AIRPLANES, AUTOMOBILES, AND STEAM-POWERED SHIPS

America of 1900 held great promise for dreamers and visionaries. Eccentric geniuses and creative mechanics tinkered in their garages on their versions of the ultimate vehicle to replace the horse. Some would develop just a single automobile for their own use; others thought beyond that to affordability and mass production; a few looked to the sky and wondered what it would be like to take wing. Two bicycle repairmen from Dayton, Ohio, aligned themselves with these few. They discovered they could soar.

The Wright Stuff

Wilbur and Orville Wright were fascinated with the thought of powered flight. They contacted the Smithsonian Institution and obtained all the scientific data gathered by Otto Lilienthal of Germany, a pioneer in gliding who made close to two thousand flights before he died in a plane crash on August 10, 1896. They researched other air pioneers as well. By 1899, the Wright Brothers had designed and built a five-foot biplane kite.

On the advice of the Weather Bureau, now the National Weather Service, the brothers went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where conditions for flight appeared perfect. Here, a dune-covered beach, part of a series of islands called the Outer Banks, jutted out along the Carolina coastline. The dunes were high enough to give the brothers the momentum they needed. Although the islands were subject to bitter winter rain storms, it was pleasantly brisk most of the year. The steady wind would get them airborne. In 1900, the Wrights flew their first pilot-flown glider from Kill Devil Hill, the tallest dune in Kitty Hawk. This glider had a sixteen-foot wingspan and cost $15 to build. Wilbur flew several feet for a matter of a few seconds before he and the glider made a bumpy return to the ground.

Wilbur and Orville were thrilled with this short but promising experience. They spent the winter experimenting with designs in the back of their bicycle shop. The brothers discovered errors in Lilienthal’s research when they set up a six-foot wind tunnel in their home. Using the tunnel they redesigned the wings’ curved surfaces. They returned to Kitty Hawk in 1901 with a larger glider, designed with guide wires to give them some control of sideways movement. Again, they flew the glider for only short distances. The brothers were encouraged by the control the guide wires provided but wanted to fly higher and further. They returned to Dayton to find a way to obtain the lifting power they needed to get the glider off the ground and maintain it in the air.

In 1902, the Wrights returned to Kitty Hawk with an aerodynamically advanced glider. That year, they made one thousand glides, some as far as six hundred feet. They were on the verge of designing a world-changing invention, and they were going further and further each year.

Wilbur Wright. (1867-1912) and Orville Wright. (1871-1948)

Wilbur Wright was born near Millville, Indiana and Orville in Dayton, Ohio, where they spent most of the rest of their lives. The boys grew up experimenting with toy-making and building their own wagons to haul rags to the junkman to pay for their supplies. By the time they were teenagers, Wilbur had set up his own printing business, edited the church bulletin, and ran a newspaper, the West Side News, out of his house. Just before high school graduation, Wilbur dropped out to stay home and nurse his mother, who was dying of tuberculosis, while Orville continued school and ran the print shop.

By 1892, the brothers were interested in both bicycle and automobile development. They were kept so busy repairing bicycles that they decided to open their own shop. They put their assistant, Ed Sines, in charge of the print shop and went into the bicycle business as The Wright Bicycle Company. The business grew rapidly, and before long, they moved to larger quarters.

By 1899, the brothers were working on a new interest — the flying machine. "Our own growing belief that man might … learn to fly," wrote Wilbur to a friend, "was based on the idea that while thousands of the most dissimilar body structures, such as insects, reptiles, birds and mammals were flying every day at pleasure, it was reasonable to suppose that man might also fly."

In 1900, the brothers went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to fly their first piloted glider. Their best glides that year lasted fifteen to twenty seconds and covered three hundred to four hundred feet.

Each summer over the next few years, the brothers experimented in the back of their bicycle shop with wind tunnels, wing shapes, and engines. Each fall, they returned to Kitty Hawk. By 1902, the brothers had designed a fully controlled glider. In 1903, they returned to Kitty Hawk with a gasoline-powered airplane. "Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so that we could discover them!" Orville told a friend.

Back at home in Dayton, the brothers issued a press statement. It read: "As winter was already well set in, we should have postponed our trials to a more favorable season, but … we were determined before returning home, to know whether the machine possessed sufficient power to fly, sufficient strength to withstand the shock of landings, and sufficient capacity of control to make flight safe in boisterous winds, as well as in calm air. When these points had been definitely established, we at once packed our goods and returned home, knowing that the age of the flying machine had come at last."

The press was beginning to pay attention, and Wilbur grew concerned that the design for the unpatented invention would be stolen. So, while the brothers waited for their patent application to be accepted, they worked secretly at Huffman Prairie in Dayton, Ohio. Their patents were approved in 1906, and the brothers made headlines as they demonstrated flight openly once again.

In 1909, Wilbur and Orville opened the doors to their own manufacturing company and began producing Wright Flyers in Dayton. Although they would always be in the center of flight, the two brothers would never again be at the forefront of the industry. Rather, they spent the rest of their years fighting patent infringement suits.

The brothers needed to protect their designs. They applied for a patent in 1903, which was accepted in 1906. Until then, they continued to experiment but shied away from publicity and attention.