The Wright brothers just glided in 1903. They flew in 1908.

[HAS59]

God? are you kidding?

jondc9
sorry mate, you're not getting away with this:

"Who invented the wing? God. Who created/invented the atmosphere through which we fly? GOD."

Wings evolved in nature, over millions of years as what we call dinosaurs became birds.

Humans copied wing forms after studying birds.

The atmosphere exists through a physical result of planetary evolution.

God did not invent anything - humans invented god (unless you can prove otherwise). Please leave your imaginary friend out of this discussion.

You are of course entitled to believe exactly what you want. I used to believe in Santa, who seemed to have controlled flight buttoned up pretty well with a few reindeer.

We should stick to science eh?

[John Farley]

HAS59

Nice one.

[simplex1]

Another myth: "The Wright brothers were the first to discover that a propeller is in fact a wing that rotates"

1) "According to Wright historian and retired aeronautical engineer Quentin Wald, the Wrights were the first to think of a propeller as a wing moving on a helical path"
Source: "Discovery of Flight, Wright Experience Prospectus, Propeller Tests To Rediscover the Wright Brothers’ Aeronautical Achievements", 1999, http://www.wrightexperience.com/inde...s/propplan.pdf

2) "Une hélice est un plan qui tombe circulairement et continuellement, tandis que l'aile est un plan qui tombe alternativement."
Source: L'Aeronaute, Year 14, No. 1, January 1881 (see L'Aéronaute (Paris) )

Translation - "A propeller is a plane (surface) that falls (moves) circularly and continuously while a (flapping) wing is a plane that falls alternately."

In conclusion, long before the Wrights started to build planes somebody, in an aeronautical journal, had already had the insight that a propeller is, in fact, a wing that rotates.

[FlightlessParrot]

Wings evolved in nature, over millions of years as what we call dinosaurs became birds.

Actually, wings seem to have evolved several times. Certain seeds, for one. Membrane wings, in pterosaurs (or whatever they are called these days), and perhaps twice in mammals, bats and sugar-gliders (perhaps more often than twice). The terrifying flying snake seems to have invented the lifting body. The bird wing seems to be the most amazing invention of all, because I think the current thought is that feathers first evolved as a form of temperature control, before they became that amazing, constantly adaptive wing surface that birds use (I remember my amazement when I first realised what was going on when a duck came in to land). On a suitably slightly comic but also heroic note, in the penguins the wing has evolved into an underwater surface, roughly corresponding to the fins of fish.

One point of this is that it is probably a mistake to worry too much about a single "inventor" of the aeroplane. Multiple strands: and in any case, the people who actually got off the ground were often successful integrators of a whole range of knowledge and nifty wheezes, rather than inventors. The idea of the hero-inventor is a bit over-romantic.

Also, whilst it is rather telling that God-as-creator and American priority were brought together that way, enough of the "imaginary friend" bullsh1t. I don't know whether God is there or not, and agree it's not a suitable topic for an aviation forum, but it does need to be said that Dawkins is a d1ckhead, with a complete ignorance about religion, and gives atheism a bad name (read Mary Midgley's _The Solitary Self_ for a nice critique by someone who is no religious believer).

[simplex1]

An airship, with a propeller similar to the ones used by the Wright brothers in Dec. 1903, appears in three pictures in L'Aerophile from April 1902

Propellers, like the ones utilized by the Wright brothers for their alleged 1903 plane, were already in existence that year as the three pictures from 1902 (see the images with Le Girardot airship) demonstrate.
The two brothers claimed in Sep. 1908 they had built their propellers entirely based on calculations and measurements they had made with the help of their wind tunnel. This claim is not credible as long as propellers with the same shape, form, aspect, identical, already existed in 1903 and the two US inventors have never revealed the exact mathematical method by which they designed the propellers.






Source: Le ballon dirigeable Le Girardot, L'Aerophile, April 1902, pag. 75-76, L'Aérophile (Paris)

The propellers allegedly used by the Wright brothers on their 1903 Flyer. As can be remarked, they are identical to the ones of Le Girardot airship.

Source:
- 1903 Wright Flyer I
- Library of Congress, [1903 machine, front view]

[Dan Winterland]

And I think propellers had been regularly seen on ships quite a while before 1903.

[Haraka]

The Wright Brothers' Propellers - University of Houston
No. 1867: The Wroght Brothers' Propellers

In which the Wright Brothers invent the airplane propeller.

Also note the other amusing claim:

They also introduced a twist along the length of the blades. This was necessary to ensure the angle of attack of the blades was kept relatively constant along their length

Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. Oklahoma City: U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. 2008. p. 2-7. FAA-8083-25A.

Hardly original work.
Just look at Maxim et. al. to see the truth. E.g. an original near 18 foot example ( derived from wind tunnel work) hanging up in the Science Museum in South Kensington in London.

[joy ride]

Early ship propellers took the form of an Archimedes Screw. One fractured in use from the high stress on such a long screw, and the ship went faster. The remaining piece was fairly similar to the shape we are now familiar with.

For centuries before practical marine propellers Windmills had happily spun their sails in the wind.

[Mechta]

Ailerons vs. Rudder

Quote:
June 1912, a plane without ailerons won the first place in Aspern - Wien airshow (Austria) for flying the smallest circle (Jane's All The World's Aircraft)
FFS Simplex - just because somebody flew without ailerons does not necessarily make it a good idea

I would hazard a guess that not one person on this thread has taught themselves to fly in a powered aeroplane which they have designed and built themselves. This, however, is what the majority of pre-1908 aviators did.

To use a comparison to learning to fly radio controlled model aircraft; it is much easier to teach oneself to fly a rudder/elevator model with ample dihedral, than one with aileron/rudder/elevator and the minimal dihedral necessary to make the ailerons effective. If you have a competent instructor ready to take over as soon as things go pear-shaped, that is a completely different situation and the aileron route is quicker.


Whether by accident or design, the early aviators such a Santos Dumont, who were learning to fly from the ground up, rather than being handed control at 500ft plus, were doing themselves a favour by starting with two axis control.

Another modern analogy is the two-axis Wood Sky Pup Ultralight which is intended for ab-initio builder/fliers.





Having said this, I am surprised just how little dihedral the Vlaicu Monoplane had, despite its apparent success.

[joy ride]

Haraka, is the date of the Maxim propeller known?

I have to admit that I mentioned windmill sails as a predecessor of plane propellers but do not recall ever seeing any with a twist, I wonder if, somewhere in the world, twisted windmill sails pre-dated Maxim's one!

[Suffolk Lad]

Having taught myself to fly Rc planes I would say from personal preference that aileron elevator is easier to learn than rudder elevator. That said the perceived easiest is stated as rudder elevator largely because the perceived aim of a novice is to fly relatively flat. The reason being that probably the biggest problem in Rc flying when you begin is losing orientation in respect to what your aeroplane is doing. As a result trainers are built with high degrees of lateral stability and to be relatively sluggish to pitch input. So that everything happens slowly. Early aviators wanted something similar it all to happen slowly but roll control makes turning more accurate and attitude recovery less vague. So the Wrights Bleriots and most of the successful designs that followed that early era have a form of roll control as a major control element. You can fly without it but it makes life a lot easier if you do have it. So for those who think that there are alternatives to Wrights claim perhaps you should read about how gobsmacked the Europeans were at the Wright flying demonstrations the when they saw them in Europe in 1908. Granted it wasn't the 1903 flyer but it was way ahead of the Europeans in terms of accuracy and control . within a year or two the Europeans had caught up and then surpassed and it took the USA pretty much until WW2 to catch up again.

[longer ron]

The propellers allegedly used by the Wright brothers on their 1903 Flyer. As can be remarked, they are identical to the ones of Le Girardot airship.

Are they really identical ?
The French ones are on paper - The Wright ones actually existed

Simplex - why do you feel the need to keep the 'alleged' accusations going ?
You never answer any questions - you just go onto some other quite often totally unrelated post !
You cannot copy any aerofoil design unless you have proper engineering drawings to work from - sure you can make something that looks similar but propeller calculations/theory are complicated and the Wrights matched their propellers to their engine power and drive system...
Just any old propeller copied from Andre or Alphonse would not have worked for them !
Also by 1905 they had improved their propeller design - I suppose they will have copied them from the french as well !

[FlightlessParrot]

Hi longer ron

I think we need to just accept that OP has his problems.

A more interesting question, to me, is how different would the early history of aviation have been without the Wrights? It's doubtful if Santos Dumont would have been delayed, or the Voisins, and maybe Langley would have tried again with a stronger machine. So what impact did the Wrights' successes of 1905 and 1908 have on other people's developments?

[eetrojan]

Simplex bloviates - An airship, with a propeller similar to the ones used by the Wright brothers in Dec. 1903, appears in three pictures in L'Aerophile from April 1902

You disappoint me. Why not go father back and contend that they copied the propeller from the Alphonse Pénaud helicopter toy that they played with as children in 1878 or so?

It's French too, and at least they actually saw that one.

[eetrojan]

Simplex, for a mere $25, you can get a CD-ROM set with over 2 million pages of history, including 16,100 pages of Wright Brothers papers:

Wright Brothers Papers - Documents - Letters - Diaries - Notebooks

Diaries. Notebooks. Correspondence. Contracts. Blueprints. Deposition transcripts. Imagine the fun.

[simplex1]

Why not go father back and contend that they copied the propeller from the Alphonse Pénaud helicopter toy that they played with as children in 1878 or so?

The propellers of Pénaud were a bit different.
See: L'Aeronaute, January 1872, L'Aéronaute (Paris)

for a mere $25, you can get a CD-ROM set with over 2 million pages of history, including 16,100 pages of Wright Brothers papers

Library of Congress is free and has all the things about the Wright brothers that I can find on that CD.
see: http://www.loc.gov/search/?q=wright+brothers

[Haraka]

Hi Joy Ride

is the date of the Maxim propeller known?

The propeller in the Science Museum is off of his 1894 machine.

P.S. Maxim's type "J" propeller planform ( as distinct from its pitch distribution i.e. "twist along its length") was possibly later adopted by Whitehead.

[simplex1]

Having said this, I am surprised just how little dihedral the Vlaicu Monoplane had, despite its apparent success.

It appears there are no 1:1 flying replicas and only a 1:10 model:

See video "Vlaicu RC, May 25, 2014":

You Tube

"www.youtube.com/watch?v=anRZc0YJPog"

As can be seen in the video, the model swings but not all the time. I also do not see it making tight turns and I do not know if its dihedral has the same opening as in the case of the original plane.

[joy ride]

Thanks Haraka, about what I figured! next time I visit the museum I will look out for it.

Until then, how would you say it compares with the description in the University of Houston article posted earlier?

In the end, computer modeling shows that the Wright's propeller design was almost optimal for their low airspeeds. Old photos of propellers from the not-quite-successful airplanes of people like Samuel P. Langley, Gustave Whitehead, and Hiram Maxim all show the same primitive flaring triangular shape. Those airplane-makers were nowhere close to their contemporaries, the Wright Brothers.


And may I ask whether or not you agree with this statement?

And so, while people try to challenge the Wright Brothers' priority, the vast base of solid engineering continues to tilt in their favor -- detail by detail. Did they invent the airplane? Oh yes indeed. I think we can safely say they really did.

[simplex1]

Computer modeling shows that the Wright's propeller design was almost optimal for their low airspeed.

Computer modeling shows nothing because the alleged 1903 originals have not survived, excepting some badly damaged parts.

The site Mechanical Engineering "100 Years of Flight" supplement, Dec. 2003 -- "Prop-Wrights," Feature Article says that many tests were effectuated and efficiencies between 75% and 82% were obtained, which is not 66% as the Wright brothers claimed. The same site says the propellers were reconstructed, with the help of computers, starting from badly damaged parts of the originals. However, in their reconstructions, the people who recreated them acknowledged they had made some assumptions that could have alter the efficiency.

see also: http://www.pprune.org/aviation-histo...ml#post8496921