Gallaudet Hydroplane
early aircraft employing the use of wing-warping for roll control
The Gallaudet Hydroplane (a.k.a. Gallaudet Wing-Warping Kite or Hydro-Bike) is an early aircraft employing the use of wing-warping for roll control.
Development
The Gallaudet Hydroplane was built in Norwich, Connecticut, by Edson Fessenden Gallaudet. The principle of wing-warping was independently applied to this kite/aircraft/glider several years before the Wright Brothers applied it to their Wright Flyer. (along with Jean-Marie LeBris, John J. Montgomery, Clement Ader, D.D. Wells, and Hugo Mattullath). The Wrights later applied for a patent on wing-warping, which led to the widespread use of the aileron control method to avoid the Wright's airplane patents. Gallaudet generically employed the name hydroplane to many of his future seaplane designs. In 1908, Gallaudet would form the Gallaudet Engineering Company, (later the Gallaudet Aircraft Corporation). Later hydroplane models were built for the United States Navy.
Design
The 1897 Gallaudet Hydroplane glider featured twin floats, a central pyramidal support frame, and flexible wooden wing ribs (employing wing warping) with fabric-covering.
The public source identifies “Gallaudet Hydroplane” as early aircraft employing the use of wing-warping for roll control. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gallaudet, Hydroplane and early.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gallaudet Hydroplane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.