The Wright Brothers

“In early 1889, while still in high school, Orville started his own print shop in the carriage shed behind the house, and apparently with no objections from the Bishop. Interested in printing for some while, Orville had worked for two summers as an apprentice at a local print shop. He designed and built his own press using a discarded tombstone, a buggy spring, and scrap metal.” 

This brief anecdote about Orville gives a sense of the brothers’ ingenuity. Orville was the more mechanically gifted of the two and even in high school displayed a keen and creative mind by building a printing press of his own design out of everyday items—certainly not an average endeavor for someone that young.

“News of Lilienthal’s death, Wilbur later wrote, aroused in him as nothing had an interest that had remained passive from childhood. His reading on the flight of birds became intense. On the shelves of the family library was an English translation of a famous illustrated volume, Animal Mechanism, written by a French physician, Etienne-Jules Marey, more than thirty years before. Birds were also an interest of Bishop Wright, hence the book’s presence in the house, and Wilbur had already read it. Now he read it anew.”

Aviator Otto Lilienthal’s death made the news while Orville was homebound recuperating from typhoid fever. Wilbur read many accounts of Lilienthal’s crash aloud to his brother. The incident rekindled Wilbur’s childhood interest in flying and prompted both to think about building a flying machine. Several reference books on flight, including Marey’s, noted the need to study birds, which Wilbur took up avidly.

“Along with Lilienthal, Chanute, and Langley, numbers of others among the most prominent engineers, scientists, and original thinkers of the nineteenth century had been working on the problem of controlled flight, including Sir George Cayley, Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison. None had succeeded. Hiram Maxim had reportedly spent $100,000 of his own money on a giant, steam-powered, pilotless flying machine only to see it crash in attempting to take off.” 

McCullough highlights the brain power that many famous people, some with substantial means, had already focused on the problem of crewed flight. The amount that Maxim spent is worth over $3 million today. The Wright brothers, by contrast, spent a total of just under $1,000 (about $32,000 today)—money they earned from their bicycle shop—and their plane was successful.

“With characteristic understatement, Wilbur summarized by saying they were able to return home ‘without having our pet theories completely knocked in the head by the hard logic of experience, and our own brains dashed out in the bargain.’ He said nothing of the fact that for the first time he had experienced the thrill of flying.” 

Wilbur’s character (as well as Orville’s) was one of modesty: He focused on the larger goal at hand. He’d successfully flown their first glider in the fall of 1900 but didn’t mention it. He only said that his and Orville’s ideas had not been disproven and that the two hadn’t been hurt—about the most minimal way possible of describing their success. As always, he kept the focus off himself and didn’t mention the fact that he’d flown.

“They broke camp at first light on October 28 in a cold, driving rain and walked the four miles to Kitty Hawk to start the journey home and in a frame of mind far different from what it had been at their departure the year before. All the time and effort given to the wind tunnel tests, the work designing and building their third machine, and the latest modifications made at Kill Devil Hills had proven entirely successful. They knew exactly the importance of what they had accomplished. They knew they had solved the problem of flight and more. They had acquired the knowledge and the skill to fly. They could soar, they could float, they could dive and rise, circle and glide and land, all with assurance.

Now they had only to build a motor.” 

The brothers’ accomplishments during their third trip to Kitty Hawk in 1902 were significant. After their first success with gliding in 1900, they’d designed and tested a larger plane in 1901 that in many ways failed. They returned to the drawing board, having to recalculate the curvature of the wings since the established data had turned out to be wrong. In a moment of despair, Wilbur had expressed doubt about their solving the problem. However, they persevered, and the third version of their glider was a success. However, they weren’t done: They wanted to create a powered plane by adding an engine. Once again, they would need to start anew by building their own motor with Charlie Taylor’s help.

“The problem became more complex the more the brothers studied it. Much to their surprise, they could find no existing data on air propellers. They had assumed they could go by whatever rule-of-thumb marine engineers used for the propellers on boats, and accordingly drew on the resources of the Dayton library only to find that after a hundred years in use the exact action of a screw propeller was still obscure. Once more they were left no choice but to solve the problem themselves. ‘Our minds,’ said Orville, ‘became so obsessed with it that we could do little other work.’” 

The Wright brothers’ perseverance and innovation drove a single-minded devotion to their goal: They’d do anything to achieve it. That they designed their own propeller is amazing on its own, but it was just one of many parts they designed and made themselves—on top of the larger vision of creating the integral whole of a flying machine. Their range and willingness to work hard at solving any problem was remarkable.

“Scratching off a postcard to Charlie Taylor, Orville expressed the same spirit in a lighter vein.

Flying machine market has been very unsteady the past two days. Opened yesterday morning at about 208 (100% means even chance of success) but by noon had dropped to 110. These fluctuations would have produced a panic, I think, in Wall Street, but in this quiet place it only put us to thinking and figuring a little.” 

By some accounts, both brothers were rather dull or grim, based on their quiet nature and public persona. In private, however, they both had a sense of humor and liked to tease each other and close family members. Their wit and playful side often came out in their correspondence, mostly among the brothers and their sister, Katharine, but also with others they felt close to, like Charlie Taylor.

“Neither brother was ever to make critical or belittling comments about Langley. Rather, they expressed respect and gratitude for the part he had played in their efforts. Just knowing that the head of the Smithsonian, the most prominent scientific institution in America, believed in the possibility of human flight was one of the influences that led them to proceed with their work, Wilbur told Octave Chanute in a letter written some years later.” 

One of many admirable traits that McCullough notes about the brothers is that they never spoke ill of their competitors or anyone who criticized them. This not only shows their character but also how self-possessed they were. They focused on their own work and didn’t get caught up in much external drama. This passage refers to the failure of Samuel Langley’s flying machine. It was certainly embarrassing for him given that he was the head of the Smithsonian and a respected scholar. Wilbur even defended him, especially from press attacks and peers’ unkind words.

“It had taken four years. They had endured violent storms, accidents, one disappointment after another, public indifference or ridicule, and clouds of demon mosquitoes. To get to and from their remote sand dune testing ground they had made five round-trips from Dayton (counting Orville’s return home to see about stronger propeller shafts), a total of seven thousand miles by train, all to fly little more than half a mile. No matter. They had done it.” 

Reflecting on the brothers’ first successful powered flight in December 1903, McCullough again shows their single-minded pursuit of their goal. He succinctly tallies all their efforts and the barriers they overcame, which speaks to their perseverance. How one deals with failure is often a barometer of how far one will get, and the brothers always treated failure as a temporary setback, something to learn lessons from and work through. To Wilbur and Orville, all the effort and failure was worthwhile to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.

“Success it most certainly was. And more. What had transpired that day in 1903, in the stiff winds and cold of the Outer Banks in less than two hours time, was one of the turning points in history, the beginning of change for the world far greater than any of those present could possibly have imagined. With their homemade machine, Wilbur and Orville Wright had shown without a doubt that man could fly and if the world did not yet know it, they did.

Their flights that morning were the first ever in which a piloted machine took off under its own power into the air in full flight, sailed forward with no loss of speed, and landed at a point as high as that from which it started.” 

McCullough puts the brothers’ 1903 success into historical context. What the Wright brothers did was momentous, and the world going forward would change. The scientific accomplishment was one thing, but the airplane’s effect on culture, warfare, and everyday life would be profound. Change happened fast, which McCullough touches on in the last chapter.

“As they crated up the damaged Flyer to ship home, the brothers were ‘absolutely sure’ in their own minds that they had mastered the problem of mechanical flying. But they also understood as no one else could have how much they had still to do, how many improvements were needed, how much more they themselves needed to learn about flying so different a machine, and that this would come only with a great deal more experience.” 

In Wilbur and Orville’s approach to their work, direct experience was crucial. By 1903, they’d created a powered plane and successfully tested it. This plane, however, differed dramatically from their early gliders, and they knew it would take some time to get used to. The only way to do this was to experiment and observe. One difference between the brothers and their competitors—and a key to their success—was that they took theory only so far. Others relied too much on theory and not enough on experimentation; some, like Langley, had other people test their machines in flight. The Wright brothers wanted to test and feel out their planes for themselves, as they thought it was the only way to really gain the knowledge they needed.

“Work at the bicycle shop on West Third Street resumed with, as Charlie Taylor said, no ‘jig steps’ over what had been achieved.

Of course, they were pleased with the flight. But their first word with me, as I remember, was about the motor being damaged when the wind picked up the machine and turned it topsy-turvy…. They wanted a new one built right away…. They were always thinking of the next thing to do; they didn’t waste much time worrying about the past.” 

McCullough again refers to the brothers’ breakthrough in December 1903, when they made the first successful powered flight in history. Charlie Taylor’s memory further illustrates the brothers’ low-key nature and humility—they didn’t brag or get too excited over either success or failure. In addition, they were always forward-thinking, focusing on the next step.

“‘When you know, after the first few minutes, that the whole mechanism is working perfectly,’ Wilbur was to say, ‘the sensation is so keenly delightful as to be almost beyond description. Nobody who has not experienced it for himself can realize it. It is a realization of a dream so many persons have had of floating in the air. More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace, mingled with the excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination.’” 

Wilbur’s words describing what flight was like to him are significant for being from one of the two people who invented the powered airplane and were the first to fly. In addition, the eloquent phrasing shows Wilbur’s strong overall education and command of the English language.

“French aviation enthusiasts had no doubt, however, that France was now clearly in the lead. France could boast of the Voisin brothers, Gabriel and Charles, who had formed their aircraft company only that year, and other French aviators beside Henri Farman, including Léon Delagrange, who also flew a Voisin biplane, and Louis Blériot, who had taught himself to fly in a monoplane of his own design. Like Henri Farman, these French pilots flew in public and greatly to the public’s delight.

Also, quite unlike the Wright brothers, most of the pilots in France—Farman, Santos-Dumont, Delagrange, Blériot, Comte Charles de Lambert—were men of ample private means for whom the costs of their aviation pursuits were of little concern.

‘It seems that to the genius of France is reserved the glorious mission of initiating the world into the conquest of the air,’ said the president of the Aéro-Club. To his eminent fellow member of the club, Ernest Archdeacon, the Wright Flyer was no more than a ‘phantom machine.’” 

The Wright brothers faced skepticism and even derision in France. The country had its own aviation pioneers, whom it was clearly proud of, and regarded them as being ahead of the Wrights—before Wilbur’s public demonstrations at Le Mans set the record straight. McCullough also notes how, in contrast to the Wrights, many French aviators were well-to-do and had a lot of money to spend on their efforts.

“The crowd was ecstatic, cheering, shouting, hardly able to believe what they had seen. As said in the Paris Herald, it was ‘not the extent but the nature of the flight which was so startling.’ There were shouts of ‘C’est l’homme qui a conquis l’air!’’ ‘This man has conquered the air,’ and ‘Il n’est pas bluffeur!’’ ‘He is not a bluffer.’ One of the French pilots present, Paul Zens, who had been waiting since morning, told a reporter, ‘I would have waited ten times as long to have seen what I have seen today.’

‘We are children compared to the Wrights,’ said another pilot, René Gasnier, and Louis Blériot declared outright, ‘I consider that for us in France, and everywhere, a new era in mechanical flight has commenced.’ Then, catching his breath, Blériot said he was not yet sufficiently calm to express all that he felt, except to say, ‘C’est merveilleux!”” 

A change occurred overnight in France once people saw Wilbur take to the air in his Flyer. The public cheered him on, the press changed its tune, and the French aviators admitted that they were far behind. Wilbur became the toast of France, and both he and Orville were celebrities. True to form, however, this didn’t change the brothers’ humble and modest demeanor.

“In the days that followed, Orville provided one sensational performance after another, breaking one world record after another. As never before the two ‘bicycle mechanics’ and their flying machines were causing simultaneous sensations on both sides of the Atlantic. They had become a transcontinental two-ring circus. Only now it was the younger, lesser known of the two whose turn had come to steal the show.” 

Orville’s first flights at Fort Myer, outside Washington, DC, in 1908 were a month after Wilbur’s performances at Le Mans. Just as in France, the Fort Myer flights at last gained the brothers the recognition they deserved. The American press, which had ignored them for so long, finally realized the significance of their achievements and hailed them as heroes. After such a long time, they finally got their due.

“The role she had taken upon herself did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Some of the press concluded she had to be a nurse and so described her. ‘Your sister has been devotion itself,’ wrote Octave Chanute to Wilbur. Most important by far, Orville told her he never could have gotten through the ordeal were it not for her.” 

McCullough highlights the Katharine’s importance at a crucial time in Orville’s life. After his crash at Fort Myer, she went to Washington, DC at once and stayed with him until he could go home to Dayton many weeks later. She took care of everything, sleeping in the hospital and cooking for him, while fighting exhaustion. Orville admitted how much she did for him during this time, and it must have played a role in his being able to return to Fort Myer the following summer and complete the trial flights.

“With the onset of February and warmer days came a marked increase in the arrival of notables of the kind Pau was known for—counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, many of them English. There were members of the French cabinet, generals, lords of the press, and a number of American millionaires, as well as a former prime minister of England and two kings.

Never in their lives had the three Wrights been among so many who, by all signs, had little to do but amuse themselves. Nor did they feel out of place or the least intimidated by such company. They felt that they, in their way, were quite as well-born and properly reared as anyone. Never did they stray from remaining exactly who they were, and more often than not, they found themselves most pleasantly surprised by those they were meeting.” 

The degree to which the Wright brothers became overnight celebrities in France was stunning, especially considering that they grew up in Dayton without indoor plumbing, electricity, or running water in the house. They remained people of modest means into their adult lives, and suddenly they were mingling with royalty. Once again, McCullough highlights their strength of character, emphasizing that the attention and difference in stature didn’t change them.

“The less Orville had to say, the more Katharine talked and with great effect. She had become a celebrity in her own right. The press loved her. ‘The masters of the aeroplane, those two clever and intrepid Daytonians, who have moved about Europe under the spotlight of extraordinary publicity, have had a silent partner,’ went one account. But silent she was no longer and reporters delighted in her extroverted, totally unaffected Midwestern American manner.” 

When Katharine and Orville arrived in France in early 1909, they received just as much attention as Wilbur had. Katharine, especially, created a sensation because she was much more outgoing than either of her brothers. She attended their social events and became as big a star as the aviators themselves, which only added to their fame. Their time in France highlights her importance to her brothers in the public eye, though over the years she did much behind the scenes as well.

“I esteem it a great honor and an opportunity to present these medals to you as an evidence of what you have done. I am so glad—perhaps at a delayed hour—to show that in America it is not true that ‘a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.’ It is especially gratifying thus to note a great step in human discovery by paying honor to men who bear it so modestly. You made this discovery by a course that we of America like to feel is distinctly American—by keeping your noses right at the job until you had accomplished what you had determined to do.” 

This was part of a speech by President Howard Taft at a White House ceremony for the Wright brothers in June 1909, at which he recognized their accomplishment by presenting them with a medal. In this excerpt, he captured two of their essential traits—modesty and an unwavering dedication to hard work—while also acknowledging the “delayed hour” at which the government took notice of their achievements.

“No one with a keen sense of dramatic effect, wrote the Washington Herald, could have created a better scene to demonstrate the ‘utter immunity of the two brothers from the fumes of importunity and the intoxication of an august assemblage.’

Uniformed army signalmen gathered ‘like pallbearers’ and wheeled the plane away, and four thousand spectators departed, many expressing opinions, including one senator, who was heard to say of the brothers, ‘I’m damned if I don’t admire their independence. We don’t mean anything to them, and there are a whole lot of reasons why we shouldn’t.’” 

Less than a year after his bad crash put a premature end to the trials at Fort Myer, and against Wilbur’s and Katharine’s wishes, Orville announced that he would return to complete them that summer—and did just that in June 1909. However, as always, the flights were on the brothers’ terms. In the above scene, on June 26, many prominent figures of the capital had turned out to see the trial, including President Taft’s son, many members of the Senate (which had adjourned specifically for this event), and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who had control of Congress’s purse strings—and thus potential payments to the brothers. However, conditions weren’t right, so the brothers scrapped the flight.

“As if by magic, everything started to work at Fort Myer as it was meant to. On the evening of July 27, Orville took off with Lieutenant Frank Lahm as passenger on an official endurance trial and in an hour and 12 minutes flew around the field 79 times, at an altitude of 150 feet, not only passing the test but breaking a world record that Wilbur had set at Le Mans the year before. An estimated eight thousand spectators saw him take off and among them was President Taft.

On Friday, July 30, Orville flew what was the official cross-country speed trial required by the army. The course covered from Fort Myer to Alexandria, Virginia, a distance out and back of 10 miles. Records of the speed flown varied, from 42 to 45 miles per hour, but there was no question that Orville passed the test.

An especially smooth landing was made to the accompaniment of honking horns and cheering. Wilbur rushed to the plane; his face covered with a broad smile. Their contract with the War Department would be signed. The price to be paid by the department was $30,000—a figure that made headlines—but far more importantly their own country was at long last committed to their achievement.”

Orville had resounding success in completing the flight tests for the US War Department—and in doing so received both a contract and the country’s recognition. This was 10 months after his serious crash—when initially it was in doubt whether he’d even walk again. With Katharine’s help, he regained his physical strength and his spirit, and he was determined to complete the trials. After a few missteps, including another crash that didn’t harm Orville physically but must have rattled him, things fell into place at the end of July and Orville had unqualified success.

“Anyone wanting proof of the pace of change in the new century had only to consider that just one year before, in August 1908, at Le Mans, all the excitement had been about one man only, Wilbur Wright, flying one airplane before about 150 people to start with. This August at Reims, a total of twenty-two pilots would take off in as many planes, before colossal grandstands accommodating fifty thousand people.” 

Here, McCullough puts into context the great pace of technological change that the Wright brothers’ invention spurred. In just one year, the aviation industry grew enough to hold a competition with over 20 planes. The airplane was well on its way to changing the world. Just five years later, World War I broke out, and the armed forces used planes as a weapon of destruction unlike anything seen—or even considered—before. When talk once turned to the use of planes in battle, Wilbur mentioned their use in ferrying people and messages. In fact, they would carry guns to fire from the air.