one million New Yorkers. These flights solidly established the fame of the Wright brothers in America.

Family flights[link]

On May 25, 1910 back at Huffman Prairie, Orville piloted two unique flights. First, he took off on a six-minute flight with Wilbur as his passenger, the only time the Wright brothers ever flew together. They received permission from their father to make the flight. They had always promised Milton they would never fly together to avoid the chance of a double tragedy and to ensure one brother would remain to continue their experiments. Next, Orville took his 82-year old father on a nearly seven-minute flight, the first and only one of Milton Wright's life. The airplane rose to about 350 feet (107 m) while the elderly Wright called to his son, "Higher, Orville, higher!"^[79]

Patent war[link]

The Wright brothers wrote their 1903 patent application themselves, but it was rejected. In January 1904 they hired Ohio patent attorney Henry Toulmin, and on May 22, 1906, they were granted U.S. Patent 821393^[10] for a "Flying Machine".

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office archive

The patent illustrates a non-powered flying machine—namely, the 1902 glider. The patent's importance lies in its claim of a new and useful method of controlling a flying machine, powered or not. The technique of wing-warping is described, but the patent explicitly states that other methods instead of wing-warping could be used for adjusting the outer portions of a machine's wings to different angles on the right and left sides to achieve lateral (roll) control. The concept of varying the angle presented to the air near the wingtips, by any suitable method, is central to the patent. The patent also describes the steerable rear vertical rudder and its innovative use in combination with wing-warping, enabling the airplane to make a coordinated turn, a technique that prevents hazardous adverse yaw, the problem Wilbur had when trying to turn the 1901 glider. Finally, the patent describes the forward elevator, used for ascending and descending.

Lawsuits begin[link]

Attempting to circumvent the patent, Glenn Curtiss and other early aviators devised ailerons to emulate lateral control described in the patent and demonstrated by the Wrights in their public flights. Soon after the historic July 4, 1908 one-kilometer flight by Curtiss in the June Bug, the Wrights warned him not to infringe their patent by profiting from flying or selling aircraft that used ailerons. Curtiss refused to pay license fees to the Wrights and sold an aircraft equipped with ailerons to the Aeronautic Society of New York in 1909. The Wrights filed a lawsuit, beginning a years-long legal conflict. They also sued foreign aviators who flew at U.S. exhibitions, including the leading French aviator Louis Paulhan. The Curtiss people derisively suggested that if someone jumped in the air and waved his arms, the Wrights would sue.^[80] European companies which bought foreign patents the Wrights had received sued other manufacturers in their countries. Those lawsuits were only partly successful. Despite a pro-Wright ruling in France, legal maneuvering dragged on until the patent expired in 1917. A German court ruled the patent not valid because of prior disclosure in speeches by Wilbur Wright in 1901 and Octave Chanute in 1903. In the U.S. the Wrights made an agreement with the Aero Club of America to license airshows which the Club approved, freeing participating pilots from a legal threat. Promoters of approved shows paid fees to the Wrights.^[81] The Wright brothers won their initial case against Curtiss in February 1913 when a judge ruled that ailerons were covered under the patent. The Curtiss company appealed the decision.

From 1910 until his death from typhoid fever in 1912, Wilbur took the leading role in the patent struggle, traveling incessantly to consult with lawyers and testify in what he felt was a moral cause, particularly against Curtiss, who was creating a large company to manufacture aircraft. The Wrights' preoccupation with the legal issue stifled their work on new designs, and by 1911 Wright aircraft were considered inferior to those of European makers. Indeed, aviation development in the U.S. was suppressed to such an extent that when the U.S. entered World War I no acceptable American-designed aircraft were available, and U.S. forces were compelled to use French machines. Orville and Katharine Wright believed Curtiss was partly responsible for Wilbur's premature death, which occurred in the wake of his exhausting travels and the stress of the legal battle.

Victory and cooperation[link]

In January 1914, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict against the Curtiss company, which continued to avoid penalties through legal tactics. Orville apparently felt vindicated by the decision, and much to the frustration of company executives, he did not push vigorously for further legal action to ensure a manufacturing monopoly. In fact, he was planning to sell the company and departed in 1915. In 1917, with World War I underway, the U.S. government pressured the industry to form a cross-licensing organization, the Manufacturers Aircraft Association, to which member companies paid a blanket fee for the use of aviation patents, including the original and subsequent Wright patents.^{[82][N 6]} The Wright-Martin company (successor to the Wright company) and the Curtiss company (which held a number of its own patents) each received a $2 million payment.^{[83][N 7][84]} The "patent war" ended, although side issues lingered in the courts until the 1920s. In a twist of irony, the Wright Aeronautical Corporation (another successor) and the Curtiss Aeroplane company merged in 1929 to form the Curtiss-Wright corporation, which remains in business today producing high-tech components for the aerospace industry.

Friendship ends[link]

The lawsuits damaged the public image of the Wright brothers, who were generally regarded before this as heroes. Critics said the brothers were greedy and unfair and compared their actions unfavorably to European inventors, who worked more openly. Supporters said the brothers were protecting their interests and were justified in expecting fair compensation for the years of work leading to their successful invention. Their 10-year friendship with Octave Chanute, already strained by tension over how much credit, if any, he might deserve for their success, collapsed after he publicly criticized their actions.

In business[link]

Wright brothers at the Belmont Park Aviation Meet in 1910

The Wright Company was incorporated on November 22, 1909. The brothers sold their patents to the company for $100,000 and also received one-third of the shares in a million dollar stock issue and a 10 percent royalty on every airplane sold.^[85] With Wilbur as president and Orville as vice president, the company set up a factory in Dayton and a flying school/test flight field at Huffman Prairie; the headquarters office was in New York City.

In mid-1910, the Wrights changed the design of the Wright Flyer, moving the horizontal elevator from the front to the back and adding wheels although keeping the skids as part of the undercarriage unit. It had become apparent by then that a rear elevator would make the airplane easier to control, especially as higher speeds grew more common. This aircraft was designated the "Model B", although the original canard design was never referred to as the "Model A" by the Wrights. However, the US Signal Corps which bought the aircraft did call it "Wright Type A".^{[86][N 8]}

There were not many customers for aircraft, so in the spring of 1910 the Wrights hired and trained a team of salaried exhibition pilots to show off their machines and win prize money for the company—despite Wilbur's disdain for what he called "the mountebank business". The team debuted at the Indianapolis Speedway on June 13. Before the year was over, pilots Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxsey died in air show crashes, and in November 1911 the brothers disbanded the team on which nine men had served (four other former team members died in crashes afterward).^[87]

The Wright Company transported the first known commercial air cargo on November 7, 1910 by flying two bolts of dress silk 65 miles (105 km) from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio for the Morehouse-Martens Department Store, which paid a $5,000 fee. Company pilot Phil Parmelee made the flight—which was more an exercise in advertising than a simple delivery—in an hour and six minutes with the cargo strapped in the passenger's seat. The silk was cut into small pieces and sold as souvenirs.

Between 1910 and 1916 the Wright Company flying school at Huffman Prairie trained 115 pilots who were instructed by Orville and his assistants. Several trainees became famous, including Henry "Hap" Arnold, who rose to Five-Star General, commanded U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, and became first head of the U.S. Air Force; Calbraith Perry Rodgers, who made the first coast-to-coast flight in 1911 (with many stops and crashes) in a Wright Model EX named the "Vin Fiz" after the sponsor's soft drink; and Eddie Stinson, founder of the Stinson Aircraft Company.

Problem airplanes in the Army[link]

In 1912–1913 a series of fatal crashes of Wright aircraft bought by the U.S. Army called into question their safety and design. The death toll reached 11 by 1913, half of them in the Wright model C. All six model C Army airplanes crashed. They had a tendency to nose dive,^[88] but Orville insisted that stalls were caused by pilot error.^[89] He cooperated with the Army to equip the airplane with a rudimentary flight indicator to help the pilot avoid climbing too steeply. A government investigation said the Wright C was "dynamically unsuited for flying,"^[88] and the military ended its use of airplanes with "pusher" type propellers, including models made by both the Wright and Curtiss companies, in which the engine was located behind the pilot and likely to crush him in a crash. Orville resisted the switch to manufacturing "tractor" type propeller airplanes, worried that a design change could threaten the Wright patent infringement case against Curtiss.^[90]

Smithsonian feud[link]

Samuel P. Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1887 until his death in 1906, experimented for years with model flying machines and successfully flew unmanned powered model aircraft in 1896 and 1903. Two tests of his manned full-size motor-driven Aerodrome in October and December 1903, however, were complete failures. Nevertheless, the Smithsonian later proudly displayed the Aerodrome in its museum as the first heavier-than-air craft "capable" of manned powered flight, relegating the Wright brothers' invention to secondary status and ironically triggering a decades-long feud with Orville Wright, whose brother had received help from the Smithsonian when beginning his own quest for flight.

Glenn Curtiss or an assistant coaxes the structurally modified Langley Aerodrome into the air above the surface of Keuka Lake near Hammondsport, New York, September 17, 1914.

The Smithsonian based its claim for the Aerodrome on short test flights Glenn Curtiss and his team made with it in 1914. The Smithsonian allowed Curtiss, in an unsavory alliance, to make major modifications to the craft before attempting to fly it.^{[91][N 9]}

The Smithsonian hoped to salvage Langley's aeronautical reputation by proving the Aerodrome could fly; Curtiss wanted to prove the same thing to defeat the Wrights' patent lawsuits against him. The tests had no effect on the patent battle, but the Smithsonian made the most of them, honoring the Aerodrome in its museum and publications. The Institution did not reveal the extensive Curtiss modifications, but Orville Wright learned of them from his brother Lorin and a close friend, Griffith Brewer, who both witnessed and photographed some of the tests.^[92]

Orville repeatedly objected to misrepresentation of the Aerodrome, but the Smithsonian was unyielding. Orville responded by loaning the restored 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer to the London Science Museum in 1928, refusing to donate it to the Smithsonian while the Institution "perverted" the history of the flying machine.^[93] Subsequently Orville would never see his invention again as he would die before its return to the United States. Charles Lindbergh attempted to mediate the dispute, to no avail. In 1942, after years of bad publicity, and encouraged by Wright biographer Fred C. Kelly, the Smithsonian finally relented by publishing, for the first time, a list of the Aerodrome modifications and recanting misleading statements it had made about the 1914 tests.^[94] Orville then privately requested the British museum to return the Flyer, but the airplane remained in protective storage for the duration of World War II and finally came home after Orville's death.

On November 23, 1948, the executors of Orville's estate signed an agreement for the Smithsonian to purchase the Flyer for one dollar. At the insistence of the executors, the agreement also included strict conditions for display of the airplane.

Original 1903 Wright Flyer in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

The agreement reads, in part, "Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the 1903 Wright Aeroplane, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight."^{[95][N 10]} If this agreement is not fulfilled, the Flyer can be reclaimed by the heir of the Wright brothers. Some aviation buffs, particularly those who promote the legacy of Gustave Whitehead, now accuse the Smithsonian of refusing to investigate claims of earlier flights.^[96] After a ceremony in the Smithsonian museum, the Flyer went on public display on December 17, 1948, the 45th anniversary of the only day it was flown successfully.

The Wright brothers' nephew Milton (Lorin's son), who had seen gliders and the Flyer under construction in the bicycle shop when he was a boy, gave a brief speech and formally transferred the airplane to the Smithsonian, which displayed it with the accompanying label:

Last years[link]

Wilbur[link]

Neither brother married. Wilbur once quipped that he "did not have time for both a wife and an airplane."^[97] He became ill on a business trip to Boston in April 1912. After returning to Dayton, he was diagnosed with typhoid fever. He lingered in and out of consciousness for several weeks until he died, at age 45, in the Wright family home on May 30.^{[N 11]} His father Milton wrote about Wilbur in his diary: "A short life, full of consequences. An unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance and as great modesty, seeing the right clearly, pursuing it steadfastly, he lived and died."^[99]

Orville[link]

Orville Wright, 1928.

Orville succeeded to the presidency of the Wright company upon Wilbur's death. Sharing Wilbur's distaste for business but not his brother's executive skills, Orville sold the company in 1915. He, Katharine and their father Milton moved to a mansion, Hawthorn Hill, Oakwood, Ohio, which the newly wealthy family built. Milton died in his sleep in 1917. Orville made his last flight as a pilot in 1918 in a 1911 Model B. He retired from business and became an elder statesman of aviation, serving on various official boards and committees, including the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), predecessor agency to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce (ACCA), predecessor to the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). Katharine married Henry Haskell of Kansas City, a former Oberlin classmate, in 1926, which greatly upset Orville. He refused to attend the wedding or even communicate with her. He finally agreed to see her, apparently at Lorin's insistence, just before she died of pneumonia in 1929.

Orville Wright served NACA for 28 years. In 1930, he received the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal established in 1928 by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. In 1936, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Scipio" was Orville's famed St. Bernard.^[100][101]

On April 19, 1944, the second production Lockheed Constellation, piloted by Howard Hughes and TWA president Jack Frye, flew from Burbank, California, to Washington, D.C. in 6 hours and 57 minutes (2300 mi – 330.9 mph). On the return trip, the aircraft stopped at Wright Field to give Orville Wright his last airplane flight, more than 40 years after his historic first flight. He may even have briefly handled the controls. He commented that the wingspan of the Constellation was longer than the distance of his first flight.^[102] Perhaps the last major highlight of Orville's life was supervising the reclamation and preservation of the 1905 Wright Flyer III, an aircraft that stands equally in importance with the 1903 Flyer.

Orville died on January 30, 1948, after his second heart attack, having lived from the horse-and-buggy age to the dawn of supersonic flight. He was followed a day later by John T. Daniels, the Coast Guardsman who took their famous first flight photo. Both brothers are buried at the family plot at Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio.^{[103][N 12]}

Competing claims[link]

First flight claims are made for Ader, Whitehead, Pearse, and Jatho for their variously documented tests in years prior to and including 1903. Claims that the first true flight occurred after 1903 are made for Vuia and Santos-Dumont. Supporters of these pre- and post-Wright pioneers argue that techniques used by the Wright brothers disqualify them as first to make successful airplane flights. Those techniques were: a launch rail; skids instead of wheels; a headwind at takeoff; and a catapult after 1903. Supporters of the Wright brothers argue that proven, repeated, controlled, and sustained flights by the brothers entitle them to credit as inventors of the airplane, regardless of those techniques.^[104]

Ohio–North Carolina rivalry[link]

The U.S. states of Ohio and North Carolina both take credit for the Wright brothers and their world-changing inventions—Ohio because the brothers developed and built their design in Dayton, and North Carolina because Kitty Hawk was the site of the Wright's first powered flight. With a spirit of friendly rivalry, Ohio adopted the slogan "Birthplace of Aviation" (later "Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers", recognizing not only the Wrights, but also astronauts John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, both Ohio natives). The slogan appears on Ohio license plates. North Carolina uses the slogan "First In Flight" on its license plates.

The site of the first flights in North Carolina is preserved as Wright Brothers National Memorial, while their Ohio facilities are part of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. As the positions of both states can be factually defended, and each played a significant role in the history of flight, neither state truly has an exclusive claim to the Wrights' accomplishment.

Notwithstanding the competition between those two states, the Wright's bicycle shop and home is at the Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.

Statuary Hall vote[link]

In early 2010, the Wright brothers were proposed by the Ohio Historical Society as finalists in a statewide vote for inclusion in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol.

See also[link]

Aviation pioneers Igor Sikorsky (left) and Orville Wright, pose in front of the prototype Sikorsky XR-4, 1942.

Aviation portal

• History by Contract
• Wilbur Wright Middle School
• Katharine Wright
• Milton Wright (bishop)
• Wright Brothers flights of 1909
• Wright Brothers Medal
• Wright Cycle Company
• Wright Exhibition Team
• Wright Flyer
• Wright Flying School
• Wright Glider
• John Joseph Montgomery

References[link]