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Show First flight: a reflection in history '': i:'. ;I.-J A" - ByRITAC.BOBOWSKI Smithsonian News Service It was 79 years ago this month. The place: a desolate strip of beach near Kitty Hawk, N.C. A strong northerly wind had blown in overnight and by morning puddles of water were covered with thin sheets of ice. Around 10 a.m., two men from Dayton, Ohio, struggling against 25 mile per hour winds, lifted a large, odd-shaped contraption con-traption onto a wooden rail. That day, Dec. 17, 1903, Flyer No. 1 made four flights, the longest covering 859 feet in 59 seconds; and Wilbur and Orville Wright saw a dream of the ages fulfilled. According to most popular accounts, the Wright brothers were a couple of eccentric tinkerers, bicycle mechanics who, with a little bit of know-how and alot of luck designed and flew the first airplane. Not so, says Tom D. Crouch, curator of aeronautics at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. "These self-taught geniuses solved problems that had eluded the best-trained best-trained engineers of the century," says Crouch. "But they did not work in a vacuum. The Wrights used the research and the aeronautical experiments ex-periments that had taken place before them." The last half of the 19th century was a time of great achievement in techonolgy and science. The phonograph, the incandescent light bulb, the telephone and monumental engineering structures like the Brooklyn Bridge were among the era's developments. A new breed of technical innovators in-novators developed as well. They were people who felt that any problem could be solved as long as they dealt with it scientifically. The airplane air-plane was one of the most difficult challenges of all. "Until the 19th century, no one really believed that man could fly," Crouch says. "In my view, one basic ingredient was missing-self-confidence. But all of a sudden, engineers started to think : We have done so many miraculous things, why not build a machine that can fly?" It soon became apparent, ap-parent, however, that a successful solution would not rest with one individual. in-dividual. The problem of flying was too complex. Areas as diverse as aircraft structure, aerodynamics, power plant and propeller technology had to be reckoned with. The technical community com-munity came to the rescue in the mid-1800s with the formation of aeronautical societies. Through their professional journals, lectures and exhibitions, the societies made up of leading engineers and scientists drew attention at-tention to the field. "Before this point," Crouch says, "the mention of flight was good for laugh. But when well-respected figures of the day began to believe in flight, people started to listen." When Orville and Wilbur entered the picture pic-ture in 1899, they made use of this body of information in-formation in addition to planning their own ex periments. Three contemporaries con-temporaries were particularly par-ticularly influential: Octave Chanute, Samuel P. Langley and Otto Lilienthal. The Wrights first contacted Octave Chanute in 1900. A close friendship quickly developed as Chanute took the Wrights under his wing, introducing them to prominent engineers, discussing their problems with them and encouraging them. Trained as a civil engineer, Chanute became interested in aeronautics in 1875. By the 1890s, he was recruiting American inventors to build full-scale full-scale gliders. Today, Chanute is considered the first great historian of aviation. "Though Chanute did not teach Wilbur and Orville much about the technology of flight," Crouch admits, "he kept them going by the simple fact that he was always there. Even from their correspondence, it is obvious Chanute realized that the Wrights were extraordinarily talented." talen-ted." Smauel P. Langley. later to become the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was attracted to flight by Chanute's enthusiasm. A self-educated mathematician and astronomer, Langley was regarded as one of the chief scientists of his day. He began serious investigations in-vestigations into flight in 1887. Like Chanute, he offered of-fered little technical assistance to the Wrights, but he was a source of inspiration. |