August 2, 2023: SiblingStudying: The Wright Brothers

[On August2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing youngersister celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’llAmericanStudy interesting American siblings!]

Threelesser-known stories of thebrothers who helped changetransportation and the world.

1)     A Printing Press: In 1888, fifteen yearsbefore their pioneering flight and when Orville was still just a junior in highschool, the brothers developed their first technological innovation, a printingpress that they built themselves. They used it not only to publishtheir own newspapers in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio (first a weekly [West SideNews] and then briefly a daily [TheEvening Item]), but also produced publications for otherfriends and locals. One of them was a high school classmate of Orville’s and ablossoming young writer and poet, PaulLaurence Dunbar; the brothers’ printed his newspaper the Dayton Tattler for atime. Such personal and historical details not only remind us that the WrightBrothers moved through many stages of invention and profession before theiraviation pinnacles, but also help situate them in their settings, both of placeand time.

2)     A Bicycle Shop: Like many talented inventors,the Wright Brothers were never satisfied to stay in one stage or field forlong; just four years after they opened their press, they had moved on, openingtheir bicycle repair and sales shop the WrightCycle Exchange in 1892. As detailed at wonderful length in KateMilford’s historical YA novel TheBoneshaker (which features a Wright Brothers bicycle in a prominent role),bicycles had become something of a craze in this period, and the brothersquickly realized that they could turn their technological prowess to designingnew and improved bikes. By 1896, the WrightCycle Company was producing its own brand of bikes, machines which would ofcourse also feature prominently in their later aeronautical efforts. But whilethis business and pursuit offer a direct throughline toward the machine thatwould propel the brothers into the air at Kitty Hawk, it also links them to atransportation trend and history that were far more widespread and influentialthroughout the 1890s and well into the early 1900s.

3)     A Museum Feud: The interesting and complexhistories didn’t stop with that 1903 flight in Kitty Hawk, of course. One ofthe most compelling was the brothers’ multi-decadefeud with the Smithsonian Institution, thanks to a rivalry with theinstitution’s secretary SamuelLangley over whose manned flying machine should be considered the firstsuccessful model. The museum chose to display Langley’sAerodrome (which he had never gotten off the ground) much more prominentlythan the Wright Brothers’ model, and the brothers (especially Orville, asWilbur died far too young in 1912) retaliated by lending their invention to theLondonScience Museum in 1928. There it remained until Orville’s death in 1948, when a long-negotiatedtruce allowed the Smithsonian to purchase the flyer and return it tothe United States for the first time in decades. Among the many salient lessonsfrom this controversial history is a reminder that museums are living andevolving spaces, reflecting the conflicts and struggles of their societies asmuch as their ideals and innovations. It’s hard to imagine an American Air& Space Museum without the Wright Brothers—but for a long time, thanks tothe tangled history of aviation, that was precisely the case.

Nextsiblings tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?