Flight Mechanics of the Wright Aircraft 1903-1912

Abstract

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the Wright Brothers' program to invent and commercialize the airplane is their decision in 1900 to use their novel canard configuration, and to persist with that geometry until 1910 despite the known deficiency that the aircraft were unstable in pitch. The reasons for their initial choice are well-known. Several studies in the part twenty years have proven beyond doubt that the Wrights did not intentionally make their canards unstable. The pitch instability of their machine was an unwitting byproduct of their design chosen partly out of fear of the conventional design and partly (they reasoned) for more positive control. With their great emphasis on control, the Wrights were able to develop a successful aircraft, albeit difficult to fly additionally because the 1903 aircraft also possessed a fast spiral instability. A canard design is not necessarily unstable, but owing chiefly to their airfoil, and an unfortunate fore-and-aft mass distribution, the Wright canards were all unstable. Though easier to fly, their 1909 aircraft was more unstable than the famous 1903 Flyer and the Brothers did not have a stable design until they finally adopted a conventional aft horizontal tail in 1910. Successful control of the canard aircraft depended heavily on large damping-in-pitch. The purpose of this paper is to apply modern analysis of flight mechanics to trace the detailed flying characteristics of their powered aircraft from 1903 to 1910 when they finally gave up the canard. Its a story in which technology, stubborness and commercialization are intimately mingled; we are concerned here only with the technology.