Recognizing the First
Generation Inventors IV
Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison,
Sumner Tainter, Valdemar Poulsen and few others are rightly qualified as first
generation inventors for telecommunication, which was built from the scratch to
the present day ICT. The next important technology that facilitated the
development of human civilization before Stone Age is transportation, which is
diverse with different levels of sophistication.
Starting with the invention of airplane,
which to my thinking is the most mind-boggling and astounding system to
mankind. From the time immemorial, mankind marveled the way birds were flying
crisscrossing the sky at will without hindrance, and it was the dream of many
inventors of 18th and 19th centuries to make human being
fly. People built wings to strap onto their arm or machines with flapping wings
called “ornithopters” in a desperate effort to navigate the sky like birds. The
concept was perfectly working for smaller body at bird-scale was not working
for much larger scale needed to lift both a man and a machine off the ground.
So, the idea was completely discarded and began to look for other means of
making man to fly. Beginning in 1783, a few aeronauts made daring, uncontrolled
flights in lighter-than-air balloons, filled with either hot air or hydrogen
gas, which made them lift the ground with tremendous risk to their lives. All
these proved impractical way to fly as there was no way to move from one point
to the next desired point unless the wind was blowing in the same - desired
direction. It was in the early nineteenth century that an English baronet from
Yorkshire conceived an idea of a flying machine with fixed wings, a kind of
propulsion system, and movable control surfaces. That was the fundamental
mechanism of making larger of object to fly - popularly called airplane. Sir
George Cayley was the first inventor of a true airplane — a kite mounted on a
stick with a movable tail. It was crude, but originated the idea of inventing
an airplane. It was that idea, which evolved overtime and made the design and
fabrication of a gigantic machine that could carry over 500 people with their
personal belongings and move with amazing speed of a thousand or so kilometers
per hour, faster than speed of sound - a supersonic speed as physicists will
call it.
In 1799, Sir George Cayley extensively worked
on the mechanics of lift and drag forces – a kind of fan engineering; and
presented his first scientific design for a fixed-wing aircraft. This arose
interests among aeronautics; scientists and engineers who experimented and
permutated all kind of ideas on designing and testing airplanes. In 1874, Felix
duTemple made the first attempt at powered flight by hopping off the end of a
ramp in a steam-driven monoplane. Other scientists, such as Francis Wenham and
Horatio Phillips studied cambered wing designs mounted in wind tunnels and on
whirling arms. The Aerial Steam Carriage, conceived by William Henson in 1843,
was the first aircraft design to show propellers. 50 years later, precisely in
1894, Sir Hiram Maxim made a successful takeoff using a biplane on a "test
rig" but it was a woefully uncontrolled flight – with danger and potential
for sustaining body injury. Thereafter, Otto Lilienthal was the first to make a
controlled flight by shifting his body weight to steer a small glider. Motivated
by the Otto’s success, the Wright brothers; Wilbur and Orville Wright
experimented with aerodynamic surfaces to control an airplane in flight
successfully. The brothers' first glider, tested in 1900, failed to fly. A
second trial in 1901 fared better, but they went on by improving the design after
each trial. Later that year, the brothers built a wind tunnel in which they
tested over 200 wing and airframe designs. This resulted in a successful glider
(unpowered) model (flown in 1902 at Kill Devils Hills near Kitty Hawk). Their
work led them to make the first controlled, sustained, powered flights on
December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It flew for 12 seconds covering
a distance of 37 m. The brothers choice of Kitty Hawk to fly their planes was because
of it was an isolated town on North Carolina's Outer Banks that had steady
winds and sand dunes on which they could glide and land gently, maximizing
their safety. The engine of the plane stalled during another trial on December
14th. It took them three days to repair the engine for the
subsequent trial, the plane accelerated on a monorail track and flew into the
air, staying up for 15 seconds; it flew 47 meters. That day, the brothers took
turns flying the plane. On the last flight that day, Wilburs flew 260 meters in
59 seconds. Their "Wright fly" was a fabric-covered biplane with a
wooden frame. A 12-horsepower water-cooled engine was made to energize the two
propellers of the plane, which caused it flew and moved. Wright brothers were
raised in Dayton, Ohio but were not able to make it to college. However, they
had strong intuitive technical ability for creativity and innovations. During
the next few years, the brothers developed more sophisticated planes. They
later formed the Wright Company, which built and sold their airplanes. Before venturing
into airplane building, they had their hands in several innovations as they
were credited of building a printing press, constructed, repair and sales of bicycles.
It was the profits made from bicycle business that funded their
airplane-building endeavor. The Wright brothers' famous airplane, the
"Wright Flyer," is on permanent display at the National Air and Space
Museum in Washington, D.C., USA. Wilbur Wright died in 1912 of typhoid fever
while Orville died 36 years later in 1948.
The work of Wrights accelerated aviation at
an unprecedented rate – and for good reason. The feats achieved sequentially
were landing without crashing (1903 to 1905) – The Wright Brothers develop
their temperamental Kitty Hawk Flyer into a practical flying machine. Aeronautical
scientists and engineers in America and Europe designed and fabricated fixed
wings to the airplane. Thereafter, the planes were made to achieve faster,
higher and long distances between 1909 and 1912) – Pilots and engineers begin
to explore the capabilities and push the possibilities of aircraft.
While the Americans are crediting and
celebrating Wright brothers of being the pioneers inventors of airplane,
elsewhere, this claim is recently being challenged. According to an online
paper www.airspacemag.com/history. The paper indicated that a number of
candidates were suggested for first-flight honors; Hiram Maxim, Clement Ader,
Karl Jatho, and Augustus Moore Herring, who were reported flying distances of
up to 70 m through the air. Another strong contender was Gustave Whitehead who
was believed to had flown his Condor plane in August 1901 - more than two years
before the Wright Brothers' famous successful flight. Condor was designed to be
part-car, part plane and may have been reputed to be the first flying car, as
reported by one of the famous aviation journal Jane. Gustave Whitehead, a German
immigrant in USA who settled in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA where he reported
to had made some spectacular flights. This is the short history of the early
invention of airplane between the Americans and Europeans in the 18th
and 19th centuries. The next interesting invention in the
transportation sector is “vehicle” which came earlier than airplane. (To be
Continued next week)
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