American Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,?

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings - High Flight by

John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Love, Tragedy, Evolution and First in Flight

Katharine Wright Haskell?(August 19, 1874 – March 3, 1929) was the younger sister of?aviation ?pioneers?Wilbur and Orville Wright ;

with whom she worked closely. She managed the bicycle shop, helped with flight operations, writing, communications and iterated ideas with her brothers, was a high school teacher and later became an international celebrity when the whole family team went to Europe (France):

The French recognized her contributions, awarding her and her brothers the French Legion of Honor:

Katharine Wright also worked to support?women's suffrage ?efforts in?Ohio , as did Clara Bryant Ford, wife of the ragingly antisemitic Henry Ford.?

During Orville's?convalescence , Katharine wrote Wilbur saying “Brother has been suffering so much… and I am so dead tired when morning comes that I cannot hold a pen.” Orville later said that without the aid of his sister, he would have died.?

Collaborative Evolution?

Equally unrecognized as contributive to flight and American Evolution are the ideas of Sir George Caley and those of Alphonse Pénaud and Alphonse Millet-who invented the motorcycle.:

Technological Innovation and the Tragedy of Alphonse Pénaud?

In 1870, Alphonse Pénaud made the first of a series of successful model helicopters. The principle of this was not new, having been demonstrated to the French Academy of Sciences in 1784 by M. Launoy, a naturalist, and M. Bienvenu,[1] and was known by?Sir George Cayley , but it was the first use of twisted rubber to power a flying model. During the early years of the development of heavier-than-air flight, many experimenters were to use this method of propulsion for experimental models, including?Lawrence Hargrave ?and?A.V. Roe .

Penaud created ornithopters and planophores, one of which (above) inspired the Wright Brothers. He was the originator of the use of twisted rubber to power?model aircraft , and his 1871 model airplane, which he called the?Planophore, was the first aerodynamically stable flying model. He went on to design a full-sized aircraft with many advanced features.?

The Dihedral - Angles of Incidence?

Key to flight is the dihedral (angle of incidence). The principle of dihedral had been worked out by?Sir George Cayley , although at the time Pénaud was not aware of Cayley's work. The principle of a difference in the angle of incidence between the main lifting surface and the stabilizer was worked out for the first time by Pénaud.?

Les Tuileries?

The Planophore was successfully flown at the Tuileries Gardens in Paris in front of members of the Société Aéronautique on 18 August 1871, flying a distance of 131 feet (40?m) and staying in the air for 11 seconds.

Functions and Features

In 1872, Penaud produced a rubber-driven?ornithopter . Both the helicopter and the ornithopter enjoyed some success as toys. In 1873 he started collaborating with an engineer named Gauchot, and produced two designs for full-sized aircraft, the first in 1874 and the second in 1876. The 1876 aircraft was drawn in detail for the purpose of patenting the ideas it incorporated, and had many remarkably advanced features, including electrically operated?elevators , a fully enclosed cabin for the pilot, a?retractable undercarriage , and the use of a pair of propellers rotating in opposite directions to eliminate the?torque ?reaction caused by a single propeller.

Tragedy?

Alphonse Pénaud was unable to obtain any financial backing for his ambitious design and committed suicide on 22 October 1880, aged 30.

*John Gillespie Magee Jr.?

Continued?