They were the first to achieve controlled, powered flight.
An overlooked, but crucial, part of their achievement is they developed the first mathematical theory of propellers. It enabled designs that were 90% efficient, about double that of other experimenters.
This, of course, nearly doubled the effective horsepower of their engine.
This is a major reason why the other pretenders to first flight failed. They simply didn't have the power/weight needed to fly, and the Wrights did.
Where the Wrights goofed was in putting the elevator in front. They did this for good reason (hoping it would make it easier to recover from a stall). Unfortunately, it caused severe pitch instability making it hard to control and the Wrights were lucky to live through early flights.
I recall reading somewhere that most of the Wright's competitors (maybe not Lillenthal) imagined flying to be like boating, but the Wrights realized that it would require more-or-less continuous input from the pilot to stay in control. I wonder if their profession as manufacturers of bicycles predisposed them to this insight.
[1] https://www.flyingmag.com/photo-gallery/photos/awesome-airpl...
You're not wrong but nobody knew this in 190x nor could it have been reliably predicted because most of our knowledge about how low pressure gasses flow over surfaces in unconstrained environments (i.e. the atmosphere) comes from aviation which didn't yet exist in 190x.
The Wrights clearly didn't. Around 1979 a Caltech scientist did a study on it, and determined that the flights of the 1903 Flyer went about as far as they could have due to the instability. At the 100th anniversary, a couple of exacting flying replicas were built, and flew about the same distance.
I'm not sure about this, but the mathematics of stability and control theory had not been invented at the time. These theories were developed alongside electronics.
However, it was still known that one puts the feathers on the back of the arrow, not the front. Just try shooting an arrow with the feathers on the front. It promptly turns around so the feathers are at the back.
Wright got a lot of things right.
They believed in flying skill.. that we must learn how to fly like a bird learning how to fly their whole life.
They were also lucky with no major injury (at least one of the brothers wasn't) and had some family wealth IIRC.
Edison was not only a patent troll, but was besieged by other patent trolls. He spent much of his career in court defending his patents and trying to overturn others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal
This is important because, for example they did not invent ailerons, but blended the wing and constant litigation from their patents block all progress in aviation in the US for a long time because they wanted to take possession of the inventions others have created(like ailerons) and became a monopoly.
Only the war and the US gobertment intervening did stop the blocking.
1. first mathematical propeller theory combining blade element theory with momentum theory, producing 90% efficient propellers
2. first lightweight aviation engine
3. first 3-axis control system
4. first use of wind tunnel to evaluate wing design of area, aspect ratio, airfoil section and tip shape
5. first research and development program using a series of prototypes to test each feature
6. correctly identifying that control was the primary problem
7. correctly identifying that an airplane must bank in order to turn
8. correctly identifying "adverse yaw" and the rudder as solution
So not only did the Wright Brothers achieve the first controlled powered flight on Earth, but in a real way they also took part in the first flight on Mars.
They formed their partnership on Watt's improvement over Newcomen's steam engine, used to drain water from mines. They then expanded to other applications for steam engines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_and_Watt
https://evrenatlasi.org/en/2019/09/who-is-james-watt-inventi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darl_McBride
I wonder if Danny McBride is any relation...
- built one of the first wind tunnels, and published the most accurate performance data in the world:
https://wright.nasa.gov/airplane/tunnel.html
https://wright.nasa.gov/airplane/results.html
- built one of the first aero engines, and first using aluminum:
https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/onlin...
The above items are simply amazing, and shows how the Wright Brothers couldn't be denied. (You can see later "aero engines" in the Hiller Museum in San Carlos (near SF) that can't even carry their own weight.)
It's true that the brothers weren't killed while flying, but Orville was seriously injured crashing in 1908, and his passenger died from a head injury.
Source: commercially-rated pilot, study aerodynamics.
