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On 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first controlled, sustained flights in a powered aeroplane. They got there through years of glider tests, wind-tunnel measurements and work on steering, while Samuel Langley's well-funded Aerodrome crashed twice that year.

Kitty Hawk, 1903

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The story behind the card

The Wrights ran a bicycle business in Dayton, Ohio. Finding published tables of wing lift unreliable, they built their own wind tunnel in 1901 and tested about 200 wing shapes. Their key insight was that a flying machine must be controlled in three ways at once: roll (tipping the wings up or down), pitch (raising or lowering the nose) and yaw (turning the nose left or right). They controlled roll by twisting the wingtips, a method called wing warping. Their first flight lasted 12 seconds and covered about 37 metres (120 feet); the fourth that day went about 260 metres in 59 seconds. Langley's Aerodrome, backed by a $50,000 War Department grant, fell into the Potomac River on both its 1903 launches.

Türkçe oku
Wilbur ve Orville Wright, 17 Aralık 1903'te Kuzey Carolina'daki Kitty Hawk'ta motorlu bir uçakla, havada kalabilen ve yönetilebilen ilk uçuşları yaptı. Bu başarıya yıllarca planör denemesi, rüzgâr tüneli ölçümü ve yönlendirme çalışmasıyla ulaştılar; bol paralı rakipleri Samuel Langley'nin Aerodrome'u ise aynı yıl iki kez düştü.
Kitty Hawk, 1903

Wright kardeşler Ohio'nun Dayton kentinde bisiklet dükkânı işletiyordu. Yayımlanmış kanat kaldırma tablolarını güvenilir bulmayınca 1901'de kendi rüzgâr tünellerini kurdular ve 200 kadar kanat biçimini sınadılar. Asıl kavrayışları, uçan bir makinenin aynı anda üç yönde denetlenmesi gerektiğiydi: yatış (kanatların bir yana yatması), yunuslama (burnun inip kalkması) ve sapma (burnun sağa sola dönmesi). Yatışı, kanat uçlarını burarak denetlediler; bu yönteme kanat bükme denir. İlk uçuşları 12 saniye sürdü ve yaklaşık 37 metre yol aldı; aynı günün dördüncü uçuşu 59 saniyede yaklaşık 260 metreye ulaştı. ABD Savaş Bakanlığı'ndan 50.000 dolar destek alan Langley'nin Aerodrome'u ise 1903'teki iki denemesinde de Potomac Nehri'ne düştü.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Wright brothers
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