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Hi, I'm Jennifer Pulley, and welcome to NASA Connect, the show that connects you to math,

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science, technology, and NASA.

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I'm here at the Wright Brothers National Memorial on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

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This is where Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first airplane 100 years ago.

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I've read that there are many inventors besides the Wright Brothers trying to invent the airplane.

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Oh yeah, it's true.

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Many famous inventors, including Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, machine gun inventor

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Kieran Maxson, and Samuel Langley, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had all attempted

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to build flying machines.

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My teacher said that the Wright Brothers didn't have high school diplomas and didn't have

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a lot of money to work with.

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Is that true?

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They were both good students in school, and Wilbur completed all the courses he needed

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to in order to graduate high school.

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He just never picked up his degree.

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Both Wilbur and Orville loved to read outside the classroom.

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And you're right, they really didn't have a lot of money to work with.

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But the Wright Brothers figured out how to conduct their experiments without spending

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a lot of money.

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They were able to support all their experiments through their day jobs, their small bicycle

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shop.

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So how come it was the Wright Brothers who invented the airplane?

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You know, that's a good question.

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Why was it that these two little-known bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, succeeded?

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There are so many other famous and successful inventors had failed.

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Well, to help find the answer to that question, we spoke with Dr. Tom Crouch, senior curator

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of the Division of Aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum.

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Dr. Crouch, what was the Wright Brothers' secret to success?

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Jennifer, they were brilliant, intuitive engineers.

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In order to invent the airplane, they had to come up with a process of invention, a

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way to solve really difficult technical problems.

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Today, we call it the engineering method.

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The first thing that the Wright Brothers did correctly was to define the problem.

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The Wright Brothers studied the experiments of other inventors and quickly realized that

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many of them were missing the true problem.

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The Wright Brothers saw that the true problem would be maintaining balance and control in

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their machine.

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Many other experimenters were convinced that an airplane could only be successful if it

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relied on some method of automatic stability.

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They thought it would be impossible for a pilot to react quickly enough to all of the

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changes that might happen to an airplane in flight.

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They thought that it would be like balancing on the head of a pin, which is impossible

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to do.

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The Wright Brothers saw things differently.

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They were bicycle builders and bicycle writers, and they drew on that experience when they

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thought about controlling an airplane.

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Imagine that you're trying to describe how you ride a bicycle to a Martian or to someone

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who's never seen one.

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You might talk about riding downhill on a tiny seat, perched atop two very narrow spinning

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tires, in addition to which you have these pedals you're going to have to work and a

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handlebar to steer with, and you're going to have to coordinate all of that at the same

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time.

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You know, I can see how the person you were talking to would think they'd have to be the

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world's greatest acrobat to ride something like that.

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That's right, but the Wright Brothers knew that you internalized the business of riding

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a bicycle, and they also knew that the same thing would happen with an airplane.

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You would learn to fly an airplane and do it automatically.

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So the Wright Brothers then correctly defined the problem.

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Yes, they knew that control was the problem, so the Wright Brothers observed the movements

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of the soaring birds to see if they could figure out how they controlled themselves

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in the air.

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They thought they detected subtle ways that soaring birds altered their wings to maintain

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balance, but the Wrights were stumped as to how they could duplicate the organic movements

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of a bird's wing in a very mechanical flying machine.

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Which brings us to the next step in the engineering method, proposed solutions.

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Tom, what solutions did the Wright Brothers propose?

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They really struggled with how they could control the geometry of their wing to control

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the motion of the flying machine, until one day, Wilbur was in the bicycle shop and a

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customer came in and asked for a bicycle tube for his tire, and Wilbur took it out in a

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box just like this one, and he was fiddling with the box, standing there talking, and

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it suddenly occurred to him that the answer to their problem was right in his hand.

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Wilbur noticed that if he put the thumb and forefinger of one hand on these two diagonal

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corners, and the thumb and forefinger of the other hand on the opposite diagonal corners,

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that he could squeeze the box back and forth.

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He noticed that the box twisted.

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In his mind, Wilbur pictured the top and bottom of the box as the wings of a biplane.

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With a simple system of cables, he could draw the corners together, turning one set of wingtips

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up in the wind, and the other set of wingtips down.

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He realized in this way he could control the shape of his wings and would be able to roll

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his aircraft in the sky.

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Okay, so now the Wright Brothers have a proposed solution, warp their biplane wings.

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Using the engineering method, the next step would be to evaluate their solution using

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tests and prototypes.

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In other words, the Wright Brothers needed to put their wing warping theory to the test.

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That's right, Jennifer.

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They didn't begin by building a powered flying machine.

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They had to start by building and testing prototypes.

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And they started with this small biplane kite.

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Watch how this prototype flies.

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Notice when you pull on the opposite strings, the kite rolls to the left and right.

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The wing twisting concept Wilbur proposed from the inner tube box actually worked in

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his prototype kite.

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So from the success of their kite, the Wright Brothers built the first powered airplane.

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Now at first, they built a series of three gliders over three years.

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And what they learned helped them to build the world's first powered airplane.

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Okay, that leads us to the final step in the engineering method, select and refine the

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best solution.