Alexander Mozhaiski
Encyclopedia : A : AL : ALE : Alexander Mozhaiski
Alexander Fyodorovich Mozhaiski (Russian: ; March 21 [O.S. March 9] 1825 in Rochensalm, current Kotka, Finland — 1 April [O.S. March 20] 1890 in Saint Petersburg) , was a Russian naval officer, aviation pioneer, researcher and designer of heavier-than-air-craft. Mozhaiski was developing concepts for heavier-than-air flight 20 years before the Wright brothers' first flight. In 1884, in Krasnoye Selo Mozhaiski's monoplane design made what is now considered to be a power assisted take off or 'hop' of 60-100 feet (20-30 meters). His feat is generally distinguished from that of the Wright brothers on the basis that his design appears to have relied upon a ramp rather than wings to generate lift. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Mozhaiski's wing design lacked the curvature necessary to generate lift. While it is possible that Mozhaiski's wings slowed down the monoplane's descent, they were unlikely to have ever provided upward movement unless used at angles of attack that would have been unsustainable given the engines available to Mozhaiski. Though he used wings without curvature in his crafts, he experimented with different angles of attacks using his own invented aerodynamic balance, as his published report of 1883 shows. During these experiments he established what is now called "the critical angle of attack" of about 15° where the lift reaches its maximum. Although Soviet propagandists later overemphasised Mozhaiski's role in aviation by claiming his hop as the first powered flight, Mozhaiski's achievements in aviation, particularly with regard to flight control and propulsion, were considerable given the limits of the technology available to him and have only recently received the attention they deserve.
See also
References
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.
