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While I totally agree that the Wright Brothers work was amazing and ground breaking, their engine was not. It weighed ~180 lbs. (was the heaviest single thing o

While I totally agree that the Wright Brothers work was amazing and ground breaking, their engine was not. It weighed ~180 lbs. (was the heaviest single thing on the airplane, heavier than either of the brothers- if you look carefully you will see that the pilot is a bit further from the centerline of the aircraft than the engine is, to balance out the weight) and produced 12 hp (the spec said <200 lbs and producing > 8hp, so it was better than the spec). Samuel Langley, working on his own engine for the failed full-sized Aerodrome #5, had an engine that weighed <210 lbs but produced 52hp, more than 4x the power. But the Wright Brothers fabulous propellers (seriously, today, with 115 years experience building airplanes, fancy computer modelling, etc., we can build a propeller out of wood about 3% better than the ones the Wright Brothers built) more than made up the difference. Because sometimes good design beats brute force.

WalterBright 8y ago
More on the Langley engine: http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Doers_and_Dreamers/Wright_Smithsonian_Controversy/Could_the_Langley_Aerodrome_have_flown.htm http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_A... The reason the Wrights built their own engine was they wrote to several engine manufacturers with a specification that they all turned down as unbuildable. So their engine was groundbreaking, though it may not have been the first. I don't know anything about the provenance of the Langley engine, except that it's clear he had to build his own engine, too. More to the point, where did the engines for the other first flight claimants come from?
elihu 8y ago
Even if the engine wasn't particularly amazing, I'm impressed that they could just ask one of their employees to build an engine and he had one working in a month and a half. > There was no manufacturer that created an engine which was as light weight as they needed. They undertook this enterprise themselves as well. The brothers asked one of their employees, Charlie Taylor, to build them an engine. Taylor built an engine in six weeks with an aluminum block to meet weight requirements. In their rough sketches given to Taylor, the brothers stated they need an engine to produce 8 horsepower. Charlie’s engine produced 12.

WalterBright 8y ago

More on the Langley engine: http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Doers_and_Dreamers/Wright_Smithsonian_Controversy/Could_the_Langley_Aerodrome_have_flown.htm http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_A... The reason the Wrights built their own engine was they wrote to several engine manufacturers with a specification that they all turned down as unbuildable. So their engine was groundbreaking, though it may not have been the first. I don't know anything about the provenance of the Langley engine, except that it's clear he had to build his own engine, too. More to the point, where did the engines for the other first flight claimants come from?

elihu 8y ago

Even if the engine wasn't particularly amazing, I'm impressed that they could just ask one of their employees to build an engine and he had one working in a month and a half. > There was no manufacturer that created an engine which was as light weight as they needed. They undertook this enterprise themselves as well. The brothers asked one of their employees, Charlie Taylor, to build them an engine. Taylor built an engine in six weeks with an aluminum block to meet weight requirements. In their rough sketches given to Taylor, the brothers stated they need an engine to produce 8 horsepower. Charlie’s engine produced 12.