Thanks to the Smithsonian Institution's systematic and creative in-depth study of past flight experiments and documents, they learned lessons from previous design experience, abandoned the wrong data and started the development of aircraft.
It is generally believed that the Wright brothers invented the airplane. In fact, before this, some people have invented the key technologies of aircraft, such as wings and power flight. The Wright brothers' main contribution is roll control. When the plane is flying in the air, it may roll if it is disturbed by the airflow.
In rolling, the lift of the wings on both sides is asymmetric. Under the joint action of the oncoming airflow, the effective attack angle of the downstream wing decreases, the lift decreases, and the upstream wing increases.
Without compensation, the lift asymmetry will naturally increase and immediately get out of control. The Wright brothers make use of the elasticity of wood and rope and pulley mechanism to make one wing tip roll up and the other wing tip roll down, artificially creating asymmetric lift, generating reverse rolling torque and maintaining rolling control.
After repeated experiments, the Wright brothers' test flight was successful. It is reported that in 1900- 1903, they built three gliders and made more than 1000 gliding flights.
I have made more than 200 different kinds of wings, conducted thousands of wind tunnel experiments, corrected some wrong flight data of predecessors, and designed the cross-sectional shape of wings with greater lift. It was not until the successful test flight of Voyager 1 that its invention made a big breakthrough.
The Wright brothers invented controllable power flight, which is also the reason why the Wright brothers invented the airplane. Naturally, they applied for and obtained relevant patents.
Extended data
1903 12 17 the plane made by the Wright brothers made its first flight successfully. At that time, my brother Wilbur was 36 years old and my brother Orwell was 32 years old. Fortunately, the Wright brothers had a camera at that time (the camera was invented by 1839), leaving valuable image data.
The Wright brothers have a strong awareness of intellectual property rights, and they decided to keep research and development and flight test confidential before obtaining the patent. So during the test flight, only three lifeguards were outsiders. The Wright brothers asked Daniel, the lifeguard, to take their pictures. This is Daniel's first contact with the camera. On this day, he successfully took three photos.
The success of the Wright brothers is not accidental. They worked hard to learn the knowledge of their predecessors who made and flew gliders, and on this basis, they conducted in-depth research and conducted a lot of boring and very strict experiments.
They made their own wind tunnel, carried out blowing experiments on more than 200 kinds of airfoils, and selected the airfoil with the best aerodynamic performance. They built gliders and made more than 1000 test flights.
Then, they designed and built an engine. This engine weighs 70kg, and its power is 12 horsepower. Its performance was very advanced at that time. At this time, the world's first internal combustion engine has just come out for more than 20 years.
The Wright brothers used wood, wire, nails, cotton cloth and homemade engines to build a plane that can really fly heavier than air, creating a great miracle.
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