飞行员莱特兄弟，本文主要内容关键词为：飞行员论文,莱特论文,兄弟论文，此文献不代表本站观点，内容供学术参考，文章仅供参考阅读下载。
Wilbur and Orville Wright（注：莱特兄弟，奥威尔（1871 —1948）和威尔伯（1867—1912），美国飞机发明家，航空先驱者，1903年成功地试飞了第一架可操纵的动力飞机，开辟了重于空气的飞行器飞行时代。） were two brothers from the heartland of America with a vision as sweeping as the sky and a practicality as down—to—earth as the Wright Cycle Co., the bicycle business they founded in Dayton,Ohio,in 1892. But while there were countless bicycle shops in turn—of—the—century America,in only one were wings being built as well as wheels.When the Wright brothers finally realized their vision of powered human flight in 1903,they made the world a forever smaller place.I've been to Kitty Hawk, N.C.（注：North Carolina北卡罗来纳州）,and seen where the brothers imagined the future,and then literally flew across its high frontier.It was an inspiration to be there,and to soak up the amazing perseverance and creativity of these two pioneers.
The Wright brothers had been fascinated by the idea offlight from an early age.In 1878 their father, a bishop inthe Church of the United Brethren（注：（宗）联合兄弟会（基督教 摩拉维兄弟会的一支）） in Christ,gave them a flying toy made of cork and bamboo.It had a paper body and was powered by rubber bands.The young boys soon broke the fragile toy,but the memory of its faltering flight across their living room stayed with them.By the mid—1890s Wilbur was reading every book and paper he could find on the still （注：a.无风的；静止的） earth-bound science of human fight.And four years before they made history at Kitty Hawk, the brothers built their first.scaled-down flying machine-a pilotless "kite" with a 5—ft.wingspan,and made of wood, wire and cloth.Based on that experiment, Wilbur became convinced that he could build an aircraft that would be "capable of sustaining a man".
While the brothers' bicycle business paid the bills, itwas Wilbur's abiding dream of building a full- size flyingmachine that inspired their work.For many years,he once said,he had been"afflicted with the belief that flight ispossible".The reality of that obsession was a lonely questfor the brothers in the workroom behind their bike shop,plotting to defy gravity and conquer the wind. Yet thatobsessive kind of world- changing belief is a force thatdrives you to solve a problem,to find the breakthrough-
aforce that drives you to bet everything on a fragile wing ora new idea.It was a force that led the Wright brothers toinvent,single-handedly,each of the technologies they neededto pursue their dream.
When published aeronautical data turned out to beunreliable,the Wright brothers built their own wind tunnelto test airfoils and measure empirically how to lift a flyingmachine into the sky.They were the first to discover that along narrow wing shape was the ideal architecture of flight.They figured out how to move the vehicle freely, not justacross land,but up and down on a cushion of air. They builta forward elevator（注：位于机身前部的升降舵） to control thepitch of their craft as it nosed up and down. They fashioneda pair of twin rudders in back to control its tendency to yawfrom side to side.They devised a pulley system that warpedthe shape of the wings in midflight to turn the plane and tostop it from rolling laterally in air. Recognizing that apropeller isn't like a ship's screw,but becomes,in effect, arotating wing,they used the data from their wind- tunnelexperiments to design the first effective airplane props- apair of 8-ft.propellers,carved out of laminated spruce,that turned in opposite directions to offset the twistingeffect on the machine's structure.And when they discoveredthat a light-weight gas-powered engine did not exist, theydecided to design and build their own. It produced 12horsepower and weighed only 152 Ibs.
The genius of Leonardo da Vinci（注：（1452—1519）， 意大利文艺复兴时期画家、雕塑家、建筑师和工程师，在艺术和科学方面均有创造性见解和成就，代表作有壁画《最后的晚餐》、祭坛画《岩下圣母》及肖像画《蒙娜·丽莎》等，著有《绘画论》） imagined a flyingmachine,but it took the methodical application of science bythese two American bicycle mechanics to create it. Theunmanned gliders spawned by their
first
efforts
flewerratically and were at the mercy of any strong gust of wind.But with help from their wind tunnel, the brothers amassedmore data on wing design that anyone before them, compilingtables of computations that are still valid today. And withguidance from this scientific study, they developed thepowered 1903 Flyer,a skeletal flying machine of spruce, ashand muslin,with an unmanned weight of just over 600 Ibs.
On Dec.17,1903,with Orville at the controls,the Flyerlifted off shakily from Kitty Hawk and flew 120 ft.—little more than half the wingspan of a Boeing 747-400.That 12-sec.flight changed the world, lifting it to new heights offreedom and giving mankind access to places it had neverdreamed of reaching.Although the Wright brothers' feat wasto transform life in the 20th century,the next day only fournewspapers in the U.S.carried news of their achievement ——news that was widely dismissed as exaggerated（注：指当时的新闻正如其夸张的特点，普遍处理简单，文字斟酌欠认真）.
The Wright brothers gave us a tool, but it was up toindividuals and nations to put it to use,and use it we have（注：=we have put use it或较多地作用we have put it to use ）.The airplane revolutionized both peace and war. It broughtfamilies together: once, when a child or other closerelatives left the old country for America, family andfriends mourned for someone they would never see again.Today,the grandchild of that immigrant can return again and againacross a vast ocean in just half a turn of the clock.But theairplane also helped tear families apart,by
makinginternational warfare an efforthess reality.
The Wrights created one of the greatest cultural forcessince the development of writing, for their
inventioneffectively became the World Wide Web of that era, bringingpeople,languages,ideas and values together.It also usheredin an age of globalization, as the world's flight pathsbecame the superhighways of an emerging international economy.Those superhighways of the sky not only revolutionizedinternational business; they also opened up isolated economics,carried the cause of democracy around the world and brokedown every kind of political barrier.And they set travelerson a path that would eventually lead beyond Earth's atmosphere.
The Wright brothers and their invention,then, sparked arevolution as farreaching as the industrial and digitalrevolutions.But that revolution did not come about by luckor accident.It was vision,quiet resolve and the applicationof scientific methodology that enabled Orville and Wilbur tocarry the human race skyward.Their example reminds us thatgenius doesn't have a pedigree,and that you don't discovernew worlds（注：本句只能采用意译的方法，new worlds指新领域，故“discover new worlds”意为“发现新领域”，也即“有所作为”。 ）by plying safe, conventional waters.With 10 years of hindsight,even Orville Wright admitted that"I look with amazement upon our audacity in attempting flights with a newand untried machine".
Now,on the eve of another century,who knows where thenext Wright brothers will be found,in what grade of schoolthey're studying,or in what garage they're inventing thenext Flyer of the information age. Our mission is to makesure that wherever they are, they have the chance to runtheir own course, to persevere and follow
their
owninspiration. We have
to
understand
that
engineeringbreakthroughs are not just mechanical or scientific- they areliberating forces that can continually improve people's lives（注：根据句意，理解为“改善人们生活，也是一种工程学上的突破，属于劳动力的解放，如从茅房到摩天大楼，从马拉车到现在的电力机车等等”。）.Who would have thought,as the 20th century opened,that one of its greatest contributions would come from twoobscure,freshfaced young Americans who pursued the utmostbounds of human thought and gave us all,for the first time,the power literally to sail beyond the sunset（注：远航去太阳落山的地方，即地球的另一边。）.
The 20th century has been the American Century in largepart because of great inventors such as the Wright brothers.May we follow their flight paths and blaze our own in the21st century.
威尔伯·莱特和奥威尔·莱特是来自美国腹地的兄弟俩，有着长空般广阔的目光，如同他们自己于1892年在俄亥俄州的代顿创立的莱特自行车商行一样实实在在地讲究实际。尽管世纪交替时期的美国有着无数家自行车商铺，但却只有这一家不仅制造轮子也制造机翼。当莱特兄弟终于在1903年实现了采用动力使人飞翔的梦想时，他们使世界从此变成了一个更小的天地。我到过北卡罗来纳州的基蒂霍克，目睹了兄弟俩展望将来的这块地方，他们后来也确确实实飞过其高地。身临其境，沉浸在两位先驱者惊人的锲而不舍的精神和无限的创造力中，是多么的鼓舞人心呵！
莱特兄弟自幼年起就着迷于飞行这个想法。1878年，在基督教联合兄弟会教堂作主教的父亲给了兄弟俩一架用软木和竹片制作的玩具飞机，机身是用纸做的，靠橡皮筋推动。小兄弟俩不久就弄坏了这架易损坏的玩具飞机，但是它摇摇晃晃地飞过起居室的情景却永远留在了他们的记忆中。到了19世纪90年代中叶，威尔伯已在阅读他所能找到的关于始终无法离开地面的人类飞行术的书籍和文章。在基蒂霍克创造历史的四年前，兄弟俩建造了他们第一架按比例缩小的飞行器——一个无人驾驶的“风筝”，翼展为五英尺，由木头、线和布做成。通过这个试验，威尔伯越发相信他能建造一架“能够载人”的飞机。
虽然兄弟俩只靠自行车商行开支，但威尔伯始终不渝地梦想建造一架全尺寸飞行器的信念一直鼓舞着他们的工作。多少年来，他曾说道，他的心中一直“萦绕着飞行是可能的这个信念”。这种痴迷的现实表现就是兄弟俩在自行车铺后的工棚里默默地追求，试图顶住地心吸引力，克服风的影响。正是这种改变世界的执着信念成了一种促使他们解决问题，寻找突破口的动力——一种促使他们将一切赌注压在一个脆弱的机翼或新的观点上的动力。这是一种促使莱特兄弟凭借自己的力量发明追求自己梦想所需的每一项技术的动力。
当已出版的航空数据被证明不可靠时，莱特兄弟就建立了自己的风洞来测试翼型，并根据试验测算如何使飞行器升入空中。他们第一个发现狭长的翼形是理想的飞行结构。他们计算出怎样使机器不仅仅在越过陆地时飞行自如，而且在空气垫的支托下能上下翻飞。他们制作了一个机身前部升降舵，以控制飞机上下飞行时的俯仰角。还在机身后部安装了一对转舵，以控制飞机容易偏来偏去的毛病。他们又设计了一个滑轮系统，能使机翼的形状在飞行中途弯曲，以便飞机转向以及阻止飞机在空中侧滚。当意识到飞机的推进器并不像轮船的螺旋桨，实际上应是旋转的翼翅时，他们利用风洞试验的数据，设计了第一个卓有成效的飞机螺旋桨——一对从多层云杉板中刻出的8英尺长的螺旋桨， 它们以相反方向转动以抵消飞机结构上承受的扭曲效应。在发现尚未有轻型的汽油发动机时，他们决定设计和制造自己的发动机，使它能产生12匹马力的功率，但重量只有152英磅。
天才里奥纳多·达芬奇想象了飞行器，但这两位美国自行车机械师应用了科学的方法论创造了飞行器。他们最初大量制作的那些无人滑翔机飞行得极不稳定，只能听凭强风的摆布。但是有了自己的风洞设备，兄弟俩积累了比前人更多的关于机翼设计的数据，编辑了至今仍行之有效的计算图表。由于有了这项科学研究作导向，他们制作了备有发动机的“1903飞鸟”——一架由云杉、白蜡树和粗帆布制成的框架飞行器，机身净重600英磅多一点。
1903年12月17日，奥威尔在操纵装置上将“飞鸟”摇摇晃晃地从基蒂霍克的地面上升起来，飞行了120英尺——比今天的波音747—400 的翼展的一半多一点。那个12秒钟的飞行改变了世界，将它升入了新的自由高度，使人类有缘进入他以前从未梦想过的境地。尽管莱特兄弟的壮举意在改变20世纪的生活，次日，美国却只有四家报纸刊登了他们的成果——而且该报道涉嫌夸大，备受冷遇。
莱特兄弟留给了我们一样“工具”，但是否将它付诸使用在于个人和国家，而我们做到了。飞机使和平和战争完全变了样。它使家庭更紧密：曾几何时，当孩子或亲人离开家乡去美国时，家人和朋友哀叹他们可能永远不能再相见。今天，那个移民的孙辈可以只花半天时间越过大洋，一次又一次地回到家乡。但是飞机也使家庭分离，因为国际战事已是不费吹灰之力的现实。
莱特兄弟创造了自书写发展以来最伟大的人文影响之一，因为他们的发明事实上已成了那个时代的万维网，它使人、语言、观念和价值得以紧密结合。它也迎来了一个全球化的时代，因为世界的飞行线路已成了新兴的世界经济的高速公路。这些空中高速公路不仅彻底地改变了国际商务，也使孤立的经济得以开发，把民主的理想传播到全世界并冲破了重重政治隔阂。它们更将旅行者带到一条最终通向地球大气外的路途。
因此，莱特兄弟和他们的发明引发了一场类似工业革命和数字革命而具有的深远意义的革命。但是那场革命并非由于运气或巧合而来。而是远见、暗下的决心和科学的方法论的运用才使奥威尔和威尔伯将人类带向空中。他们使我们想到天才并非天生，不冒风险，无以创新。十年后的回忆，甚至连奥威尔·莱特也承认说：“当时我们用新的从未试验过的机器尝试飞行，我为我们那大胆妄为的精神而惊奇。”
现在，在另一个世纪即将来临的前夕，谁又知道未来的莱特兄弟将在哪儿被找到，他们现在学校读几年级，或在哪个车行正发明着信息时代的新“飞鸟”。我们的任务是确保无论他们在哪儿，他们都能有机会走自己的路、不懈地追随自己的灵感。我们必须理解工程学的突破不只是机械上的或科学上的，它们还是能够不断改善人们生活的推动力。谁曾想到，在20世纪来临之时，它那杰出贡献之一的成就者竟是两位名不见经转、一脸稚气的美国年轻人。他们追求着人类思维最大的极限，首次给了我们所有的人实实在在的遨游天外天的力量。
20世纪在很大的程度上是美国的世纪，就是因为有了像莱特兄弟那样的伟大的发明家。但愿我们跟随他们的飞行路程，使我们自己的航天旅程在21世纪灿烂夺目。
标签：莱特兄弟论文;