June 15, 2024 @ 10:00 EDT
Site Visit #157
It’s the perfect script for a Hollywood “feel good” movie. Huge corporation or the government give vast amounts of money to “experts” for them to solve some problem or develop some new technology. Meanwhile, the hero of the movie works on the same problem in his garage with no budget, no formal education in the subject, and continued ridicule by friends and neighbors.
In the movie, of course the lone protagonist ends up beating the well-funded experts to a solution. Does that really ever happen in real life.
At Dayton Aviation Heritage NHS, we find that the answer is “yes”!
Most of us learned at a young age that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. We did not learn the details. Several groups, mostly well-funded, were actively trying to build a machine capable of powered flight. The U.S. Army gave $50,000 to Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian so he could create an airplane. None of them were successful.
Meanwhile, at a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, two brothers just decided one day that they would build such a craft. They had built printing presses in an earlier career, and now built bicycles. They had no college education and certainly no engineering education, so why not?!?
What they had was a detailed methodology and the ability to study and learn from prior attempts. They built one of the first wind tunnels to test wing design – something all the well-financed groups failed to do. Their wind tunnel showed that all current “data” on expected wing performance was off – by up to 20%. They used this knowledge to their advantage as they built wings for their test models.
On that famed day in December, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, after a few failed attempts, their latest model lifted off of the ground and flew for 120 feet. The final test on that day flew 852 feet. They proved that powered flight was possible, but their test model was not practical. Able to fly for up to 800 feet was not a great selling point.
Lost in the history books was their return to Dayton and subsequent work over the next two years. Using a large field northeast of Dayton called Huffman Prairie, the brothers set up a shed and workshop. There were many crashes and disappointments as they seemed unable to tweak the model for sustained flight.
In 1905, they made some major changes to the plane’s design, resulting in a sustained 39 minute flight around the prairie in October. Convinced that they had mastered the design, they stopped flying (for the time) and started filing patents.
Huffman Prairie remains much as it did 120 years ago. It can be reached on the grounds of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The park visitor center is some 20 minutes’ drive to the west, located next to one of the Wright Brothers’ cycle shops. The shop moved five times, and this is the only one remaining in its original location. They did not work on their airplanes while at this location and the shop where most of the aviation work was performed was bought by Henry Ford and moved to Michigan.
The video at the visitor center was well done and worth a watch. The center itself has a few displays as did the cycle shop. The main focus of this site is the history and information provided rather than the actual buildings, though seeing Huffman Prairie and trying to imagine Orville flying circles around it was worth while.
The site also honors poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who called Dayton home. He has no involvement in the aviation aspect of the park, but his home is nearby, owned by the Park Service and opened on a limited basis for tours.
Our movie comes to an end with the underdogs winning. Everyone says “nice movie but it could never happen”. Except it did for two determined bicycle repair men in Dayton, Ohio.
Steve
