Tuesday, March 23, 2021

The Wright Brothers, operating on a showstring budget to invent the airplane, without any engineering to build on, had to invent the engineering, the test cell wind tunnel, and the principles and mathmatics of lift, and all sort of other stuff with what was available in the bike shop.

They built a wind tunnel, the second in America. (The first was built by Alfred Zahm.) Over the winter of 1901-1902, they tested over 200 wing shapes to find the most promising, then thoroughly investigated about 45 shapes to determine the very best. To do this, they built two instruments for their wind tunnel, one to measure lift and another to measure the ratio of lift to drag with old wheel spoke wires and used hacksaw blades to create

https://www.wright-brothers.org/Adventure_Wing/Hangar/1901_Wind_Tunnel/1901_Wind_Tunnel.htm

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2 comments:

  1. francisco da costa7:27 PM

    but really who got off the ground for real, and it was documented, it was Santos dumont with his own wheels, and not in a catapult

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    1. Jesse9:33 PM

      yeah, I know... I posted about it years ago. You have read through the archives to see that I've posted about 46,500 different things, haven't you? If there's something to know about who did what, when, or first, I've probably posted about it already, here, see for yourself https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/02/in-early-marvelous-days-of-heavier-than.html

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