why didn't the Wright brothers think of ailerons?

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Let me put there what the website you quote says as a remark to this letter:
Eyewitness Account of First Flight by John Daniels

With other words this account is not reliable. Yes, the Wrights flew from the Hill on 14th december as confirmed by the brothers themselves. You just easily ignored that didn't you? Would you please get the hell out of this thread?

Simplex is just full of it.


The link Gaeme provides tells all...
 
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I'm going to mimic the moderator from the site posted by Gaeme.

Thanks for locking this Chris!

"I am seeing a case here of if it 'ain't want I (ME) believe' it cannot be right. That is clearly crass. Not even Mr Crouch who has been close enough to the facts, the site, and with the history in written terms before him and, who knows, other factors that the photographs prove to be inconclusive - though others don't


The one above shows that the horizon is not 'level' - it shows that the wings are not level. Both allow for deceptive matters to creep in. Little, but then photographs do lie!


Whatever. This subject is going round in circles with simplex1 almost insisting that his take is spot on. I don't agree and neither does Mr Crouch. It is, therefore, a matter of what the museum thinks of it and I know who my money is on.


It is a matter of corroborated record of what happened so who are we to try and change history.


The matter is over gentlemen. The end was in sight some days ago and that is where it stops. Thanks all the same."
 
All begins from Leonardo da Vinci's "Codice sul volo degli uccelli" "Book about how byrds fly"





and subsequent drawings





Otto Lilienthal machines are clearly inspired from those of Leonardo and the Wright brothers clearly understood that the accident that cost Lilienthal's life was the lack of lateral control







and warping the wing tips for lateral control was then widespread



until appeared some primitive ailerons with Santos Dumont





and Glen Curtiss







but was Henri Farman to "invent" the aileron as we know it today.



As many inventions, it was made from step to step
 
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Don't forget the Taube which carried the theory that a bird-shaped aircraft would be the most efficient and is perhaps the closest design to an actual bird that any successful aircraft design managed to get.

It also used wing-warping as a means of control instead of ailerons (the original Etrich and Rumpler version out of the many types produced by many manufacturers)

Even more impressive, is that it was actually put into military service for a time.
 
Tenente Giulio Gavotti



(17 October 1882 – 6 October 1939), in a Taube, set two firsts in the history of aviation: he was the first man to make an aerial bombardment from an aeroplane and as well as the first to perform a night mission in the Italo-Turkish war, Lybia, 1911.

 
No, Gavotti dropped four "Granate Cippelli" on a Turkish troop camp. In a very dangerous ( for him, of course....) way.....
 
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but was Henri Farman to "invent" the aileron as we know it today.
Click to expand...

No, sorry Elmas, it was Robert Esault Pelterie, not 'On Ree Far Man.

Robert Esnault-Pelterie | French aviation pioneer

Also, the 14bis wasn't fitted with 'ailerons'; they were more like spoilers that disrupted the flow of air round the wing - in the event they had little effect on the aircraft's course. The 14bis was not controllable about three axes of movement, hence the claims of first flights perpetuated by Brazilians don't qualify for sustained controlled powered flight.
 
The fact that Flyer I 1903 just glided, aided partly by the engine, was confirmed apparently unwillingly by John T. Daniels, an eye witness, in a letter addressed to a friend:


I am not an expert but I have spent years watching aeroplanes fly, none of them move an inch down the runway without the engines running. The first Wright flyer performed as well as any bi plane with a 14BHP motor could be expected to.

Regarding wing warping wiki says this "
Along with five other European aircraft builders, from 1910, Blériot was involved in a five-year legal struggle with the Wright Brothers over the latter's wing warping patents. The Wrights' claim was dismissed in the French and the German courts.[31]"

Maybe this could have affected some designers choices?
 
Can't see that page unfortunately. What is the author's source? There is plenty of information about Robert Esnault Pelterie out there that contradicts that statement, for example:

"The pioneering U.S. aeronautical engineer Octave Chanute published descriptions and drawings of the Wright brothers' 1902 glider in the leading aviation periodical of the day, L'Aérophile, in 1903. This prompted Esnault-Pelterie, a French military engineer, to build a Wright-style glider in 1904 that used ailerons in lieu of wing warping.[4] The French journal L'Aérophile then published photos of the ailerons on Esnault-Pelterie's glider which were included in his June 1905 article, and its ailerons were widely copied afterward.[7][14][15]"

From here: Aileron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"After studying engineering at the Sorbonne in Paris, Esnault-Pelterie built his first glider, a very rough copy of the Wright glider of 1902 but constructed without an understanding of the Wright brothers' control system. As a result, he abandoned the attempt to fly the glider with a wing-warping system and became the first flying-machine pioneer to make use of ailerons, moveable surfaces on the trailing edge of the wing, to maintain lateral control."

From here:

Robert Esnault-Pelterie | French aviation pioneer

This page lists reference sources about REP, including several that state he 'invented' the aileron, which, of course he did not, (see here "The aileron was first patented by the British scientist and inventor Matthew Piers Watt Boulton in 1868, based on his 1864 paper On Aërial Locomotion." from Aileron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) although he was the first to fit it to a man-carrying aircraft.

The Pioneers : An Anthology : Robert Esnault-Pelterie (1881-1957)
 
Oh well, Elmas, might relent and give you that, but Farman certainly didn't invent the aileron, nor was he the first to use it.
 
James W. said:
So which came 1st, 3D active coordinated control surfaces on aeroplanes, airships, or torpedo/submarines?
Click to expand...

The latter two work differently to ailerons, which deflect differentially; the left goes up while the right goes down and vice versa, whereas on airships and torpedoes, the horizontal surfaces worked as elevators, both in synch with each other. To turn, the vehicles used rudder.
 
No worries James, although I think the most modern subs with X configured fins might have differential control surfaces. You might be right regarding subs with Albacore hulls, they might have differential fins, but certainly not earlier submersibles like your traditional U-boats etc.
 
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