The 1902 Wright Glider on one of its earlier test flights (before the addition of a single moveable vertical tail).

The 1902 Wright Glider was the third free-flight glider built by Orville and Wilbur Wright and tested at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This was the first of the brothers' gliders to incorporate yaw control, and its design led directly to the 1903 Wright Flyer. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (864x576, 84 KB) Summary The 1902 Wright Glider on one of its more than 700 flights. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (864x576, 84 KB) Summary The 1902 Wright Glider on one of its more than 700 flights. ... The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 - January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 - May 30, 1912), are generally credited with the design and construction of the first practical aeroplane, and making the first controllable, powered heavier-than-air flight along with many other aviation milestones. ... Kitty Hawk is a town located in Dare County, North Carolina. ... Flight dynamics is the study of orientation of air and space vehicles and how to control the critical flight parameters, typically named pitch, roll and yaw. ... The Wright Flyer The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I and occasionally Kitty Hawk) was the first powered aircraft designed and built by the Wright Brothers. ...

Earlier experiments

From 1899 to 1901, the Wrights built and tested three experimental aircraft before the 1902 glider.

1899 Kite

The first was an 1899 kite, with a wingspan of mere 5 feet (1.5 meters). This kite, although much too small to carry a pilot, tested the concept of wing-warping that would prove essential to the brothers' solving the problem of controlled flight.

1900 Glider

The first free-flight glider was based on data from Otto Lilienthal's tables. On the Wrights' first expedition to Kitty Hawk, they tested the glider between October 5 and 18, 1900. They found the craft unforgiving in piloted flight, and they abandoned it at the site of its last landing. It was carried off in a July, 1901 gale and never seen again. Otto Lilienthal Otto Lilienthal (23 May 1848 – 10 August 1896), the German Glider King, was a pioneer of human aviation. ...

1901 Glider

The second free-flight glider was quite similar in configuration to the 1900 model. Its wing area increased from 165 ft² to 290 ft², making it the largest glider flown to that time. The glider made 50 to 100 free glides and kite tests between July 27 and August 17, 1901. The design suffered from flexible wing ribs that flattened out under the weight of a pilot, losing their airfoil shape.

After the flying season, the glider was stored at Kitty Hawk. The next year, it was picked up by wind and severely damaged. The uprights were salvaged for the 1902 Glider, but the rest was abandoned.

1902 Glider

The brothers designed the 1902 glider during the winter of 1901-1902 at their home in Dayton, Ohio. They designed the wing based on data from extensive airfoil tests conducted on a homemade wind tunnel. They built many of the components of the glider in Dayton, but they completed assembly at their Kitty Hawk camp in September of 1902. They began testing on September 19. Over the next five weeks, they made between 700 and 1000 glide flights (as estimated by the brothers, who did not keep detailed records of these tests). The longest of these was 622.5 ft (189.7 m) in 26 seconds. Image:Dayton. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

In 1903, when the brothers returned to Kitty Hawk to test their powered machine, they brought the 1902 glider out of storage and flew it again to hone their piloting skills before the powered Flyer was ready. The glider went back into storage at the camp when the brothers returned home for Christmas. When they next visited Kitty Hawk in 1908 to test their improved Flyer III, the storage shed had collapsed and the glider inside was wrecked. The Wright Flyer The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I and occasionally Kitty Hawk) was the first powered aircraft designed and built by the Wright Brothers. ... Wright Flyer III was the third powered aircraft built by the Wright Brothers. ...

Replicas

A number of replicas of the 1902 Glider have been built, starting with two 1934 replicas by the U.S. Army Air Corps, built with the cooperation of Orville Wright. One of these survives in the visitors' center at Kitty Hawk; the other was destroyed in an accident. 1. ...

In 1980, Wright enthusiast Rick Young built a working replica of the 1902 Glider. It has appeared in numerous films and television documentaries, including a 1986 IMAX On the Wing. An IMAX dome in Guayaquil, Ecuador IMAX (for Image Maximum) is a film projection system that has the capacity to display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film display systems. ...

Specifications

• Wingspan: 32 ft 1 in (9.8 m)
• Wing area: 305 ft² (28.3 m²)
• Length: 16 ft 1 in (4.9 m)
• Height: 8 ft (2.4 m)
• Weight: 117 lb (53 kg)

References

• Crouch, Tom, "The Trill of Invention." Air&Space/Smithsonian, April/May 1998, pp. 22-30. Read the article online.
• Wescott, Lynanne, Paula Degen, Wind and Sand: The Story of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. Harry N. Abrams, Inc, New York, 1983. Includes excerpts from diaries and correspondence pertaining to the Wright Brothers and their experiments.

External links

• 1902 Wright Glider at nasm.si.edu
• "The Thrill of Invention", a 1998 article in Air&Space/Smithsonian on efforts to build operable replicas of the Wright gliders.
• Photographs of the 1902 Wright Glider
• Building a replica 1902 Wright Glider

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