The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein Phd

Author:Gary Klein Phd [Klein Phd, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

➢ EXAMPLE 10.3 FLIGHTS OF CREATIVITY

As we all know, Orville and Wilbur Wright worked in a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and invented the airplane. How they achieved this invention, however, may be less well known.

The Wright brothers were not the first to become interested in the problem of getting heavier-than-air structures to fly. There were earlier devices, not simply dirigibles but precursor aircraft that had not been successful.

The Wright brothers reviewed these failures and determined that there were three problems that had to be solved: how to create lift, how to create propulsion, and how to create control. The idea of using a curved wing to create lift was already understood. The Wright brothers added to their technical knowledge through tests of different wing designs in a wind tunnel they constructed. The light but powerful engine they needed for propulsion did not yet exist, but it was coming—improvements in engine technology were being made at a promising rate.

The primary problem they identified was in achieving control of the path of the airplane. The existing technology required a pilot to change the airplane’s heading by using a rudder and nothing else. The airplane was always kept level with the ground because it was feared that anything that caused one wing to dip and the other to rise might destabilize the airplane and result in a crash. However, the rudder could not be very large or it would upset the aerodynamics. As a result, turns had to be made slowly and painstakingly.

The Wright brothers speculated that they could get more sensitive control by changing the orientation of the aircraft. They watched bicycle riders leaning into a turn. They watched the swooping of birds, one wing tip trapping the wind, the other slicing through it, like an animated windmill. And they formed the notion of asymmetrically warping the wings of the airplane to change its tilt, or bank angle. By the use of wing-warping, the pilot could lean into a turn, just like bicycle riders and birds. This was the major discovery of the Wright brothers. They selected the right problem—how to achieve tighter control—and connected it to the right leverage point—changing the shape of the wings.

For the Wright brothers, the warping of canvas stretched over a wooden frame was the leverage point they exploited. They recognized that by warping the two wings differently, they could directly control the steepness of the bank. They could therefore steer the airplane in any direction they wanted.

Despite their successful flight in 1903, the Wright brothers avoided publicity because they wanted to patent some of their important techniques. As years passed, doubts began to appear about whether they actually did have a controllable heavier-than-air device. In France, a 50,000-franc prize had been announced for the first airplane that could complete a circular flight of one kilometer. Why hadn’t the Wright brothers claimed this prize? The Paris edition of the Herald Tribune published an article entitled “Fliers or Liars?” Someone else, Henri Farman, built a flying machine and claimed the 50,000-franc prize.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.