Wright Brothers Didn't Invent Flight 

Also before anyone says it, I'm Irish, I struggle to say "turning" in a neutral accent....not pronouncing three as tree is quite difficult too

"that's not flying that's falling with style"- Woody to Wright Brothers

Wright brothers did't invent flight, the invented the non-emergency landing XD

A red herring. The Wrights never claimed to have invented flight, just to have engineered the first successful heavier than air powered, sustained and controlled machine. The modern concept of flight was invented by George Cayley a century earlier and the Wrights both knew about Cayley and gave him credit.

_Birds_ invented flight. *duh* ;)

Wright brothers = angry birds Santos Dumont = air plane

Lilienthal did not invent flight...there are 4 aspects of flight that most be controlled for flight...pitch, roll, yaw, and thrust/drag, all airplanes including gliders control these 4 aspects, Lilienthal could only control 1 roll...the Wright Brothers were inspired by Lilienthal and started with his information but soon found out all his data was wrong, so they had to start from scratch, those leading them to wind tunnel test, kit tests, and glider tests...those the Wright Brothers are the first to have a full tested and proven aircraft that could control all 4 aspects of flight...

To be fair, aviation scholars state that the Wright Bros. invented "powered, controlled, heavier than air flight." Without these modifiers, you have a dirigible or an uncontrolled glide, or a powered but uncontrolled leap. With them, you have an "airplane." And nothing less will do.

I suggest that you take a good look at Alberto Santos-Dumont's work.

I mean when people refer to flight they almost always mean powered and controlled flight in a full-scale manned aircraft, and they did invent that. Or at least, they made it work first.

Your animation of wing warping at 1:10 is incorrect and misleading. Wing warping didn't bend the entire wing up and down like that, it twisted the wing about it's length.

There is quite a difference between flying and gliding.

Channel: Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles Video: The Wright Brothers DID Invent the Airplane Watch this and learn how Wright brothers constructed first airplane.

Of course the Wright Brothers didn't invent flight. Icarus did. Wasn't too good at it, but he was the man. That Sun, melanoma and failed flight plans!

Wright Brothers experimented with Lillienthal type gliders and learned to build them, to improve them, and to fly them successfully, mastering the many variables in glider flight. Then with the advent of the lighter weight Internal combustion engines built a glider that could not only continue flying when the hill ran out, but not need a hill at all or better yet, take off and go higher than any hill. They were the first to truly successfully do that. No matter how many other people's inventions they used in combination to accomplish this. They showed that ' heavier than air ' craft flying was much more than just building a machine. They started the first ' flying school ' for the new machines. They couldn't just sell them at the local Sears outlet.

Excellent video. As an Australian, don't worry about the accent, it's fine. A point that most people miss, when looking at this, is the Wright Brothers were the first to get it working. They weren't the first people to have these ideas. As stated, there was Otto Linthall, but many others, including Leonardo Da Vinci, at least sketched up machines to do this. Nobody 'invented' flight, birds and bats and flies were already doing it. The trick was to figure out how they did it and then either copy that, or work out alternatives. The other thing people tend to overlook, about 110 years later, is that the Wright Brothers were one (rather small and poorly funded) team, who were attempting this. There were at least a dozen other individuals or teams working on the same problem, at the same time, in various places around the world, and they all watched the newspapers and prayed the other guys ran into trouble, so they'd be the first... Everybody knew, we're very close, somebody is going to get this right very soon. Many had tens of times, perhaps hundreds of times more money and resources than a pair of brother bicycle mechanics...

Misleading title. They are credited for the 1st powered flight.

The Wright bros invented powered flight. Otto invented the hang glider.

Well I see in the comment section, every culture has its own legendary glider, you may also check a this guy from 17th centruy Cosntantinople, Ottoman Empire, Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi who leaped from Galata Tower and glided over the bosphorus and landed succesfuly on Asian side. And it's a shame, after the flight, he considered as a possesed man and exiled from the realm by Sultan.

Santos Dumont is unique.

Who invented de flight? The brazilian guy Santos dumont, not the Wright brothers

That wasn't flying, that was falling with style.

The Wright Brothers invented powered flight which carried a person, but also invented the three main controls of flight. Gliders were around for awhile but not very successful. The Wright Brothers were first to the finish line.

1:16 that's not exactly how wing warping works per your diagram. the dihedral/anhedral angle doesn't change. but rather the angle of incidence does. the leading edge rises and trailing edge drops a little, so the airfoil encounters the air at a higher angle. the spar thru the wing is much too strong to bend like your diagram indicates. also 1:29 the whole elevator box doesn't rotate but rather the top and bottom surfaces each rotate on their own axis and the linkages in between connect the surfaces to the chain/lever and the mountings poke thru the bottom surface to mount it to the airframe. Yaw was linked to roll so it always made roughly coordinated turns.

Point well made. Lilienthal did, indeed, make significant advances in understanding wing shape but, without the Wright brothers' developments and their home grown engineering skills flight, as we know it, would not have happen when it did.

The most impressive fact about this video is the fact that it does not even cite the Brazilian Santos Dumont and its 14-Bis, the first airplane to take off by its own.

Your videos are pleasing to the eye and the animations are smooth. Keep it up

On 12 November 1906 Santos-Dumont set the first world record recognized by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, by flying 220 metres (722 ft) in 21.5 seconds

In grade school it was told that the Wright Bothers invented the airplane . That's called simplification . A closer look at most things shows that ideas are built on other ideas and sometimes it is ONE idea in combination with many other ideas that makes a breakthrough .

What about Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi?

(Gotta say, your Real Engineering posts are some of my favorites on RU-vid. I can't thank you enough. The following is geared more toward many of the commentators here than anything) I'm not sure the term "invented" really applies to flight. It's not unlike saying Benjamin Franklin invented electricity. With respect to the Wright brothers, what they did, and are properly credited for, is being the first people to successfully invent, build and fly a self-powered heavier than air machine that was capable of sustained controlled flight. (They were in the air for over five minutes by 1904) Those who think the brothers, Lilienthal or Dumont invented flight probably think that Frankenstein was the name of the creature from Mary Shelly's book of the same name. Llienthal was the first to design, build and fly a heavier than air controlled "craft" if you will. The Wright brothers drew EXTENSIVELY from his work. As I stated previously the Wright brothers were the first to successfully invent, build and fly a self-powered heavier than air machine that was capable of sustained controlled flight. Alberto Santos Dumont was the first to invent, build and fly a self-powered heavier than air machine that was capable of a unassisted takeoff and sustained controlled flight. Alberto Santos Dumont contribution to modern aeronautic design cannot be overstated. The man was clearly a genius who is consistently vastly underrepresented in the history of flight. He stands shoulder to shoulder with the greatest people in the history of aviation. If you are really interested in the subject I HIGHLY recommend The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. It is incredibly well researched and very interesting. My family and I listened to it while driving from our home in Westchester NY to... Kitty Hawk N.C. Then onto Titusville FL. Quite the aviation/space trip. We were going to see my mother-in-law. (She flies a broom.KIDDING!!) As far as my outlook I was VERY PROUD that in the movie about Neil Armstrong they didn't show the flag being planted. He represented the earth, our home. I don;t think the moonshot was an American feat. America supposedly prides itself on being a melting pot but claims they/we somehow are separate from the rest of the world in these situations. The success of the Apollo missions were due to Brazilians, Irish, Polish, English, Scottish, German, Japanese, Chinese, Australians, French, Spanish, Russians...(I'm writing these as they occur, in no greater or lesser degree of contribution) and all the nationalities who live in America and worked for all the different companies that were contracted to build the ships and engineer the missions. I can't feel as much pride for America alone as I can for the people from countries all over the world who lived in America and worked on this effort. I think of it as the milestone that it is and that was performed by humans.

Fact: Abbas ibn fernas managed to fly in the 9th century in the city of Cordoba in al Andalus (Muslim Spain), He even flew for a time but he fell and went to the hospital. the reason that he focused so much on how to fly but he didn't think about how he is gonna land.

It's usually the way with inventions the one that gets the credit ends up being the one that solves the final piece of the puzzle to make a useful machine. The real story of any complex invention goes back through the achievements of a whole bunch of great engineers and scientists. Flight is all coming from a string of lessons throughout the history of transport, hell even the wing designs of biplanes remind me of suspension bridges with the rods and wires stabilising the bottom span with the upper span.

Ei brasileiros vamos largar o dedo no dislike pois esse vídeo nem sequer citou Santos Dumont, o verdadeiro pai da aviação 🇧🇷

Now, what provides two-thirds to three-quarters of the energy utilized to sustain flight?

In other words, they didn't invent the glider, just the powered aeroplane and the control surface.

The U.S. Army rejected a proposal from the Wrights on the basis that their machine's ability to fly had not been demonstrated. Thus, when Alberto Santos-Dumont made a brief flight that year in his 14-Bis aeroplane, there was no acknowledged antecedent and he was acclaimed in France and elsewhere as the first to fly

Nobody claims the Wright Brothers invented flight itself, they are credited with the first POWERED* flight. An important distinction.

Did Otto start at a higher point to slowly fall down or did he leave a lower point to sustain flight falling with style

your videos are very easy to understand and watch, thanks!

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. Yes they took up the torch after Otto. In fact they were admirers of his. It was his death that made them work on flight. But in their testing they found Otto's lift data was straight up wrong. While Otto pioneered a lot of stuff, the Wright brothers had to go back to the drawing board on many things. They had to re-write Ottto's work. Hence a lot of their home made wind tunnel tests and kite tests at Kitty hawk. They had to do so much fundamental testing and work that I would credit them with the creation of flight. With Otto giving them a very good point in the right direction.

14-BIS - This apparel, set in motion by a Levavasseur motor, of 50 H.P., was a 10 meters size and 12 meters span, and it had 160 kilograms of weight. On September 13, 1906, at Bagatelle camp, 14-bis made a short flew of 8 meters. Captain Ferber wrote in his book “Aviation”: “At 4:45 p.m, in front of an aviation commission, his airplane departed, softly and shock less. The crowd, amazed, was under the impression of a miracle...” On October 23, 1906 SD was awarded the Archdeacon Cup, he flew 60 meters with his own resources (25 meters was the height stipulated for the competition). This time the crowd became dumb and soon after clapped their hands, hats were thrown above, delirium in the air. The worldwide newspapers published in their headline: “A memorable minute of the air navigation “(L’Illustration), “The first mechanical flight of men” (Herald). On November 12, 1906 Santos Dumont achieves the 220-meter flight, thus establishing the first record of world air navigation and being awarded the prize of the French Air Club, which later on built granite marc of 2-meter height to perpetuate the great achievements of the inventor.

Awesome video! I liked and subbed, I came from a reddit post from /r/videos, Good luck on your youtube adventures and keep up the good work!

Read the original fai records about first motorized flights. SANTOS DUMONT in first.

Born 20 July 1873 in state of Minas Gerais, Alberto Santos Dumont moved to Paris in 1891 but never forgot his birthplace. He soon began experimenting with flying, and designed his first balloon, the Brasil, in 1898. He later built and flew 11 dirigibles, including the prize-winning Number 6. He flew his first airplane, the 14-bis, on October 1906, the first aircraft to take off and land without any external assistance(*). His many other contributions to aviation included his 1907 Demoiselle, the precursor to modern light airplanes. He returned definitely to Brazil in 1931 and died in 1932”. AIAA declaration in honor of SANTOS DUMONT centennial

A semi-controlled glide down a hill without yaw control is not flight. Hence why Lilienthal died. The Wright brothers were the first to control a glide in all axis of rotation. Additionally, they were the first to sustain actual "flight" by overcoming the forces of gravity with an engine.

Keep going RE, the videos are great!

Why does the wings being at an angle increase or decrease lift?

It must be stated that the evidence to the Wright Brothers' claims of flying in 1903 was scant and they denied every request to prove their claims in public until 1908. In that year, at the french airclub, it happened the first death in the history of aviation. Lt Thomas Selfridge died after the glider Flyer had a broken helix. Orville Wright had a broken leg and several broken ribs. Alberto Santos Dumont flew flawlessly in 1906, without rails, catapult or any external assistance. Therefore, under any circumstances that could not be considered gliding.

what about santos drumont?

Din't anyone notice that the coordinate system used is a left hand system which is not the standard

Have you forgotten Sir George Cayley who discovered the elements of flight and aerodynamics.

Santos Dumont the first fai record for motorized flight. wright brothers eight place in official fai records. 1908

The Wright Brothers didn't "improve on" Otto Lilienthal's experimental lift data--they invalidated it and replaced it. They invented the wind tunnel and lift balance techniques to derive the first accurate lift coefficients ever applied to the problem of flight. And doing so was a prerequisite to solving the problem of control, just as solving the problem of control was a prerequisite to solving the propulsion problem. The Wrights were far ahead of anybody in these three areas of innovation. The Wright's invention is generally defined as "controlled, powered, heavier than air, flight", to distinguish them from the long line of balloonists who preceded them, but to suggest Lilienthal solve the problem of lift before them is not accurate.

Your account seems to have been suspended. Can you provide a new link?

Great visuals. It help a lot to understand for people that have idea of aeronautics. You're. On the right way to become a great chanel :)

The Wright Brothers made a valid contribution to the flight research. But, Santos Dumont made a far greater contribution for the flight research than the Wright brothers. Dam, even the Moon has a crate named after Santos Dumont.

Absolutely love love love your aerospace stuff. And I wish you put up more of it. they are very educational and mind opening! PS: I am an aerospace engineer so I have obvious biases!

Nice video, keep up the good work and good luck! Also, don't sweat the Irish accent, Jacksepticeye seems to be doing alright with it!

Wait. Isn't the YY' axis usually the pitch and ZZ' axis the yaw?

Porque os primeiros aviões, primeiros vôos sobre comunidades e cidades, primeiras empresas aeronauticas (zepellin ), primeiras indústrias fabricantes de aviões, primeiras empresas de reparos de aviões e tudo referente ao avião só apareceu depois de SANTOS DUMONT e jamais apareceu nada no período anterior a ele? Verifique você mesmo!! qual dos itens apresentados surgiu oficialmente antes de DUMONT. tente responder.

surprised there isn't more mention of George Cayley in the comments

Richard piers flew controlled a few months before the wrights but he did it in New Zealand and news didn't spread very quickly from suck a small contry

Just wondering, does your diagram of the 1903 Flyer at 1:21 use a simplification of the belt which connected the right propeller to the motor? I'm pretty sure the belt was twisted so that the propellers would counter-rotate. Not that it's a problem really, I was just wondering.

O Santos Dumont inventou sim o avião, se não tem motor não é avião. Isso é tipo feijoada vegana, se não tiver carne de porco não é feijoada, é feijão preto com legumes.

The USA has the Wright Brothers, Brazil has Alberto Santos-Dumont and New Zealand has Richard William Pearse. It is very difficult for the average joe to understand what the scenario was back in the early 1900s. Information did not come by easily and, if you're lucky, you'd learn about new technologies through imported newspapers or magazines of the time. To me the video successfully points out why, astonishingly, all three names I mentioned had the "idea" around the same time, roughly. I guess the news of an earlier inventor reached them somehow and all went "let's perfect it!". Another thing to understand is that Santos, even though experimenting earlier, only made his official flight much later in Paris whereas the Wright's were also experimenting around the same time but called their first successful flight "official" in the USA by a crowd of maybe 6 people. Richard didn't even care about being recognized for his flying machines. He was an odd bloke to put it simply but he also flew his machine around the same time. In resume, Wrights flew first with their catapulted launch, flew over 25m on self-sustained and controlled flight and it was made official in the USA. Santos had flown his 14-bis design before the Wright's, he exceeded the 25m in a machine that could take off and land o its own power and sustain fully controlled flight. Only made official much later in France. Richard also made his first successful flight before the Wright's "official" flight in a machine that was basically a bicycle with wings, self-sustained and fully controlled flight. The USA couldn't give a rats ass to what was happening in Europe and, back then, that relationship was an unforgiving one. If the definition of flight is consider to be a device heavier than air up in he air then Otto Liliesthal invented it, or would it have been Icarus?

Have read about a monk named Elmer or Oliver, who came up with man-made flight sometime between 1000 - 1010 ad. He made himself into a glider and dived off the west tower of the abbey. Apparently he covered more than a furlong in active flight bu then fell an broke his legs. He wanted to add "tail feathers" but the man in charge forbade it and he hobbled around for the rest of his days..this is from a booklet about the history of Malmsbury in it I also learned that Nancy Hanks who was the mother of our Abraham Lincoln and that the Penn's a Washington's lived near by :) What a location Wiltshire was :)

Fantastic video! I'm now inclined in buying a copy of "Birdflight as basis of aviation.

Santos-dummond Created it

Wright brothers' biggest contribution, remembering to bring a camera.

remember Gustav Weißkopf (white Header in engl.) frommen Leutershausen, Germany, the inventor of the motorized flight, right before the Wright brothers first short jump

Hello, how can I obtain a copy of the companion article? Website is down...

I'm glad you made this video. I remember doing my own research in this area at one point and finding out that the wright brothers only made the first controlled flight like you say. Reading about some of the earlier airplane designs I found one story of a man who was flying a steam powered plane and he flew straight into a brick wall while he was stoking his fire. He survived and the town he was in banned him from future flight experiments taking place near there. I just love the mental image of a man shoveling coal into the furnace of a steam powered early prototype plane as he flies into a wall.

Shivkar Talpade, an Indian scholar, and his teacher were among the firsts to invent an airplane. He did it way back in 1895, 8 years before the Wright brothers. He built an unmanned aircraft and is depicted in the bollywood film Hawaizaada. Do read about him.

These arguments avoid the central import - DEFINITIONS of words. In this case the definition of the term 'flight'

Question. Why did you use a left hand coordinate system?? Long, Lateral and Vertical axes are a common convention - X,Y,Z (Forward, Right, Down - a right hand system) just wondering...

To everyone reading this comment I highly recommend watching the video "the Wright brothers did invent flight" on Greg's airplanes and automobiles channel really informative

The. Wright. Neighboards never declare flight Activity In huffmanprayrie1903 1905. The. Neighboards never declare flights in dayton

A little south of Middlesbrough is a quaint hamlet called Brompton, on the walls of the stone walled school is a plaque to Mr Cayley (Sir George) i'm a tad shocked he wasn't worthy of a brief mention.

Your video is awesome dude keep it up!

gotta admit, click bait title :p

Until almost half of the twentieth century, the United States credited Santos Dumont with pioneering aviation. One of several evidences of this is in the Bulletin of the Pan American Union, publication of the Aeroclube of North America, referring to the annals of II Pan American Scientific Congress (Washington, 1915), that gives the Brazilian the merit by the conquest of the air. In fact, one of the proposals of the Congress was the creation of the Aeronautical Federation of the Western Hemisphere, a plan that did not avenge, but for whose presidency Santos Dumont was indicated. Curiously, the Wrights are not even remembered. Also the National Aeronautics, periodical of The National Aeronautic Association, of Washington, in December of 1939, in relating the aeronautical records, points Dumont like the first man to fly in 1906

I love aviation and aerial toys is there any online course which can teach me how to build small aeroplanes and drones....

The real engineering website associated with the tinyurl has been suspended. Is there another way to get to their website?

The first manned flight was actually made by Étienne de Montgolfier on October 15, 1783.

Official record for wright brothers first flight in conformity fai. May 06 1908.

Think you amazing vid. but i wonder did you study engineering if yes, what type of engineering you are studying??

Amazing job as always. The Wright's "wing twisting" mechanism baffled me when i first read about it. I mean, why develop such a complex configuration instead of standard ailerons? I know they didn't know about ailerons yet, but still, from a design and operational standpoint, even as an original idea, wasn't it far simpler to conceive than actual freaking twisting wings? Well, i guess it's easy for me to say all this, now that everything is figured out, while all they had was birds to get inspiration of and reverse-engineer.

ALBERTO👏SANTOS👏DUMONT

The simple fact that you did not mention Santos Dumont, already shows that he did not want to enter into this heated discussion. I can understand that. However, since he only quoted the Wriht Brothers I think it was not fair to omit that Santos Dumont was even the one who first made a flight with a heavier than air, using his own motor, dirigible and without catapults, and with official witnesses , even though this is not a very popular statement in America.

what software do you use to make your blueprint style thumbnails and videos (animations) ??

what do you have to say about Traian Vuia and Aurel Vlaicu though?

I lived in Kitty Hawk when I was little(that is where the Wright Brothers performed their flights. The Wright brothers are the people who discovered have to create lift, yes they were inspired by Dumont, but he did not know about lift. *They* learned how to create lift using the wind tunnel that *they* created. Their wind tunnel was the first.

The Wright’s were the first to fly a powered and controllable airplane. They figured out the three axis which is necessary to control flight including wing aspect ratio. For Santos Dumont fans, he flew 3 years after the Wrights. And what’s interesting is the replicas of his first aircraft have ailerons, his aircraft didn’t, which raises a question; was his 1906 leap into the air controllable?

I am confused with the picture of the Wright Flyer 1903 appearing [00:15] in a book supposedly written by Otto Lilienthal who died on 10 August 1896???????

Heard of Percy Pilcher? Another interesting character in the development of flight and thorn in our desire to label complex processes the work of one or two easily remembered people.

I don't fucking care whether it was the wright brothers or the brazilian guy, no great invention is made in a vacuum, we all build on the shoulders of the people before us. They both made contributions to flight. End of story. All I care about is how it works.

I hardly think they perfected flight, more like, made it viable, or practical, useful?

And the Wright brothers didn't invent flight because it is naturally occurring in many animals. That's like saying someone invented rolling.

To the Bishop's sons rest in peace. As far as I am concerned you both created history.