Wright Brothers National Memorial, North CarolinaEast, Omega G.
History
Wright Brothers National Memorial, North Carolina
East, Omega G.
Wright Brothers National Memorial (N.C.); Wright, Orville, 1871-1948; Wright, Wilbur, 1867-1912
For living quarters the Wrights continued using a tent. To provide more
space they erected a combined glider storage shed and workshop, the
building of which they undertook on arrival at camp in 1901. Fresh water
was secured nearby by driving a pipe 10 feet or more into the sand.
[Illustration: The Landing]
Their new campsite was located 4 miles south of Kitty Hawk, about 1,000
feet north of Kill Devil Hill, which they had used for gliding the
season before and which they now realized offered the best test
opportunities. Near the camp were four dunes formed of sand heaped by
the winds. These dunes were collectively named Kill Devil Hills. They
were constantly changing in height and slope, according to the direction
and force of the prevailing winds. Using three of the four Kill Devil
Hills for gliding experiments during the period 1900-1903, the Wrights
called these the Big Kill Devil Hill, the West Hill, and the Little
Hill.
[Illustration: The second glider was stored in the wooden shed while
the tent served as living quarters at Kill Devil Hills in 1901. Here
Wilbur and Orville spent many hours discussing their experiments.]
On the 1901 trip to camp the brothers brought with them parts to be
assembled into a larger glider than the one tested in 1900. Knowing it
would be impractical to house the larger glider with them in the tent,
as they had done with the smaller one, they built a rough frame shed for
the new glider and for use as a workshop. This building was 25 feet long
and 16 feet wide. Its ends were hinged at the top near the gable parts
to form doors so the glider could be removed or stored easily. The doors
also served as awnings at the ends of the building.
When assembled, the new glider had a wingspan of 22 feet. It weighed 98
pounds, nearly double the weight of the earlier glider. To give it
greater lifting power, the glider had a total lifting area of 290 square
feet, considerably larger than the 165-foot wing area of the previous
glider. The 1901 glider was a much larger machine than anyone had ever
dared try to fly. It had the same system of control and general design
as the first one. The Wrights increased the camber in this glider, from
1 in 22 to 1 in 12 to conform to the shape prescribed by Lilienthal’s
tables of air pressure. Chanute and others had used these tables, and
the brothers were rudely surprised upon finding that wings with a camber
of 1 in 12 were even less efficient than the 1-in-22 camber wings they
had used in 1900.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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