The Wright Brothers Tale

The Wright brothers conducted the first manned flight: you’d expect that to be the end of their biography, right? Wrong, says this Hourly History book:

“The brothers’ first flight is the middle of their story, not the beginning or the end.”

As kids, their interest in flight was initiated by a toy helicopter “though the helicopter soon broke”. It helped that they came from “a family of adventurous individuals”.

Years later, the brothers referred to tables developed by an expert in aeronautical experimentation, Octave Chanute to “calculate the amount of headwind they would need to make the plans for their glider work”. The answer was 15 to 20 miles per hour. They got in touch with the US Weather Bureau to find a location with that type of wind. The answer? Chicago. They dropped Chicago since it would attract too much attention. Instead, they settled on remote Kitty Hawk.

The first successful flight in 1903 lasted just 12 seconds and covered a distance of 120 feet! Over the course of the same day, they managed to increase the flight length to 852 feet. Flying was possible! But there were hardly any witnesses other than those helping the brothers.

When Orville telegraphed his father the news, the telegraph operator tipped of a reporter. In his haste to be the first to break the news, the reporter wrote a very wrong report (he claimed it flew 3 miles). Even after that, other newspapers didn’t bother to report the news. Why? Partly due to a recent publication by a famous and respected physicist, Simon Newcomb, saying heavier than flight was impossible. Other scientists and engineers had agreed with Newcomb… The brothers, however, were not bothered by the skepticism or the misreporting:

“They had already made history, but they knew they still had a long way to go to develop their airplane into a practical vehicle.”

Governments were as slow as the newspapers to realize the possibilities being opened up. In 1905, the US Army turned down the brothers who thought the plane would be useful for scouting. They tried contacting the British government next in 1906, again with no luck. The French government didn’t respond either, but the Germans showed some interest. But while the German possibility was still being explored, the US government finally signed a contract with the Wright brothers in 1908 for $25,000.

But it wasn’t exclusive. While Orville stayed in the US to work with the government, Wilbur went to Paris and gave a successful demo of manned flight. Wilbur was soon famous in France. That in turn drew the attention of the British government. Meanwhile Orville’s demo flight with an armyman on board ended in a crash… and the death of the armyman. While tragic, the brothers had now become celebrities who were toasted across the US and Europe.

And that drew the interest of other individuals. Which in turn led to bitter lawsuits by the Wright brothers for patent violations. This phase of lawsuits dominated the Wrights in the early 1910’s, “taking away their potential to keep developing their aircraft designs”. These lawsuits also hurt the brothers’ reputation: many accused them of caring more about credit, glory and money than the overall development of the airplane. There was some truth in those charges: after Wilbur died in 1912, Orville sold the company and got “officially out of the airplane business”.

Before you criticize the Wrights too much, remember the airplane took off for military use much before it became safe for civilians. As Orville said years later:

“I don’t have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused.”