From ‘bat’ wings to outer space

Everyone gleans a slightly different moral from the story of the Wright brothers’ first flight. Maybe it’s the benefit of teamwork. Or dedication. Or American ingenuity.

But to Kenneth Phillips, aerospace curator at the California Science Center, the lesson is that the scientific method works.

Wilbur and Orville Wright, he said, tested their gliders thousands of times. They built wing models and wind tunnels, and made detailed observations. It took four years, but on Dec. 17, 1903, they got the first self-propelled airplane to take off.

To mark the anniversary, the museum has devised the Centennial of Flight Festival, which celebrates the progress that has taken humans from gliding over dunes to traveling in space.

The event, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in and around the museum in Exposition Park, includes everything from make-it-yourself paper rockets to a computerized flight simulator of the Wrights’ 1903 airplane.

Inside the Air and Space Gallery, exhibits are designed to teach the principles of flight, the very problems that early aviators were competing to solve.

“The Wrights were pretty much discounted,” said Phillips. “They were just bicycle mechanics from Ohio. But bicycles at that time were highly complicated pieces of machinery.”

Standing in the gallery overlooking a recently restored replica of the 1902 Wright Glider, Phillips points out another nearby glider one designed by German engineer Otto Lilienthal in the early 1890s. It has one set of curved wings, rather than the biplane-style wings the Wrights used. More than anything, it resembles a giant bat costume.

Such early attempts, Phillips said, were “largely a daredevil contest. People had ideas about what should fly, and it was mostly based on observations of birds.” Lilienthal had more success: He stayed aloft while traveling up to 750 feet, but he died in a glider crash in 1896.

It was 1899 when the Wright brothers wrote to the Smithsonian Institution for information on early aviation. They determined that Lilienthal and others had worked out the problem of wing size and lift, but that his and other early gliders had another problem: control.

In essence, the Wrights started with a very large kite, developing a system of strings that allowed them to steer its movement, and then rode their kite as a glider. An elevator -- horizontal flaps at the front -- controlled the pitch up and down. A rudder in the back controlled yaw, which points the nose of the aircraft left or right. The Wrights then twisted the wings with cables to make the structure roll. In 1900 and 1901, they tested and tweaked their glider in the winds at Kitty Hawk, N.C., and in 1903 they added an engine and propellers.

On Dec. 17, with Orville in the pilot’s cradle, the first engine-powered airplane left the ground for an unsteady 12 seconds. After two more attempts, the brothers kept it aloft for nearly a minute.

The Air and Space Gallery has several permanent displays that explore the principles of lift and steering. Kids and adults can don foam wings and step into a wind tunnel, where their arms will lift into the air. A model F-20 Tigershark can be steered with a joystick to show pitch, roll and yaw. Other exhibits trace the evolution of air travel.

Special for the festival, however, is the Microsoft 1903 Wright Flyer Simulator. For the anniversary, Microsoft added the Wright’s flier and the landscape of Kill Devil Hills, the area just south of Kitty Hawk where that first flight occurred, to its flight simulator program. For museums, they built a pilot’s cradle and partial wings, and put the video on a large projection screen. There are no keyboards or joysticks for this simulation: Steering is with a wood plank and by wiggling the hips.

It’s not easy, says project manager Darryl Saunders. The program has settings for all the physics involved, which have been put on the easiest level.

“The kids do better than the adults because they don’t have any preconceived ideas about how things should be,” he said. “But sometimes we get a hairy-chested pilot who says, ‘Put it on tough mode.’ And they can barely stay on for 10 seconds.”

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Wright stuff

Books

Here are a few recent books about the Wright brothers appropriate for kids.

“Into the Air: The Story of the Wright Brothers’ First Flight,” written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Bill Wylie, 2002. A century-old adventure transformed into an up-to-date comic book. Ages 8-10.

“To Fly: The Story of the Wright Brothers,” written by Wendie C. Old and illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker, 2002. The 30-page book, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner this year, follows the brothers’ personal journey. Ages 8-10.

“First to Fly: How Wilbur & Orville Wright Invented the Airplane,”

by Peter Busby and illustrated by David Craig, 2003. This book continues the Wright brothers’ story beyond Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, N.C., and is illustrated with archival photos, paintings and diagrams. Ages 9-13.

“My Brothers’ Flying Machine: Wilbur, Orville, and Me,”

written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Jim Burke, 2003. Told in child-like verse from the viewpoint of Katherine, the brothers’ younger sister. Ages 6-10.

“The Wright Sister: Katherine Wright and Her Famous Brothers,” by Richard Maurer, 2003. The 128-page biography is drawn from her writings. Ages 13 and up.

“Airborne: A Photobiography of Wilbur and Orville Wright,” by Mary Collins, 2003. A finely detailed book from National Geographic with 60 photos from Dayton, Ohio, and Kitty Hawk, N.C. Ages 11-15.

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Web sites

Numerous Web sites offer Wright brothers information as well.

www.centennialofflight.gov: This exhaustive site of historical and educational resources was created by the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.

www.first-to-fly.com: An online museum created by the nonprofit Wright Brothers Aeroplane Co.

www.nationalaviation.org: The site of the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton.

www.flight100.org: The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

www.fi.edu/wright/: Orville Wright left the brothers’ models and drawings (posted on the site) to Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kids/flight/index.html: PBS’ history site for kids.

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Centennial of Flight Festival

What: Activities include a simulator of the 1903 Wright Flyer, science demonstrations, craft-making, screenings of flight-themed IMAX films, as well as live music and dance performances. Weather permitting, there will be hot air balloon rides and plane flyovers

Where: California Science Center, 700 State Drive, Exposition Park, L.A. Parking at 39th and Figueroa streets, $6

When: Saturday and Sunday,

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Cost: Free admission, except IMAX movies

Info: (323) 724-3623, or www.californiasciencecenter.org

Robin Rauzi can be contacted at weekend@latimes.com.