Wilbur and Orville Wright ran a bicycle repair shop in Dayton, Ohio USA but set to designing and building the first aeroplane in their spare time working in their shed!
So how did two hobbyists manage to achieve what many well funded, full time, industry backed inventors had failed to achieve?
They collected the existing knowledge on what experiments and tests had already been carried out then studied the results.
They soon realised that many thousands of hours and dollars were being spent for very little time in the air – 5000 hours of design & build time for 5 seconds air time was typical.
They identified 3 critical knowledge areas:
- construction of the sustaining wings
- generation and application of power
- balancing and steering of the machine
Between 1900 and June 1903 the brothers:
Devised
Discovered
They conducted and meticulously recorded extensive experiments.
These often challenged and proved wrong the existing ‘knowledge’ and wisdom of the time.
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