John Kay was born on 17 June 1704 (in the
Julian calendar) in the Lancashire hamlet of Walmersley, just north of Bury.
His yeoman farmer father, Robert, owned the "Park" estate in Walmersley,
and John was born there. Robert died before John was born, leaving Park House
to his eldest son. As Robert's fifth son (out of ten), John was bequeathed £40
(at age 21) and an education until the age of 14. His mother was responsible
for educating him until she remarried.
John Kay's son, Robert, stayed in Britain,
and in 1760 developed the "drop-box", which enabled looms to use
multiple flying shuttles simultaneously, allowing multicolour wefts.
The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19,
1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were two
American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are credited with
inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the
first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on
December 17, 1903. From 1905 to 1907, the brothers developed their flying
machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to
build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to
invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.
In July 1899 Wilbur put wing warping to the
test by building and flying a biplane kite with a five-foot (1.5m) wingspan.
When the wings were warped, or twisted, one end of the wings produced more lift
and the other end less lift. The unequal lift made the wings tilt, or bank: the
end with more lift rose, while the other end dropped, causing a turn in the
direction of the lower end. The warping was controlled by four cords attached
to the kite, which led to two sticks held by the kite flyer, who tilted them in
opposite directions to twist the wings.
The Wrights based the design of their kite
and full-size gliders on work done in the 1890s by other aviation pioneers.
They adopted the basic design of the Chanute-Herring biplane hang glider
("double-decker" as the Wrights called it), which flew well in the
1896 experiments near Chicago, and used aeronautical data on lift that
Lilienthal had published. The Wrights designed the wings with camber, a
curvature of the top surface. The brothers did not discover this principle, but
took advantage of it. The better lift of a cambered surface compared to a flat
one was first discussed scientifically by Sir George Cayley. Lilienthal, whose
work the Wrights carefully studied, used cambered wings in his gliders, proving
in flight the advantage over flat surfaces. The wooden uprights between the
wings of the Wright glider were braced by wires in their own version of
Chanute's modified Pratt truss, a bridge-building design he used for his
biplane glider (initially built as a triplane). The Wrights mounted the
horizontal elevator in front of the wings rather than behind, apparently
believing this feature would help to avoid, or protect them, from a nosedive
and crash like the one that killed Lilienthal. Wilbur incorrectly believed a
tail was not necessary, and their first two gliders did not have one. According
to some Wright biographers, Wilbur probably did all the gliding until 1902,
perhaps to exercise his authority as older brother and to protect Orville from
harm as he did not want to have to explain to Bishop Wright if Orville got
injured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers
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