Orville and Wilbur Wright: Pioneers of the Age of Flight
Wilbur and Orville’s younger sister Katharine shown here at about the age of 21 was their constant companion when they were young and throughout life as a partner in their aviation and business ventures Wilbur and Orville took that guidance to heart Even though their life-sized flying machine hadn’t worked out the boys continued their childhood tinkering The introverted brothers were confident determined and mechanically gifted They were also inseparable Because the Wright family moved often for Milton’s work the young tight-knit twosome learned to depend on no one but each other and their family members As children the boys played together As adults they worked side by side on project after project For most of their lives they even lived in the same house along with their younger sister Katharine who worked with her brothers in their various business ventures Neither brother ever married As Wilbur and Orville grew up they never stopped inventing things and reinventing themselves When Orville was still a teenager and with Wilbur barely in his 20s they dove into the printing industry When that company became successful they moved into the bike business When that no longer posed a challenge to the creative brothers they looked for a new direction in life That new direction turned out 10
to be skyward At the time in the mid-1890s a number of international inventors were making news with their efforts to launch human flight Orville and Wilbur perhaps remembering how much fun they’d had with their bat years earlier became fascinated with the idea of soaring like the birds They quietly jumped into the race to create a flying machine After much trial error experimentation and crash-landing they figured it out In 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the first powered aircraft capable of controlled flight It would be two years before they perfected it and it would be a further three years before the international aviation community believed that the Wrights had actually flown When the world finally recognized Wilbur 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 John T Daniels one of five witnesses to the Wright brothers first flight Orville and Wilbur Wright took this photo of the Wright Flyer the first powered aircraft capable of controlled flight sometime before their history making flight on December 17 1903 11
and Orville as the inventors of the airplane the brothers became global heroes but it wasn’t all smooth sailing Competition from other aviators near-fatal accidents and years of legal battles drained the brothers time energy and passion for flight Claims that other aviators had invented human-powered flight before the Wright brothers created controversy in the aviation community for decades Today however Orville and Wilbur Wright are recognized as the fathers of flight Every airplane that has been developed since 1903 uses the same basic building blocks the Wright brothers identified in 1903 Until the Wright brothers put their minds to solving what they called the flying problem humans could only travel in two dimensions moving across Earth’s flat surface Ultimately these quiet bookish brilliant brothers solved the problem they’d set their minds to They taught humans how to travel in an upward direction a third dimension They taught the world to fly For the past century postal services around the world have issued dozens of stamps that pay tribute to the Wright brothers contributions to flight 12
A postcard sent from France featuring Orville left and Wilbur Wright probably issued around 1908 After years of keeping their work secret that was the year the brothers took both France and the United States by storm with spectacular public demonstrations of Flyer planes The WrighT sTuFF In a 1908 article for Century Magazine Orville Wright described for the general reader what it was like to fly a circle in a plane Remember only a handful of people had ever flown in an aircraft at this point in history At a height of one hundred feet 30 m you feel hardly any motion at all except for the wind which strikes your face If you did not take the precaution to fasten your hat before starting you have probably lost it by this time The operator moves a lever the right wing rises and the machine swings about to the left You make a very short turn yet you do not feel the sensation of being thrown from your seat so often experienced in automobile and railway travel You find yourself facing toward the point from which you started When you near the starting point the operator stops the motor while still high in the air The machine coasts down and comes to rest Although the machine often lands when traveling at a speed of a mile a minute you feel no shock whatever and cannot in fact tell the exact moment at which it first touched the ground The motor close beside you kept up an almost deafening roar during the whole flight yet in your excitement you did not notice it till it stopped 13
