Wings Assessment #2

1. Did flight have any influence outside of aviation? If so, how?

Flight had a massive influence on many areas outside of aviation. For the first time in the history of mankind, up in the skies were men and even now women soaring in circles, diving, and dipping all while encased in a wooden, winged frame. The sight of such an anomaly inspired artists, writers, and popular culture as a whole.

The famous Pablo Picasso witnessed a flying spectacle at Issy-les-Moulineaux along with Georges Braque. As a result of their observations, they were inspired to build model airplanes. Furthermore, Picasso created “Still Life: Our Future Is in the Air,” which illustrated how the dawn of flight was critical to the defense of nations.

Moreover, a young Austrian writer, Franz Kafka saw the idols of Reims competing in aviation heroics and it simply left him breathless. Similarly impacted were the Italian writers Gabriele D’Annunzio and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Russian writer Vasily Vasilyevich Kamensky. Kamensky in particular wrote, “The airplane—that is the truest achievement of our time.” He would later move to Paris and learn to fly. Ultimately he would wind up lecturing on airplanes and Futurist poetry in conjunction with David Burlyuk and Valdimir Mayakovsky.

The awesomeness of flight made a great impression on popular culture as well. Songs like “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine,” “My Little Loving Aero Man,” and “Take Me Down to Squantum, I want to See Them Fly,” were all part of Tin Pan Alley’s desire to stay current and hip. The Aviator premiered at the Tremont Theater in September 1910, awing spectators when a real plane was rolled onto the stage and the engine was started. Even household items were influenced by aviation. Clocks, fans, cigarette cases, etc. were all produced to be a sign of the times: branded with pictures of airplanes flying high in the sky. Flight truly had a massive influence on all aspects of life as it ascended into a wide-scale market.

2. How did this new field of aviation affect science?

While the first gliders were being tested and crashed at various sites across the world, the first aerodynamicists were making observations and testing theories on the fundamental physics behind flying. Essentially, they had a desire to know how wings actually worked and the core principles behind flight. This desire was aroused due to the increasing popularity of flight.

The simple scenario of a cylinder placed in a fluid stream was considered. John William Strutt observed that a stationary, non-spinning cylinder in the stream undergoes the phenomenon of drag, whereas, when it spins in the clockwise direction in the stream, lift is generated. Strutt designated this occurrence to the idea that the molecules flowing off the back of the object were sent into a downward motion. Newton’s third law says that for every force, there is one equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. This would be one explanation for the phenomenon of lift observed by Strutt.

Daniel Bernoulli discovered that molecules moving over the top of the cylinder are more tightly packed than the molecules moving beneath the cylinder. Thus, there would be an area of low pressure beneath the cylinder and an area of high pressure above. This pressure differential generates lift also.

The question remains, which one is right? Well, today we know that they were both correct and both theories contribute to the overall lifting force.

Bernoulli and Strutt laid the foundation for lift and drove other researchers and scientists to hunt for more knowledge about the subject. One German scientist in particular Ludwig Prandtl presented “one of the most important fluid dynamics papers ever written.” The paper divulged the discovery of the boundary layer, or the layer of air molecules that cause the bulk of friction between the wing and the air. From here it was a snowball effect as the theory of wings began to take form throughout the rest of the 20^th century.

3. Who took the lead in establishing aviation as a business and what effect did it have on the rest of the world?

Louis Bleriot was the man who was at the helm in transforming experimental and exhibition-type aviation into a business. In 1909 he was in a nasty crash leaving him with fractured ribs and injuries to his internal organs. This caused him to leave his original career as an exhibition pilot and delve into the business world. As early as September of the same year, he found himself with 101 orders for his XI aircraft. By 1911, Bleriot had manufactured 500 airplanes since he began mass-production. Between 1909 and 1914, forty-five different aircraft were produced which was a massive amount for the time period. A standard XI was priced at $2,350, which was equivalent to about $60,000 in today’s money due to inflation. But one must keep in mind that salaries back then were relatively much less. Flight instruction was a big part of the business as well, since first-time airplane buyers really had no idea what they were getting into.

Bleriot inspired thirty-three competitors across France alone. The rest of the world was not falling asleep on the business of aviation either. The Belgian Armand Deperdussin began producing sleek designs that appeared as if they had come from the future. Premier racing pilots preferred Deperdussin for the increase in speed that the aerodynamic design yielded. However, in 1913, Deperdussin would fall apart when Armand was convicted of financial chicanery and sent to prison. The once beloved Bleriot reorganized the company and would remain an important figurehead in French aviation until his death in 1936.