_The_
WRIGHT BROTHERS
“As scientists, they discovered the secret of flight. As inventors,
builders and flyers, they brought aviation to the world.”
On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the first
power-driven heavier-than-air machine ever to achieve sustained flight
rose from its starting track and in 12 seconds soared through the air
for a distance of 120 feet. Short as this flight was, it nevertheless
marked the beginning of man’s conquest of the air. Orville Wright was at
the controls; Wilbur Wright balanced the machine at the take-off. This
picture records for posterity an epochal event witnessed by just seven
men, the Wright brothers themselves and five others who, more than they
knew, stood that day on the threshold of history.
[Illustration: The first flight at Kitty Hawk, N. C., December 17,
1903.]
[Illustration: uncaptioned]
The Age of Flight, with its miracle of service, began in an obscure
little bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. Here two devoted brothers, working
amid tires, wheels and air pumps, dreamed that man could fly in a
heavier-than-air machine. The names of these two brothers who wrote
themselves indelibly into history, were Wilbur and Orville Wright.
The story of the Wright brothers is an inspiring narrative of success.
Wilbur and Orville combined to a rare degree the searching intelligence
of the scientist, the ability to visualize of the inventor, and the
practical craftsmanship of the builder. In addition they had great
personal courage.
The Wright brothers were by no means the first who sought the secret of
flight. Particularly in Europe, able men had delved deep and risked much
in the effort to fly like a bird. Certain theories of aerodynamics had
been developed and were generally accepted as accurate. One of the major
setbacks to the hopes of the Wrights was the discovery, through their
own experiments, that these previously accepted theories were incorrect.
This meant that they had to start from the beginning and develop their
own tables of air pressures. Two developments of the Wrights made it
possible to build an aeroplane that would fly. One was a crude wind
tunnel and the other was an ingenious set of balances made out of old
hack saw blades and bicycle spokes. With these comparatively crude
instruments, they compiled data which made flight possible.
In the months and years following their first flights, the Wrights were
acclaimed by nations and by men. They knew success in the fullest
measure. But probably no subsequent achievement quite equaled the thrill
which must have been theirs when they were able to send to their father
and sister that now famous message:
“Success four flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one-mile
wind started from level with engine power alone average speed through
air thirty-one miles longest 59 seconds inform press home Christmas.”
An idea is born
[Illustration: The shop of the Wright Cycle Company on West Third
Street in Dayton ... birthplace of the aeroplane.]
The Wright brothers sprang from pioneers who settled Dayton when the
Ohio country was young. Their father, the Reverend Milton Wright, became
a bishop of the United Brethren Church. His vocation necessitated
frequent changes of residence. Thus it came about that Wilbur was born
April 16, 1867, on a farm eight miles from Newcastle, Indiana, while
Orville was born in a house at 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton. This house
was the Wright home for more than forty years.
From earliest childhood, the boys were mechanically minded. They had
both the inclination and the aptitude for creative work. The pioneering
urge and the gift of original thinking were theirs.
[Illustration: An issue of the “West Side News,” an early Wright
venture.]
One day the Bishop came home from a short trip, bringing the children a
present. He held something in his hands and then tossed it toward them.
It was a toy helicopter. Instead of flopping to the floor, it ascended
to the ceiling where it fluttered before it fell. That helicopter set up
a milepost in the lives of the Wright boys. The idea of their future
conquest of the air, in all likelihood, was born then and there.
[Illustration: Wilbur Wright in the bicycle shop, 1897.]
[Illustration: Orville Wright, in white shirt, at work in shop.]
At an early age they began to fly kites. They became interested
successively in wood cuts, printing and photography. The urge for
invention was strong in them. Wilbur got a job folding the entire issue
of an eight-page church paper. When he found the handwork tiring and
tedious, he designed and built a machine that did the folding.
[Illustration: The house on Hawthorn Street, home of the Wrights for
40 years and now re-erected in Greenfield Village in Dearborn,
Michigan.]
Orville was no less enterprising. When he was 15, he entered into a
partnership with Ed Sines, a neighbor boy, and launched the printing
firm of Sines and Wright. The plant was located in a corner of the Sines
kitchen. One of their first ventures was to print a little paper called
“The Midget.”
[Illustration: One of the Wrights’ first efforts to measure the
effect of air pressure was this horizontal bicycle wheel mounted on
one of their own bicycles and equipped with two metal vanes. This
bicycle was placed in the Park through the co-operation of the
family of the late Frank Miller, former Superintendent of Dayton
Schools.]
Later Orville started a weekly newspaper called the “West Side News.”
Wilbur joined him as an editorial writer. These publications and others
which followed were printed on a press which the Wright boys designed
and built.
In 1892 came the enterprise that was to provide the setting for, and the
approach to, the supreme adventure with which the names of the Wright
brothers are associated. The boys became absorbed in bicycles. Orville
became interested in track racing and participated in several events. In
their enthusiasm the boys decided to go into the bicycle business. After
embarking on bicycle selling they discovered they must have a repair
shop. Punctures provided the bulk of their business, with free air as a
side issue. The first shop of what became the Wright Cycle Company was
at 1005 West Third Street.
Business increased to such an extent that the Wrights moved to South
Williams Street. Here they began to manufacture bicycles. Their first
model was called the Van Cleve, named after one of their pioneer Dayton
ancestors. Continued expansion of the business necessitated a move to
1127 West Third Street. This was the shop linked with the birth and
development of aviation. It was here that Wilbur and Orville not only
dreamed of flying but practically built the first plane.
A hint of what the future had in store came one day when the brothers
were discussing what was then the new-fangled horseless carriage. Since
it was an original idea, it appealed to them. Orville suggested that
they might engage in the automobile business. “No,” replied Wilbur,
“you’d be tackling the impossible. Why, it would be easier to build a
flying machine.”
[Illustration: A replica of the Wrights’ original wind tunnel which
secured its pressure from a fan mounted on the shaft of an old
grinding wheel.]
The first active interest in flying that the Wrights displayed developed
in 1895 when they read about the glider experiments being carried out by
Otto Lilienthal in Germany. They now began to read everything they could
lay hands on that bore on the attempts of man to fly, going back to the
days of the great Leonardo da Vinci. They wrote to the Smithsonian
Institution for a list of books on the subject. The germ of flying now
entered their systems, never to be eradicated.
The Wrights went thoroughly into the problem of gliders. After
Lilienthal had been killed while gliding, the brothers discovered that
neither he nor any other man who glided had an adequate method of
insuring lateral balance. In seeking the solution to this problem,
Orville worked out a theory for the operation to vary the inclination of
sections of the wings, thereby obtaining force for restoring balance.
Thus he hit upon a fundamental principle which became a claim in the
original Wright patent.
[Illustration: One of the most valued possessions of the Wrights, a
balance made of hacksaw blades. With this balance they evolved their
own tables of air pressure which eventually enabled them to fly. The
original balance is in Franklin Institute, Philadelphia; this
replica is in Wright Hall, Carillon Park.]
[Illustration: Many glider flights at Kitty Hawk preceded the first
attempt to fly in a power-driven plane. Here the Wrights are flying
a glider as a kite, controlling it from the ground. Later flights
were made in man-carrying gliders.]
The brothers now began to study wing structure, but hit upon many
difficulties. A simple incident set them on the right track. In selling
a customer an inner tube for a tire, Wilbur had taken the tube from the
pasteboard box and was idly twisting the box back and forth as he talked
to the customer. In doing so he noticed that although the vertical sides
remained rigid at the ends, the top and bottom sides could be twisted so
that they made different angles at the opposite ends. He immediately
wondered why the wings of a gliding machine could not be warped from one
end to the other in this same way. In this way the wings could be put at
a greater angle at one side than the other and there would be no
structural weakness. Wilbur explained the plan to Orville and it seemed
so satisfactory that they adopted it for their gliders.
The Wrights were now glider-conscious. They built a bi-plane kite with a
new system of controls. In 1900 the brothers constructed a man-carrying
glider. In order to get practice in operation, they decided to fly it
first as a kite. For kite flying they required flat, open country; and
for gliding, sand hills free from trees or shrubs were necessary.
Favorable winds were also needed.
From reports received from the Weather Bureau in Washington, the Wrights
learned that a place named Kitty Hawk in North Carolina seemed to meet
all requirements. So they wrote to the man in charge of the weather
station there for further information. On his and other data, the
brothers came to the conclusion that Kitty Hawk was suitable for
experiments. What was then a tiny spot on the map was to become, in
time, a center of world interest.
[Illustration: Diary of Orville Wright, showing page recording the
first successful flight.]
[Illustration: Map of Kitty Hawk area.]