Early Flight Development

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Carl Schwamberger
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Re: Early Flight Development

#16

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 22 Mar 2014, 14:10

phylo_roadking wrote:P.S....
that the others were still having trouble getting off the ground for the next 4-5 years. It is not until after 1908 the other are able to emulate the Wrights ability in the air.
...can I ask - where did this date come from?
Wrights sold licenses from that year. Dumont was the first to purchase in 1908. He distributed licenses to other French manufactors.
phylo_roadking wrote:Alberto Santos-Dumont in 1906, Louis Bleriot in 1907, Gabriel Voisin's biplane in 1907, AV Roe in 1907....
Dumont managed a 21 second flight tin 1906, 220 meters straight line. Subsequent models and flights managed similar straight line distances & times. Bleriots 1907 flights managed 500 meters with one flight including a 180 degree turn at the end of the year. In 1908 he scrapped that model and built a entirely new design. Voisin built the aircraft Bleriot tested 1906 & 1906. In January 1908 his newest deisgn managed a one kilometer closed course. Roe managed a few hundred meters straight line in 1907 with a rudderless machine in 1907. In 1908 he got a couple more flights

By 1905 the Wright flyers were routinely flying multi kilometer flights with repeated turns. The longest that year recorded at 39 kilometers in 39 minutes.

What I had pointed out to me is the original patent did not cover 'wing warping' control' only, but refered to control at the outer edges of the wings in general. That is the Wrights understood there were other, perhaps better mechanical methods for achieving the control they had achieved in their first powered flyer. I dont know if they had anything specific on paper or in models for their wind tunnel.
phylo_roadking wrote:Carl - I don't think they did. What they DID discover was the intimate connection between controlling roll and yaw simultaneously I.E. they did a lot of work on "control" and their way of how to achieve it...but not via ailerons. They did use hinged elevators - on the Flyer's canard - and the rudders were hinged...but wingwarping was always their path to controlling roll and yaw.
Yeah they did. Their law suite vs Glen Curtis revolved around his use of hinged alerons. The patent court unpheld the Wrights claim. In 1917 the US government effectively took control of Wrights patent and distributed license to the other manufactors in order to unstick war production. The Wright patent was wrtiten to cover the most effective methods of controling Yaw & Roll. Dumont judged it better to pay for a license rather than thry to make a case in the courts

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phylo_roadking
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Re: Early Flight Development

#17

Post by phylo_roadking » 22 Mar 2014, 20:05

What I had pointed out to me is the original patent did not cover 'wing warping' control' only, but refered to control at the outer edges of the wings in general. That is the Wrights understood there were other, perhaps better mechanical methods for achieving the control they had achieved in their first powered flyer. I dont know if they had anything specific on paper or in models for their wind tunnel.
..I don`t think they did. What they DID discover was the intimate connection between controlling roll and yaw simultaneously I.E. they did a lot of work on "control" and their way of how to achieve it...but not via ailerons. They did use hinged elevators - on the Flyer's canard - and the rudders were hinged...but wingwarping was always their path to controlling roll and yaw.
Yeah they did. Their law suite vs Glen Curtis revolved around his use of hinged alerons. The patent court unpheld the Wrights claim. In 1917 the US government effectively took control of Wrights patent and distributed license to the other manufactors in order to unstick war production. The Wright patent was wrtiten to cover the most effective methods of controling Yaw & Roll. Dumont judged it better to pay for a license rather than thry to make a case in the courts
The Wright Bros.-Curtiss "Patent War" is legendary...because it stunted he development of aviation in the US for nearly a decade! With respect to the question asked back up the thread a bit, it`s actually NOT clear that their early wind tunnel and gliding work involved the use of ailerons at all. Their patent....applied for in 1904 but not issued until 1906...diescibed and applied to the whole Flyer as a piece and the methods of controlling roll and yaw in that aircraft by wingwarping; it did not actually mention ailerons or moveable surfaces...ALL it said was that "control" could be achieved by "other means"....

Their winning the court judgement wasn`t actually about ailerons....it was that Curtiss controlled roll and yaw! Yes, it`s pretty obvious to us that to do so he needed SOME way of changing the attitude of the outer sections of wing surface to achieve that control -but whether it had been by moveable surfaces, ailerons, or wingwarping - the court judged in favour of the Wrights because he controlled it! Not because of the way he controlled it. :lol: Only in litigation....! :roll:

As for licensing their patent in Europe - the story, as with anything to do with the Wrights! - is far more complicated; what they did was set up licensed companies IN European countries... so that they could chase down what they viewed as patent infringements on a country-by-country basis It didn`t work out as they planned; they won a partial victory in France, but lost in Germany - it turned out both Wilbur Wright and Octave Chanute had referred to controlling an aircraft by changing the atitude of portions of the wing surfaces in public speeches in 1903 and 1901 respectively -LONG before their patent was granted...

Santos-Dumont was already doing his own research into moveable surfaces to control roll and yaw when the Wrights got their patent; as with the Curtiss judgement, he paid the license to cover the control aspect....not the use of ailerons...because the patent would, as a result of the wording and the court judgement in the U.S., have applied to ANY way of doing it - even HIS moveable surfaces work!

It was very sharp business practice, not unlike many examples today....starting companies and building them up ONLY to sell them at a profit over start-up costs, registering all possible permutations of potential domain names, etc., etc.....

One thing that came to light as a result of the Patent War, and several years subsequently, was that an Englishman, one Matthew Boulton, had registered a patent on ailerons in 1868! The "inventing" of the aileron in the first decade of the 20th century was actually a RE-inventing of something patented 40 years before!

Anyway - Glen Curtiss did the actual (re-) inventing of the aileron - and he, not the Wrights, is actually credited with th first kilometre-plus flight in the U.S....because all those kilometre-plus flights by the Wrights were carried out without any form of official third-party observation!
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phylo_roadking
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Re: Early Flight Development

#18

Post by phylo_roadking » 22 Mar 2014, 20:23

As to the initial question of why the apparent "delay", and are you missing something?...well, yes; first of all, there was the whole issue as mentioned above of the Wrights` propensity for "offensive" litigation putting a lot of early designers off...

But there`s the whole aspect of two different evolutionary paths to be considered; from Day One, Santos-Dumont and the other European developers and designers were working with undercarriages, whether wheeled or skid-and-wheeled. They were working on aircraft that could take off, fly and land under their own power and equipment (for want of a better word) because THAT was what the early sponsored aviation prizes and competitions in Europe specified ;) The Wright Flyer was seriously compromised not only by having no undercarriage and needing its launching rail...but also in its first couple of incarnations needing its dropweight and pulley "assist" to get into the air. And not only did the European prizes specifications list the use of an undercarriage - they ALSO specified aircraft getting into the air under their OWN power...I.E. no "assist"!

Thus European deisgners and pioneers were having to look at and develop several other technologies that had to go hand-in-hand with simply flying....safe and suitably-strong undercarriages, powerful enough engines etc. The Wrights didn`t have a wheeled undercarriage until 1910...

(I`m tempted here to note that the Wrights` attitude did them no favours; not only did their Patent War put many budding designer-aviators off...it stunted cooperation and idea-sharing between those that WERE working in the U.S.! Europe was very different; the whole enterprise had elements of cooperation to joint ends and technology-sharing not unlike the early Linux community in computing! Santos-Dumont for example published full and detailed plans of his later, successful Demoiselle aeroplane in the press specifically for others to freely copy and improve on...and he even published them in the U.S.! Can you seriously imagine Curtiss or the Wrights doing THAT???)
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...

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