On Sat, 06 Dec 2003 03:01:37 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:

Might and main?

Yes. There were inquiring minds even before the advent of
the internet. Replicas were made in 1943 and 1948.
A multitude of books have been written. I've read three
of them since last Saturday:

On Great White Wings by Culick and Dunmore (coffee
table book, lots of photos).

Visions of a Flying Machine by Jakab (oriented toward
the technical and scientific aspects).

A Dream of Wings by Crouch.

I also watched the DVD, Kitty Hawk by Garrigus.

I got all four items from a friend who has family who live
near the Outer Banks and who has tickets to attend
the December 17 re-enactment.

We're not discussing why they chose the canard for their earliest gliders,
we're discussing why they chose it for the 1903 Flyer.

The 1903 Flyer is a lineal descendent of the three glider
designs (1900, 1901, and 1902). All three had a forward
elevator (they called it a "rudder"). Here's what Jakab said
about the issue in 1990:

"The Wrights stayed with a canard configuration for years
because it offered several benefits that were unique to the
design beyond the basic functions of pitch control. From an
historical perspective, however, documenting their decision
to use the forward elevator is as slippery a matter as
determining exactly how they arrived at wing warping for
lateral control. The brothers, and many tellers of the Wright
story that followed them, invariably point to the advantages
derived from the canard arrangement. However, there are only
a few, hazy clues as to why they adopted it in the first place.
Here again, despite their voluminous records, another of the
most significant aspects of their inventive work remains
unclear" (70-1).

The Wrights experimented with the elevator on the rear
in 1900. "Orville remarked that they had tried the machine
'with tail in front, behind, and every other way. When we
got through, Will was so mixed up he couldn't even theorize"
(Crouch, 238).

Chanute and Herring had a biplane glider with rearward
empennage in 1896. After Lilienthal's death, Herring was
the most accomplished glider pilot in the world. The
Wrights knew both men--both came to Kitty Hawk for
longer or shorter visits, with and without their own gliders
to test. It's not as though the Wrights didn't realize that
there were other ways to skin the cat.

Jakab guesses that the Wrights may have been trying to
forestall (pun intended) dying like Lilienthal, whose
monoplane glider with rearward empennage stalled and
spun in from a height of 50 feet (71). "As it turned out,
the Wrights' forward elevator was extremely effective in
reducing the violent reaction of a stall. Following a
stall at low altitudes, the Wrights canard design settled
to the ground almost parachute style rather than going
into a chilling spin common to aircraft with the stabilizer
in the rear. The glider hit with a fairly good jolt upon
landing, but it was usually not hard enough to damage
the machine or to injure the pilot" (71).

"The automatic stall recovery of the forward-elevator design
was decidedly beneficial. It saved Wilbur and Orville from
serious injury on several occasions before they came to
understand stalls and to recognize how to logically
avoid them. A stable, well-designed airplane with the
stabilizer in the rear will also offer gentle, controllable
stall characteristics. But with an unstable aircraft
such as the Wrights', a canard configuration offered
a far better chance of safe recovery ... It is possible that
the Wrights intuitively decided that placing the stabilizer
ahead of the wings would hep alleviate the deadly nosedive
that claimed Lilienthal's life. They alluded to this in later
years. Recalling the experiments of 1900, Orville stated
in 1924, 'We retained the elevator in front for many years
because it absolutely prevented a nose dive such as
that in which Lilienthal and many others since have met
their deaths'" (73).

So they chose it for the 1903 flyer because it worked well
on the 1900, 1901, 1903 gliders. The question that Jakab
says is obscure is why they chose it for the 1900 glider
in the first place--why did they start with the canard. That's
where the documentation is lacking. Once they had it, they
found out that it had some benefits.

Marty