The Wright Vertical 4 was an American aircraft engine built by the Wright brothers in the very early years of powered flight. It was a liquid-cooled piston engine with four inline cylinders, mounted vertically. (Earlier Wright engines were mounted horizontally.) It generated about NaNhp from a displacement of 240abbr=offNaNabbr=off and weighed about . Developed by Orville Wright in 1906, the Vertical 4 was produced by the Wright Company until 1912 and was the most numerous engine they manufactured.[1] [2] Around a hundred Vertical 4 engines were built, according to a Wright test foreman.
The Vertical 4 powered most Wright aircraft during this period, including the Model A and Model B and variants built for the U.S. Army and Navy.
This engine was also built under license by Bariquand et Marre in France and by Neue Automobil-Gesellschaft in Germany.[3]
Wright Vertical 4 engines can be seen on display in the following museums, among others:
Book: Hobbs . Leonard S. . Smithsonian Annals of Flight, No. 5: The Wright Brothers' Engines and Their Design . 1971 . Smithsonian Institution Press . Washington, D.C. .
Book: Lippincott . Harvey H. . Wolko . Howard S. . The Wright Flyer: An Engineering Perspective . Propulsion Systems of the Wright Brothers . 1987 . Smithsonian Institution Press . Washington, D.C. . 0-87474-979-4 . 87–89 .
Book: McFarland . Marvin W. . The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Including the Chanute-Wright Letters and Other Papers of Octave Chanute . Two: 1906–1948 . 1953 . McGraw-Hill . New York . 1215–1216.