title: Aaron Swartz

text: On January 13, 2013, members of Anonymous hacked two websites on the MIT domain, replacing them with tributes to Swartz that called on members of the Internet community to use his death as a rallying point for the open access movement. The banner included a list of demands for improvements in the U.S. copyright system, along with Swartz's "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto." On the night of January 18, 2013, MIT's e-mail system was taken offline for ten hours. On January 22, e-mail sent to MIT was redirected by hackers Aush0k and TibitXimer to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology. All other traffic to MIT was redirected to a computer at Harvard University that was publishing a statement headed "R.I.P Aaron Swartz," with text from a 2009 posting by Swartz, accompanied by a chiptune version of "The Star-Spangled Banner". MIT regained full control after about seven hours. In the early hours of January 26, 2013, the U.S. Sentencing Commission website, USSC.gov, was hacked by Anonymous. The home page was replaced with an embedded YouTube video, "Anonymous Operation Last Resort". The video statement said Swartz "faced an impossible choice". A hacker downloaded "hundreds of thousands" of scientific-journal articles from a Swiss publisher's website and republished them on the open Web in Swartz's honor a week before the first anniversary of his death.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: After Swartz's death, more than 50,000 people signed an online petition to the White House calling for the removal of Ortiz, "for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz." A similar petition was submitted calling for prosecutor Stephen Heymann's firing. In January 2015, two years after Swartz's death, the White House declined both petitions.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On August 3, 2013, Swartz was posthumously inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. There was a hackathon held in Swartz' memory around the date of his birthday in 2013. Over the weekend of November 8–10, 2013, inspired by Swartz's work and life, a second annual hackathon was held in at least 16 cities around the world. Preliminary topics worked on at the 2013 Aaron Swartz Hackathon were privacy and software tools, transparency, activism, access, legal fixes and a low-cost book scanner. In January 2014, Lawrence Lessig led a walk across New Hampshire in honor of Swartz, rallying for campaign finance reform.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 2017, the Turkish-Dutch artist Ahmet Öğüt commemorated Swartz through a work entitled "Information Power to The People" which depicted his bust.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: A long-time supporter of open access, Swartz wrote in his "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto":Supporters of Swartz responded to news of his death with an effort called #PDFTribute to promote Open Access. On January 12, Eva Vivalt, a development economist at the World Bank, began posting her academic articles online using the hashtag "#pdftribute" as a tribute to Swartz. Scholars posted links to their works. The story of Aaron Swartz has exposed the topic of open access to scientific publications to wider audiences. In the wake of Aaron Swartz, many institutions and personalities have campaigned for open access to scientific knowledge. Swartz's death prompted calls for more open access to scholarly data (e.g., open science data). The Think Computer Foundation and the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University announced scholarships awarded in memory of Aaron Swartz. In 2013, Swartz was posthumously awarded the American Library Association's James Madison Award for being an "outspoken advocate for public participation in government and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles." In March, the editor and editorial board of the "Journal of Library Administration" resigned "en masse", citing a dispute with the journal's publisher, Routledge. One board member wrote of a "crisis of conscience about publishing in a journal that was not open access" after the death of Aaron Swartz. In 2002, Swartz had stated that when he died, he wanted all the contents of his hard drives made publicly available.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives – Republican Darrell Issa and Democrats Zoe Lofgren and subsequent Colorado Governor Jared Polis – all on the House Judiciary Committee, raised questions regarding the government's handling of the case.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Calling the charges against him "ridiculous and trumped up," Polis said Swartz was a "martyr", whose death illustrated the need for Congress to limit the discretion of federal prosecutors. Speaking at a memorial for Swartz on Capitol Hill, Issa said


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a statement saying "[Aaron's] advocacy for Internet freedom, social justice, and Wall Street reform demonstrated ... the power of his ideas ..."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn asked, "On what basis did the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts conclude that her office's conduct was 'appropriate'?" and "Was the prosecution of Mr. Swartz in any way retaliation for his exercise of his rights as a citizen under the Freedom of Information Act?"


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Issa, who chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, announced that he would investigate the Justice Department's actions in prosecuting Swartz. In a statement to "The Huffington Post", he praised Swartz's work toward "open government and free access to the people." Issa's investigation has garnered some bipartisan support.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On January 28, 2013, Issa and ranking committee member Elijah Cummings published a letter to U.S. Attorney General Holder, questioning why federal prosecutors had filed the superseding indictment. On February 20, WBUR reported that Ortiz was expected to testify at an upcoming Oversight Committee hearing about her office's handling of the Swartz case. On February 22, Associate Deputy Attorney General Steven Reich conducted a briefing for congressional staffers involved in the investigation. They were told that Swartz's "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" played a role in prosecutorial decision-making. Congressional staffers left this briefing believing that prosecutors thought Swartz had to be convicted of a felony carrying at least a short prison sentence in order to justify having filed the case against him in the first place.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Excoriating the Department of Justice as the "Department of Vengeance", Stinebrickner-Kauffman told the "Guardian" that the DOJ had erred in relying on Swartz's "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" as an accurate indication of his beliefs by 2010. "He was no longer a single issue activist," she said. "He was into lots of things, from healthcare, to climate change to money in politics."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On March 6, Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the case was "a good use of prosecutorial discretion." Stinebrickner-Kauffman issued a statement in reply, repeating and amplifying her claims of prosecutorial misconduct. Public documents, she wrote, reveal that prosecutor Stephen Heymann "instructed the Secret Service to seize and hold evidence without a warrant... lied to the judge about that fact in written briefs... [and] withheld exculpatory evidence... for over a year," violating his legal and ethical obligations to turn such evidence over to the defense. On March 22, Senator Al Franken wrote Holder a letter expressing concerns, writing that "charging a young man like Mr. Swartz with federal offenses punishable by over 35 years of federal imprisonment seems remarkably aggressive – particularly when it appears that one of the principal aggrieved parties ... did not support a criminal prosecution."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In 2013, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) introduced a bill, "Aaron's Law" (, ) to exclude terms of service violations from the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and from the wire fraud statute.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Lawrence Lessig wrote of the bill, "this is a critically important change... The CFAA was the hook for the government's bullying... This law would remove that hook. In a single line: no longer would it be a felony to breach a contract." Professor Orin Kerr, a specialist in the nexus between computer law and criminal law, wrote that he had been arguing for precisely this sort of reform of the Act for years. The ACLU, too, has called for reform of the CFAA to "remove the dangerously broad criminalization of online activity." The EFF has mounted a campaign for these reforms. Lessig's inaugural Chair lecture as Furman Professor of Law and Leadership was entitled "Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age"; he dedicated the lecture to Swartz.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: The Aaron's Law bill stalled in committee. Brian Knappenberger alleges this was due to Oracle Corporation's financial interest in maintaining the status quo.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) is a bill that would mandate earlier public release of taxpayer-funded research. FASTR has been described as "The Other Aaron's Law."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) introduced the Senate version in 2013, 2015, and 2017 while the bill was introduced to the House by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Kevin Yoder (R-Kans.). Senator Wyden wrote of the bill, "the FASTR act provides that access to taxpayer funded research should never be hidden behind a paywall."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: While the legislation had not passed , it helped to prompt some motion toward more open access on the part of the US administration. Shortly after the bill's original introduction, the Office of Science and Technology Policy directed "each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Swartz has been featured in various works of art and has posthumously received dedications from numerous artists. In 2013, Kenneth Goldsmith dedicated his "Printing out the Internet" exhibition to Swartz. There are also dedicated biographical films for Aaron:


title: Aaron Swartz

text: On January 11, 2014, marking the first anniversary of his death, a preview was released of "The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz", a documentary about Swartz, the NSA and SOPA. The film was officially released at the January 2014 Sundance Film Festival. "Democracy Now!" covered the release of the documentary, as well as Swartz's life and legal case, in a sprawling interview with director Brian Knappenberger, Swartz's father, brother, and his attorney. The documentary is released under a Creative Commons License; it debuted in theaters and on-demand in June 2014.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Mashable called the documentary "a powerful homage to Aaron Swartz". Its debut at "Sundance" received a standing ovation. "Mashable" printed, "With the help of experts, "The Internet's Own Boy" makes a clear argument: Swartz unjustly became a victim of the rights and freedoms for which he stood." "The Hollywood Reporter" described it as a "heartbreaking" story of a "tech wunderkind persecuted by the US government", and a must-see "for anyone who knows enough to care about the way laws govern information transfer in the digital age".


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In October 2014, "Killswitch", a documentary film featuring Aaron Swartz, as well as Lawrence Lessig, Tim Wu, and Edward Snowden, received its world premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Editing. The film focuses on Swartz's role in advocating for internet freedoms.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: In February 2015, "Killswitch" was invited to screen at the Capitol Visitor's Center in Washington, D.C. by Congressman Alan Grayson. The event was held on the eve of the Federal Communications Commission's historic decision on Net Neutrality. Congressman Grayson, Lawrence Lessig, and Free Press CEO Craig Aaron spoke about Swartz and his fight on behalf of a free and open Internet at the event.


title: Aaron Swartz

text: Congressman Grayson states that "Killswitch" is "one of the most honest accounts of the battle to control the Internet – and access to information itself." Richard von Busack of the Metro Silicon Valley writes of "Killswitch", "Some of the most lapidary use of found footage this side of The Atomic Café". Fred Swegles of the "Orange County Register" remarks, "Anyone who values unfettered access to online information is apt to be captivated by "Killswitch", a gripping and fast-paced documentary." Kathy Gill of GeekWire asserts that ""Killswitch" is much more than a dry recitation of technical history. Director Ali Akbarzadeh, producer Jeff Horn, and writer Chris Dollar created a human-centered story. A large part of that connection comes from Lessig and his relationship with Swartz."


title: Aaron Swartz

text: "Patriot of the Web" is an independent biographical film about Aaron Swartz, written and directed by Darius Burke. The film was released on September 15, 2019, onto YouTube. Actor Shawn Mcclintock plays Aaron Swartz. The film had a limited video on demand release in December 2017 on Reelhouse and in January 2018 on Pivotshare.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; , ; , ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East Indies across the Pacific Ocean to open a maritime trade route, during which he discovered the interoceanic passage bearing thereafter his name and achieved the first European navigation from the Atlantic to Asia.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: During this voyage, Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan in 1521 in the present-day Philippines, after running into resistance by the indigenous population led from Lapulapu, who consequently became a Philippines national symbol of resistance to colonialism. After Magellan's death, Juan Sebastián Elcano took the lead of the expedition, and with its few other surviving members in one of the two remaining ships, completed the first circumnavigation of Earth when they returned to Spain in 1522.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Born 4 February 1480 into a family of minor Portuguese nobility, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer in service of the Portuguese Crown in Asia. King Manuel refused to support Magellan's plan to reach the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands") by sailing westwards around the American continent. Facing criminal charges, Magellan left Portugal and proposed the same expedition to King Charles I of Spain, who accepted it. Consequently, many in Portugal considered him a traitor and he never returned. In Seville he married, fathered two children, and organised the expedition. For his allegiance to the Hispanic Monarchy, in 1518, Magellan was appointed an admiral of the Spanish fleet and given command of the expedition – the five-ship Armada of Molucca. He was also made Commander of the Order of Santiago, one of the highest military ranks of the Spanish Empire.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Granted special powers and privileges by the King, he led the Armada from Sanlucar de Barrameda southwest across the Atlantic Ocean, to the eastern coast of South America, and down to Patagonia. Despite a series of storms and mutinies, the expedition successfully passed through the Strait of Magellan into the Mar del Sur, which Magellan renamed the "Peaceful Sea" (the modern Pacific Ocean). The expedition reached Guam and, shortly after, the Philippine islands. There Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan in April 1521. Under the command of captain Juan Sebastian Elcano, the expedition later reached the Spice Islands. To navigate back to Spain and avoid seizure by the Portuguese, the expedition's two remaining ships split, one attempting, unsuccessfully, to reach New Spain by sailing eastwards across the Pacific, while the other, commanded by Elcano, sailed westwards via the Indian Ocean and up the Atlantic coast of Africa, finally arriving at the expedition's port of departure and thereby completing the first complete circuit of the globe.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: While in the Kingdom of Portugal's service, Magellan had already reached the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia on previous voyages traveling east (from 1505 to 1511–1512). By visiting this area again but now traveling west, Magellan achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for the first time in history.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Magellan was born in the Portuguese town of Sabrosa on 4 February 1480. His father, Pedro de Magalhães, was a minor member of Portuguese nobility and mayor of the town. His mother was Alda de Mezquita. Magellan's siblings included Diego de Sosa and Isabel Magellan. He was brought up as a page of Queen Eleanor, consort of King John II. In 1495 he entered the service of Manuel I, John's successor.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: In March 1505, at the age of 25, Magellan enlisted in the fleet of 22 ships sent to host Francisco de Almeida as the first viceroy of Portuguese India. Although his name does not appear in the chronicles, it is known that he remained there eight years, in Goa, Cochin and Quilon. He participated in several battles, including the battle of Cannanore in 1506, where he was wounded. In 1509 he also fought in what is considered one of the six battles that changed the world, the battle of Diu.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: He later sailed under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira in the first Portuguese embassy to Malacca, with Francisco Serrão, his friend and possibly cousin. In September, after arriving at Malacca, the expedition fell victim to a conspiracy and ended in retreat. Magellan had a crucial role, warning Sequeira and risking his life to rescue Francisco Serrão and others who had landed.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: In 1511, under the new governor Afonso de Albuquerque, Magellan and Serrão participated in the conquest of Malacca. After the conquest their ways parted: Magellan was promoted, with a rich plunder. In the company of a Malay he had indentured and baptized, Enrique of Malacca, he returned to Portugal in 1512 or 1513. Serrão departed in the first expedition sent to find the "Spice Islands" in the Moluccas, where he remained. He married a woman from Amboina and became a military advisor to the Sultan of Ternate, Bayan Sirrullah. His letters to Magellan later proved decisive, giving information about the spice-producing territories.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: After taking a leave without permission, Magellan fell out of favour. Serving in Morocco, he was wounded, resulting in a permanent limp. He was accused of trading illegally with the Moors. The accusations were proven false, but he received no further offers of employment after 15 May 1514. Later in 1515, he was offered employment as a crew member on a Portuguese ship, but rejected this. In 1517, after a quarrel with Manuel I of Portugal, who denied his persistent requests to lead an expedition to reach the Spice Islands from the east (i.e., while sailing westwards, thus avoiding the need to sail around the tip of Africa), he left for Spain. In Seville he befriended his countryman Diogo Barbosa and soon married the daughter of Diogo's second wife, Maria Caldera Beatriz Barbosa. They had two children: Rodrigo de Magallanes and Carlos de Magallanes, both of whom died at a young age. His wife died in Seville around 1521.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Meanwhile, Magellan devoted himself to studying the most recent charts, investigating, in partnership with cosmographer Rui Faleiro, a gateway from the Atlantic to the South Pacific and the possibility that the Moluccas were Spanish under the demarcations of the Treaty of Tordesillas.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: After having his proposed expeditions to the Spice Islands repeatedly rejected by King Manuel I of Portugal, Magellan renounced his Portuguese nationality and turned to Charles I, the young King of Spain (and future Holy Roman Emperor). Under the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Portugal was to control the eastern routes to Asia that went around Africa, specifically around the Cape of Good Hope. Magellan instead proposed to reach the Spice Islands by a western route, a feat which had never been accomplished. Hoping that this would yield a commercially useful trade route for Spain, Charles approved the expedition, and provided most of the funding.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: King Manuel saw this as an insult, and did everything in his power to disrupt Magellan's arrangements for the voyage. The Portuguese king allegedly ordered that Magellan's properties be vandalized as it was the Coat of arms of the Magellan displayed at the family house's façade in Sabrosa, his home town; and may have even requested the assassination of the navigator. When Magellan eventually sailed to the open seas in August 1519, a Portuguese fleet was sent after him though failed to capture him.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Magellan's fleet consisted of five ships carrying supplies for two years of travel. The crew consisted of about 270 men of different origins, though the numbers may vary downwards among scholars based on contradicting data from the many documents available. About 60 percent of the crew were Spaniards from virtually all regions of Castile. Portuguese and Italian followed with 28 and 27 seamen respectively, while mariners from France (15), Greece (8), Flanders (5), Germany (3), Ireland (2), England and Malaysia (one each) and other people of unidentified origin completed the crew.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: The fleet left Spain on 20 September 1519, sailing west across the Atlantic toward South America. In December, they made landfall at Rio de Janeiro. From there, they sailed south along the coast, searching for a way through or around the continent. After three months of searching (including a false start in the estuary of Río de la Plata), weather conditions forced the fleet to stop their search to wait out the winter. They found a sheltered natural harbor at the port of Saint Julian, and remained there for five months. Shortly after landing at St. Julian, there was a mutiny attempt led by the Spanish captains Juan de Cartagena, Gaspar de Quesada and Luis de Mendoza. Magellan barely managed to quell the mutiny, despite at one point losing control of three of his five ships to the mutineers. Mendoza was killed during the conflict, and Magellan sentenced Quesada and Cartagena to being beheaded and marooned, respectively. Lower-level conspirators were made to do hard labor in chains over the winter, but were later freed.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: During the winter, one of the fleet's ships, the "Santiago", was lost in a storm while surveying nearby waters, though no men were killed. Following the winter, the fleet resumed their search for a passage to the Pacific in October 1520. Three days later, they found a bay which eventually led them to a strait, now known as the Strait of Magellan, which allowed them passage through to the Pacific. While exploring the strait, one of the remaining four ships, the "San Antonio", deserted the fleet, returning east to Spain. The fleet reached the Pacific by the end of November 1520. Based on the incomplete understanding of world geography at the time, Magellan expected a short journey to Asia, perhaps taking as little as three or four days. In fact, the Pacific crossing took three months and twenty days. The long journey exhausted their supply of food and water, and around 30 men died, mostly of scurvy. Magellan himself remained healthy, perhaps because of his personal supply of preserved quince.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: On 6 March 1521, the exhausted fleet made landfall at the island of Guam and were met by native Chamorro people who came aboard the ships and took items such as rigging, knives, and a ship's boat. The Chamorro people may have thought they were participating in a trade exchange (as they had already given the fleet some supplies), but the crew interpreted their actions as theft. Magellan sent a raiding party ashore to retaliate, killing several Chamorro men, burning their houses, and recovering the stolen goods.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: On 16 March, the fleet sighted the island of Samar ("Zamal") in the eastern Philippine Islands. They weighed anchor in the small (then uninhabited) island of Homonhon ("Humunu"), where they would remain for a week while their sick crew members recuperated. Magellan befriended the tattooed locals of the neighboring island of Suluan ("Zuluan") and traded goods and supplies and learned of the names of neighboring islands and local customs.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: After resting and resupplying, Magellan sailed on deeper into the Visayan Islands. On 28 March, they anchored off the island of Limasawa ("Mazaua") where they encountered a small outrigger boat ("boloto"). After talking with the crew of the boat via Enrique of Malacca (Magellan's slave-interpreter who was originally from Sumatra), they were met by the two large balangay warships ("balanghai") of Rajah Kulambo ("Colambu") of Butuan, and one of his sons. They went ashore to Limasawa where they met Kulambo's brother, another leader, Rajah Siawi ("Siaui") of Surigao ("Calagan"). The rulers were on a hunting expedition on Limasawa. They received Magellan as their guest and told him of their customs and of the regions they controlled in northeastern Mindanao. The tattooed rulers and the locals also wore and used a great amount of golden jewelry and golden artifacts, which piqued Magellan's interest. On 31 March, Magellan's crew held the first Mass in the Philippines, planting a cross on the island's highest hill. Before leaving, Magellan asked the rulers for the next nearest trading ports. They recommended he visit the Rajahnate of Cebu ("Zubu"), because it was the largest. They set off for Cebu, accompanied by the balangays of Rajah Kulambo and reached its port on 7 April.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Magellan met with the King of Cebu, Rajah Humabon, who asked them for tribute as a trade, thinking they were traders bartering with them. Magellan and his men insisted that they did not need to pay tribute as they were sent by the king of Spain, "the most powerful king in the world", and that they were willing to give peace to them if they wanted peace and war if they wanted war. Humabon then decided not to ask for any more tribute and welcomed them instead to the Kingdom of Cebu (Sugbo). To mark the arrival of Christianity in the Far East, Magellan then planted a Cross on the shorelines of the kingdom. Magellan set about converting the locals, including the king and his wife, Queen Humamay, to Christianity. Rajah Humabon was renamed "Carlos" and Queen Humamay was renamed "Juana" after the king and queen of Spain. After her baptism, the queen asked the Spaniards for the image of the Child Jesus (Santo Niño), which she was drawn to, and begged them for the image in contrition, amidst her tears. Magellan then gave the image of the Child Jesus, along with an image of the Virgin Mary, and a small cross to the queen as a gesture of goodwill for accepting the new faith. The king then had a Blood Compact with Magellan in order to cement the allegiance of the Spaniards and the Cebuanos. The king then told the Spaniards to go to the island of Mactan to kill his enemy Lapulapu.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: The Spaniards went to the island of Mactan just as Rajah Humabon told them to. However, they did not initially come by force and wanted to Christianize them. Unlike the people of Cebu who accepted the new religion readily, the King of Mactan, Datu Lapulapu, and the rest of the island of Mactan resisted. On 27 April, Magellan and members of his crew attempted to subdue the Mactan natives by force, but in the ensuing battle, the Europeans were overpowered and Magellan was killed by Lapulapu and his men.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Following his death, Magellan was initially succeeded by co-commanders Juan Serrano and Duarte Barbosa (with a series of other officers later leading). The fleet left the Philippines (following a bloody betrayal by former ally Rajah Humabon, who had poisoned many Spanish soldiers on a banquet ruse on the night after the battle for being easily defeated by Lapulapu and the people of Mactan and failing to kill Lapulapu) and eventually made their way to the Moluccas in November 1521. Laden with spices, they attempted to set sail for Spain in December, but found that only one of their remaining two ships, the "Victoria", was seaworthy. The "Victoria", captained by Juan Sebastián Elcano, finally returned to Spain by 6 September 1522, completing the circumnavigation. Of the 270 men who left with the expedition, only 18 or 19 survivors returned.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: After several weeks in the Philippines, Magellan had converted as many as 2,200 locals to Christianity, including Rajah Humabon of Cebu and most leaders of the islands around Cebu. However, Lapulapu, the leader of Mactan, resisted conversion. In order to gain the trust of Rajah Humabon, Magellan sailed to Mactan with a small force on the morning of 27 April 1521. During the resulting battle against Lapulapu's troops, Magellan was struck by a "bamboo" spear ("bangkaw", which are actually metal-tipped fire-hardened rattan), and later surrounded and finished off with other weapons.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Antonio Pigafetta and Ginés de Mafra provided written documents of the events culminating in Magellan's death:


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: In the immediate aftermath of the circumnavigation, few celebrated Magellan for his accomplishments, and he was widely discredited and reviled in Spain and his native Portugal. The Portuguese regarded Magellan as a traitor for having sailed for Spain. In Spain, Magellan's reputation suffered due to the largely unflattering accounts of his actions given by the survivors of the expedition.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: The first news of the expedition came from the crew of the "San Antonio", led by Estêvão Gomes, which deserted the fleet in the Strait of Magellan and returned to Seville 6 May 1521. The deserters were put on trial, but eventually exonerated after producing a distorted version of the mutiny at Saint Julian, and depicting Magellan as disloyal to the king. The expedition was assumed to have perished. The "Casa de Contratación" withheld Magellan's salary from his wife, Beatriz "considering the outcome of the voyage", and she was placed under house arrest with their young son on the orders of Archbishop Fonseca.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: The 18 survivors who eventually returned aboard the "Victoria" in September 1522 were also largely unfavourable to Magellan. Many, including the captain, Juan Sebastián Elcano, had participated in the mutiny at Saint Julian. On the ship's return, Charles summoned Elcano to Valladolid, inviting him to bring two guests. He brought sailors Francisco Albo and Hernándo de Bustamante, pointedly not including Antonio Pigafetta, the expedition's chronicler. Under questioning by Valladolid's mayor, the men claimed that Magellan refused to follow the king's orders (and gave this as the cause for the mutiny at Saint Julian), and that he unfairly favoured his relatives among the crew, and disfavoured the Spanish captains.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: One of the few survivors loyal to Magellan was Antonio Pigafetta. Though not invited to testify with Elcano, Pigafetta made his own way to Valladolid and presented Charles with a hand-written copy of his notes from the journey. He would later travel through Europe giving copies to other royals including John III of Portugal, Francis I of France, and Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. After returning to his home of Venice, Pigafetta published his diary (as "Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo") around 1524. Scholars have come to view Pigafetta's diary as the most thorough and reliable account of the circumnavigation, and its publication helped to eventually counter the misinformation spread by Elcano and the other surviving mutineers. In an often-cited passage following his description of Magellan's death in the Battle of Mactan, Pigafetta eulogizes the captain-general:


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Magellan's main virtues were courage and perseverance, in even the most difficult situations; for example he bore hunger and fatigue better than all the rest of us. He was a magnificent practical seaman, who understood navigation better than all his pilots. The best proof of his genius is that he circumnavigated the world, none having preceded him.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Magellan has come to be renowned for his navigational skill and tenacity. The first circumnavigation has been called "the greatest sea voyage in the Age of Discovery", and even "the most important maritime voyage ever undertaken". Appreciation of Magellan's accomplishments may have been enhanced over time by the failure of subsequent expeditions which attempted to retrace his route, beginning with the Loaísa expedition in 1525 (which featured Juan Sebastián Elcano as second-in-command). The next expedition to successfully complete a circumnavigation, led by Francis Drake, would not occur until 1580, 58 years after the return of the "Victoria".


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Magellan named the Pacific Ocean (which was also often called the "Sea of Magellan" in his honor until the eighteenth century), and lends his name to the Strait of Magellan. His name has also since been applied to a variety of other entities, including the Magellanic Clouds (two dwarf galaxies visible in the night sky of the southern hemisphere), Project Magellan (a Cold War-era US Navy project to circumnavigate the world by submarine), and NASA's Magellan spacecraft.


title: Ferdinand Magellan

text: Even though Magellan did not survive the trip, he has received more recognition for the expedition than Elcano has. Since Magellan was the one who began it, Portugal wanted to recognize a Portuguese explorer, and Spain feared Basque nationalism. In 2019, the 500th anniversary of the voyage, Spain and Magellan's native Portugal submitted a new joint application to UNESCO to honour the circumnavigation route.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the "Wright Flyer" on December 17, 1903, south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. The brothers were also the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.


title: Wright brothers

text: In 1904–1905, the Wright brothers developed their flying machine to make longer-running and more aerodynamic flights with the Wright Flyer II, followed by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III. The brothers' breakthrough was their creation of a three-axis control system, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and to maintain its equilibrium. This method remains standard on fixed-wing aircraft of all kinds. From the beginning of their aeronautical work, Wilbur and Orville focused on developing a reliable method of pilot control as the key to solving "the flying problem". This approach differed significantly from other experimenters of the time who put more emphasis on developing powerful engines. Using a small home-built wind tunnel, the Wrights also collected more accurate data than any before, enabling them to design more efficient wings and propellers. Their first U.S. patent did not claim invention of a flying machine, but rather a system of aerodynamic control that manipulated a flying machine's surfaces.


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers gained the mechanical skills essential to their success by working for years in their Dayton, Ohio-based shop with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and other machinery. Their work with bicycles, in particular, influenced their belief that an unstable vehicle such as a flying machine could be controlled and balanced with practice. This was a trend, as many other aviation pioneers were also dedicated cyclists and involved in the bicycle business in various ways. From 1900 until their first powered flights in late 1903, the brothers conducted extensive glider tests that also developed their skills as pilots. Their shop mechanic Charles Taylor became an important part of the team, building their first airplane engine in close collaboration with the brothers.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright brothers' status as inventors of the airplane has been subject to counter-claims by various parties. Much controversy persists over the many competing claims of early aviators. Edward Roach, historian for the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, argues that they were excellent self-taught engineers who could run a small company, but they did not have the business skills or temperament to dominate the growing aviation industry.


title: Wright brothers

text: Wilbur and Orville Wright were two of seven children born to Milton Wright (1828–1917), of English and Dutch ancestry, and Susan Catherine Koerner (1831–1889), of German and Swiss ancestry. Milton Wright's mother, Catherine Reeder, was descended from the progenitor of the Vanderbilt family - one of America's richest families - and the Huguenot Gano family of New Rochelle, New York. Wilbur was born near Millville, Indiana, in 1867; Orville in Dayton, Ohio, in 1871.


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers never married. The other Wright siblings were Reuchlin (1861–1920), Lorin (1862–1939), Katharine (1874–1929), and twins Otis and Ida (born 1870, died in infancy). The direct paternal ancestry goes back to a Samuel Wright (b. 1606 in Essex, England) who sailed to America and settled in Massachusetts in 1636.


title: Wright brothers

text: None of the Wright children had middle names. Instead, their father tried hard to give them distinctive first names. Wilbur was named for Willbur Fisk and Orville for Orville Dewey, both clergymen that Milton Wright admired. They were "Will" and "Orv" to their friends and in Dayton, their neighbors knew them simply as "the Bishop's kids", or "the Bishop's boys".


title: Wright brothers

text: Because of their father's position as a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, he traveled often and the Wrights frequently moved – twelve times before finally returning permanently to Dayton in 1884. In elementary school, Orville was given to mischief and was once expelled. In 1878 when the family lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, their father brought home a toy helicopter for his two younger sons. The device was based on an invention of French aeronautical pioneer Alphonse Pénaud. Made of paper, bamboo and cork with a rubber band to twirl its rotor, it was about long. Wilbur and Orville played with it until it broke, and then built their own. In later years, they pointed to their experience with the toy as the spark of their interest in flying.


title: Wright brothers

text: Both brothers attended high school, but did not receive diplomas. The family's abrupt move in 1884 from Richmond, Indiana, to Dayton, Ohio, where the family had lived during the 1870s, prevented Wilbur from receiving his diploma after finishing four years of high school. The diploma was awarded posthumously to Wilbur on April 16, 1994, which would have been his 127th birthday.


title: Wright brothers

text: In late 1885 or early 1886 Wilbur was struck in the face by a hockey stick while playing an ice-skating game with friends, resulting in the loss of his front teeth. He had been vigorous and athletic until then, and although his injuries did not appear especially severe, he became withdrawn. He had planned to attend Yale. Instead, he spent the next few years largely housebound. During this time he cared for his mother, who was terminally ill with tuberculosis, read extensively in his father's library and ably assisted his father during times of controversy within the Brethren Church, but also expressed unease over his own lack of ambition.


title: Wright brothers

text: Orville dropped out of high school after his junior year to start a printing business in 1889, having designed and built his own printing press with Wilbur's help. Wilbur joined the print shop, and in March the brothers launched a weekly newspaper, the "West Side News". Subsequent issues listed Orville as publisher and Wilbur as editor on the masthead. In April 1890 they converted the paper to a daily, "The Evening Item", but it lasted only four months. They then focused on commercial printing. One of their clients was Orville's friend and classmate, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who rose to international acclaim as a ground-breaking African-American poet and writer. For a brief period the Wrights printed the "Dayton Tattler", a weekly newspaper that Dunbar edited.


title: Wright brothers

text: Capitalizing on the national bicycle craze (spurred by the invention of the safety bicycle and its substantial advantages over the penny-farthing design), in December 1892 the brothers opened a repair and sales shop (the Wright Cycle Exchange, later the Wright Cycle Company) and in 1896 began manufacturing their own brand. They used this endeavor to fund their growing interest in flight. In the early or mid-1890s they saw newspaper or magazine articles and probably photographs of the dramatic glides by Otto Lilienthal in Germany.


title: Wright brothers

text: 1896 brought three important aeronautical events. In May, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Langley successfully flew an unmanned steam-powered fixed-wing model aircraft. In mid-year, Chicago engineer and aviation authority Octave Chanute brought together several men who tested various types of gliders over the sand dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan. In August, Lilienthal was killed in the plunge of his glider. These events lodged in the minds of the brothers, especially Lilienthal's death. The Wright brothers later cited his death as the point when their serious interest in flight research began.


title: Wright brothers

text: Wilbur said, "Lilienthal was without question the greatest of the precursors, and the world owes to him a great debt." In May 1899 Wilbur wrote a letter to the Smithsonian Institution requesting information and publications about aeronautics. Drawing on the work of Sir George Cayley, Chanute, Lilienthal, Leonardo da Vinci, and Langley, they began their mechanical aeronautical experimentation that year.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright brothers always presented a unified image to the public, sharing equally in the credit for their invention. Biographers note that Wilbur took the initiative in 1899–1900, writing of "my" machine and "my" plans before Orville became deeply involved when the first person singular became the plural "we" and "our". Author James Tobin asserts, "it is impossible to imagine Orville, bright as he was, supplying the driving force that started their work and kept it going from the back room of a store in Ohio to conferences with capitalists, presidents, and kings. Will did that. He was the leader, from the beginning to the end."


title: Wright brothers

text: Despite Lilienthal's fate, the brothers favored his strategy: to practice gliding in order to master the art of control before attempting motor-driven flight. The death of British aeronaut Percy Pilcher in another hang gliding crash in October 1899 only reinforced their opinion that a reliable method of pilot control was the key to successful – and safe – flight. At the outset of their experiments they regarded control as the unsolved third part of "the flying problem". They believed sufficiently promising knowledge of the other two issues – wings and engines – already existed.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright brothers' plan thus differed sharply from more experienced practitioners of the day, notably Ader, Maxim, and Langley, who all built powerful engines, attached them to airframes equipped with untested control devices, and expected to take to the air with no previous flying experience. Although agreeing with Lilienthal's idea of practice, the Wrights saw that his method of balance and control by shifting his body weight was inadequate. They were determined to find something better.


title: Wright brothers

text: On the basis of observation, Wilbur concluded that birds changed the angle of the ends of their wings to make their bodies roll right or left. The brothers decided this would also be a good way for a flying machine to turn – to "bank" or "lean" into the turn just like a bird – and just like a person riding a bicycle, an experience with which they were thoroughly familiar. Equally important, they hoped this method would enable recovery when the wind tilted the machine to one side (lateral balance). They puzzled over how to achieve the same effect with man-made wings and eventually discovered wing-warping when Wilbur idly twisted a long inner-tube box at the bicycle shop.


title: Wright brothers

text: Other aeronautical investigators regarded flight as if it were not so different from surface locomotion, except the surface would be elevated. They thought in terms of a ship's rudder for steering, while the flying machine remained essentially level in the air, as did a train or an automobile or a ship at the surface. The idea of deliberately leaning, or rolling, to one side seemed either undesirable or did not enter their thinking. Some of these other investigators, including Langley and Chanute, sought the elusive ideal of "inherent stability", believing the pilot of a flying machine would not be able to react quickly enough to wind disturbances to use mechanical controls effectively. The Wright brothers, on the other hand, wanted the pilot to have absolute control. For that reason, their early designs made no concessions toward built-in stability (such as dihedral wings). They deliberately designed their 1903 first powered flyer with anhedral (drooping) wings, which are inherently unstable, but less susceptible to upset by gusty cross winds.


title: Wright brothers

text: On July 27, 1899, the brothers put wing warping to the test by building and flying a biplane kite with a wingspan, and a curved wing with a chord. When the wings were warped, or twisted, the trailing edge that was warped down produced more lift than the opposite wing, causing a rolling motion. The warping was controlled by four lines between kite and crossed sticks held by the kite flyer. In return, the kite was under lateral control.


title: Wright brothers

text: In 1900 the brothers went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to begin their manned gliding experiments. In his reply to Wilbur's first letter, Octave Chanute had suggested the mid-Atlantic coast for its regular breezes and soft sandy landing surface. Wilbur also requested and examined U.S. Weather Bureau data, and decided on Kitty Hawk after receiving information from the government meteorologist stationed there.


title: Wright brothers

text: Kitty Hawk, although remote, was closer to Dayton than other places Chanute had suggested, including California and Florida. The spot also gave them privacy from reporters, who had turned the 1896 Chanute experiments at Lake Michigan into something of a circus. Chanute visited them in camp each season from 1901 to 1903 and saw gliding experiments, but not the powered flights.


title: Wright brothers

text: The 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 Otto Lilienthal had published. The Wrights designed the wings with camber, a curvature of the top surface.


title: Wright brothers

text: 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.


title: Wright brothers

text: 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.


title: Wright brothers

text: 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 their father, Bishop Wright, if Orville got injured.


title: Wright brothers

text: <nowiki>* (This airfoil caused severe stability problems; the Wrights modified the camber on-site.)</nowiki>


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers flew the glider for only a few days in the early autumn of 1900 at Kitty Hawk. In the first tests, probably on October 3, Wilbur was aboard while the glider flew as a kite not far above the ground with men below holding tether ropes. Most of the kite tests were unpiloted, with sandbags or chains and even a local boy as ballast.


title: Wright brothers

text: They tested wing-warping using control ropes from the ground. The glider was also tested unmanned while suspended from a small homemade tower. Wilbur, but not Orville, made about a dozen free glides on only a single day, October 20. For those tests the brothers trekked four miles (6km) south to the Kill Devil Hills, a group of sand dunes up to high (where they made camp in each of the next three years). Although the glider's lift was less than expected, the brothers were encouraged because the craft's front elevator worked well and they had no accidents. However, the small number of free glides meant they were not able to give wing-warping a true test.


title: Wright brothers

text: The pilot lay flat on the lower wing, as planned, to reduce aerodynamic drag. As a glide ended, the pilot was supposed to lower himself to a vertical position through an opening in the wing and land on his feet with his arms wrapped over the framework. Within a few glides, however, they discovered the pilot could remain prone on the wing, headfirst, without undue danger when landing. They made all their flights in that position for the next five years.


title: Wright brothers

text: Before returning to Kitty Hawk in the summer of 1901, Wilbur published two articles, "The Angle of Incidence" in "The Aeronautical Journal", and "The Horizontal Position During Gliding Flight" in "Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen". The brothers brought all of the material they thought was needed to be self-sufficient at Kitty Hawk. Besides living in tents once again, they built a combination workshop and hangar. Measuring long by wide, the ends opened upward for easy glider access.


title: Wright brothers

text: Hoping to improve lift, they built the 1901 glider with a much larger wing area and made dozens of flights in July and August for distances of . The glider stalled a few times, but the parachute effect of the forward elevator allowed Wilbur to make a safe flat landing, instead of a nose-dive. These incidents wedded the Wrights even more strongly to the "canard" design, which they did not give up until 1910. The glider, however, delivered two major disappointments. It produced only about one-third the lift calculated and sometimes pointed opposite the intended direction of a turn – a problem later known as adverse yaw – when Wilbur used the wing-warping control. On the trip home a deeply dejected Wilbur remarked to Orville that man would not fly in a thousand years.


title: Wright brothers

text: The poor lift of the gliders led the Wrights to question the accuracy of Lilienthal's data, as well as the "Smeaton coefficient" of air pressure, a value which had been in use for over 100 years and was part of the accepted equation for lift.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wrights used this equation to calculate the amount of lift that a wing would produce. Over the years a wide variety of values had been measured for the Smeaton coefficient; Chanute identified up to 50 of them. Wilbur knew that Langley, for example, had used a lower number than the traditional one. Intent on confirming the correct Smeaton value, Wilbur performed his own calculations using measurements collected during kite and free flights of the 1901 glider. His results correctly showed that the coefficient was very close to 0.0033 (similar to the number Langley used), not the traditional 0.0054, which would significantly exaggerate predicted lift.


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers decided to find out if Lilienthal's data for lift coefficients were correct. They devised an experimental apparatus which consisted of a freely rotating bicycle wheel mounted horizontally in front of the handlebars of a bicycle. The brothers took turns pedaling the bicycle vigorously, creating air flow over the horizontal wheel. Attached vertically to the wheel were an airfoil and a flat plate mounted 90° away. As air passed by the airfoil, the lift it generated, if unopposed, would cause the wheel to rotate.


title: Wright brothers

text: The flat plate was oriented so its drag would push the wheel in the opposite direction of the airfoil. The airfoil and flat plate were made in specific sizes such that, according to Lilienthal's measurements, the lift generated by the airfoil would exactly counterbalance the drag generated by the flat plate and the wheel would not turn. However, when the brothers tested the device, the wheel "did" turn. The experiment confirmed their suspicion that either the standard Smeaton coefficient or Lilienthal's coefficients of lift and drag – or all of them – were in error.


title: Wright brothers

text: They then built a six-foot (1.8 m) wind tunnel in their shop, and between October and December 1901 conducted systematic tests on dozens of miniature wings. The "balances" they devised and mounted inside the tunnel to hold the wings looked crude, made of bicycle spokes and scrap metal, but were "as critical to the ultimate success of the Wright brothers as were the gliders." The devices allowed the brothers to balance lift against drag and accurately calculate the performance of each wing. They could also see which wings worked well as they looked through the viewing window in the top of the tunnel. The tests yielded a trove of valuable data never before known and showed that the poor lift of the 1900 and 1901 gliders was entirely due to an incorrect Smeaton value, and that Lilienthal's published data were fairly accurate for the tests he had done.


title: Wright brothers

text: Before the detailed wind tunnel tests, Wilbur traveled to Chicago at Chanute's invitation to give a lecture to the Western Society of Engineers on September 18, 1901. He presented a thorough report about the 1900–1901 glider experiments and complemented his talk with a lantern slide show of photographs. Wilbur's speech was the first public account of the brothers' experiments. A report was published in the "Journal" of the society, which was then separately published as an offprint titled "Some Aeronautical Experiments" in a 300 copy printing.


title: Wright brothers

text: Lilienthal had made "whirling arm" tests on only a few wing shapes, and the Wrights mistakenly assumed the data would apply to their wings, which had a different shape. The Wrights took a huge step forward and made basic wind tunnel tests on 200 scale-model wings of many shapes and airfoil curves, followed by detailed tests on 38 of them. An important discovery was the benefit of longer narrower wings: in aeronautical terms, wings with a larger aspect ratio (wingspan divided by chord – the wing's front-to-back dimension). Such shapes offered much better lift-to-drag ratio than the stubbier wings the brothers had tried so far. With this knowledge, and a more accurate Smeaton number, the Wrights designed their 1902 glider.


title: Wright brothers

text: The wind tunnel tests, made from October to December 1901, were described by biographer Fred Howard as "the most crucial and fruitful aeronautical experiments ever conducted in so short a time with so few materials and at so little expense". In their September 1908 "Century Magazine" article, the Wrights explained, "The calculations on which all flying machines had been based were unreliable, and ... every experiment was simply groping in the dark ... We cast it all aside and decided to rely entirely upon our own investigations."


title: Wright brothers

text: The 1902 glider wing had a flatter airfoil, with the camber reduced to a ratio of 1-in-24, in contrast to the previous thicker wing. The larger aspect ratio was achieved by increasing the wingspan and shortening the chord. The glider also had a new structural feature: A fixed, rear vertical rudder, which the brothers hoped would eliminate turning problems. However, the 1902 glider encountered trouble in crosswinds and steep banked turns, when it sometimes spiraled into the ground – a phenomenon the brothers called "well digging." According to Combs, "They knew that when the earlier 1901 glider banked, it would begin to slide sideways through the air, and if the side motion was left uncorrected, or took place too quickly, the glider would go into an uncontrolled pivoting motion. Now, with vertical fins added to correct this, the glider again went into a pivoting motion, but in the opposite direction, with the nose swinging downward."


title: Wright brothers

text: Orville apparently visualized that the fixed rudder resisted the effect of corrective wing-warping when attempting to level off from a turn. He wrote in his diary that on the night of October 2, "I studied out a new vertical rudder". The brothers then decided to make the rear rudder movable to solve the problem. They hinged the rudder and connected it to the pilot's warping "cradle", so a single movement by the pilot simultaneously controlled wing-warping and rudder deflection. The apparatus made the trailing edge of the rudder turn away from whichever end of the wings had more drag (and lift) due to warping. The opposing pressure produced by turning the rudder enabled corrective wing-warping to reliably restore level flight after a turn or a wind disturbance. Furthermore, when the glider banked into a turn, rudder pressure overcame the effect of differential drag and pointed the nose of the aircraft in the direction of the turn, eliminating adverse yaw.


title: Wright brothers

text: In short, the Wrights discovered the true purpose of the movable vertical rudder. Its role was not to change the direction of flight, as a rudder does in sailing, but rather, to aim or align the aircraft correctly during banking turns and when leveling off from turns and wind disturbances. The actual turn – the change in direction – was done with roll control using wing-warping. The principles remained the same when ailerons superseded wing-warping.


title: Wright brothers

text: With their new method, the Wrights achieved true control in turns for the first time on October 9, a major milestone. From September 20 until the last weeks of October, they flew over a thousand flights. The longest duration was up to 26 seconds, and the longest distance more than . Having demonstrated lift, control, and stability, the brothers now turned their focus to the problem of power.


title: Wright brothers

text: Thus did three-axis control evolve: wing-warping for roll (lateral motion), forward elevator for pitch (up and down) and rear rudder for yaw (side to side). On March 23, 1903, the Wrights applied for their famous patent for a "Flying Machine", based on their successful 1902 glider. Some aviation historians believe that applying the system of three-axis flight control on the 1902 glider was equal to, or even more significant, than the addition of power to the 1903 Flyer. Peter Jakab of the Smithsonian asserts that perfection of the 1902 glider essentially represents invention of the airplane.


title: Wright brothers

text: In addition to developing the lift equation, the brothers also developed the equation for drag. It is of the same form as the lift equation, except the coefficient of drag replaces the coefficient of lift, computing drag instead of lift. They used this equation to answer the question, "Is there enough power in the engine to produce a thrust adequate to overcome the drag of the total frame ...," in the words of Combs. The Wrights then "... measured the pull in pounds on various parts of their aircraft, including the pull on each of the wings of the biplane in level position in known wind velocities ... They also devised a formula for power-to-weight ratio and propeller efficiency that would answer whether or not they could supply to the propellers the power necessary to deliver the thrust to maintain flight ... they even computed the thrust of their propellers to within 1 percent of the thrust actually delivered ..."


title: Wright brothers

text: In 1903 the brothers built the powered "Wright Flyer", using their preferred material for construction, spruce, a strong and lightweight wood, and Pride of the West muslin for surface coverings. They also designed and carved their own wooden propellers, and had a purpose-built gasoline engine fabricated in their bicycle shop. They thought propeller design would be a simple matter and intended to adapt data from shipbuilding. However, their library research disclosed no established formulae for either marine or air propellers, and they found themselves with no sure starting point. They discussed and argued the question, sometimes heatedly, until they concluded that an aeronautical propeller is essentially a wing rotating in the vertical plane. On that basis, they used data from more wind tunnel tests to design their propellers. The finished blades were just over eight feet long, made of three laminations of glued spruce. The Wrights decided on twin "pusher" propellers (counter-rotating to cancel torque), which would act on a greater quantity of air than a single relatively slow propeller and not disturb airflow over the leading edge of the wings.


title: Wright brothers

text: Wilbur made a March 1903 entry in his notebook indicating the prototype propeller was 66% efficient. Modern wind tunnel tests on reproduction 1903 propellers show they were more than 75% efficient under the conditions of the first flights, "a remarkable feat", and actually had a peak efficiency of 82%. The Wrights wrote to several engine manufacturers, but none could meet their need for a sufficiently light-weight powerplant. They turned to their shop mechanic, Charlie Taylor, who built an engine in just six weeks in close consultation with the brothers.


title: Wright brothers

text: To keep the weight down the engine block was cast from aluminum, a rare practice at the time. The Wright/Taylor engine had a primitive version of a carburetor, and had no fuel pump. Gasoline was gravity-fed from the fuel tank mounted on a wing strut into a chamber next to the cylinders where it was mixed with air: The fuel-air mixture was then vaporized by heat from the crankcase, forcing it into the cylinders.


title: Wright brothers

text: The propeller drive chains, resembling those of bicycles, were supplied by a manufacturer of heavy-duty automobile chains. The "Flyer" cost less than a thousand dollars, in contrast to more than $50,000 in government funds given to Samuel Langley for his man-carrying Great Aerodrome. In 1903 $1,000 was . The "Wright Flyer" had a wingspan of , weighed , and had a , engine.


title: Wright brothers

text: On June 24, 1903, Wilbur made a second presentation in Chicago to the Western Society of Engineers. He gave details about their 1902 experiments and glider flights, but avoided any mention of their plans for powered flight.


title: Wright brothers

text: In camp at Kill Devil Hills, the Wrights endured weeks of delays caused by broken propeller shafts during engine tests. After the shafts were replaced (requiring two trips back to Dayton), Wilbur won a coin toss and made a three-second flight attempt on December 14, 1903, stalling after takeoff and causing minor damage to the "Flyer". Because December 13, 1903, was a Sunday, the brothers did not make any attempts that day, even though the weather was good, so their first powered test flight happened on the 121st anniversary of the first hot air balloon test flight that the Montgolfier brothers had made on December 14, 1782. In a message to their family, Wilbur referred to the trial as having "only partial success", stating "the power is ample, and but for a trifling error due to lack of experience with this machine and this method of starting, the machine would undoubtedly have flown beautifully."


title: Wright brothers

text: Following repairs, the Wrights finally took to the air on December 17, 1903, making two flights each from level ground into a freezing headwind gusting to . The first flight, by Orville at 10:35 am, of in 12 seconds, at a speed of only over the ground, was recorded in a . The next two flights covered approximately , by Wilbur and Orville respectively. Their altitude was about above the ground. The following is Orville Wright's account of the final flight of the day:


title: Wright brothers

text: Five people witnessed the flights: Adam Etheridge, John T. Daniels (who snapped the famous "first flight" photo using Orville's pre-positioned camera), and Will Dough, all of the U.S. government coastal lifesaving crew; area businessman W.C. Brinkley; and Johnny Moore, a teenaged boy who lived in the area.


title: Wright brothers

text: After the men hauled the "Flyer" back from its fourth flight, a powerful gust of wind flipped it over several times, despite the crew's attempt to hold it down. Severely damaged, the "Wright Flyer" never flew again. The brothers shipped the airplane home, and years later Orville restored it, lending it to several U.S. locations for display, then to the Science Museum in London (see Smithsonian dispute below), before it was finally installed in 1948 in the Smithsonian Institution, its current residence.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wrights sent a telegram about the flights to their father, requesting that he "inform press". However, the "Dayton Journal" refused to publish the story, saying the flights were too short to be important. Meanwhile, against the brothers' wishes, a telegraph operator leaked their message to a Virginia newspaper, which concocted a highly inaccurate news article that was reprinted the next day in several newspapers elsewhere, including Dayton.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wrights issued their own factual statement to the press in January. Nevertheless, the flights did not create public excitement – if people even knew about them – and the news soon faded. In Paris, however, Aero Club of France members, already stimulated by Chanute's reports of Wright gliding successes, took the news more seriously and increased their efforts to catch up to the brothers.


title: Wright brothers

text: An analysis in 1985 by Professor Fred E.C. Culick and Henry R. Jex demonstrated that the 1903 "Wright Flyer" was so unstable as to be almost unmanageable by anyone but the Wrights, who had trained themselves in the 1902 glider. In a recreation attempt on the event's 100th anniversary on December 17, 2003, Kevin Kochersberger, piloting an exact replica, failed in his effort to match the success that the Wright brothers had achieved with their piloting skill.


title: Wright brothers

text: In 1904 the Wrights built the Wright Flyer II. They decided to avoid the expense of travel and bringing supplies to the Outer Banks and set up an airfield at Huffman Prairie, a cow pasture eight miles (13km) northeast of Dayton. The Wrights referred to the airfield as Simms Station in their flying school brochure. They received permission to use the field rent-free from owner and bank president Torrance Huffman.


title: Wright brothers

text: They invited reporters to their first flight attempt of the year on May 23, on the condition that no photographs be taken. Engine troubles and slack winds prevented any flying, and they could manage only a very short hop a few days later with fewer reporters present. Library of Congress historian Fred Howard noted some speculation that the brothers may have intentionally failed to fly in order to cause reporters to lose interest in their experiments. Whether that is true is not known, but after their poor showing local newspapers virtually ignored them for the next year and a half.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wrights were glad to be free from the distraction of reporters. The absence of newsmen also reduced the chance of competitors learning their methods. After the Kitty Hawk powered flights, the Wrights made a decision to begin withdrawing from the bicycle business so they could concentrate on creating and marketing a practical airplane. This was financially risky, since they were neither wealthy nor government-funded (unlike other experimenters such as Ader, Maxim, Langley, and Santos-Dumont). The Wright brothers did not have the luxury of being able to give away their invention: It had to be their livelihood. Thus, their secrecy intensified, encouraged by advice from their patent attorney, Henry Toulmin, not to reveal details of their machine.


title: Wright brothers

text: At Huffman Prairie, lighter winds made takeoffs harder, and they had to use a longer starting rail than the rail used at Kitty Hawk. The first flights in 1904 revealed problems with longitudinal stability, solved by adding ballast and lengthening the supports for the elevator. During the spring and summer they suffered many hard landings, often damaging the aircraft and causing minor injuries. On August 13, making an unassisted takeoff, Wilbur finally exceeded their best Kitty Hawk effort with a flight of .


title: Wright brothers

text: Then they decided to use a weight-powered catapult to make takeoffs easier and tried it for the first time on September 7.


title: Wright brothers

text: On September 20, 1904, Wilbur flew the first complete circle in history by a manned heavier-than-air powered machine, covering in about a minute and a half. Their two best flights were November 9 by Wilbur and December 1 by Orville, each exceeding five minutes and covering nearly three miles in almost four circles.


title: Wright brothers

text: By the end of the year the brothers had accumulated about 50 minutes in the air in 105 flights over the rather soggy pasture, which, remarkably, is virtually unchanged today from its original condition and is now part of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, adjacent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wrights scrapped the battered and much-repaired aircraft, but saved the engine, and in 1905 built a new airplane, the "Flyer III". Nevertheless, at first this "Flyer" offered the same marginal performance as the first two. Its maiden flight was on June 23 and the first few flights were no longer than 10 seconds. After Orville suffered a bone-jarring and potentially fatal crash on July 14, they rebuilt the "Flyer" with the forward elevator and rear rudder both enlarged and placed several feet farther away from the wings. They also installed a separate control for the rear rudder instead of linking it to the wing-warping "cradle" as before.


title: Wright brothers

text: Each of the three axes – pitch, roll, and yaw – now had its own independent control. These modifications greatly improved stability and control, enabling a series of six dramatic "long flights" ranging from 17 to 38 minutes and 11– around the three-quarter mile course over Huffman Prairie between September 26 and October 5. Wilbur made the last and longest flight, in 38 minutes and 3 seconds, ending with a safe landing when the fuel ran out. The flight was seen by a number of people, including several invited friends, their father Milton, and neighboring farmers.


title: Wright brothers

text: Reporters showed up the next day (only their second appearance at the field since May the previous year), but the brothers declined to fly. The long flights convinced the Wrights they had achieved their goal of creating a flying machine of "practical utility" which they could offer to sell.


title: Wright brothers

text: The only photos of the flights of 1904–1905 were taken by the brothers. (A few photos were damaged in the Great Dayton Flood of 1913, but most survived intact.) In 1904 Ohio beekeeping businessman Amos Root, a technology enthusiast, saw a few flights including the first circle. Articles he wrote for his beekeeping magazine were the only published eyewitness reports of the Huffman Prairie flights, except for the unimpressive early hop local newsmen saw. Root offered a report to "Scientific American" magazine, but the editor turned it down. As a result, the news was not widely known outside Ohio, and was often met with skepticism. The Paris edition of the "Herald Tribune" headlined a 1906 article on the Wrights "Flyers or liars?".


title: Wright brothers

text: In years to come, Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep. J.M. Cox, who published the "Dayton Daily News" at that time, expressed the attitude of newspapermen – and the public – in those days when he admitted years later: "Frankly, none of us believed it."


title: Wright brothers

text: A few newspapers published articles about the long flights, but no reporters or photographers had been there. The lack of splashy eyewitness press coverage was a major reason for disbelief in Washington, DC, and Europe, and in journals like "Scientific American", whose editors doubted the "alleged experiments" and asked how U.S. newspapers, "alert as they are, allowed these sensational performances to escape their notice.


title: Wright brothers

text: In October 1904, the brothers were visited by the first of many important Europeans they would befriend in coming years, Colonel J.E. Capper, later superintendent of the Royal Balloon Factory. Capper and his wife were visiting the United States to investigate the aeronautical exhibits at the St. Louis World Fair, but had been given a letter of introduction to both Chanute and the Wrights by Patrick Alexander. Capper was very favorably impressed by the Wrights, who showed him photographs of their aircraft in flight.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright brothers were certainly complicit in the lack of attention they received. Fearful of competitors stealing their ideas, and still without a patent, they flew on only one more day after October 5. From then on, they refused to fly anywhere unless they had a firm contract to sell their aircraft. They wrote to the U.S. government, then to Britain, France and Germany with an offer to sell a flying machine, but were rebuffed because they insisted on a signed contract before giving a demonstration. They were unwilling even to show their photographs of the airborne Flyer.


title: Wright brothers

text: The American military, having recently spent $50,000 on the Langley Aerodrome – a product of the nation's foremost scientist – only to see it plunge twice into the Potomac River "like a handful of mortar", was particularly unreceptive to the claims of two unknown bicycle makers from Ohio. Thus, doubted or scorned, the Wright brothers continued their work in semi-obscurity, while other aviation pioneers like Santos-Dumont, Henri Farman, Léon Delagrange, and American Glenn Curtiss entered the limelight.


title: Wright brothers

text: In 1906 skeptics in the European aviation community had converted the press to an anti-Wright brothers stance. European newspapers, especially those in France, were openly derisive, calling them "bluffeurs" (bluffers). Ernest Archdeacon, founder of the Aéro-Club de France, was publicly scornful of the brothers' claims in spite of published reports; specifically, he wrote several articles and, in 1906, stated that "the French would make the first public demonstration of powered flight".


title: Wright brothers

text: The Paris edition of the "New York Herald" summed up Europe's opinion of the Wright brothers in an editorial on February 10, 1906: "The Wrights have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars. It is difficult to fly. It's easy to say, 'We have flown'."


title: Wright brothers

text: In 1908, after the Wrights' first flights in France, Archdeacon publicly admitted he had done them an injustice.


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers contacted the United States Department of War, the British War Office and a French syndicate on October 19, 1905. The US Board of Ordnance and Fortification replied on October 24, 1905, specifying they would take no further action "until a machine is produced which by actual operation is shown to be able to produce horizontal flight and to carry an operator." In May 1908, Orville wrote:


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers turned their attention to Europe, especially France, where enthusiasm for aviation ran high, and journeyed there for the first time in 1907 for face-to-face talks with government officials and businessmen. They also met with aviation representatives in Germany and Britain. Before traveling, Orville shipped a newly built Model A Flyer to France in anticipation of demonstration flights. In France, Wilbur met Frank P. Lahm, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Aeronautical Division. Writing to his superiors, Lahm smoothed the way for Wilbur to give an in-person presentation to the U.S. Board of Ordnance and Fortification in Washington, DC, when he returned to the U.S. This time, the Board was favorably impressed, in contrast to its previous indifference.


title: Wright brothers

text: With further input from the Wrights, the U.S. Army Signal Corps issued "Specification 486" in December 1907, inviting bids for construction of a flying machine under military contract. The Wrights submitted their bid in January, and were awarded a contract on February 8, 1908. Then on March 23, 1908, the brothers had a contract to form the French company La Compagnie Générale de Navigation Aérienne. This French syndicate included Lazare Weiller, Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, Hart O. Berg, and Charles Ranlett Flint.


title: Wright brothers

text: In May they went back to Kitty Hawk with their 1905 Flyer to practice for their contracted demonstration flights. Their privacy was lost when several correspondents arrived on the scene. The brothers' contracts required them to fly with a passenger, so they modified the 1905 Flyer by installing two upright seats with dual control levers. Charlie Furnas, a mechanic from Dayton, became the first fixed-wing aircraft passenger on separate flights with both brothers on May 14, 1908. Later, Wilbur over-controlled the front elevator and crashed into the sand at about . He emerged with bruises and hurt ribs, but the accident ended the practice flights.


title: Wright brothers

text: In October 1911, Orville Wright returned to the Outer Banks again, to conduct safety and stabilization tests with a new glider. On October 24, he soared for 9 minutes and 45 seconds, a record that held for almost 10 years, when gliding as a sport began in the 1920s.


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers' contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, DC.


title: Wright brothers

text: Facing much skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a ""bluffeur"", Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908, at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France. His first flight lasted only 1 minute 45 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Blériot. In the following days, Wilbur made a series of technically challenging flights, including figure-eights, demonstrating his skills as a pilot and the capability of his flying machine, which far surpassed those of all other pioneering aircraft and pilots of the day.


title: Wright brothers

text: The French public was thrilled by Wilbur's feats and flocked to the field by the thousands, and the Wright brothers instantly became world-famous. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. "L'Aérophile" editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights "have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly ..." Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, "For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff ... They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure ... to make amends."


title: Wright brothers

text: On October 7, 1908, Edith Berg, the wife of the brothers' European business agent, became the first American woman passenger when she flew with Wilbur – one of many passengers who rode with him that autumn, including Griffith Brewer and Charles Rolls. Wilbur also became acquainted with Léon Bollée and his family. Bollée was the owner of an automobile factory where Wilbur would assemble the Flyer and where he would be provided with hired assistance. Bollée and his wife would fly that autumn with Wilbur. Madame Carlotta Bollée had been in the latter stages of pregnancy when Wilbur arrived in LeMans in June 1908 to assemble the Flyer. She was fluent on Greek, French and English and translated the technical discussions between Wright and her husband. Wilbur promised her that he would make his first European flight the day her baby was born which he did, August 8, 1908. He became Elizabeth Bollée's godfather.


title: Wright brothers

text: Orville followed his brother's success by demonstrating another nearly identical Flyer to the United States Army at Fort Myer, Virginia, starting on September 3, 1908. On September 9, he made the first hour-long flight, lasting 62 minutes and 15 seconds. On the same day he took up Frank P. Lahm as a passenger, and then Major George Squier three days later.


title: Wright brothers

text: On September 17, Army lieutenant Thomas Selfridge rode along as his passenger, serving as an official observer. A few minutes into the flight at an altitude of about , a propeller split and shattered, sending the "Flyer" out of control. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull in the crash and died that evening in the nearby Army hospital, becoming the first airplane crash fatality. Orville was badly injured, suffering a broken left leg and four broken ribs. Twelve years later, after he suffered increasingly severe pains, X-rays revealed the accident had also caused three hip bone fractures and a dislocated hip.


title: Wright brothers

text: The brothers' sister Katharine, a school teacher, rushed from Dayton to Virginia and stayed by Orville's side for the seven weeks of his hospitalization. She helped negotiate a one-year extension of the Army contract. A friend visiting Orville in the hospital asked, "Has it got your nerve?" "Nerve?" repeated Orville, slightly puzzled. "Oh, do you mean will I be "afraid" to fly again? The only thing I'm afraid of is that I can't get well soon enough to finish those tests next year."


title: Wright brothers

text: Deeply shocked and upset by the accident, Wilbur determined to make even more impressive flight demonstrations; in the ensuing days and weeks he set new records for altitude and duration. On September 28, Wilbur won the Commission of Aviation prize, and then on December 31, the Coupe Michelin. In January 1909 Orville and Katharine joined him in France, and for a time they were the three most famous people in the world, sought after by royalty, the rich, reporters, and the public. The kings of Great Britain, Spain, and Italy came to see Wilbur fly.


title: Wright brothers

text: All three Wrights relocated to Pau, where Wilbur made many more public flights in nearby Pont Long. Wilbur gave rides to a procession of officers, journalists, and statesmen, including his sister Katharine on March 17, 1909. The brothers established the world's first flying school to meet the French syndicate requirements to train three pilots, Charles de Lambert, Paul Tissandier, and P.-N. Lucas-Girardville. In April the Wrights went to Rome where Wilbur assembled another "Flyer". At Centocelle, Wilbur made demonstrations flights, and trained three military pilots, Mario Calderara, Umbert Savoia, and Castagneris Guido. A Universal cameraman flew as a passenger, and filmed the first motion pictures from an airplane.


title: Wright brothers

text: After their return to the U.S. on May 13, 1909, the brothers and Katharine were invited to the White House where on June 10, President Taft bestowed awards upon them. Dayton followed up with a lavish two-day homecoming celebration on June 17 and 18. On July 27, 1909 Orville, with Wilbur assisting, completed the proving flights for the U.S. Army. They met the requirements of an aircraft carrying two persons remaining aloft for an hour, followed by a speed trial demonstrating an average speed of at least .


title: Wright brothers

text: President Taft, his cabinet, plus members of Congress composed the audience of 10,000. Following the successful flights, the Wrights received from the army $25,000, plus $2500 for each mile per hour they exceeded 40 miles per hour. Orville and Katharine then traveled to Germany, where Orville made demonstration flights at Tempelhof in September 1909, including a flight with the Crown Prince of Germany as a passenger.


title: Wright brothers

text: On October 4, 1909, Wilbur made a flight before a million people in the New York City area during the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. Taking off from Governors Island, Wilbur flew up the Hudson River to Grant's Tomb, and back to Governors Island for a landing, with a canoe attached to the aircraft's framework, as a safety precaution in the case of ditching. Wilbur then trained three military pilots at the College Park Airport, Frank P. Lahm, Frederick E. Humphreys, and Benjamin Foulois.


title: Wright brothers

text: On May 25, 1910, back at Huffman Prairie, Orville piloted two unique flights. First, he took off on a six-minute flight with Wilbur as his passenger, the only time the Wright brothers ever flew together. They received permission from their father to make the flight. They had always promised Milton they would never fly together to avoid the chance of a double tragedy and to ensure one brother would remain to continue their experiments. Next, Orville took his 82-year-old father on a nearly 7 minute flight, the only powered aerial excursion of Milton Wright's life. The aircraft rose to about while the elderly Wright called to his son, "Higher, Orville, higher!".


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright brothers wrote their 1903 patent application themselves, but it was rejected. In January 1904, they hired Ohio patent attorney Henry Toulmin, and on May 22, 1906, they were granted U.S. Patent 821393 for "new and useful Improvements in Flying Machines".


title: Wright brothers

text: The patent illustrates a non-powered flying machine – namely, the 1902 glider. The patent's importance lies in its claim of a new and useful method of "controlling" a flying machine, powered or not. The technique of wing-warping is described, but the patent explicitly states that other methods instead of wing-warping could be used for adjusting the outer portions of a machine's wings to different angles on the right and left sides to achieve lateral (roll) control.


title: Wright brothers

text: The concept of varying the angle presented to the air near the wingtips, by any suitable method, is central to the patent. The patent also describes the steerable rear vertical rudder and its innovative use in combination with wing-warping, enabling the airplane to make a "coordinated turn", a technique that prevents hazardous "adverse yaw", the problem Wilbur had when trying to turn the 1901 glider. Finally, the patent describes the forward elevator, used for ascending and descending.


title: Wright brothers

text: In March 1904, the Wright Brothers applied for French and German patents. The French patent was granted on July 1, 1904. According to Combs, regarding the U.S. patent, "... by 1906 the drawings in the Wright patents were available to anyone who wanted badly enough to get them. And they gave proof – in vivid, technical detail – of how to get into the air."


title: Wright brothers

text: Attempting to circumvent the patent, Glenn Curtiss and other early aviators devised ailerons to emulate lateral control described in the patent and demonstrated by the Wrights in their public flights.


title: Wright brothers

text: Soon after the historic July 4, 1908, one-kilometer flight by Curtiss in the AEA June Bug, the Wrights warned him not to infringe their patent by profiting from flying or selling aircraft that used ailerons.


title: Wright brothers

text: Orville wrote Curtiss, "Claim 14 of our patent no. 821,393, specifically covers the combination which we are informed you are using. If it is your desire to enter the exhibition business, we would be glad to take up the matter of a license to operate under our patent for that purpose."


title: Wright brothers

text: Curtiss was at the time a member of the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), headed by Alexander Graham Bell, where in 1908 he had helped reinvent wingtip ailerons for their Aerodrome No. 2, known as the AEA White Wing


title: Wright brothers

text: Curtiss refused to pay license fees to the Wrights and sold an airplane equipped with ailerons to the Aeronautic Society of New York in 1909. The Wrights filed a lawsuit, beginning a years-long legal conflict. They also sued foreign aviators who flew at U.S. exhibitions, including the leading French aviator Louis Paulhan. The Curtiss people derisively suggested that if someone jumped in the air and waved his arms, the Wrights would sue.


title: Wright brothers

text: European companies which bought foreign patents the Wrights had received sued other manufacturers in their countries. Those lawsuits were only partly successful. Despite a pro-Wright ruling in France, legal maneuvering dragged on until the patent expired in 1917. A German court ruled the patent invalid because of prior disclosure in speeches by Wilbur Wright in 1901, and Chanute in 1903. In the U.S. the Wrights made an agreement with the Aero Club of America to license airshows which the Club approved, freeing participating pilots from a legal threat. Promoters of approved shows paid fees to the Wrights.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright brothers won their initial case against Curtiss in February 1913 when a judge ruled that ailerons were covered under the patent. The Curtiss company appealed the decision.


title: Wright brothers

text: From 1910 until his death from typhoid fever in 1912, Wilbur took the leading role in the patent struggle, travelling incessantly to consult with lawyers and testify in what he felt was a moral cause, particularly against Curtiss, who was creating a large company to manufacture aircraft. The Wrights' preoccupation with the legal issue stifled their work on new designs, and by 1911 Wright airplanes were considered inferior to those of European makers. Indeed, aviation development in the U.S. was suppressed to such an extent that, when the U.S. entered World War I, no acceptable American-designed airplanes were available, and U.S. forces were compelled to use French machines. Orville and Katharine Wright believed Curtiss was partly responsible for Wilbur's premature death, which occurred in the wake of his exhausting travels and the stress of the legal battle.


title: Wright brothers

text: In January 1914, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict against the Curtiss company, which continued to avoid penalties through legal tactics. Orville apparently felt vindicated by the decision, and much to the frustration of company executives, he did not push vigorously for further legal action to ensure a manufacturing monopoly. In fact, he was planning to sell the company and departed in 1915. In 1917, with World War I underway, the U.S. government pressured the industry to form a cross-licensing organization, the Manufacturers Aircraft Association, to which member companies paid a blanket fee for the use of aviation patents, including the original and subsequent Wright patents. The "patent war" ended, although side issues lingered in the courts until the 1920s. In a twist of irony, the Wright Aeronautical Corporation (successor to the Wright-Martin Company), and the Curtiss Aeroplane company, merged in 1929 to form the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, which remains in business today producing high-tech components for the aerospace industry.


title: Wright brothers

text: Aviation historian C.H. Gibbs-Smith stated a number of times that the Wrights' legal victory would have been "doubtful" if an 1868 patent of "a prior but lost invention" by M.P.W. Boulton of the U.K. had been known in the period 1903–1906. The patent, titled "Aërial Locomotion &c," described several engine improvements and conceptual designs and included a technical description and drawings of an aileron control system and an optional feature intended to function as an autopilot. In fact, this patent was well known to participants in the Wright-Curtiss lawsuit. A U.S. federal judge who reviewed previous inventions and patents and upheld the Wright patent against the Curtiss company reached the opposite conclusion of Gibbs-Smith, saying the Boulton patent "is not anticipatory".


title: Wright brothers

text: The lawsuits damaged the public image of the Wright brothers, who were generally regarded before this as heroes. Critics said the brothers were greedy and unfair, and compared their actions unfavorably to European inventors, who worked more openly. Supporters said the brothers were protecting their interests and were justified in expecting fair compensation for the years of work leading to their successful invention. Their 10-year friendship with Octave Chanute, already strained by tension over how much credit, if any, he might deserve for their success, collapsed after he publicly criticized their actions.


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright Company was incorporated on November 22, 1909. The brothers sold their patents to the company for $100,000 and also received one-third of the shares in a million dollar stock issue and a 10 percent royalty on every airplane sold. With Wilbur as president and Orville as vice president, the company set up a factory in Dayton and a flying school / test flight field at Huffman Prairie; the headquarters office was in New York City.


title: Wright brothers

text: In mid-1910, the Wrights changed the design of the "Wright Flyer", moving the horizontal elevator from the front to the back and adding wheels although keeping the skids as part of the undercarriage unit. It had become apparent by then that a rear elevator would make an airplane easier to control, especially as higher speeds grew more common. The new version was designated the "Model B", although the original canard design was never referred to as the "Model A" by the Wrights. However, the U.S. Army Signal Corps which bought the airplane did call it "Wright type A".


title: Wright brothers

text: There were not many customers for airplanes, so in the spring of 1910 the Wrights hired and trained a team of salaried exhibition pilots to show off their machines and win prize money for the company – despite Wilbur's disdain for what he called "the mountebank business". The team debuted at the Indianapolis Speedway on June 13. Before the year was over, pilots Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxsey died in air show crashes, and in November 1911 the brothers disbanded the team on which nine men had served (four other former team members died in crashes afterward).


title: Wright brothers

text: The Wright Company transported the first known commercial air cargo on November 7, 1910, by flying two bolts of dress silk from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio, for the Morehouse-Martens Department Store, which paid a $5,000 fee. Company pilot Phil Parmelee made the flight – which was more an exercise in advertising than a simple delivery – in an hour and six minutes with the cargo strapped in the passenger's seat. The silk was cut into small pieces and sold as souvenirs.


title: Wright brothers

text: Between 1910 and 1916 the Wright Brothers Flying School at Huffman Prairie trained 115 pilots who were instructed by Orville and his assistants. Several trainees became famous, including Henry "Hap" Arnold, who rose to Five-Star General, commanded U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, and became the first head of the U.S. Air Force; Calbraith Perry Rodgers, who made the first coast-to-coast flight in 1911 (with many stops and crashes) in a Wright Model EX named the "Vin Fiz" (after the sponsor's grape soft drink); and Eddie Stinson, founder of the Stinson Aircraft Company.