The Prodigy that made Human Fly:
Invention of Airplane
As children, we all waved at the airplane and presumed ourselves flying in the splendid creation. Today we are going to learn about the invention that not only provided a new way of travel but also changed the trade and warfare, the Aeroplane.
Now you all must be thinking everyone knows who invented the airplane but every significant event is not just a one day work. There's a lot more work, effort, and people behind it. So let's sail our ship to know more about the invention of the airplane.
Humans have always been overwhelmed by the beautiful gift birds are provided with, flight. And as the brilliant creatures of the world, we always wanted to do so. Many attempts had been made in the direction, to let humans experience the joy of flying. The basic idea we got, in the earlier times, was the possession of wings in order to fly. So the attachment of artificial wings on arms was done.
Gliders were made, the first-ever successful glider flight was done by German aviator Otto Lilienthal with his self-made glider. But he died in a crash of his glider in 1896. Some people who wanted to ensure safety, first created machines to fly without any man on it. Like Samuel Langley, who succeeded in creating short flights with his unmanned aircraft powered by a steam engine in 1896.
But we all know the first airplane was created by Wright Brothers. How did they do that? Orville and Wilbur Wright, two brothers in the family of 9 members with 7 siblings including them. Their father, Milton Wright, used to travel a lot and brought toys whenever he came back home. One time he gifted them a rubber band toy helicopter, which sparked their interest in flight. Before becoming the inventors to successfully create and fly the airplane, they did various jobs like Orville started a printing press with the help of Wilbur but that was a worthless effort. After that, they started a shop selling and repairing bicycles. But the flicker for flight and aviation was still there.
One day they saw how the birds change it’s direction while flying by using its wings. So Wilbur created a kite to examine if they could do it or not and it turned out that the experiment was successful. With that success, in 1900 they created an aircraft and flew it like the kite, with strings. The aircraft was not able to fly. The Wright brothers realized that they need the power to make the aircraft flow in the air. In 1902, they created a wind tunnel for power and added it to the aircraft which gave better results but still was not able to fly properly in the air. They didn’t know how to overcome the problem of gravity.
So they used a scientific approach to solve that by using Bernoulli’s theorem and Newton’s third law. Bernoulli’s theorem states the velocity of a fluid increases at a narrower section and pressure there decreases. So Wright brothers modified the shape of the wing in the aircraft. So when air moved along the narrow part of the wing it’s speed increases and pressure decreases. Since the pressure above the wing was low as compared to the pressure below it, the lift had created.
Also, the high velocity at the edge of the wing increased the downward force. So by Newton’s third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, an equal upward force came in play. By using this they prevailed over the gravity. In 1903, they had done all the modifications and were ready to fly the aircraft. They also added propellers and gasoline engines to the aircraft and named it the Wright Flyer. So on December 17th, 1903 Orville piloted the Wright Flyer for the first time and created a history by flying the aircraft for 12 seconds, covering 120 feet and a lift of 10 feet, on the beaches of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.
They flew the aircraft various times on that day and the best flight of the Wright Flyer, piloted by Wilbur this time, flying time of 59 seconds covering 2556 feet. And that’s how the first historic and remarkable event of flight of airplane took place. So the curiosity of various people and the effort of the Wright brothers made air travel possible. So never let the light of curiosity in you blow and to know your curiosity level, click here to discover your curiosity type.
