The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough

“It must not remain our desire only to acquire the art of the bird,” Lilienthal had written. “It is our duty not to rest until we have attained a perfect scientific conception of the problem of flight.”

“My observations since have only convinced me more firmly that human flight is possible and practicable.

Along with the cost of experiments in flight, the risks of humiliating failure, injury, and, of course, death, there was the inevitable prospect of being mocked as a crank, a crackpot, and in many cases with good reason.

“It is a fact,” the Post later categorically declared, “that man can’t fly.”

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.

“The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.”

“We believed in a good God, a bad Devil, and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that same God did not intend man should ever fly.”

Orville would later say that even with all the adversities they had to face, it was the happiest time they had ever known.

“Learning the secret of flight from a bird,” Orville would say, “was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.”

He considered it “a pleasure trip.” And certainly it was for both brothers—to be off on their own in a setting so entirely different from any they had ever known and doing what mattered to them above all. They had hoped to learn much of value there and they

“But if you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.”

“Never in the history of the world had men studied the problem with such scientific skill nor with such undaunted courage.”

“A calm survey of certain natural phenomena leads the engineer to pronounce all confident prophecies for future success as wholly unwarranted, if not absurd. Where, even to this hour, are we to look for the germ of the successful flying machine? Where is the preparation today?”

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.

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

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.

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.

“History was being made in their bicycle shop and in their home, but the making was so obscured by the commonplace that I did not recognize it until many years later.”

Their patient perseverance, their calm faith in ultimate success, their mutual consideration of each other, might have been considered phenomenal in any but men who were well born and well reared. These flights, or spurts at flying, they always made in turn; and after every trial the two inventors, quite apart, held long and confidential consultation, with always some new gain; they were getting nearer and nearer the moment when sustained flight would be made, for a machine that could maintain itself aloft two minutes might just as well stay there an hour, if everything were as intended.

Not one reporter bothered to attend during this time. Nor did public interest increase. With few exceptions there seemed no public interest at all, no local excitement or curiosity or sense of wonder over the miraculous thing happening right in Dayton’s own backyard. Nor did anyone seem to appreciate the kind of minds, not to say the extraordinary skill and courage, needed to succeed at so daring a venture. In five months the brothers were to make no less than fifty test flights at Huffman Prairie, and Charlie Taylor, ever on hand in case of motor trouble, would say that every time he watched either of them head down the starting track, he had the awful feeling he might never again see him alive. To Wilbur and Orville, it seemed fear was a stranger.

But before describing what he saw happen, he made a point of stressing that the Wrights were not just the sort who love machinery, but were “interested in the modern developments of science and art.”

When it first turned that circle, and came near the starting point, I was right in front of it, and I said then, and I believe still, it was one of the grandest sights, if not the grandest sight, of my life.

“The best dividends on the labor invested,” they said, “have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.”

Such keen interest as he had in art was not only remarkable in someone so committed to technical innovation, but a measure of a truly exceptional capacity of mind. As weeks, then months passed, Wilbur, of his own choice, visited the Louvre fifteen or more times.

The meals were better than any he had had since coming to Europe—better in that they were both plentiful and not overly fancy.

Wilbur turned his cap backward, and to Berg, Bollée, and the others said quietly, “Gentlemen, I’m going to fly.

“Today, because it is Sunday, M. Wright, a good American, would not think of breaking the Sabbath.

He and his brother made the conquest of the sky their existence. They needed this ambition and profound, almost religious, faith in order to deliberately accept their exile to the country of the dunes, far away from all. . . . Wilbur is phlegmatic but only in appearance. He is driven by a will of iron which animates him and drives him in his work.

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.

They say that I, too, am a workman.

Do not let yourself be forced into doing anything before you are ready.

Left alone, he sat with head in hands. When another friend came in—Léon Bollée most likely—Wilbur looked up, his eyes full of tears, and said if anything could make him abandon further work in solving the problem of flight, it would be an accident like this.

People think I am foolish because I do not like the men to do the least important work on the machine. They say I crawl under the machine when the men could do the thing well enough. I do it partly because it gives me opportunity to see if anything in the neighborhood is out of order.

“the grit and indomitable perseverance that characterize American efforts in every department of activity.” The crowds

Scarcely ten years ago, all hope of flying had almost been abandoned; even the most convinced had become doubtful, and I confess that, in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for fifty years. Two years later, we ourselves were making flights. This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since distrusted myself and have refrained from all prediction—as my friends of the press, especially, well know. But it is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain that it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.

In the nearly ten years that the Wright brothers had been working to achieve success with their invention, this was to be the first formal recognition by their hometown of their efforts and success and there was to be no mistaking the whole town’s enthusiasm.

“Long live the United States! It is to that country that I owe my success.”

but since they showed that the thing could be done everybody seems able to do it.”

“All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others.”

I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is I regret all the terrible damage caused by fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire to thousands of important uses.