UP IN THE AIR: THE STORY OF THE WRIGHT BROTHERS
By BRIAN FLOCA
Posted: 4:10 am
July 15, 2008
STORY SO FAR: Wilbur Wright is experimenting with kites and gliders. Needing advice, he has sent a letter to the well-known engineer Octave Chanute.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Octave Chanute
May-September 1900
"You look like you found something," Orville said.
Wilbur, standing at the bike shop's counter, had been going through the day's mail. Now he had stopped. He was studying one envelope in particular.
"It's from Octave Chanute," said Wilbur. He was surprised to receive a response so quickly. In truth, he was a little surprised to receive one at all; Wilbur was a bicycle mechanic who built kites in his spare time. Octave Chanute knew as much about flight as anyone in the world.
As a young man, Chanute became a well-known engineer by designing railroads, bridges, and stockyards. At first he hid his interest in mechanical flight as if it were a bad habit he was trying to kick; "aeronautical engineering," everyone knew, was just a batch of crackpot theories. Finally, though, Chanute's curiosity grew greater than his fear of embarrassment. He directed all of his training as an engineer toward the question of how a flying machine would work. Chanute conducted experiments, published articles, and organized conferences. He became the leading expert on mechanical flight.
Wilbur opened the envelope. "I have your very interesting letter of the 13th," Chanute began, "and am quite in sympathy with your proposal to experiment…" Chanute got right to business. He enclosed some articles, recommended others, and urged Wilbur on.
Chanute's encouragement energized Wilbur. Soon, letter after letter was moving between Wilbur, in Dayton, and Chanute, in Chicago. Wilbur asked what kind of spruce would be best to use for ribs in the wing; Chanute recommended "sapwood, clear, straight-grained, and thoroughly seasoned." Wilbur wondered what varnish was best for coating the fabric of the wings, to make them airtight; Chanute sent a recipe. Wilbur described his plan to build a tower and attach his glider to it; Chanute thought that a dangerous idea. "I have preferred preliminary learning on a sand hill," he wrote, "and trying ambitious feats over water."
In the workshop above the bike shop, Wilbur began constructing his glider. Occasionally Orville would come up from the showroom to check on his brother's progress.
"It will be a biplane machine," Wilbur told him. "Like the kite. But bigger, of course. According to the equation Lilienthal published, the wings need about two hundred square feet of surface area to fly in a fifteen-mile-per-hour wind. I could have made the wings smaller, but that's the fastest wind in which I think I ought to fly."
"It's a reasonable speed," Orville said.
