activities and that was his base for some time. He began to feel the
need for a larger printing press and he determined to build one. The
bed for the new press was an old gravestone he got from a marble dealer.
This press would print a sheet eleven by sixteen inches. Orville could
now undertake larger printing projects. One order required more type
than he had on hand. But that didn’t stop him. After he had used up
all his type, with the job only half done, he recalled having heard of
stereotype plates. He looked up in an encyclopedia a description of how
such plates were cast from the impression of the original type in wet
cardboard. And he contrived to make such a plate from the type already
set. Then he redistributed that type for use in setting the rest of the
job.
Ambitious to be a really good printer, Orville took employment during
two summer vacations with a printing establishment in Dayton, and
worked there sixty hours a week. But he felt that the most fun and
satisfaction in connection with printing had been from building his
own press. Along in the spring of 1888, when he was nearly seventeen
years old, he started to build another press, bigger than any he had
used before. He didn’t know exactly what he would do with it, but that
question did not yet give him much concern. He would have the fun of
building it. In the family woodshed was a pile of fire-wood cut in
four-foot lengths. From these he made much of the framework, though
he had to buy at a lumber yard a few longer pieces. From near-by junk
yards he collected odds and ends of iron or steel that could be used. A
difficult problem was to find a means of forcing the type against the
printing surface, always with the same pressure, just enough and not
too much. Orville searched the Wright barn and tool-shed for something
that could be adapted, but without success until his eye happened to
alight on the old family buggy. The buggy had a folding top, held
firmly in place, when raised, by steel bars hinged in the middle. They
were designed to force the top just so far and no farther. Exactly what
he needed!
The job turned out to be much more difficult than Orville had expected,
and Wilbur Wright, observing his kid brother at a tough job, offered
to help him build the press. Some of the suggestions Wilbur made for
moving parts of that press were peculiar in that they seemed to violate
all mechanical rules and could not possibly be expected to work. Yet
they did. Some time later, a well-dressed stranger entered the shop
where Orville, merrily whistling, was feeding paper into his press,
and asked if he might look at that “home-made printing outfit.” He
had heard about it while visiting in Dayton. What at once astonished
Orville and two or three boys in the shop was that the visitor, with
complete disregard for his good clothes, lay right down flat on his
back on the floor to study the press in operation. After he had
observed it for several minutes, he got up, brushed himself off, and
remarked: “It works all right, but I still don’t understand _why_ it
works.” Before leaving he laid his card on a table. He was the foreman
of the pressroom of a newspaper in Denver.
Now that he had his new press, Orville wished he could put it to some
purpose to make full use of the greatly increased printing capacity.
The press was big enough and fast enough to print a newspaper. Why not
start a neighborhood weekly? He had hardly more than thought of this
before he decided to do so. It was probably the first time a paper was
ever started just to use a press.
Orville now rented a room on West Third Street, near Broadway. The
first issue of the paper--four three-column pages--appeared on March
1, 1889. In his salutatory, Orville said: “This week we issue the
first number of the _West Side News_, a paper to be published in the
interests of the people and business institutions of the West Side.
Whatever tends to their advancement, moral, mental, and financial, will
receive our closest attention.”
There were seventeen advertisements. A leading feature was a story
about Abraham Lincoln and General Sherman, from the _Youth’s
Companion_; and there was an article about Benjamin Franklin. The
range of the publisher’s reading was indicated by a number of short
paragraphs on foreign affairs, and about the approaching inauguration
of President-elect Benjamin Harrison. Altogether it was a creditable
job. No boyish “boners” or typographical errors were to be found.
All copies of the first issue were distributed free, as samples, but
the paper was soon a fairly profitable enterprise. After the first
few numbers, it was enlarged from three columns wide to four columns.
Ed Sines devoted himself to rounding up advertisements and news
items. From time to time Wilbur Wright helped to fill space by writing
humorous essays, and after a few weeks his name was added to the
paper’s masthead as “editor,” along with Orville’s as publisher.
Another contributor to the _West Side News_ was a young Negro lad, a
friend of Orville since grammar grades, Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose
poetry afterward made him famous. Dunbar, in 1890, started a paper,
_The Tattler_, for Negro readers, and Orville did the printing.
By the time the _West Side News_ had been running a year, Orville had
completed his course in high school. He thought the final year, devoted
in the regular course largely to review, would hardly justify the time.
Instead, having it in mind that he might decide to go to college and
would need additional credits for college entrance requirements, he
was a special student in Latin during that fourth year, attending high
school an hour or two a day. The two elder Wright brothers had attended
college in Iowa and Indiana, and later their sister Katharine took a
degree at Oberlin, but both Wilbur and Orville gave up the idea of
going to college, and neither ever received a diploma from high school.
It may be added, however, that Orville in later years never agreed
with those who suggested that “college might have ruined the Wright
brothers.” More than once he said they doubtless could have done their
scientific work more easily if they had had the advantage of college
education.
Having decided, partly because of interest in the job at hand, not
to go to college, Orville, in April, 1890, with Wilbur as partner,
converted the _West Side News_ from a weekly to a four-page,
five-column daily, called _The Evening Item_.
This venture, though it showed no loss, was never profitable. At that
time the perfecting-press was coming into use and Dayton newspapers
were issuing big, thick editions that proved to be increasingly keen
competition for a small neighborhood sheet. After about four months the
paper was suspended. But, as late as 1894, Orville and Wilbur published
for a time a little two-column weekly called _Snapshots_, devoted to
vigorous comments on current local events. After the first issue or two
these were usually written by Wilbur.
Both Orville and Wilbur now became absorbed in one more new interest.
Orville had owned in Richmond an old high wheel bicycle for which he
had paid $3--borrowed from Wilbur. Now, a new European type of bicycle
with wheels about the same size, and called a “safety,” had begun to
be popular. In 1892, Orville bought one of these, a Columbia. It had
pneumatic tires and cost $160. Six months later, Wilbur got a bicycle.
His was an Eagle and he was able to get it at an auction for $80.
Orville promptly became interested in track-racing and began to enter
his name in various local racing events. Wilbur, though he had been
a great athlete--a wonderful fancy skater and the best performer in
Dayton on a horizontal bar--never went in for racing, because not yet
completely recovered from the effects of his skating accident.
Within a few weeks or months from the time they bought their bicycles,
these Wright brothers decided to go into the bicycle business--to sell
certain well-known makes. Then they soon found that they would have
to add a repair shop. Their first sales room was at 1005 West Third
Street. They rented it in December, 1892, to be ready for business
when the bicycle season began in the early spring of 1893. For a while
Orville divided his time between the bicycle shop and the job printing
business across the street in which Ed Sines was still employed. (Sines
continued to work there until 1898 when an accident to a lame knee
forced him to seek another kind of work, and a few months later the
shop was sold.)
The brothers soon had to move their bicycle business to larger
quarters, at 1034 West Third Street. They were successful both in
selling new machines and general repairing. Among the bicycles they
sold at one time or another were the Coventry Cross, Halladay-Temple,
Warwick, Reading, Smalley, Envoy and Fleetwing.
By 1895 increased business had caused them to move once more, to 22
South Williams Street, and soon they began to manufacture bicycles.
The first “custom made” model was called the Van Cleve--after their
pioneer ancestors. A later and lower-priced model was the St. Clair;
and finally they made a still lower-priced machine called the Wright
Special. It sold for as low as $18. Before they were through with
the business they had put out under their own brand several hundred
bicycles. Many of these were built in the last building the brothers
occupied, a remodeled dwelling house at 1127 West Third Street--the
building afterward preserved as a museum at Henry Ford’s Greenfield
Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
Much of their work when building new bicycles was done in winter,
when selling was slack, in rooms upstairs over the shop, and from
time to time the brothers were interrupted by the necessity of going
down to attend to wants of customers. Sometimes they went down to
meet a caller who wished only to borrow their air-pump to inflate a
tire. They had no pressure-tank but kept a large hand-pump on the wall
near the front door. To avoid needless trips downstairs, the Wrights
contrived mechanical means by which they could tell if a caller’s wants
required their attention. They took an old two-tone bell, intended to
be fastened to a bicycle handlebar, and attached it to the wall in
their upstairs work-rooms. By means of wires and other mechanism, the
opening of the downstairs door yanked the thumb-lever on the bell in
one direction, producing one tone; and shutting the door pulled the
little lever in an opposite direction to cause the other tone. The hook
on which the air-pump hung was also connected by a wire and a spring
to a pointer upstairs. Thus it was possible to have secret knowledge
upstairs if the caller might be a real customer or if he “only wanted
air.” If he promptly helped himself to the pump, there probably was no
need for anyone to go down. Then when the pointer showed that the pump
was back on the hook and the bell signaled the closing of the door,
on the caller’s departure, the brothers could feel sure they had not
missed a sale of any kind by sticking to their work.
Throughout the time they were repairing, selling, and building
bicycles, the Wrights continued to make various experiments, just for
the fun of it. They made in 1893 what was doubtless the first pair of
“balloon” tires ever installed on a vehicle. It was necessary to build
a special “front fork” and widen the frame at the rear to make room for
the over-sized pneumatics.
Orville even found time during this period for experiments having
nothing to do with bicycles. Along about 1895, he made a new kind of
calculating machine for multiplying as well as for adding. He worked
also on a typewriter more simplified than any in existence.
Occasionally the brothers took in trade an old high wheel. They had
two of these, about the same size, that they couldn’t sell for much,
and the only way to get any benefit from them was to use them in a new
way for sport. Why not, they asked themselves, convert them into a
tandem? No one had ever heard of two high wheels operated as a unit,
and though riding such an outfit might be dangerous, it also would be
exciting. They put a swivel in the steel tube connecting the two wheels
to prevent it from twisting and breaking. Then they began to practice,
to learn the special technique the man on the rear seat had to know.
It was a little different from any a bicyclist had needed before--a
little like that of a man steering the rear end of a long fire truck.
Though it looked fairly easy, only one person besides the Wrights ever
succeeded in staying mounted. Indeed, riding even on the front seat was
perilous enough. One afternoon Orville took the rear seat with a boy
named Tom Thorne in front. As they tried to steer around a hole in the
muddy street, the handlebar caught the leg of the lad in front, which
prevented his turning far enough.
Of course there was a spill. Orville from the rear seat managed to
land on his feet, but Tom Thorne, with one leg pinioned, was hurled
headfirst to the street. When he came up for air none of his features
was to be seen, so thoroughly was he plastered with mud. He looked
so frightful that none of the boys who saw the mishap showed any
amusement. They were afraid he had ruined his face. But Orville at
once realized that the soft mud had prevented any injury and his
young friend’s appearance struck him as the funniest thing he had
ever seen. For some moments he was doubled up with mirth, unable to
control himself, while the other rider, not exactly indignant but
unable to enter into the hilarity, stood trying to gouge the mud
out of his eyes with his thumbs. It happened that Tom Thorne had an
intimate acquaintance with a family living near by and he went there,
accompanied by Orville, to ask permission to wash up; but the girl who
opened the door, though a lifelong friend, was unwilling to believe the
strange-looking creature was anyone she knew. Tom asked her to call her
mother. The mother had known him almost from the day of his birth, but
she showed no sign of recognition now. She did finally identify him by
his voice, however, and told him he might wash at the pump. He was able
to remove some of the larger chunks of mud. Then he and Orville took
the machine back to the shop. The episode was not one of the Wright
triumphs. But neighbors who heard about it smiled and wondered:
What will those Wright boys be doing next?
As boys and girls of high school age were potential customers for
bicycles, Wilbur Wright thought there should be an effective way to
stir their interest in the makes of bicycles sold by the Wright Cycle
Co. and he hit on a plan that showed him to have latent genius as an
advertising man. He got a copy of a high school examination paper and
had printed what appeared to be a set of examination questions--using
the same kind of paper and the same typography. Then he arranged with
one or two students to distribute these sheets at the high schools. At
first glance a student would think he had got hold of an advance copy
of an examination paper. But all the questions related to bicycles on
sale by the Wrights!
A chum of the Wrights, Cordy Ruse, in 1896 had built the first
horseless buggy ever run over the streets of Dayton. The Wrights and
others used to sit and talk with him about some of his problems.
They had many jokes about the difficulties of hitting upon a
suitable ignition system, a workable differential, and other seeming
insurmountables. Another problem, caused by the vibration of a
horseless carriage, had impressed Wilbur most of all.
One day when the Wrights and several others were chatting with Cordy
Ruse, Wilbur suddenly slapped his thigh and said:
“I’ve just thought of a wonderful invention! I’ll have it patented.
It’s simple enough. All there is to it is a bed sheet to be fastened
beneath an automobile to catch all the bolts, nuts, and other parts
that’ll keep dropping off.”
Orville thought that, crude as horseless carriages were, they were
probably the coming thing, and that eventually they might even hurt the
bicycle trade. In 1897 he suggested to Wilbur that perhaps they might
well give thought to the idea of going into the business of building
automobiles.
No, insisted Wilbur, shaking his head, they would never be practical.
“To try to build one that would be any account,” declared Wilbur,
“you’d be tackling the impossible. Why, it would be easier to build a
flying-machine!”
IV
FIRST THOUGHTS OF FLIGHT
Ever since the Wright brothers had played with their Pénaud toy
helicopter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, their interest in whatever they
chanced to read about flying-machines was probably greater than if the
seed had not been planted in childhood.
Along in the early 1890’s, both Wilbur and Orville were likely to
read any article they saw on a scientific subject, and to talk
about it. Occasionally an article in a magazine that came to the
Wright home dealt with attempts of man to fly. As time went on, such
articles interested the brothers more and more. In 1895, both were
impressed--perhaps more than they then realized--by a brief item
they had come upon about the glider experiments, in Germany, by Otto
Lilienthal. He had been gliding through the air, down the side of a
hill, on a machine he had built. That, the brothers thought, must be
the king of sports, to go soaring through the air on a gliding machine.
They wished they knew more about Lilienthal and his work. All the
reports they could find about him were meager enough; but what little
they did learn increased their enthusiasm. Lilienthal, “the father of
gliding flights,” was to have a tremendous influence on them.
Their interest in anything relating to Lilienthal was still strong in
the summer of the next year, 1896, when Orville was taken ill--typhoid
fever. Then, at a time when Orville was still delirious from the fever,
Wilbur read that Lilienthal had been killed in a crash of his glider.
After Orville was well enough to hear about Lilienthal’s fatal
accident, both he and Wilbur felt a greater eagerness than ever to
learn more about what Lilienthal had accomplished, as well as of
what had been tried by others, toward human flight. Books dealing
with attempts of man to fly appeared to be scarce, but the brothers
got whatever was available in the Dayton library, besides looking up
articles on the subject in the encyclopedia. All they read, however,
during the next two or three years did not satisfy their craving for a
better understanding of the whole problem of flight.
Knowing that the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, was interested
in the subject of human flight, they decided to send a letter to the
Smithsonian asking for suggestions as to reading material. The reply,
received early in June, 1899, suggested: Octave Chanute’s _Progress in
Flying Machines_; Professor Langley’s _Experiments in Aerodynamics_;
and the _Aeronautical Annuals_ of 1895, 1896, and 1897, edited by James
Means, which contained reprints of accounts of various experiments,
clear back to the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Besides this list of
suggested reading, the Smithsonian sent also some pamphlets, reprints
of material extracted from their own annual reports, among which were
Mouillard’s _Empire of the Air_, Langley’s _Story of Experiments in
Mechanical Flight_, and a paper by Lilienthal on _The Problem of
Flying and Practical Experiments in Soaring_.
This reading material arrived from Washington at a time when Katharine
Wright had just returned from Oberlin College, accompanied by a young
woman classmate. She had assumed that her brothers would help to
entertain this guest, but, to her vexation, Wilbur and Orville had
become too absorbed in their reading to have much time for girls.
It was now evident to the brothers that though the previous ten years
had been a period of unusual activity, the results had not been
encouraging. Maxim, after spending one hundred thousand dollars, had
abandoned his work; the Ader machine, built at the expense of the
French government, had been a failure; Lilienthal in Germany, and
Pilcher, a marine engineer, in England, had been killed while trying to
glide; Octave Chanute, too, after making some experiments in gliding,
had quit.
Since Lilienthal had already aroused the brothers’ admiration, they
were especially interested in what he had done. With hundreds of short
flights, he had had more flying practice than anyone else, even though
he had been in the air a total of only five hours in five years.
Lilienthal became the Wrights’ hero. They decided that he, by his
experiments, had made more advance in the flying art than had anyone
else up to that time--an opinion, it may be added, that they never
changed.
Their reading now gave the Wrights a good idea of how earlier
experimenters had attempted to solve the problem of equilibrium. Some
experimenters had placed the center of gravity far below the wings, on
the theory that the weight would seek to remain at the lowest point.
But it had been proved that the wings would then oscillate about the
center of gravity in a manner destructive to stability. Others had
arranged the wings in the shape of a broad V, to form a dihedral angle,
with the center low and the wing tips elevated. This, too, tended
to make the machine oscillate from side to side except in calm air.
Pénaud, in his models propelled by rubber bands, had used wings that
formed a dihedral angle, and a rear stabilizer set with its forward
edge lower than the rear edge. This produced inherent stability in both
lateral and longitudinal directions. Lilienthal, Chanute, and some of
the others had used the Pénaud system in their gliders, but in addition
to that system they counted on shifting the weight of their bodies to
help maintain equilibrium.
All this reading, while adding to their store of knowledge, also gave
the Wrights much misinformation. One wrong idea they got was that men
already knew how to design wings and propellers of such efficiency that
motors then available could easily sustain the machine in the air;
another, that the greatest problem was to maintain equilibrium. They
also were misled into thinking that fore and aft control of a flying
machine would be much more difficult than lateral control.
That neither Lilienthal nor any other experimenter had ever tried
any more adequate method to insure lateral balance struck Orville as
surprising. Why, he asked himself, wouldn’t it be possible for the
operator to vary the inclination of sections of the wings at the tips
and thus obtain force for restoring balance from the difference in
the lifts of the two opposite wing tips? That seems today an obvious
enough idea, but no one had ever done anything about it before. Orville
had hit on a fundamental principle. (Indeed, this principle later
became the basic claim of the original Wright patent, and the claim
was sustained, as covering the idea of the aileron control, in all
countries where the Wright patents were adjudicated.)
Orville made a rough sketch of a wing, showing a stationary section at
the center, consisting of approximately one-third of the wing, measured
from tip to tip, with two adjustable sections, one at either side.
These sections were carried on shafts interconnected by cogs mounted on
the center section and extending toward the wing tips. The movement of
a lever attached to one of the shafts would cause one wing section to
rotate in one direction while the other wing would turn in the opposite
direction. Thus a greater lift could be obtained on whichever side it
was needed.
The Wrights soon saw, however, that for two reasons this particular
design did not provide a good structure for a gliding machine. First,
with two-thirds of the entire weight of the machine and operator
carried by the two shafts, the structure would be weak; and, second,
with the ends of the wings free to turn about the shafts, there would
not be enough rigidity for a machine that would have to be toted about.