The Airplane - Jay Spenser [138]
9. Theodore W. Fuller, San Diego Originals (Pleasant Hills, CA: California Profiles Publications, 1987), 23, 25.
10. Orville Wright, How We Invented the Airplane: An Illustrated History, ed. Fred C. Kelly (New York: Dover, 1988), 84.
11. Wilbur Wright, letter to his father, October 2, 1902.
6 WINGS, PART II: Cloud-Cutting Cantilevers
1. Wealthy pioneer U.S. aviator John Moisant had actually designed, built, and tested a one-of-a-kind airplane made entirely of metal in 1909. Constructed of aluminum, that experimental single-seater reportedly hopped rather than flew.
2. The boundary layer is a very thin layer of air immediately over a wing that, because of friction between the air molecules and the wing’s surface, has a lower velocity than the overall airflow over the wing. The boundary layer flows smoothly from front to back during normal flight (laminar flow), but at high angles of attack with insufficient airspeed it no longer has sufficient energy to remain laminar all the way to the trailing edge. As a result, boundary-layer separation (turbulent airflow) begins on the wing; this aft point of detachment progresses forward on the wing as the resultant aerodynamic stall deepens.
3. Fly-by-wire jet transports have a programmed yaw-damper function in their computerized flight-control systems rather than a discrete yaw-damper system.
8 FLIGHT CONTROLS: The Chariot’s Reins
1. Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, The Invention of the Aeroplane, 1799–1909 (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), xiv.
2. Paris Herald, August 9, 1908.
3. Henry S. Villard, Contact! The Story of the Early Birds (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968), 54.
4. Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, The Rebirth of Aviation (London: HMSO, 1974), 286–87.
5. Tom D. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 368.
6. The tips of the Éole’s wings could be tilted up or down but not forward or aft for effective roll control.
7. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 167.
8. Louis Mouillard, “The Empire of the Air: An Ornithological Essay on the Flight of Birds,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893, 397.
9. Orville Wright, How We Invented the Airplane: An Illustrated History, ed. Fred C. Kelly (New York: Dover, 1988), 83.
10. James Tobin, To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight (New York: Free Press, 2003), 151.
11. Orville Wright, How We Invented the Airplane, 19.
12. Amos I. Root, “Our Homes,” Gleanings in Bee Culture, January 1, 1905, 36.
13. Ibid.
14. Orville Wright, How We Invented the Airplane, 86.
15. In November 1906, Alberto Santos-Dumont added octagonal ailerons to the outer wing bays of the 14-bis; while this technically gave his machine three-axis control, in practice it remained only marginally controllable.
16. Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, The Wright Brothers: A Brief Account of Their Work, 1899–1911 (London: HMSO, 1963), 26.
9 FLIGHT DECK: Cockpits for Aerial Ships
1. Tom D. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 285.
2. Walter S. Ross, The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 105.
3.Ibid.
4. Harry F. Guggenheim, The Seven Skies (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1930), 151.
5. Ibid.
6. Lowell Thomas and Edward Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 95.
7. Ibid., 102.
8. “Blind Plane Flies 15 miles and Lands,” New York Times, September 25, 1929.
10 AERO PROPULSION: Prometheus Is Pushing
1. George Cayley, “On Aerial Navigation” (part 1 of 3), A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts 24 (1809): 164.
2. Howard S. Wolko, In the Cause of Flight: Technologists of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), 52.
3. Orville Wright, How We Invented the Airplane: An Illustrated History, ed. Fred C. Kelly (New York: Dover, 1988), 85.
4. Ibid.
5. The world’s first rotary engine was a small three-cylinder automobile