Wilbur talked the idea over with his brother Orville, and the two designed an experiment to test it. They built a "kite." And with this kite, which flew over 100 years ago, the Wright brothers began an aeronautical adventure that would result in the world's first practical aircraft.

Actually, this flying machine was a good deal more than a kite; it was a 1/4-scale experimental airplane. The Wrights called it a "model glider." And there's a good chance that it was designed to do more than simply test the effectiveness of wing warping. It may have been used to determine the lift produced by different wing cambers, find the optimum size and position of the horizontal elevator, and experiment with the position of the pilot on the lower wing, and more.

To see an animated demonstration of the inner tube box experiment, click the photo above. To repeat this experiment for your self, click HERE.

He gives no other measurements, but does offer some important construction details: "The uprights were connected to the surfaces by means of hinged joints�To the rear central upright post was attached to a horizontal rudder or elevator." Fred Kelly, the only biographer to work directly with the Wrights, reveals another detail in The Wright Brothers, "The elevator was held by a pair of wooden rods attached at right angles to the uprights that connected the wings." Marvin McFarland, who edited The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright adds, "The frame was pine.* Shellac was applied to the cloth covering." He also tells what became of the kite. It was used in experiments with an automatic stabilizer, then burned with other trash in 1905.

And there you have it. Those few scraps of information, and the rough sketches that Wilbur made 13 years after the fact, were the only guideposts I could find with which to resurrect the kite. Wilbur's sketches weren't to scale, so I couldn't know the camber of the wings, the size of the elevator, or its position in relation to the wings. There was no way to tell how far apart the struts held the wings, or how they were hinged to the spars. It seemed impossible to make an accurate reproduction.

There was one item in all the Wright literature about the kite that stuck out like a sore thumb. In How We Invented the Airplane, a personal account assembled from various writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright, editor Fred Kelly inserts this note: "Experiments with this five-foot apparatus, more a model glider than a kite, were confined to one day." I'm sure that Kelly got this impression directly from Orville, but when you view it in the context of the Wrights greater work, it makes no sense. If what Kelly says is true, then the Wright brothers spent several weeks designing and building something that they flew for only a few hours, and only one of them had the curiosity to fly it. Orville says, "I myself was not present�" when Wilbur first flew the kite, but don't you think Orv would have wanted to try it out for himself? After all, Orville recalls that an excited Wilbur rode his bicycle miles out in the country to where his brother was camping to describe the success of the initial flights. Doesn't it make sense that Orv would have been infected by Will's enthusiasm and have been aching to try the kite as soon as he got back?

If he didn't, this would have been the one and only time in their lives when the Wrights didn't investigate everything there was to investigate about a flying machine. It would also be the only time they made just one instead of a series of evolving aircraft. Remember that they made several gliders in 1900, 1901, and 1902 before they were satisfied with the performance. And they made several powered machines in 1903, 1904, and 1905 before they arrived at what they deemed a flyable aircraft. Even when they were children, they made not one but several copies of a rubber band-powered helicopter, each one larger than the last. I have a hard time believing that they made only one kite and flew it only once.

In a letter to Octave Chanute dated May 13, 1900, Wilbur mentions, "My experiments to date have been confined to machines spreading about 15 square feet of surface, and have been sufficiently encouraging to induce me to lay plans for a trial with a full-size machine." The operative word here is machines - plural! Wilbur seems to be saying that he has conducted experiments with more than one kite. Furthermore, the dimensions he gives - 15 square feet - do not match Orville�s later recollection. The kites the Wilbur is describing probably had wings that were 15" x 72" rather than 13" x 60".

Browsing the Dayton Daily News archives, I happened on an interview with James E. Salts from July 28, 1951 that also suggests multiple kites. Salts had been a neighbor of the Wrights and recalled that as a young boy, he watched both Wilbur and Orville flying many types of kites in an open area not far from the bicycle shop (probably at or near Dayton's Riverview Park). He was also present when Wilbur an Orville cleaned their shop in 1905 and burned "armloads" of kites. What fixed this incident in his mind is that Wilbur kindly gave him one.

Here was evidence from an eyewitness that the Wrights built more than one kite. In all probability, they were part of a series, each one an improvement on the last. It's possible that these kites were from a series of automatic stabilizer experiments, but it's just as likely they were from the Wrights' initial design experiments in 1899 and 1900. It just makes sense that the Wrights would want to test their design ideas on a model before risking their necks on a full-size glider. One detail on Wilbur's 1912 sketches supports the theory that kite flying was an on-going experiment in glider design. The drawings include a weight where the pilot would lay. If the kite was designed to test the effectiveness of wing warping only, what's the purpose of the weight? Any scientist worth a test tube immediately sees the weight as a variable in an experiment, and it has nothing to do with roll control. Like as not, the Wrights varied the position and size of the weight to judge balance and lift. If that is true, they were likely varying other things, too � such as the camber, which would affect lift, and the size of the elevator, which would affect balance.

Wilbur also made this sketch in 1912 to show how the kite was controlled. It too was used as an exhibit in the patent suit.

This reasoning helped me to fill in most of the missing details, including some of the construction details. The parts of the kite were probably lashed together with waxed linen cord, just like the early gliders. This made it a simple matter to test out new configurations and refine their glider design. Will and Orv could swap out the ribs or add a new tail simply by cutting a few cords, then lashing the new parts in place. The cloth covering was probably sewn to the wing frames in much the same way the Wrights sewed it to their gliders, and the coverings on the last kites were probably not shellacked. They must have found that the shellac stuck the wood to the cloth and made it impossible to change or repair parts.

I also doubt that Wilbur used wires at the leading and trailing edges, as the court sketches seem to show. The Wright brothers never made an airplane with wires at the leading and trailing edges; I doubt that they would have done so for a kite. The Wrights rarely built anything for their aircraft that wasn't functional and necessary; there is no reason to presume that they weren't just as careful when building kites. The point of this particular kite was to test wing warping as an aerodynamic control, and possibly to measure lift and balance. All that was required was a simple rectangular frame. Remember that Wilbur made the kite sketches 12 years after building the kite. His sketches were copied and given a more professional look by a court illustrator who may or may not have had some familiarity with airplane construction. You can't take the 1912 sketches as gospel.

Aeronautical investigators before the Wrights favored an arched 1 ro 12 camber. The 1896 Chanute-Herring glider, shown above, had such a camber. It was widely considered to be the most successful design to date in 1900.

We put all this reasoning to the test by building our first kite with the wing shape and camber shown in Wilbur�s sketches. And sure enough, it didn�t fly- it was too unstable. Even a small change in angle of attack caused the center of pressure on the deeply arched wings to reverse itself, traveling back and forth so quickly that the kite actually fluttered in the air like it was going to shake itself to pieces. We then made several versions of the kite with flat cambers and shallow parabolic cambers. The flat camber is easier to control for the simple reason that the center of pressure is very well behaved on a flat wing. The shallow parabolic camber is slightly more squirrelly, but still relatively easy to control. It also provides more lift than either the flat camber of the arched camber. Wilbur and Orville must have made the same discovery.