Scudrunners

David McCullough writes a book that is an easy read and explains why the world had doubts when the brothers took several years to go public with their airplane. Also how they improved on their design to make a truely functional craft.

The book goes into great detail on how through determination and hard work, they basically figured out how to build machines that could fly, and actually flew them..

Going from the vast majority of people in the world at the time mocking them, to demonstrating humans could fly.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/226 ... t-brothers

IIRC one of their biggest achievements - rarely mentioned - is the development
of an engine which was light enough and powerful enough.

https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/ ... engine.cfm

Without that, they had nothing.

From a modern perspective, their airplane was pretty weird. The elevator was miles
out in front (instead of being in the prop slipstream) and they didn't even have
ailerons, they just bent the wings in-flight to turn. Their wings were just curved -
they didn't have a flat bottom and a curved top, as we are used to. Not very
efficient lift generation.

It's strange how people look at things and the perceptions they have that their brains deem logical. I'm sure the Wright Bros looked at the elevator and it was entirely logical to them. The best example I have is when flying a boat (not a flying boat - lol) it was always stern first but any dude on the dock would always ask why not the bow first, less resistance in their mind. After trying to explain this while I was always really busy I simply came up with this. I would ask them which part of the wing went first, fat side or skinny side. Usually that was enough.

The book covers the importance of Charlie Taylor and the engines he built. Including pictures for guys like me. The author describes the mechanics in an amount of detail that is interesting if you understand without getting too technical if one is not mechanical.

Agreed Liquid_Charlie. It's also interesting that by 1909 the brothers had moved the elevator to the aft while they were still putting the rudder out in front of their aircraft.

By that time Louis Bleriot on the other hand was building his machines with the modern tail plane design.

Compare a jet powerplant from 1960, to one from 2020. Incomparable.

However, the airframe? Apart from the use of composite materials and
maybe winglets, how much difference in the last 50 years?