Dayton, OH is considered the home of aviation and "Wrightfully" so. While the first sustained flight may have occurred at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers did all of the design and experimentation inside their bicycle shop in Dayton. They started out as printers, then dabbled in repairing bicycles when that craze began in the late-1800s, ultimately designing and selling their own cycles.
But the allure of flight got hold of them and they tinkered, designed, practiced, tested and built until they had their first glider in 1902. It didn't perform as they expected and they suspected the flight dynamics calculations they had been relying upon. So they built their own wind tunnel, did their own measurements, and came up with calculations still in use today.
Add a small engine built by an employee in their bike shop and voila ... the Flyer III ended up with sustained flights up to 59 minutes ... might have been longer, but they didn't top off the 1 gallon fuel tank that day.
A belt-driven wind tunnel ... of course.
The actual Wright Flyer III with about 80% original parts!
Some of the original parts ... the Flyer III weighed 112 lbs without fuel or pilot. The cotton canvas material was sewn on a small household machine, similar to some in Daphne's collection.
When they solved wing warping - having the wings 'warp' when banking into a turn, they solved flight. While they used handles to control the elevators and rudder, the pilot lay on a saddle which slid from side-to-side, feathering the wing ends to accommodate the turns.
Cool stuff - touching history again.
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