How Did the Airplane Arrive?

HOW did designers finally achieve success with heavier-than-air flying machines? They turned their attention back to the true masters of flight—birds. In 1889 a German engineer named Otto Lilienthal, inspired by the flight habits of storks, published “Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation.” Two years later he built his first simple glider. In 1896, after about 2,000 glider flights, Lilienthal was killed while practicing with a monoplane. Octave Chanute, a French-born American engineer, elaborated on Lilienthal’s design and developed a double-winged glider that again represented a significant advance in the design of a heavier-than-air flying machine.

Enter the Wright brothers. Proprietors of a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A., Orville and Wilbur Wright began their first gliding experiments in 1900, building on the accomplishments of Lilienthal and Chanute. The Wrights worked slowly and methodically over the next three years, making repeated experimental flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They developed new designs with the aid of wind tunnels, the first of which they made for themselves from a laundry starch box. For their first powered flight, they built their own four-cylinder, 12-horsepower engine and mounted it on the lower wing of a new plane. The engine powered two wooden propellers, one on each side of the plane’s rear rudder.

On December 14, 1903, the Wrights’ new invention rose off its wooden launching track for the first time—and stayed aloft for three and a half seconds! Three days later the brothers flew the machine again. Eventually it remained airborne for nearly a full minute and covered a distance of 853 [260 m] feet. The airplane was a success.a

Surprisingly, this landmark accomplishment was given little attention by the rest of the world. When The New York Times finally carried a story about the Wright brothers in January 1906, it said that their “flying machine” had been developed in strict secrecy and that the brothers had obtained only “some slight success in flying through the air” in 1903. In reality, Orville had sent a telegram to his father on the very night of the historic flight, urging him to inform the press. However, only three newspapers in the United States bothered to publish the story at that time.

No Commercial Future for Flying Machines?

The world in general was skeptical of aviation in its early years. Even Chanute, one of aviation’s noteworthy pioneers, predicted in 1910: “In the opinion of competent experts it is idle to look for a commercial future for the flying machine. There is, and always will be, a limit to its carrying capacity which will prohibit its employment for passengers or freight.”

Nevertheless, aviation technology advanced rapidly in the years following the Wrights’ first flights. Within five years the brothers had built a two-person biplane that could speed along at 44 miles [71 km] per hour and climb to an altitude of 140 feet [43 m]. In 1911 the first U.S. transcontinental airplane crossing was made; the trip from New York to California took about 49 days! During World War I, aircraft speeds were pushed from 60 miles per hour [100 kph] to over 145 miles per hour [230 kph]. Altitude records soon topped 30,000 feet [9,000 m].

Aviation records continued to grab headlines in the 1920’s. Two American army officers made the first nonstop flight across the United States in 1923, journeying from coast to coast in less than 27 hours. Four years later Charles A. Lindbergh won instant fame by flying nonstop from New York to Paris in 33 hours and 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, the fledgling commercial airlines were starting to attract customers. By the end of 1939, air travel had caught on to the point that U.S. airlines were serving nearly three million passengers annually. The standard airliner of the late 1930’s, the DC-3, carried just 21 passengers at a cruising speed of 170 miles per hour [270 kph]; but after World War II, commercial airplanes grew much larger and more powerful, achieving cruising speeds of over 300 miles per hour [480 kph]. The British introduced commercial turbojet service in 1952. And jumbo jets, such as the 400-seat Boeing 747, made their debut in 1970.

Another breakthrough came in 1976 when a team of British and French engineers introduced the Concorde, a delta-winged jetliner capable of carrying 100 passengers at twice the speed of sound—more than 1,400 miles per hour [2,300 kph]. But steep operating costs have limited the widespread use of commercial supersonic planes.

Shaping the World

Even if you have never flown in an airplane, your life has probably been shaped by these rapid technological advances. Airfreight operations span the globe; often, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the machinery we use at work or at home have been flown in from across the ocean or across a continent. Letters and packages are whisked from country to country by means of airmail. Businesses rely heavily on courier services by plane to conduct daily transactions. The goods and services available to us and the prices we pay for them have all been influenced by man’s ability to fly.

Aviation has also generated profound social changes. Without a doubt, the world has shrunk, thanks to aviation. Within a few hours, you can be almost anywhere in the world—if you can afford it. News travels fast, and so do people.

The Price of Progress

But such progress has come at a price. With air traffic increasing, some fear that the skies are becoming more dangerous. Each year crashes involving private and commercial planes take many lives. “Under competitive pressures, many airlines are forgoing the extra margins of safety that they maintained routinely when they could pass the extra costs on to customers,” says Fortune magazine. The Federal Aviation Administration, charged with the task of ensuring air safety in the United States, is “underfunded, undermanned, and badly managed,” the magazine reported.

At the same time, a growing number of environmentalists are alarmed by increases in air and noise pollution that result from heavier jet traffic. Dealing with concerns over noise problems is “among the more divisive issues in world civil aviation,” said the magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology.

These problems are compounded by the fact that air fleets are getting older: In 1990, 1 of every 4 U.S. airliners was found to be more than 20 years old, and a third of them had been used beyond their prescribed “objectives for useful life” as originally set by the manufacturer.

Thus, aeronautical engineers are now faced with tremendous challenges. They must develop safer and less expensive ways to carry more passengers, even as costs escalate and environmental concerns increase.

Some solutions for cutting costs have already begun to emerge. Jim Erickson, writing in Asiaweek, says that the Franco-British team of Aerospatiale and British Aerospace plan to develop a plane that can carry up to 300 passengers at twice the speed of sound. Costs and fuel consumption per passenger will be lower. And in response to the overcrowded traffic conditions at many airports, some industry visionaries have proposed a new generation of giant commuter helicopters—each capable of carrying 100 passengers. These aircraft, they believe, could someday handle much of the short-haul air traffic now carried by conventional fixed-wing aircraft.

Will mammoth helicopters and supersonic planes truly meet the urgent needs of the airline industry in the years to come? Only time will tell as man presses on in his quest to ‘open the skies’ to human flight.

[Footnote]

[Picture on page 6]

Otto Lilienthal, about 1891

[Credit Line]

Library of Congress/Corbis

[Pictures on page 6, 7]

Charles A. Lindbergh arriving in London after his transatlantic flight to Paris, in 1927

[Credit Line]

Corbis-Bettmann

[Picture on page 7]

Sopwith Camel, in 1917

[Credit Line]

Museum of Flight/Corbis

[Picture on page 7]

DC-3, in 1935

[Credit Line]

Photograph courtesy of Boeing Aircraft Company

[Picture on page 7]

Sikorsky S-43 flying boat, in 1937

[Picture on page 8]

Coast Guard rescue helicopter

[Picture on page 8]

The acrobatic Pitts, Samson replica

[Picture on page 8, 9]

The Concorde began scheduled flights in 1976

[Picture on page 8, 9]

The Airbus A300

[Picture on page 9]

Upon reentry, the space shuttle becomes a high-speed glider

[Picture on page 9]

“Rutan VariEze,” 1978