The Wrights found one of the greatest difficulties to be overcome was
the balancing of their machine. This was only measurably and
unsatisfactorily accomplished by the horizontal rudder. They began to
study the flight of soaring birds for a solution of the difficulty. They
found that the hawk, the eagle and the gull maintained a horizontal
position by a slight, almost imperceptible upward or downward bending of
the extreme tips of their wings. They then began experiments with
slightly flexible planes that could be bent or warped at will by the
pilot. This was one of their most important and original contributions
to the problem of aviation, and it gave the pilot in a marked degree
control of his machine. The scientific arching of the planes to give
them the maximum lifting effect was also the result of their
investigations.
They now removed the field of experiment to Hoffman Prairie near Dayton
where at first they met with indifferent success. They invited friends
and reporters from their home city to witness a flight, but the machine
acted badly in the presence of company. While the spectators were not
favorably impressed the inventors were in no wise discouraged. Their
perseverance was later rewarded in 1904 by a flight of three miles in
five minutes and twenty-seven seconds. The year following a flight of
24.20 miles was made in thirty-eight minutes, thirteen seconds, at
heights of seventy-five to one hundred feet. These attracted small
attention. The inventors fully satisfied with their success and working
industriously to perfect their machine were also safeguarding the
results of their labors by carefully patenting every device that helped
them to the goal of practical aviation. While Europe was applauding the
achievements of the intrepid and wealthy Brazilian, Santos-Dumont, who
made public flights near Paris, the world was practically unaware of the
greater achievements of the Wright brothers a year earlier. Newspaper
accounts of their flights were received with a degree of incredulity,
but the indifference of the public was favorable to the modest brothers
who with tireless energy and slender means triumphed over difficulty
after difficulty as they moved toward the larger success that they
ardently desired and the fame that they sought not.