December marks the anniversary of the Wright brothers’ history-making flight at Kitty Hawk, when the duo successfully completed the first heavier-than-air powered flight. To mark this occasion, let’s take a closer look at biplanes.
December marks the anniversary of the Wright brothers’ history-making flight at Kitty Hawk, when the duo successfully completed the first heavier-than-air powered flight. To mark this occasion, let’s take a closer look at biplanes.
Discover the importance of the biplane, and how it changed the world forever!
Join us for a story about flying away in your own airplane. Where would you fly and what would you see? Write and illustrate your own airplane story book.
Join us for a story about flying away in your own airplane. Where would you fly and what would you see? Write and illustrate your own airplane story book.
What is a biplane?
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one over the other.
The Wright Flyer
The Wright Flyer—the aircraft behind the world’s first successful flight of a powered heavier-than-air flying machine—was the product of a sophisticated four-year program of research and development conducted by Wilbur and Orville Wright beginning in 1899. After building and testing three full-sized gliders, the Wrights' first powered airplane flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, making a 12-second flight, traveling 120 ft.
Biplanes such as the Boeing FB-5 allowed the US Navy to develop the training and techniques needed to land aircraft on moving aircraft carriers.
Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk had a hook attached to the top wing. This allowed a Sparrowhawk pilot to snag a trapeze suspended beneath the US Navy airships. The airship could store the Sparrowhawk inside or launch it again.
The Stearman was the most common military primary trainer used by the Army and Navy during World War II. It remained in military service training pilots until 1946.
The Sorceress became in 1976 the first sport biplane racer to exceed 200 mph in level flight.
Naval Aircraft Factory N3N was a popular Navy primary flight trainer that first flew February 1936. The Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, used this N3N for training at the academy until 1960.
Curious about how biplanes fly. Explore the forces of flight, aerodynamics, propulsion, and more.
Last Month's Theme
When you picture space, what do you see? Perhaps it’s the Earth like a blue marble in the sky, Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon, or colorful images of the universe taken by space telescopes. Artists and scientists have played major roles in how we visualize space.
Inspiring Art on Earth
In the 1800s, Étienne Trouvelot’s artwork captured astronomical events.
Before humans went to the Moon, Chesley Bonestell imagined the surface of the Moon with his masterpiece A Lunar Landscape. However, later photos taken by the first lunar probes showed a very different place than in A Lunar Landscape.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, artist Alma Woodsey Thomas painted abstractions inspired by moments—including astronomical events and moments from the Apollo program.
Taking Pictures ... in Space
During the Apollo 8 mission, the combination of everyday photography technology and out-of-this-world space technology led to the iconic Earthrise photo, transforming the way we thought about our home planet.
See More with Super Powerful Telescopes
Discover how image processors take invisible (to us) light and data from space telescopes and translate it into something that's better than what our naked eyes can see.
Alyssa Paga and Joe DePasquale share how they create data from space telescopes to create imagery.
Join the Astronomy Education team from the National Air and Space Museum as they discuss this amazing image, what a black hole is, and how the National Science Foundation and the Event Horizon Telescope accomplished this amazing feat.
Sheperd Doeleman, founding director of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, talks about the collaboration created an image of a black hole shares details of the first results.