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There were two schools of thought for the stability and control of aircraft in the first decade of powered flight: inherently stable aircraft (used by nearly all the European and most of the U.S. aeronautical engineers) and inherently unstable aircraft (used only by Orville and Wilbur Wright). A very stable aircraft was easy to fly and relatively safe. Unfortunately, it was sluggish and difficult to maneuver. When the aircraft was designed to be very stable, it actually impeded the pilot's desire to make changes to the direction. The Wright brothers, however, designed aircraft that were inherently unstable; these were planes that had to be controlled at every instant of flight. Their goal was to gain quick and easy maneuverability, but it made their airplanes very difficult to fly. New pilots required very long periods of training in order to fly their planes. The unstable planes were also more dangerous to fly; they were much less forgiving of pilot mistakes. On the morning of January 13, 1908, Henri Farman flew his Voisin-Farman I-bis biplane on a long, more-or-less circular path around the field he took off from and landed at his original take-off point. The flight took 1 minute and 28 seconds, and it was the longest flight at that point in Europe. It was also the first circular flight. The Voisin-Farman biplane had only a very basic rudder, and Farman had to swing the airplane around by its tail in order to make a long, flat turn. During the turn, the wings remained parallel, or aligned with the ground. Just seven months later, on August 8, 1908, in another field in France, Wilbur Wright made his first public flight in Europe. He and his brother had been working in secret for years, and aviation pioneers from all over Europe had come to see if the rumors about the Wright brothers and their plane were true. Flying the new Wright type A biplane, Wilbur took off, made 2 graceful circles above the field, and landed after 1 minute and 45 seconds of flight. Using their patented design of twisting the wingtips (called wing warping), Wilbur was able to bank and turn easily. The European aviators were amazed and quickly admitted that the Wright brothers' designs were superior. The European designers quickly adopted the Wright brothers' patented concepts for control using the wing warping and rudders, but they were unwilling to give up the idea of a stable aircraft. They wanted good control with easy flying characteristics. So they expanded on the Wright brothers' plans by adding movable surfaces on the wings near the tips. Using the ailerons (from a French word for the extremity of a bird's wing) instead of wing warping maintained the desired stability and gained the easy control and turning that Wilbur had demonstrated so clearly that year. By 1910, the European planes began to surpass the Wright's machines. The concept of inherent stability for airplane design became the basic design feature for all successful aircraft up to the 1970's. Oddly enough, newer designs for fighters have gone back to the Wright brothers' idea of inherently unstable aircraft, where control surfaces must be adjusted at all times. The difference this time around is the capability to have computers constantly monitor and electronically change the control surfaces - the "fly by wire" concept! The advantage of very high maneuverability is now less taxing on the pilot because much of the work is done electronically. The principle of inherent stability in airplane design is becoming less of a given in new planes with the advent of these "fly by wire" systems.
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