JF Ptak Science Books Post 2738
I used to wonder why the Wright brothers’ experimental gliding flights at Kill Devil Hills in 1901 received so little attention in the popular scientific press at that time–particularly the coverage in Scientific American. The reporting on their successful experiments was tucked away safely in the depths of the SA issue for 22 February 1902, cushioned and obscured by other news reports on minor but newsworthy subjects.
The report is sandwiched in between “Winter Railroading in Alaska”, “Experiments of M. Moissan with hybrids of potassium” and “A Garbage-Consuming plant” on the page opposite with “Alloys for Brass and Bronze “ just below it. And as it turns out there are more words devoted to the Alaska railroading article than to the Wrights as well. There are dozens of articles given better placement in this issue: steam boiler inspection, variable speed gears for pumps, making photographs with electric headlights, domestic manufacturing of Portland cement, assorted announcements of electrical progress, and other such stuff. The front page of the issue is dedicated to the new bridge of the Redheugh Bridge at Newcastle-on-Tyne; the Wright article follows on page eight.
Even though the brothers had been experimenting with gliding flight at Kill Devil since 1900, reports of their activities had been mostly unreported–and this partly of their own accord, for the sake of security and privacy, partly from the event being dismissed as another crackpot flying idea, and possibly partly because the location of their flights was so removed and obscure. And this seems to have suited them—the brothers seemed not to need or even want publicity, or recognition, at this point. The Wrights were not predisposed to be accommodating to strangers, necessarily, though neither would they ever be rude; as they did enjoy their privacy, and they would protect the details of their flying machine with scrupulous vigor. So, even though there weren’t necessarily public demonstrations of their flying machine, neither were they done in secret.
Kill Devil Hills was very remote at that time, and few people outside of the Outer Banks made the trips to bear witness. There were people who did witness the Wrights’ successes here, but it seems that this was not enough to convince many people that the remarkable achievements made there were true and accurate. So here were reports on their progress, that they had made incomparable strides since they first became interested in flight in 1896 following the failure of Samuel Langley and the Potomac River crash of his aerodrome. (Just for the record, Alex Bell also referred to his aircraft as aeromdomes.) And there was still at this point the perceived lunacy of people who pursued the construction of flying machines, an unbrilliant assumption that would persist until 1908, when all of that would change.
This report for February seems to be the earliest on the 1901 flights in North Carolina, with the principle difference (from what I can see) is that this earlier glider didn’t yet have a tail which would make an appearance a little latter in the year (followed by a very critical discovery on the need for the maneuverability of the tail.) It also seems that the 1902 gliders were as different from the 1901 gliders as the 1903 glider/plane would be from the 1902 model.
Still, given the competing news of the day, and the importance of the Wrights’ experiments, and the amount of interest in flight at this time, it is a little bothersome to me why the report on their sandy accomplishments got so gobbled up in the nonchalant scientific bric-a-brac and standardiana of 1902.
Of course there is the whole “crackpot” angle, and the endless parade of significant people who claimed that human flight (not in a balloon) was impossible, and experimenting on that a waste of time and money…and there were plenty of experiments to back this up. The Wrights were different–they weren’t just two engineering-able tinkering brothers with a bike shop and some tools; they were scientific explorers, observers of a high order, scientific method men.
Even after the success of the December 17, 1903 powered flights, the Scientific American seemed lukewarm (and even critical and questioning) to the reports of the brother’s achievements, not really embracing them until April 1906. It certainly seems that they were far more asknowledged in Europe during their tour there in 1908 than they had been in the U.S.–even the U.S. army expressed no interest in the flyer when first presented with the opportunity to purchase it in 1905, though the Wrights found very willing potential buyers for their aircraft in England in France. It was after the Wrights European exposure that the Army finally became interested in the aircraft enough to have the Wrights perform test trials prior to purchase and contract at For Myer in 1908. (Actually it was just Orville there in the summer of 1908 as Wilbur was in Europe entertaining business interests of a similar sort.) It was really with these flight trials in Fort Myer in 1908 (and concluding) in 1909 that the U.S. public seemed to truly understand and accept the success of the Wrights in human powered flight–after all, the Army did begin purchasing aircraft and began training pilots in the autumn of 1909, so it was outstandingly obvious that the new era had begun.
Notes:
By my reckoning from what I can see in my run of the Scientific American that the magazine did not dedicate a cover to the Wrights until 1908:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/first-airplane-flight-marks-111th-anniversary/
Since this is outside my area I quote liberally from the US Commission on the Centennial of Flight for a more exact description of the difference of the gliders between 1901 and 1902:
“Their 1902 glider had a new wing with a shallow camber and high aspect ratio. It was a major departure from their earlier machines. It had roughly the same wing surface area as the 1901 machine, but the similarities ended there. The wingspan was ten feet (three meters) longer and the chord two feet (0.6 meter) shorter than the old machine, making the glider look larger and more graceful. It had an overall length of 16 feet (5 meters) and weighed 112 pounds (51 kilograms). The wing camber followed a shallow parabolic curve, and the elevator was extended farther out in front of the pilot. This gave it more leverage, which allowed better control. The 1902 glider also had a new rudder that consisted of two fixed vertical surfaces located behind the aircraft . Wilbur and Orville calculated that these would help prevent the skidding that had occurred when they warped the wings.”
And the following on the 1902 flights from Orville Wright “How We Made the First Flight”:
“The flights of the 1902 glider had demonstrated the efficiency of our system for maintaining equilibrium, and also the accuracy of the laboratory work upon which the design of the glider was based. We then felt that we were prepared to calculate in advance the performance of machines with a degree of accuracy that had never been possible with the data and tables possessed by our predecessors. Before leaving camp in 1902 we were already at work on the general design of a new machine which we proposed to propel with a motor…”
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