From ancient times, right up to the Middle Ages, people have dreamt of spreading their arms and flying up into the blue sky like birds. There is a well-known story of a Spanish scholar who, in 875, is said to have covered himself with feathers and flown – to his death. Others made wings of their own design and materials and jumped into the deep. Even learned priests drew similar designs behind the walls of monasteries and hid them from their superiors, lest they be condemned for their hubris. Around 1400, the genius and scholar Leonardo da Vinci drew the most detailed plans yet for flying through the air. According to brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, their story of flight began when their father Milton Wright, a firm believer in the educational value of toys, brought them back from France a small toy based on an idea by the 19th century French experimenter Penaud. It was a stick with two propellers and rubber propelling strips. Once he had the straps in place and tensioned, he threw it into the air and the toy flew. It was the start that brought the brothers everlasting fame.
It was an unusual photo showing the brothers sitting on the steps of the covered foyer of the family house in Dayton. It was taken in 1909, when the brothers were at the height of their fame. Wilbur was then forty-two years old, skinny, long-nosed and bald. Orville, aged thirty-eight, was a little more robust than his brother and had a little more hair and a small, well-groomed moustache. Everyone in Dayton knew that the brothers were extremely hard-working and as inseparable as twins. They lived together in the same house, worked together six days a week, ate together and had money in a joint bank account. They both loved music, Wilbur playing the accordion and Orville the mandolin. They also both liked to cook. Hard work was what they believed in, and they each knew what they could contribute to a project.
They lived in the same house with their father, a Protestant priest who was often on the road, and their sister Katharine, who was the only one to finish her schooling and taught Latin at a school in Dayton. She was the most lively of the three and loved to talk. The other two eldest brothers had long since moved away and had their own families. Wilbur, an excellent student, actually wanted to continue his education at Yale, but while playing hockey, someone knocked out all his front teeth with a stick. He suffered terrible pain, had to get used to false teeth, suffered indigestion and became depressed. He had to forget about going to university.
In 1889, while still at high school, Orville set up a small, simple printing press in the shed behind his house and, together with his brother, started a newspaper with local news. However, they did not stay in print for long, as the bicycle business was booming at the time, although some still considered it morally objectionable. In 1893, the brothers opened a bicycle shop, repaired bicycles and, three years later, began to make their own models to order.
In the summer of 1896, 25-year-old Orville contracted typhoid fever. Newspapers had been warning for some time that most cases of typhoid fever were caused by drinking contaminated water. He lay delirious for four whole days, and the local doctor told his brother and sister to prepare for the worst. But he survived, and it was a month before he could even lie upright in bed.
During this time, Wilbur read in the newspaper about Otto Lilienthal, a German sailing enthusiast who had killed himself while sailing. Lilienthal had learned to sail from birds and discovered that the secret of their flight was in the arched wings that allowed them to sail in the wind. Over the years, he built a series of gliding machines, their wings made of white muslin stretched over a frame of willow sticks, and took his first flight in the Rhinow mountains, a two-hour train ride from Berlin. He positioned himself at the top of the slope and held the wings above his head, descending into the depths and controlling the direction of flight with his body and legs. “The Flying Man”, the newspapers around the world proclaimed, and soon he was almost the most famous man in America. But in 1894 he was not so lucky, falling 15 metres, breaking his back and dying a day later.
His death prompted Wilbur to start reading books about birds and how they fly. The book Animal Mechanism opened his eyes to things he had never thought about before. The bicycle trade was doing well, but by the turn of the century, the first cars were also starting to appear in Dayton. Other modes of travel than horse-drawn carriages were also becoming established, heralding a century of travel by mechanical means.
On 30 May 1899, Wilbur was alone in the house, the others were out running errands. He was sitting at his desk, writing his most important letter, only two pages long, but of great importance for history. Addressed to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, it said, among other things:
“Since I was a child, I have been interested in the problem of the mechanical and the human year. I will start working systematically on this problem and will spend all the time I have left in my full-time job on it. I would like to obtain everything your Institute has published on this subject, as well as a list of other works on the subject in English. I am an enthusiast, but not in the sense that I am also a prude with only amateur theories about building a flying machine.”
After getting all the information they needed from the Smithsonian, the brothers started reading in earnest. They took into account everything that Lilienthal, Chanute and Langley had found out about flight and the theories of Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. All of them were more or less enthusiastic about flight, but none of them managed to fly. Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the engine room, even spent a very large sum for those days, $100 000, and built a large flying machine powered by steam, only to see his invention crash on take-off.
The French government invested money in a similar flying machine project, but the results were so poor that it was abandoned, but not before project leader Clement Ader gave his machine the French name “avion”. Although all these attempts failed, they were still a great improvement since that long-ago day in 1850 when a Frenchman wanted to strap wings to a chair and fly.
The end of the century in America was a time of technical innovation, big and small. George Eastman brought to market his Kodak, the photographic camera, Isaac Singer the first electric sewing machine, Otis installed the first elevator in New York, the first safety razor, the first mousetrap, and so on, and the first usable cars were built. But no one had ever flown in the air before.
Keep the balance
When they had time, Wilbur and Orville would go from Dayton to the countryside to watch the birds fly and learn the language of aeronautics, which helped them understand how to achieve balance in flight. “It’s not hard to get in the air, it’s hard to stay there”, they were convinced that Lilienthal’s main problem was that he had no control in the air, that he therefore “didn’t know how to balance his machine in the air”.
In the summer of 1899, in a room above their bicycle shop, the brothers began to assemble their first aeroplane, a flying paper kite with a bamboo frame and a wingspan of 150 centimetres. It was a biplane, equipped with a system of ropes which the ground operator could use to control the movement of the wings. The test flight failed because the machine crashed so quickly to the ground that people had to move away from it to prevent it from falling on them.
The brothers didn’t give up, but they knew they had to choose a place with stable weather to start their experiments. The Chief Weather Bureau in Washington recommended Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, almost 1 000 kilometres from Dayton. They quickly built a normal-sized glider with a wingspan of five and a half metres. It was not to be assembled until the flight. They planned to test it first as a paper kite and then fly it if that proved possible. They loaded it all into a lorry and drove off. Sister Katharine waved them goodbye and just said, “I hope they know what they are doing.”
The legendary Outer Banks, a narrow chain of sandy islands that protect the North Carolina coast from the Atlantic’s powerful waves, were inhabited by few people in 1900 because the islands were not connected to the mainland by any bridges. The only signs of civilisation on Kitty Hawk were four marine life-saving stations and one weather observatory. There were virtually no roads and the only infrastructure was a dilapidated hotel at Nags Head.
On 7 September 1900, Wilbur spent a long time on the shore unsuccessfully asking people how to get to Kitty Hawk, which was 70 kilometres from the coast. Everybody was looking at him hard and nobody knew where Kitty Hawk was. Finally, he found a fisherman who was willing to take him there in his dilapidated boat through the stormy sea. Kitty Hawk was a village of fifty fishing houses. The fishermen lived as simple a life as possible and did not expect foreign visitors in late summer.
The brothers’ intention was just to test the glider, without a motor, and to solve the problem of balance in the air. It also had no wheels, but instead a wooden landing gear. Wilbur was lying on his stomach, head first, operating the rudder. In fact, they had not expected the thing to fly in any real sense of the word. All they wanted was to get the glider a few metres off the ground and land on the soft sand. Of course, they knew that the flight would only be possible if the wind was blowing. They were sure that they would quickly solve the problem with the engine if they successfully solved the problem with the balance beforehand. But if the engine failed in the air, it would only mean a slow descent and landing instead of a catastrophic fall.
The people of Kitty Hawk were of a different opinion: ‘We believe in a good God, a bad devil and a hot hell, but most of all, we believe that this same God didn’t want people to ever fly’.
Orville came to Kitty Hawk to see his brother, and quickly realised that they were going to have problems. The wind was blowing at 50 km/h during the first attempt, so the machine flew like a paper kite without Wilbur on board, and was controlled by ropes hanging down. They didn’t always succeed, and sometimes the kite would wriggle in the air and suddenly fall to the ground. The repairs took them a long time. They envied the birds that flew around them and admired their lightness of movement in the air.
It was mid-October, they hadn’t been in their shop for six weeks, and Sister Katharine had written to them to say that the shop was doing badly without them, and the brothers still hadn’t done a manned sailplane flight. So they towed the sailboat to the sands of Kill Devil Hills, six kilometres away and 300 metres high, and on 19 October Wilbur flew a kilometre several times and landed at 45 km/h. They then returned home, leaving the glider to the locals, who used the canvas to make some clothes for their children. But they promised to return to Kitty Hawk.
After building a new sailboat, they set off again on 7 July 1901 for the Kill Devil Hills. The first flights were bad, as the nose of the glider kept pulling towards the ground and Wilbur, who was sitting close to the nose of the plane, had to move back. He changed the centre of gravity of the glider, but still had to manoeuvre the rudder with all his strength to land without any problems. So something was wrong and they decided to change the pitch of the wings. They managed to do it. Wilbur later wrote: “The machine with the new wing pitch reacted properly to even the slightest rudder movement.”
There were also no more landing problems. Meanwhile, Octave Chanute, the famous builder of bridges, roads and gliders, with whom the brothers had been in contact before, also visited the brothers. He was impressed by their work and convinced that they had done more in a few months than he had done in all his years.
Nevertheless, the brothers were not satisfied. It turned out that all the calculations made by Lilienthal, Langley and Chanute, which they had used to build their own sail, were wrong and that they could therefore not rely on the wisdom of celebrities. They must work out the calculations themselves. This could not be done in a few days. Then, out of the blue, Octave Chanute invited Wilbur to Chicago, where he was to give a lecture to well-known citizens on the problems of flying in the air. This lecture was for many years afterwards cited by the scientific journals as an exceptionally good presentation.
Wilbur did not go into complicated explanations, but simply lifted the piece of paper high in the air, let it fall in irregular curves towards the ground and explained that to fly successfully, it was necessary to sail with the wind, maintain balance and control the rudder. If we don’t know how to do this, we will be like a falling piece of paper. But those who want to fly in complete safety should sit on the windowsill and watch the birds in flight. Only then will nothing happen to them.
After returning home, the brothers started their own aerodynamic calculations. They made a small wind duct, almost two metres long, and attached a fan at one end, powered by a loud petrol engine. They then spent several months in the wind tunnel testing different wing shapes. They were not discouraged by articles in scientific journals claiming that flying in the air was a fiction and a myth, and wondering how humans could benefit from it all.
At the end of August 1902, glider No.3 was ready and the brothers went to Kill Devil Hills for the third time, started to assemble the plane and made 50 flights in just three days, some of them with a pilot in the glider. Orville was at the helm that trip. But they were very careful, as no flight was longer than 100 metres. Only after many flights did they reach a distance of more than 1000 metres.
They were very happy with sail 3, as it was based on their own calculations for making a wing in a windy channel. However, they kept coming up with new improvements and realised that the pilot’s job could be simplified by connecting the rudder and the wings with tow ropes. Their work attracted more and more people interested in flying in the air. Some of them were brought by Octave Chanute, others came because they had heard about the project from acquaintances. Chanute also told Samuel Langley about the Wright brothers’ experiments, who had been trying since 1896 to make a pilotless, steam-powered aeroplane. Langley thought about it and realised that he had serious competition in the Wright brothers.
Engine and propeller
The Wright brothers returned to Dayton happy. They believed they had solved the problem of flying by air. They could lift off, circle and descend safely. Now all that was left was to build the engine and attach it to the plane. As 1903 dawned, they sent a letter to engine manufacturers in seven states, asking them to build an engine that was light but had enough power to get their plane into the air. They received only one reply, and even then the engine was too heavy for their needs.
So they will have to tackle the problem themselves, even though they have had no practice in building engines. But they were lucky. Charlie Taylor, a mechanic by trade, worked in their bike shop. Unfortunately, he had not had much practice with petrol engines. But he was persistent and talented, and when he saw the Wright brothers in need, he asked them simply to draw him what they wanted and he would do the rest.
And indeed he got to work in the back room of a bike shop, building a bike in six weeks. Compared to later engines, his was simple and crude. It had four cylinders and weighed only 63 kilograms because the casing was made of cast aluminium sent to him by the Pittsburgh aluminium works. The rest of the parts were made by Dayton craftsmen.
The weight of the engine was just enough for the total weight of the aircraft with the pilot, which could not exceed 276 kilograms. But when the engine was tested in the mechanics’ workshop, it began to smoke uncontrollably, the casing cracked and the leaking petrol damaged the bearings. It took two months for the new casing to arrive; that time, the 12-horsepower engine was running.
The propeller was almost even more difficult to build, as the brothers were unable to obtain any useful data for their manufacture. The only technical data on ship propellers was, of course, useless. So they were again left to their own devices. They imagined the propeller as the wing of a bird, which rotates in curves rather than straight lines. The Flyer – as they called their aircraft – would thus have two propellers, one turning clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. Once this was sorted out, the brothers registered their Flyer with the patent office.
On 8 August, they learned that Samuel Langley was going to test his flying machine with a motor that can carry a pilot. All the journalists and the curious came to the Potomac River near Washington, where Langley installed his device on the roof of a floating wooden house in the middle of the river. The pilotless plane took off and soon plunged into the water. “An airship like a submarine”, the newspapers sneered. The Wright brothers didn’t care, as they were busy building their own plane. They never assembled it in Dayton, but loaded the disassembled parts on to a train on 18 September, knowing that more work awaited them on the Kill Devil Hills.
Leaving the bustling city of Dayton for the peaceful landscape of the low islands, close to the open sea and clear skies, was a real blessing for my brother. They were happy to return to Kitty Hawk more and more often. It was often very windy and the wind could sometimes blow at 100 km/h, but the same wind transformed the sands into the best places for sailing a plane. In Kill Devil Hills they set up a large tent, and later a wooden hut, which was both workshop and dwelling.
On 27 October, they decided to add an engine to the plane, but it failed to start and they had to take some parts to the mainland for repair. In particular, the propellers did not work as they should. It was also getting cold and by November the first snowflakes had fallen.
In the first days of December, the cold and wind had died down and Samuel Langley was in Washington preparing for his second attempt at a manned flight. Again, the plane was mounted on top of a wooden house on a raft and was to be launched by catapult. At a given signal, the catapult was released, the aircraft flared and climbed into the air at a 60 degree angle, the wings collapsed and the aircraft fell into the water not far from where it had taken off. The pilot barely escaped the cold river and the wreckage of the plane, and Langley was deeply disappointed. He died three years later.
On 14 December 1903, the brothers decided to fly their plane. They replaced all the broken parts and prepared the plane for flight. A coin decided which of the brothers would be the first to sit in it. Wilbur was luckier. He lay belly down on the shaft of the plane, the engine roared and the plane slowly rose, but the angle of lift was too great. Wilbur tried to correct the error by turning the nose down, but he did so too quickly and the aircraft hit the ground 300 metres from the take-off. But the brothers were satisfied because the damage was minor and everything on the plane worked as it should.
Wilbur’s poor handling was, of course, due to inexperience. On 17 November, the plane was ready again, and the brothers put up a white sheet in front of the tent, a sign that they might need help from a nearby sea rescue station.
Only five curious people came to see what would happen. The day was extremely cold and a thin crust of ice covered some of the nearby puddles. The flyer was towed to a catapult only a few metres long, which was supposed to facilitate the take-off. Now it was Orville’s turn to get into the plane. The brothers, both dressed in overcoat, white shirt and tie, shook hands in silence and Orville lay down on his stomach in the plane.
In recent years, the brothers have also become interested in photography, so they put a large Grundlach Korona V camera nearby. At exactly 10.35, Orville let go of the rope that held the plane in place. The plane started to move, slowly at first because of the headwind. Then it left the catapult and lifted off. One of the spectators, who had never used a camera before, pulled the trigger and the most famous photograph of the century was taken. The plane flew aimlessly, rose a little and then descended again, turning left and right. All this took no more than 12 seconds and the distance covered was no more than half a football field.
“Were you afraid?” Wilbur asked his brother. “I didn’t have time for that,” he replied, and they all went into the big tent together to warm up and drink tea. Around 11 o’clock it was Wilbur’s turn to fly. His flight was a little longer, and Orville’s next flight was a little longer still. At noon, during the fourth flight, Wilbur had flown almost 300 metres in 59 seconds. Their four years of work had paid off. They have survived many disappointments, ridicule and people’s indifference. They worked in good weather, gales and rain, battled with suppliers and tried to be successful bicycle salesmen. Then they wanted to try again, but an extremely strong gust of wind blew the flyer across the sand and dragged it along the ground, so that it ended up a complete wreck.
But what happened in a short two hours in 1903 on the Kill Devil Hills footpaths will remain forever etched in the history of mankind. Man flew through the air like a bird. The Wright Brothers’ flights were the first attempts in which a man-piloted plane, powered by an engine, lifted off the ground, flew and landed. All their costs up to that time had been no more than $1000, while Samuel Langley’s failed attempts had cost the then enormous sum of $75 000.
The Wright brothers picked up the wreckage of the flyer, took it to Dayton and stored it. The flyer never flew again. The news of man’s first flight was published rather unnoticeably in the local newspapers, and even those that were published were full of all sorts of inaccuracies. Mostly, however, the successful flight was attributed to a happy accident.
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First departure for Europe
The Wright brothers didn’t give up when they returned home. They wanted to build a new and more powerful plane with a more powerful engine. But they needed money. The only way to earn it was to work in a bicycle shop. They also needed to reduce the cost of trucking to Kitty Hawk, so they looked for a suitable place near Dayton where they could continue flying.
But urbanisation has already reached the areas around Dayton. There was hardly any land or pasture that was not fenced off with wire. Trees grew here and there in the middle of the plains, people dug ditches, and electricity pylons further reduced the open space. The Wright brothers knew that their job would be even harder and that the manoeuvrability of the new aircraft would have to be even greater to avoid all these obstacles and land safely. Finally, they found a suitable pasture; it belonged to the president of the city bank, who allowed them to use it free of charge, but also imposed a condition. “Before the flight, remove all the cows from the pasture and put them in a pen,” he told them. The banker did not believe in their project and commented, “They are really fools.”
On the twenty-third of May 1904, about 50 spectators gathered in the pasture. Journalists were also invited, but on condition that they would not take photographs. The brothers were afraid that someone would use the photographs to make a similar aeroplane. The first test flight was cancelled because there was not enough wind. Engine or not, the plane still needed wind for lift. The second attempt also failed because it was raining. Then, on 26 May, in a short hour of fine weather, and even though there was no wind and another storm was forecast, the brothers decided to fly. Flyer II took to the air and landed immediately. Something was wrong with the engine. Several more attempts ended in failure; once the rudder failed, another time something was wrong with the tail, another time with the wings.
Finally, on 13 August, to everyone’s surprise, Flyer II flew more than 300 metres. But something more had to happen. So the brothers built a real but very complicated catapult, connected by a rope with a heavy weight on it. When the pilot let go of the rope, the falling weight pulled the plane into the air. On 15 September, they were able to make a half-turn, which was undoubtedly a great achievement. However, journalists and public opinion were not interested in these successes. Some townspeople even grumbled that they were wasting valuable time and that it would have been better if they had got more serious about the bicycle trade.
But on 20 September, Wilbur did something that proved the aircraft’s full utility. He rounded the plane and made a perfect circle. In November, he made four full circles over the meadow in one go. Watching all this was Amos Root, a factory worker from Ohio, who had come to Dayton by car for this very event. He realised the significance of what was happening and wrote several articles about it when he returned home, and gradually articles began to appear in the major newspapers.
Then, the newly elected Republican Congressman Nevin suggested that the brothers write to the Ministry of Defence to ask for financial support to develop the aircraft. The brothers did indeed sit down to write, and in their letter they stated that in 1904 alone they had made 150 straight-line, circle and figure-of-eight flights, flying in good and bad weather, and they also pointed out that the aircraft could be used in war for observation and to carry messages. The US Administration’s response was, as usual, bureaucratic, with the Ministry saying that the thing was not yet ripe for useful use.
The brothers were disappointed, but continued working on the Flyer III, which was really the first practical aircraft. It was more robust and had 25 horsepower, with slightly shorter wings and the rudder pushed forward. Wilbur flew 15 kilometres at a time in the new plane, and Orville flew 20 kilometres. On 5 October 1905, Wilbur circled the meadow 29 times, landing only when he ran out of fuel. They were now convinced that they could offer the Flyer III to the American market.
But there were also first interested parties; the British government and a group of French businessmen, backed by the French government, which offered them $200 for one plane, on condition that the test flight would be a success. On 30 December 1905, Wilbur and Orville signed a contract with the French. And so, in March 1906, four Frenchmen appeared in Dayton. One was a former actor and businessman, Arnold Fordyce, and the other three were senior officers in the French army.
The beginning of 1906 was not particularly promising for the Wright brothers, who made almost no flights, but in France interest in aviation was growing. But others came forward to try to make money from the Wright brothers’ patent. Flint & Company offered them $500 for the rights to sell their aircraft outside America, leaving the brothers to sell on the American market. The Germans also came forward, interested in fifty aircraft and offering $500 each. A whole new world opened up for the Wright brothers and Wilbur set sail for Europe in May 1906, as prospective buyers demanded more explanations and assurances from him, especially test flights.
After five days of pleasant boat rides, he arrived in Liverpool, met a Flint representative, one Hart Berg, and travelled with him to Paris. He was enchanted by the city, for he had never seen such beauty anywhere. He stayed in the best hotel, immediately bought a new suit of clothes, went to the Louvre and visited many attractions. He conducted business talks with the help of Berg, as he himself did not speak French, and later he liked to say that he was not used to business talks.
For him, it was something completely new. He agreed that the French, as prospective buyers, had a right to see the aircraft and how it was flown. He was impatient, because the talks went on too long for his liking, and there was no shortage of intrigue. Some considered him “a bluffer who wants to sell the French something that is worth nothing”. There were also hints about who all should be bribed, and Flint was blackmailed for a commission.
Meanwhile, in Dayton, his brother Orville was feverishly finishing the new Flyer III, shipping it dismantled by boat to Europe and then heading there himself. So, one day in July, the brothers met in Europe. But the French delayed a definitive answer, so the brothers decided to return home to Dayton. They left Flyer III, which had already arrived in Europe by ship, in a bonded warehouse in the port of Le Havre.
The Wright brothers have never officially presented their aircraft to the American public. But when the government started to take an interest, they realised they had to take that step too. But they needed peace of mind, as there was still much to improve, so they set off again for Kill Devil Hills. There, however, they were met with disappointment. There was practically nothing left of their camp, especially the large wooden hut. Storms, gales, rain and vandals had done their work, and everything had to be rebuilt.
On 27 April, the camp was ready and crates of dismantled aircraft parts arrived. There was now enough room for two people in the plane, which was now to be seated side by side instead of lying on their stomachs. Air resistance would of course be greater, and there would be greater control over the handling of the aircraft.
The brothers took turns to make several flights, including some at 300 metres, and enjoyed the fact that several journalists from well-known newspapers were watching their exploits, even though Kill Devil Hills was a place at the end of the world for journalists. “Here on this lonely beach we watched the greatest feat in history, but there were no spectators and no applause, only the crashing of the waves and the cries of frightened birds,” wrote one journalist. But a few days later, still unaccustomed to the new way of handling the plane, Wilbur made a mistake when circling, the nose of the plane was pulled down and Wilbur crashed into the sand. He had to be pulled out of the wreckage, and during the crash he suffered a cut on his nose and a bunch of bumps.
The plane was destroyed and the show for journalists is over. Nevertheless, their flights became a sensation and they knew that they had to keep the spoiled audiences in Washington and Paris happy with similar shows.
Performance in Le Mans
Wilbur wrote home that the French press was hostile to him, and that they were mainly impressed by the successes of their own flyers, but that the problem was finding a suitable place to demonstrate flying the Flyer III. He finally chose the quiet town of Le Mans, with 60 000 inhabitants, about 150 kilometres from Paris. There was plenty of open space at the horse-racing venue. But he was dismayed by what was brought to him from the customs warehouse in Le Havre. The wing was broken, the canvas torn several times, the propellers twisted, the radiators bruised and the ties torn.
He did the repairs himself, as the French mechanics didn’t speak English and he couldn’t get them to understand what he wanted. A few days before the demonstration flight, with the help of a Flint Berg representative and a French industrialist who had provided him with a flying space at the horse-racing track, he discreetly dragged the aircraft to the hangar at the track and decided to spend the night there to protect it.
It was a beautiful day on 8 August 1908, and the grandstand from which people otherwise watched the horse races quickly filled up. The men were dressed in striped trousers, Panama hats on their heads, and the women stood in summer dresses and giant hats on their heads. There were also some officers and representatives of the Aero Club of France, as well as the famous French aviator Louis Blériot.
At six in the afternoon, Wilbur announced in a solemn voice: “Gentlemen, I’m going to fly.” The plane took off and headed for the distant trees, then turned left and headed for the grandstand, circled it twice with the greatest of ease and gently descended to the ground. The flight lasted no more than two minutes. The spectators screamed with excitement, shouted and waved and could hardly believe what they had just seen. Over the next few days, Wilbur flew several more times, and each time more people watched.
Meanwhile, Orville was also preparing for test flights in Fort Myer, Virginia. On the first day, there were few spectators, but Orville was satisfied because the Ministry was contractually obliged to pay him $25,000 because his plane reached a speed of 60 km/h. On the second day, he stayed in the air for just under an hour, a world record. Hearing this in nearby Washington, officers began leaving government offices the next day and rushing to Fort Myer to see how Orville would circle 57 times over the scene and stay in the air for over an hour.
So the brothers set records on both sides of the Atlantic. But Orville stayed in the air much longer than Wilbur in France – Wilbur’s record there was 21 minutes, which was also less than the 30-minute record set by French aviator Leon Delagrange a week before Wilbur flew in Le Mans.
But Orville also had a problem. The ministry asked him to fly the young officer Selfridge, whom Orville disliked, with him the next day. What does the officer want? Perhaps he wants to know some details about the plane? But he could not refuse the request. So the two of them flew in front of several thousand spectators, circled the scene several times, and then the spectators saw something fly off the plane. Orville noticed this and looked back towards the engine, but saw nothing. Nevertheless, he prepared to land for safety reasons.
Then they both heard two muffled thumps, the plane started to fall uncontrollably and finally crashed. Orville and Selfridge lay bloodied under the wreckage, Orville conscious but screaming in pain and Selfridge unconscious. A crowd immediately gathered around them. They were given first aid by military doctors and then stretchered to a military hospital on the edge of the scene.
The public was only informed of their condition late at night. Orville’s condition was critical, with a fractured leg, hip and four ribs, as well as several abrasions, but he is expected to survive. Selfridge, on the other hand, had a fractured skull and died without realising it. He was the first casualty in aviation history. No one has mentioned the fact that the President of America, Theodore Roosevelt, actually wanted to be the second passenger to sit next to Orville that day.
Katharine, the Wright brothers’ sister, came to the hospital as soon as she heard about the accident and stayed with Orville for the full five weeks of treatment. Orville was then put on a train. He expected to be greeted by an enthusiastic crowd when he arrived at the Dayton train station. But there were only a few people at the station, shaking their heads and watching in silence as he was tortured with crutches. In that short time, Orville had aged at least ten years.
Months have passed since his accident, and Wilbur has become increasingly popular in France. In fact, not since Benjamin Franklin has an American been so popular there. People came to Le Mans in trains, carriages and rare cars to watch his antics in the air. In the six months he was in Le Mans, 200,000 people watched his flights. Many have hugged him, taken photos with him and asked for his autograph.
The Aero Club of France hosted a large banquet in his honour at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, inviting 250 dignitaries. He was awarded the French Aero Club’s Gold Medal amidst enthusiastic applause. He was delighted, and also happy, that he already had $35 000 in the French bank, which he had earned through various prizes. But he wanted his brother Orville and sister Katharine to share in his glory, so he invited them to join him in Europe.
For Katharine, who has never travelled far and has never seen the sea, it was a unique experience. When she disembarked in Cherbourg with Orville on 11 January 1909, she hugged Wilbur in joy. He told her that a few days earlier he had set a new record by flying for 2 hours, 20 minutes and 23 seconds.
Soon, the three of them travelled to the south of France to the city of Pau, at the foot of the Pyrenees, a well-known winter resort. Here Wilbur wanted to continue his summer in front of a select group of guests – many of them English. In the days of February, Pau became a meeting place for the cream of society from all over Europe. Counts and countesses, princes and princesses, ministers, generals, tycoons and millionaires – among them a whole lot of American ones – flooded the luxury hotels in and around the town. There was the publisher John Pulitzer, the former English Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, King Alfonso XIII of Spain and King Edward VII of England.
Every day except Sunday, convoys of expensive cars drove to Pont Long, 10 kilometres away, to see the “Flying American”. Wilbur not only flew for the entertainment of the rich and famous, but he also taught some French pilots and enthusiastic civilians to fly at the same time. Katharine was encouraged and flew with Wilbur.
The fame the brothers enjoyed in France resonated strongly in America. However, despite the attention the Wright brothers received, there was also a lot going on in aviation. Six months earlier, there were only six companies in France building “aeroplanes” of one kind or another. By mid-April 1909, there were already 15, and the following year, the first international aircraft exhibition was to be held in Reims.
Aviation‘s unprecedented progress
After the departure of the distinguished guests from Pau, the Wright brothers also started to clean up and prepare to leave for a new venue – Rome. The plane was already dismantled and ready to go. Rome took everyone by surprise, as the city was bustling with tourists, including 30,000 Americans. Wilbur flew fifty times without mishap between 15 and 26 April, teaching Italian officers and some brave men to fly, and giving a series of lectures. King Emmanuel III of Italy also appeared with a camera slung over his shoulder, trying to behave like a tourist.
But the Wright brothers and Katharine were slowly getting tired of Europe. Wilbur had been in Europe for a year and was drawn home, and all three had plenty of money, with Wilbur earning around $200,000 in prizes and contracts. “Let’s go home”, they decided, and when the ship docked in New York harbour, all the ship’s sirens blared in honour of the Wright brothers, and a crowd of photographers swarmed around the trio. A procession of cars lined the streets, people stood on the pavements or leaned out of the windows, waving and shouting, and President Taft gave them a celebratory lunch in Washington.
Little did the brothers realise the enormous progress they had made in the development of aviation by their visit to Europe. On 25 April, they received the almost unbelievable news. The French aviator Louis Bleriot had flown his fragile No. XI across the English Channel. He took off from Les Baraques, near Calais, shortly before five o’clock in the morning and landed at Northfield Meadow, near Dover, covering 35 kilometres in just 20 minutes.
Next year, the world’s elite pilots and their planes will gather in Reims. The competition is sponsored by the French Champagne industry. If a year ago the French admired only one pilot, the American Wilbur Wright, 25 pilots have signed up for Reims with their own planes. The Wright brothers refused to take part, saying they had more important things on their minds – they had signed a contract with the US Defence Department worth $30,000. So the American Aero Club sent Glenn Curtiss to France, who himself had started out as a wheel repair mechanic and later built his own plane.
Instead of going to Reims, Orville and his sister travelled to Europe again, this time to Germany, convinced that he had to impress even the cold Germans. Wilbur stayed in Dayton to work on a new, more powerful engine and filed a lawsuit against Glenn Curtiss’s company for patent infringement in the manufacture of his aircraft.
The 1910 competition and exhibition in Reims exceeded all expectations, with around 200,000 people in attendance and competitors flying higher, faster and further than ever before, breaking all records set by Wilbur the year before. The most celebrated of all the flyers was Glenn Curtiss, who took the speed record prize and became a new American hero.
A week later, 200,000 spectators gathered at the Tempelhof near Berlin to see Orville, who set a new record by flying with a passenger for 1 hour and 35 minutes. After returning to Dayton, the Wright brothers turned their attention to business. They opened the Wright Company in New York on Fifth Avenue. They realised that flying alone would not be enough, and that they would also have to sell planes and teach pilots to fly. Above all, the numerous lawsuits against infringers of their patents were taking up a lot of their time.
The strain, stress and constant travelling took a toll on Wilbur’s health. In May 1912, he had a fever for several days, which turned out to herald a life-threatening typhoid fever. On 30 May he died, aged only 45. Although the family would have liked a private funeral, at the request of many, they changed their minds and 25,000 people gathered in Dayton for the funeral ceremony.
After Wilbur was gone, the family’s life changed little. Katharine gave up teaching Latin and became involved in the women’s suffrage movement, helping Orville with his business affairs. In 1913, she accompanied him on a trip to various countries in Europe. She married at the age of 58, to an acquaintance she had been seeing for some time. Orville felt betrayed and abandoned and refused to attend the wedding or speak to his sister again.
Katharine moved to Kansas City. Two years later, Orville was informed that his sister was dying of pneumonia and wanted to see him, but he refused. He changed his mind at the last moment and stayed with her until her death. Katharine died in March 1929 and was buried in her native Dayton.
Orville continued to fly his planes for seven years after his brother’s death. He had hoped to fly until his death, but pain in his body and stiff joints from numerous plane crashes forced him to give up flying. In 1918, he sold the family business, the Wright Company, founded the Wright Aeronautical Laboratory and started to do scientific research, but still had to deal with patent infringement lawsuits.
In the following years, aviation advanced so fast that Orville could not have imagined it. Charles Lindbergh flew from America and landed in Paris in 1927, something even the Wright brothers could not have imagined. Orville had yet to see the horrors and devastation wrought on the enemy by World War II wartime aviation and had lived through the jet age. All this caused him to retreat more and more into solitude, although he still received accolades. He outlived his brother Wilbur by a full 36 years. He died of a heart attack in Dayton on 30 January 1948, aged 77.
On 20 July 1969, when Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, he carried a piece of fabric from the wing of their 1903 Flyer plane in memory of the Wright brothers.
