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With their background in design and construction as bicycle mechanics, The Wright Brothers set out to build a flying machine. Nevertheless, success took half a decade of experimental engineering & even the Wrights themselves didn’t think much of their world renowned flight on 17th December 1903. On that day, they were lucky but they were only halfway there. Proper flying did not come until 1905.

The Wrights were not enthusiastic amateurs. As genuine engineers, they read the literature before starting work. An early insight, coming from bicycle design, was that aircraft not only had to be controlled, but a degree of instability was useful. The lecture will review what they did and summarise the Wrights’ other engineering achievements.

In the decades that followed, the unstable aircraft was considered an idiotic concept. Today, however, advanced fighters and even some commercial aircraft have adopted the Wrights’ approach. Instability gives better manoeuvrability, lower aircraft weight, and reduced fuel consumption. But there are dangers.

About the Speaker

Dr Fred Starr graduated as a metallurgist from Battersea College (now the University of Surrey) in 1966. He joined British Gas, London Research Station, in Fulham, where he remained for 30 years, moving from failure investigation, to leading the company’s research on high temperature materials.
However, the last ten years of Fred’s working life were geared towards energy conversion, principally with British Gas and the European Commission. This included Stirling engines, gas turbines and steam plant. It was a switch made possible by an amateur with a deep interest in the design of aircraft and aircraft engines, especially their history. In this respect, Fred’s one regret in life, is not knowing that the Newcomen Society used to meet at the Science Museum, just up the road from where he worked.

Formally “retiring” in 2007, Fred became an active member of the Newcomen Society. He got the Society to put on conferences on The Piston Engine Revolution (the development of the IC engine) and Swords into Ploughshares (how WWI transformed British Engineering). Fred has also published a three part paper in the Newcomen Journal on the development of materials for IC engine poppet valves.

He has also set up his own website, fredstarr.com, that has sections on industrial history.