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We went to visit my neice Morag and family in Columbus, Ohio. We found them in good spirits and a lovely house. Morag's doing well in her career in the University Library service and Josh is doing post-doctorial research in Math at the University of Ohio in Columbus - one of the largest universities in the United States. Katya - their daughter is also in good spirits and seems as clever as her gifted parents.
Ohio is the home of aviation. The Wright Brothers lived and worked in Dayton. The first powered flight took place at Kittyhawk, North Carolina. However the workshop was in Dayton. More importantly, only the first 4 flights took place at Kittyhawk - all subsequent development took place in Ohio. We visited Huffman Prairie Flying Field Interpretive Center. This overlooks Wright Patterson AFB - the site of most of the development of aviation and the first flight school. Very interesting. Later in the vacation, we saw the Wright Brothers Bike Shop and Workshop at Greenfield Village, Michigan.
The Wright Brothers were really gifted engineers. They had a very methodical approach to a difficult problem. Many people had tried to solve the problem of powered flight. The Wright Brother found the solution to the three puzzles:
- Lift - the parabolic wing shape which generates lift
- Thrust - the propellor which generates forward force as a spinning wing
- Control - how to contol the pitch and turn using elevators, rudder and wing warping
Without doubt controlled flight has changed society in the 20th century in many profound ways. It's one of the greatest discoveries of all time. The basic elements of the Wright Brothers airplane used by all fixed wing aircraft today. Wing warping was replaced by ailerons - however apparently this technique is being reconsidered for some state of the art aircraft.
When we left Josh in Columbus, we drove up through Marion and went to visit the retirement home and memorial to President Warren G Harding. Unfortunately it was closed on Tuesday. And it was raining. So we took some photos and drove on via Toledo to Michigan. I've always wanted to see Toledo, Ohio after hearing John Denver's song about the place. I'm sure it's better than John describes. We'd have liked to visit Andrew's friend Dr T - however we hadn't made an arrangement to visit him, so we pushed on to Dearborn and the Henry Ford Museums.
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