Aeronautics -- United States -- Biography; Wright, Orville, 1871-1948; Wright, Wilbur, 1867-1912
same--the wing warping appeared to have no effect at all.
The Wrights now made the discovery that in free flight, when the wing
on one side of the machine was presented to the wind at a greater
angle than that on the other side, the wing with the greater angle,
instead of rising as it was expected to do, sometimes descended. The
explanation was that the greater angle of the wing at one side gave
more resistance to forward motion and thus reduced the speed on that
side. This decrease in speed more than counter-balanced the effect of
the larger angle of the wing in producing lift. (The Wrights had not
discovered this when flying the glider as a kite, because, when held by
ropes, the wings always maintained equal air speeds, even when their
resistances were unbalanced.)
It was evident to the brothers that their present method of controlling
equilibrium was not yet complete. Something was needed to maintain
equal speeds at the two wing tips. The idea occurred to them that the
addition of a vertical fin attached to the machine at some distance in
the rear of the wings might be the solution of the problem. But the
test of such a fin had to be left until another season.
The behavior of the glider in these various flights forced the Wrights
to give thought to another scientific problem, that regarding the
center of air pressure on curved surfaces. Contrary to the teachings of
scientific books on the subject, it was becoming more and more evident
that the travel of the center of pressure on a cambered surface is not
always in the same direction as the travel on a plane surface. When
the angle of attack on a plane surface is decreased, the center of
pressure moves toward the front edge; but on a cambered surface this
is true only when larger angles are being decreased. When the angle of
attack on a cambered surface is decreased from, say, thirty degrees
to twenty-five degrees, the center of pressure moves forward, as it
does on a plane surface; but when a certain angle (between twelve
and fifteen degrees) is reached, then the movement of the center of
pressure is reversed. From there on, the center of pressure moves
toward the rear so long as any further decrease is made in the angle
of attack. The Wrights proved this by a series of experiments with a
single surface from their plane. Knowledge of the phenomenon of this
reversal of center of pressure was of great importance to them in their
later work of designing aeroplanes.
Scientific problems were not the only ones to perplex the Wrights. A
sore trial were the mosquitoes and sandfleas, particularly numerous
and aggressive in that summer of 1901. As Orville Wright recalled
in later years, there were times when he thought, while fighting
mosquitoes through the night, that if he could just survive until
morning he would pack up and return home. Those mosquitoes might have
caused a long postponement of the conquest of the air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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