News Story

CalTech labels Whalley ‘FirstFlight = cool site’

Wednesday 9 Apr 1997

Peter Whalley’s Firstflight project has been dubbed ‘cool site’ by the California Institute of Technology, in recognition of the project’s novel approach to helping students understand the complexities of aeronautics. The project encourages individuals to experiment with the numerous parameter settings concerned with air flow and wing shape, and then puts them directly in the Wright Brothers’ cockpit so they can experience what the flight would have been like had their own wing design been implemented.
The CalTech reference, headed "First Flight – Cool Site!" says "Peter Whalley is a multimedia researcher at the Open University in the U.K., and has been working on a flight simulation of the Wright Brother’s frist flight. Data for the sim will be from some of the subscale wind tunnel tests and published by Frederick J. Hooven in Smithsonian and Scientific American."
Relevant sites/links (will open in a fresh browser window):

• Peter Whalley’s FirstFlight page
• CalTech Wright Flyer Project
• CalTech Cool site mention for Whalley’s project

OUAnalyse at the Digital Ethics Summit 2025: Advancing Responsible AI in Education

KMI: The Early Years

Connecting Ideas: FBL Visits KMi

KMi takes centre stage at landmark Milton Keynes event 

KMi and Springer Nature renew their partnership for another two years