At the beginning of the 19th century, sustained powered heavier-than-air flight remained an impossibility because of the lack of suitable power plants. The level of technology that would permit even limited powered flight lay over a century in the future. Clockwork mechanisms and other sorts of spring-powered systems were clearly unsuitable for human flight. While electricity powered several airships during the last quarter of the century, the poor power-to-weight ratio of such systems made it difficult to imagine an electrically propelled airplane.

The aeronautical potential of propulsion systems ranging from hot-air engines to gunpowder to compressed air and even to carbonic-acid power plants was discussed during the course of the century. The Australian Lawrence Hargrave, in particular, experimented with compressed-gas propulsion systems. Nevertheless, steam and internal-combustion engines quickly emerged as the choice of most serious experimenters. As early as 1829, F.D. Artingstall constructed a full-scale steam-powered ornithoptor, the wings of which were smashed in operation just before the boiler exploded. A lightweight steam engine developed by the English pioneer Frederick Stringfellow in 1868 to power a triplane model aircraft survives in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Russian Alexandr Mozhaysky (1884), Englishman Hiram Maxim (1894), and Frenchman Clément Ader (1890; see Ader Éole and Ader Avion) each jumped full-scale steam-powered machines off the ground for short distances, although none of these craft was capable of sustained or controlled flight. In the United States, Samuel Pierpont Langley achieved the first sustained flights in 1896 when he launched two of his relatively large steam-powered model aircraft (see Langley aerodrome No. 5) on aerial journeys of up to three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) over the Potomac River.

As the end of the 19th century approached, the internal-combustion engine emerged as an even more promising aeronautical power plant. The process had begun in 1860, when Étienne Lenoir of Belgium built the first internal-combustion engine, fueled with illuminating gas. In Germany, Nikolaus A. Otto took the next step in 1876, producing a four-stroke engine burning liquid fuel. German engineer Gottlieb Daimler pioneered the development of lightweight high-speed gasoline engines, one of which he mounted on a bicycle in 1885. German engineer Karl Benz produced the first true automobile the following year, a sturdy tricycle with seating for the operator and a passenger. In 1888 Daimler persuaded Karl Woelfert, a Lutheran minister who longed to fly, to equip an experimental airship with a single-cylinder gasoline engine that developed all of eight horsepower. The initial test was marginally successful, although the open-flame ignition system presented an obvious danger to a hydrogen-filled airship. In fact, Woelfert perished when an internal-combustion engine finally did set a much larger airship on fire in 1897.

At the beginning of their career in aeronautics, the Wright brothers recognized that automotive enthusiasts were producing ever lighter and more powerful internal-combustion engines. The brothers assumed that if their gliding experiments progressed to the point where they required a power plant, it would not be difficult to buy or build a gasoline engine for their aircraft.

Britannica Quiz

Early Aviation

They were essentially correct. Having flown their successful glider of 1902, the Wright brothers were confident that their wings would lift the weight of a powered flying machine and that they could control such a craft in the air. Moreover, three years of experience with gliders, and the information gathered with their wind tunnel, enabled them to calculate the precise amount of power required for sustained flight. Unable to interest an experienced manufacturer in producing an engine meeting their relatively narrow power-for-weight specifications, the brothers designed and built their own power plant.

Charles Taylor, a machinist whom the brothers employed in their bicycle shop, produced a four-cylinder engine with a cast aluminum block that produced roughly 12.5 horsepower at a total weight of some 200 pounds (90 kg), including fuel and coolant. It was by no means the most advanced or efficient aeronautical power plant in the world. Langley, who was also building a full-scale powered flying machine, spent thousands of dollars to produce a five-cylinder radial engine with a total weight equal to that of the Wright engine but developing 52.4 horsepower. Langley produced an engine far superior to that of the Wright brothers—and an airplane, the aerodrome No. 6, that failed to fly when tested in 1903. The Wright brothers, on the other hand, developed an engine that produced exactly the power required to propel their flyer of 1903—the world’s first airplane to demonstrate sustained flight.

The design of the propellers for the 1903 airplane represented a much more difficult task, and a much greater technical achievement, than the development of the engine. The propellers not only had to be efficient but had to produce a calculated amount of thrust when operated at a particular speed by the engine. It is important to recognize, however, that once powered flight had been achieved, the development of more powerful and efficient engines became an essential element in the drive to improve aircraft performance.

Balancing and steering the machine: the problem of control

Having decided that the design of wings and the development of a power plant were fairly well in hand, the Wright brothers focused on the element of control. Other experimenters had given some thought to the subject. Cayley was the first to use an elevator for control in pitch (directing the nose up and down). Throughout the second half of the 19th century, airships had used rudders for yaw control (directing the nose to the right and left).

It was far more difficult to conceive of a way to control an aircraft in roll (that is, balancing the wingtips or banking the aircraft). Moreover, most experimenters were convinced that the operator of a flying machine would find it difficult or impossible to exercise full control over a machine that was free to operate in all three axes of motion at once. As a result, far more thought had been given to the means of achieving automatic or inherent stability than to active control systems.

Cayley, for example, suggested dihedral wings (wingtips angled up from the midpoint of the wing) as a means of achieving a measure of stability in roll; he also recommended the use of a pendulum to control pitch. French aviation pioneer Alphonse Penaud was the first to produce an inherently stable aircraft, the Planophore (1871), which featured a pusher propeller powered by twisted rubber strands. The hand-launched model featured dihedral wings for stability in roll and a horizontal surface set at a slight negative angle with regard to the wings to provide stability in pitch. With the addition of a vertical surface for stability in yaw, this was the approach taken by virtually all experimenters with model aircraft, including Langley.

Model builders were forced to employ automatic stability, but those experimenters who built and flew gliders had to develop active flight controls. Virtually all of the pre-Wright brothers glider pilots, including Lilienthal, used hang-gliding techniques, in which the pilot shifted his weight in order to alter the position of the centre of gravity of the machine with regard to the centre of pressure. Weight shifting was dangerous and limiting, however. If simple movements of the operator’s body were to have a significant impact on the motion of the machine, the wing area had to be reasonably small. This limited the amount of lift that could be generated. Moreover, it was by no means difficult for such an aircraft to reach a stall or some other uncontrolled position from which weight shifting could not effect a recovery—as demonstrated by the deaths of Lilienthal (1896) and the English experimenter Percy Pilcher (1899) in glider crashes.

Determined to avoid those problems, the Wright brothers created a positive control system that enabled (indeed, required) the pilot to exercise absolute command over the motion of his machine in every axis and at every moment. Others had rejected that goal because they feared that pilots would be overwhelmed by the difficulty of controlling a machine moving in three dimensions. The Wright brothers, however, had recognized how easily and quickly a bicycle rider internalized the motions required to maintain balance and control, and they were certain that it would be the same with an airplane.

Recognizing the dangers inherent in attempting to rely on control of the centre of gravity, the Wright brothers devised a system to control the movement of the centre of pressure on the wing. They achieved this by enabling the pilot to induce a twist across the upper and lower wings in either direction, thus increasing the lift on one side and decreasing it on the other. This technique, which they called “wing warping,” solved the crucial problem of roll. Meanwhile, an elevator (a horizontal surface placed at the front of the aircraft) provided the means of pitch control. When the Wright brothers introduced a rudder to their design in 1902, this device was used to compensate for increased drag on the positively warped side of the aircraft. In 1905 they disconnected the rudder from the wing warping system, enabling the pilot to exercise independent control in yaw for the first time. The Wright flyer of 1905 is therefore considered to be the first fully controllable, practical airplane.