A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first aircraft to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane design, as did most aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage over a monoplane, it produces more drag than a similar unbraced or cantilever monoplane wing. Improved structural techniques and materials and the quest for greater speed made the biplane configuration obsolete for most purposes by the late 1930s.
Wednesday, Oct 30 2013 by kjfitz