• the dream of flight (is that found in all cultures?)
  
• the role of science in the invention of the airplane
• amateurs vs. professionals
• what point is defined as the invention (who gets credit)
• what is the purpose of an invention (killer app)
  
• automobile and airplane invented in parallel
  

• the airplane as a symbol of freedom and the modern era
  
• the dream of an airplane in every garage
  
• impact of the airplane on warfare

Prof. Lienhard on airplanes (3:40) about technological change

These ideas/questions are conceptual tools that can be generalized and applied to other cases

• Flight had been a dream for a long time
• the legend of Icarus is best know, but occurs in other cultures
• in the Arab world Ibn Firnas launched himself from a tower in a glider (glided down from the tower)  in 875 AD and lived to tell the tale
• a monk named Eilmer in England made a similar flight just after 1000 AD
• should gliders (that soar like a bird) count?  
• 
  
• 0., records
  
• early designs for airplanes were usually by direct analogy to birds and therefore with flapping wings (Leonardo).  

• Montgolfier brothers used both hot air and hydrogen
• Balloons came into use in the late 18th century and saw significant use in the Civil War and for sport, so there was some familiarity with the atmosphere as an environment.
• 
  

• Sir George Cayley laid out much of the necessary theory for flight in the early 1800s 
• the Reverend Burrell Cannon felt called by God in 1900 to build an Ezekiel wheel flying machine
• Frederick Marriott built a steam powered dirigible in 1869
• his nephew John Montgomery made some key inventions in wing shape for gliders in 1883
• In France starting in 1871 Alphonse Penaud designed rubber band powered model airplanes using propellers instead of flapping wings
  
• Octave Chanute experimented with gliders and promoted flight

• wings with lift had been solved for gliders
  
• still needed: a successful engine
• how to turn without just slipping sideways

Langley Aerodrome #5

• By the end of the 1800s gliders had been flown successfully up to 250 meters and a number of people were working on powered gliders.
• The Smithsonian Institution's head, Samuel Pierpont Langley, had a government grant to build a heavier-than-air craft.  His approach was to "urge a system of rigid planes through the air at great velocity"--in other words like running a knife through butter.  He visualized air as a series of identical elastic cubes.

• He successfully flew an unpiloted engine-driven plane before the Wright brothers but his manned version failed to fly and had fundamental problems with control.  He owned the Washington establishment--nobody paid any attention to the Wright Brothers.

• the Wright brothers emphasized the fluid nature of air, and sought a plane that was flexible and adjustable, not rigid.
• Now mind you, they were not scientists, but they were bicycle-makers and racers who read the professional literature, studied the problems of aviation with great care and corresponded with other aeronautical researchers such as Octave Chanute.  The Wright brothers even built their own wind tunnel--6 feet long and 16 inches square--to study the relationship of various wing shapes and lift and also propellers.
• 
  
• Some of the other researchers were professional engineers and scientists, but the Wrights could do just as good empirical research
  • they used existing scientific knowledge, but this wasn't good enough to actually predict flight characteristics
  • they were lucky in the analogies they picked when there wasn't a clear scientific answer
    
  • they used the scientific method
  • they didn't publish scientific results, they were just trying to solve problems
    
• they developed a system to turn the plane with a rudder linked to a system to warping the entire wing so that the plane would bank in flight, tested it extensively in gliders.

• They built their own gasoline engine, because they could not find a suitable one on the market, and a much more efficient propeller.  They successfully flew a powered airplane Dec. 17, 1903 (for more on the Wright Brothers and their process of invention--and lots of pictures and quick-time movies--see To Fly is Everything and to listen to a story about their forgotten sister go to: The forgotten Wright and click listen)
  

 
 Wright Brothers flight, National Air and Space Museum

• The Wright family gave the plane to the Smithsonian and "stuck one clause into that contract that said if the Smithsonian ever says anybody flew before the Wright brothers, we have the right to take the airplane back. That clause is in fact still in the contract," Crouch says. (source)
  

Flight was initially used more for entertainment than for practical purposes:

In the era of amateur experiments and barnstorming, flight became a symbol of freedom

• new technologies don't have a lot of rules yet and so often provide a way in for people who are discriminated against, such as women and African-Americans
• women were involved in flight both as rich amateurs and in effect as a freak show--people would pay to see a woman do something they were bored with seeing men do
• airplane builders came to support women pilots for the publicity, with its particular implication that aviation was safe.
• Airplanes were a symbol of freedom to travel anywhere you wanted
  
• Harriet Quimby was particularly talented at promoting herself and aviation at the same time
• Bessie Coleman became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wanted to set up her own flying school for African-Americans

Freedom:

• getting away from the rules and prejudices of society
• control of your own body
• freedom to go where you want when you want
  

Flight inspired much good literature and became a symbol not just of freedom but of transcendence, speed, and intensity

• West with the Night
• Amelia Earhart
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince)
  

Transition

• aviation for recreation and entertainment had room for women and African Americans
• then in WWI aviation becomes of military importance, military designs airplanes and trains pilots
• airplanes become symbols of power rather than symbols of freedom
• 
  

Ch. 11

The popular view of the airplane was based on the idea that danger was fun--people for some years did not take flying seriously

Behind that:
the Wright brothers had a terrible time interesting anyone in their success--the U.S. military did not purchase its first plane until 1909

• Europeans were more interested, and during World War I learned to use aircraft for reconnaissance, bombing, and fighting
  
• when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, we lagged far behind in military aircraft
• In the year before the U.S. declared war the U.S. aviation industry produced 411 planes, though a large number of airplane engines were shipped to Europe by one company partnership that had designed a good lightweight engine and techniques for mass-producing it (the Liberty Engine, Packard and Hall-Scott).
• by the end of the war in 1919 the army had 5,500 planes, though most of the fighters were purchased in Europe.  The U.S. industry did successfully produce trainers, and many planes were in production when the war ended

 

 French Spad WWI fighter--National Air and Space Museum

How did aviation make the transition from entertainment to transportation?  With a lot of government help, both subsidies like air mail service and for research

there was a need for research also, or at least coordination, and it almost instantly outgrew the resources of amateurs like the Wright brothers or even the small firms that were building aircraft.

• The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was one of a number of organizations created as a result of lobbying by scientists and engineers for a new government role in research and development in World War I.
• President Wilson signed the naval appropriations bill that created the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics in March 1915.  The scientists, engineers and enthusiasts who had lobbied for the bill for more than four years wanted government funding of aeronautical research to allow the United States to catch up with rapid developments in Europe.  But the legislation did not pass until the outbreak of war provided an additional push, and the bill did nothing more than create an advisory committee and provide it with a small appropriation.

• The NACA then set out to invent its own role.  In its first few years the new Committee played a significant role in the wartime coordination of industry and used some of its small budget to sponsor research at private institutions, but its leaders made the building of a new laboratory their highest priority.  The laboratory at Langley Field, in Virginia, established the NACA as a federal research agency despite its title as an advisory committee.  After the war ended, debates over the role of the federal government in supporting and regulating aviation created considerable uncertainly about the future of the NACA, but the final result strengthened the Committee's emphasis on research because other aviation-related functions--regulation and the sponsorship of infrastructure--were assigned to the Department of Commerce.  The federal government also helped the aviation industry by funding air mail service.
  
• At the Langley Memorial Laboratory, dedicated in June 1920, NACA scientists and engineers set out to invent a role for the federal government in peacetime aviation research.  The laboratory provided fairly up-to-date facilities: a wind tunnel, an engine-dynamometer laboratory, and a general research laboratory building.
• The laboratory developed a focus on aeronautical principles both in order to take advantage of its wind tunnel facilities and to avoid competition with the military services (which wanted to maintain control of testing and setting specifications for new aircraft designs for miliary missions) and the National Bureau of Standards and industry (which had facilities for engine research).
• The NACA found a niche not only in its choice of research program but also in how it approached research problems: "The strength of the NACA seems to be that it had the luxury of pursuing incrementally over a long period of time answers to problems that were of great interest to the commercial and military worlds."
• The leaders of the NACA initially thought that the committee had to establish its reputation by scientific (not engineering) achievement, and hired Max Munk from Germany because of his theoretical reputation.  Munk made a key discovery, that by compressing the air in a tunnel you could use scale models in wind tunnels to provide results that would correlate with data from a full-sized plane in actual use.  This idea was put into use in a 5 foot diameter variable density tunnel in 1923, and then was followed by a 20 foot diameter tunnel for full scale research in 1927. NACA's first wind tunnel

• the NACA used the large tunnel for research on propellers, landing gear, and drag.  They discovered that the engine provide as much as 1/3 of the plane's total drag, and invented a way to cover the engine to enhance cooling while reducing drag.  During a test a plane that normally averaged 157 mph averaged 177 mph.  But this wasn't a theoretical breakthrough--each cowling was custom developed for a particular combination of airplane and engine by wind tunnel experiments.

detail from Diego Rivera mural at Detroit Institute of Art

• The necessity of practical results to justify federal funding and the dominant role of engineers on the NACA main committee gradually reversed that attitude, establishing the relationship between theoretical and practical research as a central tension within the laboratory and the agency as a whole.

At the end of World War I, the airplane had proved itself as a weapon but military aircraft weren't of much practical use

• because there were more surplus airplanes than demand, production of new airplanes almost ceased until the government rescued the industry by creating an air mail service
• Aeronautical Engineering began to develop as a field of study: in 1929 1400 students were studying aero-engineering in more than a dozen schools.
• Meanwhile, aircraft design was developing in the 1920s and 1930s as the market finally began to expand again.
• Ford trimotor of 1926--metal structure and cantilevered wing.

 

 Ford Trimotor, National Air and Space Museum

• People began to predict that soon there would be an airplane in every garage
  
• Aluminum propeller developed in 1925, and variable pitch propellers by the end of the decade.
• The first successful helicopter flew in Germany in 1936; Russian emigre Igor Sikorsky had a U.S. design in tests by 1939 and got a contract from the army in 1940

 Sikorsky's first helicopter The airplane became a symbol of how much the world had changed and an influence on modern design (see the book for more on this)

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This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack

HIST 1220
last updated 10/18/23

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