The Wrights Discovered What? Another Chapter

Was the Wrights' "original" research original?

The aspect ratio of the wing

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”-Galileo Galilei 

"There are no secrets." Glenn Hammond Curtiss

Gull in flight. Credit NOAA

Wilbur Wright became seriously interested in aeronautics after Otto Lilienthal, the great German aviation pioneer, lost control of his glider and died from the crash in 1896. Lilienthal's glider experiments had brought him just to the point, it's said, that he planned to attempt manned, powered flight.

Otto Lilienthal in flight. Credit: National Air and Space Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution

Apparently, Wilbur saw the opportunity to continue where Lilienthal left off. Accordingly, he stated his intention, when he wrote to the Smithsonian for information in 1899, to take the level of aviation at that point in time and "add his mite." To read aviation history, however, and the court battles the Wrights instigated in 1909 to establish their intended monopoly, the Wrights pioneered the "secret of 
flight," starting when Wilbur began his aeronautical investigations.

 Research in aviation history is difficult at the very least. It's full of complicated aeronautical concepts and mathematical formulas, and it's a whole lot easier to accept the Wright version of history. "First to fly, did all their own research with their wind tunnel, Kitty Hawk, 1903, geniuses, etc"--fairly easy to learn sound bites. Advertisers and politicians use sound bites all the time if they want to sell you something, or worse, to make you believe something that might not be totally true. By the time Wright biographies exploded in vast numbers, most people believed that the Wrights' sound bite version was gospel, anyway. In fact, maybe it was the sound bite that the Wrights discovered! It certainly wasn't the "secret(s) of flight." The corrected Smeaton's coefficient, the function of the aspect ratio of the wing, and the travel forward and reversal of the center of pressure were studies  pioneered before the Wrights by Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley. See John David Anderson, Jr.*

The aspect ratio of the wing is the length of the wing in proportion to the width. Professor Langley's experiments published in 1891 showed that a longer narrower wing ( high aspect ratio), as opposed to a shorter, wider wing (low aspect ratio)' is more efficient in lift. The long, narrow gull wing pictured below, lower right, is designed by nature so that the bird can efficiently soar and glide long distances.

When Wilbur, who determined to learn aviation, wrote the Smithsonian in 1899 for information about the state of the art; the Institution promptly sent pamphlets and recommended books on the current published knowledge in aeronautical research. Among them were two publications by Professor Langley and one by Edward Chalmers Huffaker. See letter and notes below.

From the Library of Congress digital collection

Notes on the back of letter "copy" above. From the LOC digital files

In the "copy" of his thank you letter, above, we can see that Wilbur orders Professor Samuel Langley's 1891 publication called "Experiments in Aerodynamics" for one dollar. I have provided you with the link that will take you to Langley's publication, complete and digitized online, which is a primary source of Langley's early experiments,  Here we have, fully documented, Professor Langley's experiments and conclusions on the aspect ratio of the wing in chapter V, page 26, "The Plane Dropper."--These are the plane dropping tests that John David Anderson refers to on pages 171-173 of "A History of Aerodynamics." *  Selected quotations from Anderson's book as follows:.

   "Another novel device designed by Langley was his plane dropping apparatus....The most important finding from Langley's plane-dropping tests was that a wing with a high aspect ratio would produce more lift than a wing with a low aspect ratio..."Anderson page 171

 "Wenham had preceded Langley in appreciating the aerodynamic efficiency of high-aspect ratio wings, but Langley was the first to produce an organized set of experimental data clearly showing the superiority of such wings." Anderson page 172

         " An irrefutable demonstration that high-aspect ratio wings were superior to low-aspect ratio wings, and by approximately how much, was good enough for Langley, and that determination was one of his major contributions to applied aerodynamics." Anderson page 173

But in the 1943 Fred Kelly biography "The Wright Brothers,"** authorized by Orville Wright, we have a description of some of the discoveries the brothers claimed they made from their wind tunnel tests in 1901--ten years after the publication of Langley's report. Among them, see below:

On page 76 from "The Wright Brothers" by Fred Kelly***
 

The trials of the 1902 glider p 79 of The Wright Brothers by Kelly

Success of the 1902 glider, Kelly p. 80

With changes to their 1902 glider, particularly the aspect ratio, we see that the Wrights achieved more successful flights than in the disappointing trials of 1901. As noted above, they attributed their success to their wind tunnel tests and their discovery that the higher aspect ratio would provide more lift.

However, at least one of the aviation pioneers who was at Kitty Hawk in 1901 knew better. It was Edward Chalmers Huffaker.The Wrights ignored or downplayed input by Edward Huffaker and Dr.George Spratt in 1901 whereby they very likely would have been informed of the need to remodel their glider.

  Edward Chalmers Huffaker had worked for Professor Langley at the Smithsonian and conducted Langley's experiments on cambered (curved) wings. Anderson pp 188-190. Even if the Wrights didn't read or understand Professor Langley's treatises, which they had in their possession, or trust his conclusions, as some say, Edward Huffaker would have shared knowledge with the Wrights in 1901 when he was with them at the Wright camp near Kitty Hawk .

Wrights also downplayed Langley's research by saying that Langley's studies were only on flat planes, so his experiments didn't help them.The truth is that Langley's published work at that time was on flat planes, so they could later get away with that statement (and historians believed them). But it's a little known fact that they had access to Langley's unpublished work on curved surfaces and other research through Huffaker. 

  Before the Wrights' secrecy, it was quite common for pioneers to share their knowledge. Also, Huffaker was a brilliant theoretician, and he had explained the Bernoulli principle regarding flight--how the flow of air over a wing provides lift--even to Langley. This is arguably one of the most important concepts leading to flight by man. See "The Unwelcome Assistant" by Hensley.

It wasn't the Wrights who originated the early knowledge regarding the function of the shape of the wing.They might have used their wind tunnel tests late in 1901 to verify for themselves much of what was already known, but verifying earlier discoveries is not the same as making the discoveries--as they claimed. 


 

Borrowed from the Tennessee Aviation Network. Thank you

 

 http://tennesseeaviation.net/HallofFame.htm

 













A reader of Fred Howard in "Wilbur and Orville"*** needs to take note of his unacceptable insults and belittling of Edward Huffaker per the Wrights in chapter 8. In fact, they sound like those of a fishwife in a spiteful marriage.  Huffaker was shiftless, unconscientous, and sloppy, they said. He spit tobacco and read with his feet on the desk. What's more, he never changed his shirt. Who cares? Does anyone know whether Newton chewed tobacco or Galileo changed his underwear? But many readers of this Wright "per-version" of history (some might call it) then, will tend to dismiss Huffaker, and many aviation pioneers other than the Wrights, because, as I can demonstrate, the Wrights verbally assassinated their competitors in one way or another, discredited them, their knowledge, and their contributions to aviation. They did it in a way that it sticks. It even crept into John David Anderson Jr.'s book. Sound bites.
 
Further, in his book "Wilbur and Orville,"*** Fred Howard, states on page 132 that Dr. Samuel Pierpont Langley's only contribution to aviation was the flights of his models in 1896. This is  a complete contradiction of the facts. But it is the version of history that the Wrights wanted you to believe. (See previous post.) Like many/most Wright historians, Fred Howard didn't do his due diligence. He simply accepted the Wright statements, seriously neglecting his homework on the Wrights' fellow aviators, including Langley.

Launching Langley's model aerodrome
Edward Huffaker was likely there.

Aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley

To conclude this post, the Langley history has been perverted by the Wrights, as has the history of many, many other pioneers, including Edward Huffaker and Dr. Spratt (see future post) who were both at Kitty Hawk in 1901. Why? It seems obvious that the true contributions of these pioneers clashed with the Wrights' desire to be remembered as the primary inventors of the airplane and as the first to fly. Note that when Judge John Raymond Hazel's court awarded the Wrights victory in 1913 in their patent infringement lawsuit against Glenn Curtiss, the Wrights were declared by Judge Hazel to be "pioneer inventors" and thus entitled to a broad interpretation of their 1906 patent. This meant that the Wrights" system of warping the wings for lateral control could be equated with Curtiss's system of ailerons because both systems achieved basically the same function, even though the Wrights never thought of ailerons to control their airplanes and didn't mention them in their patent. Therefore, even though ailerons were a vast improvement over wing warping and they have been adopted by planes ever since, and even though planes as a rule have discarded wing warping altogether, Curtiss was declared an infringer of the Wright patent of wing warping.

To be continued.... 

 *Anderson John D., Jr., "A History of aerodynamics and its impact on flying machines," Cambridge University Press, 1997. Page numbers provided are from this edition.

 **Kelly, Fred, "The Wright Brothers," Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1943

***Howard, Fred, "Wilbur and Orville" Ballantine Books, 1987