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WonderHistory fact

On 17 December 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright flew 37 m in 12 seconds. Others had engines too; what the Wright brothers had solved was control. The pilot could tilt the wings, raise or lower the nose and turn, keeping the aircraft balanced in the air.

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

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Most experimenters of the time concentrated on more powerful engines and thought of steering like a ship's rudder. The Wrights, who built bicycles in Dayton, Ohio, saw that a flying machine had to be balanced like a bicycle and lean into turns like a bird. Wilbur noticed that birds change the angle of their wingtips to roll, and the brothers copied this with wing-warping: cables twisted the ends of the wings to tip the aircraft left or right. With a front elevator for climbing and diving and a movable rudder for turning, the pilot could control all three directions of movement, known as three-axis control. They tested wing shapes in a home-made wind tunnel in 1901 and learned on gliders before adding an engine. Four flights were made that day; the longest, by Wilbur, lasted 59 seconds and covered 260 m. Aeroplanes still use three-axis control today.

Türkçe oku
Orville Wright, 17 Aralık 1903'te Kuzey Carolina'da Kitty Hawk yakınlarında 12 saniyede 37 metre uçtu. Motorlu uçak deneyen başkaları da vardı; Wright kardeşler ise uçağı denetleme sorununu çözmüştü. Pilot kanatları yana yatırabiliyor, burnu kaldırıp indirebiliyor, dönebiliyor ve uçağı havada dengede tutabiliyordu.

Dönemin deneycilerinin çoğu daha güçlü motorlara odaklanıyor, yönlendirmeyi de gemi dümeni gibi düşünüyordu. Ohio'nun Dayton kentinde bisiklet yapan Wright kardeşler ise uçan bir makinenin bisiklet gibi dengede tutulması, dönerken de kuş gibi yana yatması gerektiğini gördü. Wilbur, kuşların yana yatmak için kanat uçlarının açısını değiştirdiğini fark etmişti. Kardeşler bunu kanat bükme yöntemiyle taklit etti: Teller kanatların uçlarını burarak uçağı sağa ya da sola yatırıyordu. Tırmanıp alçalmak için öndeki irtifa dümeni ve dönmek için hareketli bir istikamet dümeni de eklenince pilot, uçağı üç eksende birden denetleyebildi; buna üç eksenli denetim denir. 1901'de kendi yaptıkları bir rüzgâr tünelinde kanat biçimlerini denediler ve motor takmadan önce planörlerle uçmayı öğrendiler. O gün dört uçuş yapıldı; en uzunu Wilbur'unkiydi: 59 saniye sürdü ve 260 metre yol aldı. Bugünkü uçaklar da aynı üç eksenli denetimi kullanır.

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Background reading: Wright brothers
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