The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough

“The Great Agnostic,” Robert Ingersoll,

Years later, a friend told Orville that he and his brother would always stand as an example of how far Americans with no special advantages could advance in the world. “But it isn’t true,” Orville responded emphatically, “to say we had no special advantages . . . the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”

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In another letter, this to brother Lorin, Wilbur had still more to say. He was one who not only devoted much of his time to reading, but to thinking, and he had given a great deal of thought to the subject of business and reached a number of his own conclusions. In business it is the aggressive man, who continually has his eye on his own interest, who succeeds [he wrote]. Business is merely a form of warfare in which each combatant strives to get the business away from his competitors and at the same time keep them from getting what he already has. No man has ever been successful in business who was not aggressive, self-assertive and even a little bit selfish perhaps. There is nothing reprehensible in an aggressive disposition, so long as it is not carried to excess, for such men make the world and its affairs move. . . . I entirely agree that the boys of the Wright family are all lacking in determination and push. That is the very reason that none of us have been or will be more than ordinary businessmen. We have all done reasonably well, better in fact than the average man perhaps, but not one of us has as yet made particular use of the talent in which he excels other men. That is why our success has been only moderate. We ought not to have been businessmen. . . . There is always a danger that a person of this disposition will, if left to depend upon himself, retire into the first corner he falls into and remain there all his life struggling for bare existence

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When Darius leaped into the air in his creation from the barn loft, it was only to crash below in a heap of “tangled strings, broken braces and broken wings, shooting stars and various things,” the moral of the story being, “Stick to your sphere.” In no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright, any more than the fact that they had had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own. Or the entirely real possibility that at some point, like Otto Lilienthal, they could be killed.

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According to Charlie Taylor, they were never really mad at each other. One morning after one of their “hottest” exchanges, he had only just opened the shop at seven o’clock as usual when Orville came in saying he “guessed he’d been wrong and they ought to do it Will’s way.” Shortly after, Wilbur arrived to announce he had been thinking it over and “perhaps Orv was right.” The point was, said Charlie, “when they were through . . . they knew where they were and could go ahead with the job.”

On July 14 came the news that in a matter of days, Samuel Langley was to test his “latest contrivance” on the mosquito-infested banks of the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia, thirty miles south of Washington. This time it was to be a motor-powered “full-fledged airship” called “The Great Aerodrome,” capable of carrying one operator. It had cost $50,000 in public money—in Smithsonian resources and the largest appropriation yet granted by the U.S. War Department. Professor Langley and several of his friends, including Alexander Graham Bell, contributed another $20,000. Reporters rushed to the scene, and in a flotilla of watercraft comprised of everything from catboats to steam launches converged on the giant houseboat, “the ark” as they called it, on top of which perched Langley’s machine, “the buzzard,” poised to go. Langley himself arrived from Washington and went aboard the houseboat only to disappear inside, refusing to show himself, despite earnest pleas for interviews. When a storm struck, he and his party of mechanics and scientists went back to Washington. Then, with the storm over, the young man who was expected to fly the machine, Charles Manly, hurried off to Washington, but on returning the next day refused to say anything. At last, on the morning of August 8, the air perfectly still, an unmanned, quarter-scale model of the Langley machine was launched and traveled some 1,000 feet before crashing into the river. “AIRSHIP AS A SUBMARINE” ran the mocking headl...

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. Being the kind of men they were, neither ever said the stunning contrast between their success and Samuel Langley’s full-scale failure just days before made what they had done on their own all the more remarkable. Not incidentally, the Langley project had cost nearly $70,000, the greater part of it public money, whereas the brothers’ total expenses for everything from 1900 to 1903, including materials and travel to and from Kitty Hawk, came to a little less than $1,000, a sum paid entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business. Of those who had been

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John T. Daniels was much the most effusive about what he had felt. “I like to think about it now,” he would say in an interview years later. “I like to think about that first airplane the way it sailed off in the air . . . as pretty as any bird you ever laid your eyes on. I don’t think I ever saw a prettier sight in my life.” But it would never have happened, Daniels also stressed, had it not been for the two “workingest boys” he ever knew. It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith.

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By this point, too, the Dayton press had at last awakened. The Wrights, reported the Daily News, were making sensational flights every day as local witnesses were happy to attest. W. C. Fouts, the druggist, was quoted saying: When I went out to Huffman Prairie I expected to see somebody’s neck broken. What I did see was a machine weighing 900 pounds soar away like an eagle. . . . I told a friend about it that night and he acted as if he thought I had gone daft or joined the liar’s club.

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Not so many years before, Wilbur had decided he was unsuited for “commercial pursuits.” Now he found himself in the thick of extremely complex commercial dealings, playing for extremely high stakes with highly experienced entrepreneurs, politicians, and bureaucrats, and in a language he neither spoke nor understood. The whole game, the players, the setting, the language were all new to him. Yet he was more than holding his own, and in good spirits, aware as he was of the derision to be found behind the scenes. At the war ministry it was being said the Wrights were “bluffers like all Americans,” “worthless people” trying to sell to France “an object of no value” that even the Americans did not believe in. Alert, patient, closely attentive, Wilbur “never rattled,” as his father would say, never lost his confidence. He could be firm without being dictatorial, disagree without causing offense. Nor was there ever a doubt that when he spoke he knew what he was talking about. Most importantly, he remained entirely himself, never straying from his direct, unpretentious way, and with good effect. If anything, his lack of French, his lack of sophistication, seemed to work to his advantage. He was, indeed, as Hart Berg had anticipated, a capital Exhibit A and more. That Wilbur neither drank or smoked or showed the least interest in women remained, of course, a puzzlement to the French. The whole while he was keeping those at home, and Orville in particular, fully abreast of all that ...

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That said, Delagrange openly declared in the article he wrote for L’Illustration, “Wilbur Wright is the best example of strength of character that I have ever seen. In spite of the sarcastic remarks and the mockery, in spite of the traps set up from everywhere all these years, he has not faltered. He is sure of himself, of his genius, and he kept his secret. He had the desire to participate today to prove to the world he had not lied. To François Peyrey, who had seen more of Wilbur than had others and knew more, he was “un timide”—shy, a simple man, but also a “man of genius” who could work alongside the men of the Bollée factory, just as he could work entirely alone, who could cook his own meals and do whatever else was necessary under most any conditions and quiet by nature. He went his way always in his own way, never showing off, never ever playing to the crowd. “The impatience of a hundred thousand persons would not accelerate the rhythm of his stride.”

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Rumors in Washington and in an article in the New York Times on September 15 saying that President Roosevelt would soon announce his intention of going up in the plane with Orville provided still more excitement. To many it seemed perfectly in keeping with a president so “given to the espousal of the unusual.” Two years before he had startled the country by diving beneath the waters of Long Island Sound in a submarine. “Of course, if the President asks me to take him on a flight, I cannot refuse,” Orville said when reporters questioned him. However, he was not enthusiastic about the idea. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t believe the President of the United States should take such chances.”

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It is a wonderful lesson—this celebration. It comes at an auspicious time. The old world was getting tired, it seemed, and needed help to whip it into action. There was beginning a great deal of talk about man’s no longer having the opportunities he once had of achieving greatness. Too many people were beginning to believe that all of the world’s problems had been solved. . . . Money was beginning to tell in the affairs of men, and some were wondering whether a poor boy might work for himself a place in commerce or industry or science. This celebration throws all such idle talk to the winds. It crowns anew the efforts of mankind. It crushes for another hundred years the suspicion that all of the secrets of nature have been solved or that the avenues of hope have been closed to those who would win new worlds. It points out to the ambitious young man that he labors not in vain; that genius knows no class, no condition. . . . The modesty of the Wright brothers is a source of a good deal of comment. . . . But above all there is a sermon in their life of endeavor which cannot be preached too often. The following morning, Thursday, June 17, at nine o’clock every church bell and factory whistle announced the start of what was to be a two-day celebration. Thousands of people poured

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