CHARLES TAYLOR
CHARLES E. TAYLOR: THE MAN AVIATION HISTORY ALMOST FORGOT
BY BOB TAYLOR (FROM
FAA.GOV)
THREE MEN WERE INVOLVED IN THE INVENTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIRST POWERED AIRPLANE — THAT’S RIGHT, THREE. EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, BUT THAT THIRD MAN WAS CHARLES E. “CHARLIE” TAYLOR, A QUIET GENIUS WHO LOVED CIGARS AND THE SOUND OF MACHINERY. ALTHOUGH HE CONTRIBUTED TO ONE OF MAN’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS, “POWERED FLIGHT,” HIS NAME WAS ALMOST LOST IN AVIATION HISTORY — UNTIL NOW — AND IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR CHARLIE THAT FIRST POWERED AIRPLANE WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN OFF THE GROUND.
Charlie Taylor was born on a little
farm in Cerro Gordo, IL on May 24, 1868. As a boy Charlie moved to Lincoln, NE, with his family. Charlie quit school at the age of 12 and went to work as an errand boy for the Nebraska State Journal. However, Charlie was mechanically inclined so later, when he began working with machinery in the Journal’s bindery, it came easy for him. When Charlie was in his twenties he moved to Kearney, NE, where he
30
DOMmagazine.com | may 2019
went into a business of making metal house numbers. While in Kearney, Charlie met a young lady named Herietia Webbert in 1892 and married her two years later. In 1896 the Taylors moved to Dayton, OH, where Charlie worked for a Stoddard Manufacture which made farm equipment and later bicycles. It was in Dayton where Charlie met the Wrights. Mrs. Taylor’s uncle rented the building on West Third Street to the Wright brothers for their bicycle business. This was a convenient connection, because, in 1898 when Charlie started his own machine shop, Orville and Wilbur Wright brought him special jobs, including a bicycle coaster brake they had invented but later dropped. Charlie eventually sold his tool shop for a profit and went to work for the Dayton Electric Co. However, he didn’t like his job, so he accepted when the Wright brothers asked him to work for them at $18.00 per week. This was a good decision for several reasons — the Wright brothers’ shop was only six blocks from where Charlie lived, he could ride a bike home for lunch every day, he was making eight dollars a week more and he liked the Wright brothers a lot. Charlie started to work for the Wright brothers on June 15, 1901,
doing routine repairs on bicycles. This let the Wright brothers pursue their experiments with gliders which included many trips to Kitty Hawk. After one of these trips, the brothers decided they needed more accurate information then was available and decided to build a small wind tunnel with delicate force balance. With this, they would measure the amount and direction of air pressures on plane and curved surfaces operating at various angles and improve their theories based on their gliding experiences. Building the wind tunnel was the
first job that Charlie Taylor did for the Wright brothers that had any connection with aeronautics. The wind tunnel was a rectangular box with a fan at one end driven by a natural gas engine. Charlie ground hacksaw blades and used them for balance in the tunnel. The Wright brothers did many experiments in their wind tunnel and from this data they began to make their 1902 glider with Charlie machining many of the parts. On August 13, 1902, the brothers shipped the glider to Kitty Hawk. They did several flights with the glider and on October 31, 1902, the Wrights returned to Dayton to make plans for a powered airplane. Through
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
