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Re: [Phys-l] flying machine patent +- physics



On 05/22/2009 01:06 PM, Gary Karshner wrote:

Thanks for the nice reference to how air foils work.

:-)

I tried to
find the Wright Brother's original patent to see if I could find how they
thought wings worked, but my browser would not open the files.


If you're looking for physics info and fluid dynamics info, that's
the wrong place to look. The Wright brothers were amazingly skilled
engineers, but they were not physicists. They were not fluid
dynamicists.

Consider the contrasts:
-- atomic physics, solid-state physics, crystallography ... metallurgy
of the "heat it and beat it" school.
-- Similarly we have mathematics, physics, fluid dynamics theory ...
practical aeronautical engineering ... piloting.

where each instance of "..." represents a very large gap.

Unless I'm missing something, the only statement about physics or theory
in the 1903 "Flying Machine" patent is so very incomplete and misleading
as to be wrong for all practical purposes ("contact between the air and
the under surfaces ...").
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT821393&id=h5NWAAAAEBAJ&dq=821,393

In the book _How We Invented the Airplane_ Orville mentions a dozen
people whose work inspired or informed them, but they are all IIRC
from the empirical heat-it-and-beat-it school (Cayley, Lillienthal,
Chanute, ...) to the exclusion of the math and physics school (Euler,
Bernoulli, Rayleigh ...). There was some major theoretical work going
on contemporaneously (Kutta 1902, Zhukovski 1905) but I very much
doubt the WB knew of this in 1903, and also doubt that they had the
mathematical chops to deal with it. Conformal transformations? Not
their style. Building a wind tunnel, possibly the first wind tunnel
in the new world? That's more their style.

===================

The Wright brothers did not invent aerodynamics or invent wings. They did
not try to patent aerodynamics or wings. The theory had been around for
centuries already (Bernoulli's principle dates from 1738) and people had
been building kites and gliders for centuries also.

To make a successful airplane, they had to do a hundred little things right,
including doing many of them just a little bit better than anybody else.

Meanwhile (!) the area where they really excelled was their mastery of
_control_ including turning. This was the main claim of the patent, and
rightfully so.
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT821393&id=h5NWAAAAEBAJ&dq=821,393