A Closer Look
WRIGHT
BROTHERS Aeroplane
Company
A Closer Look
Built in Dayton, Ohio and test-flown at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the original 1902 Wright Glider is one of the most important machines ever designed. Although the Wright Brothers are better known for the 1903 Wright Flyer, in which they made the first sustained powered flights, their 1902 glider was the first fully controllable aircraft, with movable surfaces that balanced the craft in the air.
The vertical rudder (at the back of the glider) yawed the nose from side to side. The horizontal elevator (at the front of the glider) pitched the nose up and down. And a unique wing-warping system (the forerunner of modern ailerons) rolled the wings left and right. This allowed a pilot, for the first time, to navigate in all three dimensions. This basic, brilliant idea -- yaw, pitch, and roll controls -- is still used in every aircraft flying today. It's also the basis of spacecraft control, submarine navigation, and robotics. These remarkable advances all trace their roots back to this simple machine. If you research the fundamental patent on the airplane, you'll find a drawing of the 1902 Wright Glider, not the 1903 Wright Flyer.
This replica was built for an extraordinary educational mission. Nick Engler, the team leader of the group that built it, designed it to come apart so it will fit through an ordinary door. This allows us to set up the glider inside a school or museum quickly, easily, and inexpensively. All we need is a 20' by 40' space and about an hour's time to assemble the glider. So far, this glider as traveled as far east as Baltimore, Maryland and as far west as Dallas, Texas, where we've set it up to show to students from first grade to high school. If you would like us to bring this glider and our "portable museum" of the Wright Brothers to your school or educational institution, see "The Spirit of Dayton" Project.
The 1902 Wright Glider replica on a clear spring day at Huffman Prairie, in front of a replica of the Wright brother's hangar. |
 When on display, we usually show the glider on these special trestles. Note that the outboard trestles pivot, allowing us to demonstrate wing warping. |
 Like this! Click on the photo to see David Newell of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) warp the wings of the glider. |
 To give you some idea of the size of the 1902 glider, here it is set up in the Vincennes University hangar (in Indianapolis) with a Boeing 737 airliner and a Ventur 2 glider. |
Here's another view showing just the glider and the 737. |
Let's take a quick walk-around. Here's the glider from the front, sowing it's full 32-foot wingspan. |
Moving around to our right, here's diagonal view of the glider... |
...and a view of the end. The glider is 17 feet from nose to tail. |
From the back, it looks as if the wings droop a little. They do -- the wings have a 4-inch anhedral (arch). The Wright rigged it this way to prevent side wind gusts from rising a wing. |
The tail of the glider is hinged to the trailing edge of the wings. The Wrights did this to prevent the tail from breaking off when they "flared" (raised the nose) for a landing. |
 The Wrights left the cockpit open at the bottom because they thought they would swing their legs down as they came in for a landing. This proved impractical because the glider was too heavy (about 112 pounds). |
The wings, rudder, and elevator are all covered with a single layer of muslin. This muslin was not treated or doped in any way. Consequently a lot of air bled through the wings in flight. |
Although the Wrights did not dope their wings, they took other measures to make them more aerodynamic. Note that each rib is enclosed in its own pocket, and the spars are covered with long strips of muslin. |
Almost a century of technology separate these two gliders. The 1902 Wright glider descended at a slope of 6 to 1 -- 6 feet horizontal flight for every 1 foot of altitude. The 2000 Ventur 2 descends along a slope of 60 to 1. |
Some things never change, however. For all the progress that has been made in a century of aviation, the Ventur 2 still has a "yaw string" attached where the pilot can see it. |
As does the Wright glider. This was the first flight instrument -- pilots use it to gauge the direction of the relative wind flowing over the wings. |
 The controls of the Wright glider are very simple. Both the wing warping and the rudder are activated by a hip cradle (top right). Swing your hips right to turn right, left to turn left. To adjust the elevator, rotate the control bar (center.) |
 Turning the control bar rotated a set of pulley at the front of the glider. These, in turn, worked levers that raised and lowered the elevator. |
 All of the struts were hinged to the spars, allowing the wings to move. The glider was kept rigid not by its fittings but by a network of bracing wires. This may seem flimsy, but it proved remarkably durable. The original 1902 glider survived over 2000 flights. |
Here's a close-up of a strut fitting (left). It was just a simple hook-and-eye. The control pulley (right) was turned from a boxwood roller skate wheel. |
 Kids often ask us how we get the glider into their school. The secret is our assembly frame. First we set up the trestles and stands to hold the wings of the glider. |
 Then we put the glider together on the frame. After it's assembled, we remove the stands but leave the trestles. |
 Kids also ask what it's like to fly, and we're in the very beginning stages of finding that out. Here's a picture of our first test flights. It looks pretty good in the air, don't you think? |
 Of course, we think it looks better like this, surrounded with kids. To find out how to arrange a school tour, click HERE. |
| While we were down in the North Carolina
Outerbanks for the Return to Kitty Hawk 2001, Michelangelo
Flores, the benevolent master of virtual realities, put together a
series of "VR images" for us. The image you see here
allows you to "spin" the 1902 Wright Glider on the sand so you
can see it from all angles -- just click on the photo to the right.
(It's 257K.) To enjoy the VR images that Michelangelo has created, you'll
need a QuickTime extension for your browser . If you don't have one,
download it from the Apple
web site. It's free!
QTVR image � 2001 by Michelangelo Flores |
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