How man broke free from earth

paved the way for them, says STEPHEN LEWIS.

ONE hundred years ago today, on a beach at Kittyhawk Sands, North Carolina, a young man named Orville Wright took a deep breath and launched himself into history. On that day, at 10.35am local time, the younger of the two Wright brothers made the first powered flight in a controllable aircraft - and man's age-old dream of conquering the skies came true.

The flight itself wasn't particularly spectacular. Orville was airborne for 12 seconds and flew 120 feet in what to our modern eyes looks like a glorified kite.

But it was enough. Orville and his elder brother Wilbur - who later that same day managed to fly a more impressive 852 feet - made history.

In the 100 years since, the Wrights have become the most famous aviation pioneers of all. The bicycle-making brothers were followed by the likes of Charles Lindbergh, who flew solo across the Atlantic in 1927; Amy Johnson, from Hull, who flew single-handed from Britain to Australia in 1930; Chuck Yeager, who broke the sound barrier in 1947 and Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon back in 1969.

Look at that list of names and achievements and what is startling, even now, is just how quickly it all happened.

For centuries man had dreamed of taking to the air and once he did he was in no mood to stop there. Within little more than 60 years of that first fumbling flight along a North Carolina beach we had left the earth altogether and set foot upon another world.

It is as though once we knew, finally, that it could be done, all those centuries of pent-up longing were released in a technological explosion that carried us further and faster than the Wrights could ever have dreamed of.

Ian Richardson, of the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, still marvels at the speed with which it all happened.

"In 1903 we were just managing to get off the ground," he says. "By 1969 we were landing on the moon."

In a hangar at Elvington stands a full-scale replica of the Wright brothers' flyer - a replica that was used to make a historic flight at RAF Finningly in September 1966. One of only two full-size replicas in Europe, it remains the only one of its kind ever to have flown, says Ian proudly. It is a beautiful craft - an impossibly frail-looking construction of white sails held together by slender struts and taut wire. It is powered by a 2bhp internal combustion engine fixed to the main wing.

"You can see they the Wrights were cycle manufacturers," says Ian, gesturing to the two bicycle-style chains that transmit the tiny engine's power to the two propellers behind the main wings.

Ian says the pilot would have lain across the lower of the two main wings and used a lever to adjust the 'forward canard' - the adjustable forward wings which could be used like a modern tail elevator to control pitch.

There were also cables which could be used to twist the wings, producing an aileron-like effect that enabled the pilot to steer and control lateral roll. The pilot would also probably have swung his weight from side to side to help with steering, says Ian.

Beautiful it certainly is. But this replica of probably the most famous aircraft in history also looks incredibly primitive.

Yet astonishingly, the Wright Flyer operated on essentially the same principles that have governed every fixed-wing aircraft since, from the Spitfire to Concorde.

All have used wings with a curved surface to generate lift; and all have been steered by controls used to roll the wings right or left, pitch the nose up or down, and yaw the nose from side to side.

So the Wright brothers were great aviation pioneers indeed. But were they the greatest of all?

You may find it difficult to make your voice heard today, on the centenary of Orville Wright's historic flight, but in Yorkshire we can lay claim to the man who was the true inventor of heavier-than-air flight.

Sir George Cayley is considered by many to be the real father of aviation. True, the Yorkshire baronet - who lived on an estate near Scarborough - never managed to achieve powered manned flight. But that may have been because, in a sense, he was too far ahead of his time. The only engines available to him would have been steam-powered - and a steam engine was far too heavy to have made powered flight possible.

The Wrights themselves recognised the extent of his achievement. In 1908, Wilbur Wright is reported to have said: "About 100 years ago an Englishman, Sir George Cayley, carried the science of flying to a point which it had never reached before and which it scarcely reached again during the last century."

Cayley, who was born in 1773, was a man of many interests.

He spent his life working on engineering, social and political problems, and his achievements included working with artificial limbs and the tension-spoked wheel, as well as modernising railway signalling and draining acres of land in the Vale of Pickering.

But it is for his contribution to aviation that he will be remembered. It was he who discovered the difference between lift and drag.

As early as 1799 he had the idea of a craft with fixed wings to provide lift and 'flappers' to provide thrust, as well as a movable tail for control. He engraved a drawing of this craft on a silver coin - thought to be the first recorded drawing of a 'true' aeroplane.

By 1804 Cayley had designed, built and flown a small model glider which had a fixed wing and a horizontal and vertical tail that could be adjusted. In 1809 and 1810, he published three papers on his aeronautical research - which have since come to rank among the most important aeronautical documents in history. He established for the first time that lift is caused by a region of low pressure on the upper portion of a wing, and that wings with curved surfaces generate lift more efficiently than those with flat surfaces. The way was paved at last for manned flight.

In 1849, Cayley designed and built a full-sized triplane glider, which carried a ten-year-old boy several yards through the air down a hill at Brompton Dale. But his real breakthrough came four years later when he was in his 80th year.

In 1852 Cayley designed an improved glider, the 'governable parachute'. In the summer of 1853 he persuaded his coachman to take to the air in a version of this.

The glider had a single main sail or wing with what looked like a boat slung beneath it for the passenger, and a movable tail for steering attached to a kind of tiller. It flew more than 130 yards across the dale with the coachman on board.

The story goes that immediately after the flight the coachman handed in his notice, insisting he had been hired to drive, not fly. But Sir George's theories of aerodynamics had been conclusively proved.

Ian Richardson suggests had Cayley lived longer he may well have gone on to claim the laurel for the first powered, manned flight, which eventually fell to the Wright brothers 50 years later.

"Cayley was in his 80th year when he designed the Governable Parachute, and I believe it flew four years before his death," he points out. "It could be speculated that had he lived longer, he may have designed a successful engine! Certainly, during his lifetime, he brought aviation to its most advanced state, creating a platform for others to build upon."

So who was the greatest aviation pioneer of all?

Was it the Wright Brothers? Or was it the Yorkshire baronet who 200 years ago discovered the principles upon which all fixed-wing flight has since been based? Ian hums and haws, but there is only one way his vote is going.

"Cayley," he says. "He fulfilled the dream."

Updated: 09:46 Wednesday, December 17, 2003