Fabric in Flight

Christy Cagle, Ph.D. Student,
George Hodge, Professor,
NCSU College of Textiles

On December 17 2003 North Carolina and the whole of the United States celebrated 100 years of flight. On this same day in 1903 at Kill Devil Hill just outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to achieve controlled and sustained flight in a powered, heavier-than-air machine, piloted by a human. Although the first flight was only 12 seconds and covered a small distance of only 120 feet, it was a huge step in facilitating future aeronautical developments.

This great feat may not have been accomplished without the use of textiles. The Wright brothers used fabric, wood and wire to assemble the body of their historic Flyer. The fabric was important to the design of the aircraft for two main reasons. First, they needed to keep the aircraft as light as possible and second; they needed a flexible and durable material in order to achieve their groundbreaking idea for controlling the aircraft, which they called wing warping.

The idea for wing warping came from watching how birds navigated through the sky. They realized that birds did not have rigid wings, but wings that could move in order to use the wind to control the direction of their flight. Using the birds as a model, the Wrights become conscious of the fact that if the wing on one side of the aircraft met the oncoming flow of air at a greater angle than the opposite wing, it would generate more lift on that side and the wing would rise, causing the aircraft to bank. They then decided to develop an aircraft where the pilot could twist, or warp, the wings in this same way in order to maintain balance and turn the aircraft. The use of fabric on the wings was a crucial element of this design concept.

Fabric is lightweight, yet strong, flexible and durable. These characteristics made it the perfect choice for covering the two wings, the horizontal rudder, and the vertical rudder of the first airplane. The fabric was the main component of the wings. It was cut on the bias and pockets were sewn, from a coarser fabric type, to the interior of the muslin fabric for the ribs of the plane to be housed. This allowed for the ribs to be held in place laterally while also allowing the fabric to slide over them during wing warping. The fabric was then folded over one end of the wing and fastened to the other end, creating a type of pocket for the entire wing. The fabric was all sewn of the bias, so that when the wing was fully covered, the diagonal directions of the threads on the top and bottom of the wing were opposed, giving the wing lateral strength and stability. Each of the two wings were made of three panels. The section in the center was sewn tighter in order to be more rigid since it had to support the pilot, engine, and transmission. The two sections on either end of the wings were sewn a bit looser in order to achieve the flexibility needed to warp the wings for pitch and control. The use of the fabric on both the top and the bottom of the wing, something that the Wrights did not do in earlier models, added a smoother overall wing surface, which enhanced the plane’s aerodynamic efficiency. For a more in-depth explanation of the wing design, visit http://www.centennialofflight.gov/

The fabric that the Wright brothers chose to cover their aircraft was tightly woven cotton, unbleached muslin called “Pride of the West”. Manufactured by a now extinct company called Slater Mills, the fabric was originally used to make women’s slips. The Wrights cut the fabric on the bias to add more strength and stiffness to the wings and left the muslin unfinished in order to save weight. Using a fabric typically used for women’s undergarments is just another small example of the innovative thinking process that the Wright brothers possessed. Senator John Glenn carried a piece the fabric from the wing of the 1903 Flyer aboard his 1998 flight in the space shuttle “Discovery”. In an interview with Parade Magazine, he as quoted as saying, “That stained bit of cloth symbolized the curiosity that is at the heart of all progress”. I think that says it all.