2025 Seattle Visit, Museum of Flight, Wright Brothers Story
We visited Musuem of Flight July 29, 2025. Luckily a public free tour guide was available by then and it was a wonderful experience. This post is focused on Wright Brothers story. While everyone knows their success, the narrative is so personal and approchable: inventors are no more than common people born at particular time in history, not necessarily had to be mysterious scientist. Driven by curiosity, efforst and maybe fame, they left a remarkable page on human history.
Wright brothers are home school. Initially they are focused on Glider. They chose the North Carolina as there’s was constant wind. After a series failures, they went back to the lab, designed a Wind tunnel in bike shop. Scientific design simulation to determine the weight.
Wind Tunnel Machine brothers used to experiment the shape of the aircraft.
Their built a first full control airframe 3 axis aircraft. What does that mean? Aircraft 3 axis control: Pitch, Yaw, Roll. (Nasa image), being able to turn around in 3 dimensions.
How would a flight be qualified ? You must end with a place that is higher than starting point. In another words, diving from a cliff and dropped on a lowland is not qualified.
The initial
After figuring out the air dynamics and the optimum shape, brothers now realized they need engine for sustained power suplly. They calcualted that the engine requires 4 hours power. Asking many manufacturer no one is willing or able to help. In the end, Charline designed a 4 cylinder engine, with 180 pounds get 12 horse power.
Aircraft in the musuem (a replica)
At this point brothers were Aware significance of their first experiment in human history. They need to Determine who to take the first flight. Flip the coin and brother a won. I found this interesting and funny.
Brother A failed and broke the plane initially, hitting the ground with the airplane's nose. After repair brother b said, "Your first shot now it’s my turn." Such a hilarious thing!
Brothers use Flag to signal for local people of their active flight operation. In hope of people could come for help. Someone from Coast guard indeed came and helped. He came with Camera setup and took a pic of the initial flight attempt. Pic become one of the most famous in human history.
Question time, I asked: How is the airplane being transported? Everything is composable by pieces. Frames are made of Spruce and fabric is cotton and muslin. The aircraft was mailed back and did not reassembled after 15 years but still function later.
For some reason, the initial attempt was not recognized by U.S. as lack the evidence of real flight. Waiting for another 5years later a contract from gov. I briefly searched and it was a contract for the signal / military usage.
Initially European are skeptical as they attempted flying hard but not succeeded. But convinced once seeing demo.
Anecdote: The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. houses the original 1903 Wright Flyer. Definitely check it out next time visiting DC.
Some ppl tried to replicate wright brothers flight in North Carolina. Same spot 35000 ppl gathered , but failed due to raining and no wind.
Boeing's Success
In next post I would wrote about the Boeing's story learned from the guide.