.FLYINGHEAD 100 YEARS OF FLIGHT
.TITLE The twelve seconds that changed history
.AUTHOR Mardell Haskins
.SUMMARY The 20th Century and aviation began with an unforgettable minute in the span of time, atop a hill on a bitter, cold, windy Carolina morning. Never in the course of history did an event, no matter the magnitude or size, affect the course of the entire world, as did the first powered flight of man. This is the story of that event.
.FEATURE
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 About this special series
This article is one in our series honoring 100 years of flight. Be sure to read the fifteen articles across all our magazines for some amazingly powerful stories in honor of this special anniversary. Links to all the articles in the series are included at the end of this article.
.END_SIDEBAR
The 20th Century and aviation began with an unforgettable minute in the span of time, atop a hill on a bitter, cold, windy Carolina morning. Never in the course of history did an event, no matter the magnitude or size, affect the course of the entire world, as did the first powered flight of man.
The many fantasies of flight in the minds of dreamers have become a reality in a mere century of time. The wings of time have flashed by in a scant moment, ending with the building of a space city two hundred and forty miles above the earth.
In just sixty-six short years, man went from dreaming of flight to walking on the moon. No single period in time has seen as much progress in the development of both society and technology than the last 100 years. Today, not even the heavens are the limit of man’s dreams. Flight is limited only by the imagination of our minds.
The dreams of Orville and Wilbur Wright have left a legacy greater than any other person or persons in history. Their legacy is many things, not just the accomplishment of flight. They left a wealth of notes, diaries, photos, glass-plate negatives, and all their research and experiments. Amazingly, the photo that you see of their first flight was taken by them. They showed the world that curiosity, determination, faith, and belief in one’s self can accomplish anything. We should all follow their lead.
[Our international readers have told us that there is some dispute over who, exactly, flew the first powered flight. However, history records the Wrights, and no matter who’s version of history you acknowledge, there’s no doubt the Wright’s accomplishment was momentus. — DG]
Wilbur was born in 1867, and Orville in 1871. They had two older brothers, Reuchlin and Lorin, a younger sister Katherine, and twin baby brothers who died in infancy. All the Wright children grew up in an atmosphere where they were encouraged to explore whatever aroused their curiosity and to pursue intellectual interests. Wilbur and Orville believed that they got their mechanical aptitude, not from their father, Milton, a Bishop in the Lutheran Church, but from their mother, Susan Koerner Wright.
Their father a man of iron will and absolute self-confidence, was so mechanically inapt that he could not even drive a nail straight, while their mother, a quiet, retiring woman, enjoyed working with her hands. Their many mechanical and technological achievements, all without the benefit of formal education, were inspired and encouraged by their mother. She had a rare understanding of mechanics for a woman, especially in that era, the late 1880s. She encouraged them to solve problems and gave all her children a fascination for mechanics that they had their entire lives.
Katherine was the only one of the Wright children to attend college. She graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio, in 1898, and became a school teacher, teaching Latin and English at Steele High School in Dayton, Ohio. When their mother died of tuberculosis in 1889, Katherine took over the running of the Wright household at the age of 15, which she continued to do the rest of her life.
Reuchlin and Lorin each married and had families at a rather young age. However, neither Wilbur, Orville, nor Katherine ever married and all three lived together in a very close-knit family group their entire lives. Katherine had a very profound influence on her brothers and was very much involved in all their endeavors. In the aviation community she is honored almost as much as Wilbur and Orville.
Wilbur and Orville’s interest in flight begin at the age of 11 and 8, respectably, when their father gave them a helicopter made of paper, bamboo, and cork. It was powered by a twisted rubber band attached to twin propellers. The boys named the toy the "Bat" and played with it until it fell apart. They built a number of copies which flew successfully until they tried to make a larger one. It would be many years before they solved the problem of why flying objects, when enlarged, would not fly — but they eventually did.
Growing up, the boys were always tinkering. Orville built kites and sold them to schoolmates. Wilbur made pocket money by helping to print the church newsletter. He developed a machine to fold the paper and together the boys built a foot-powered wood lathe. Everything they did their entire life was a joint effort. They played together, worked together, and talked over their ideas, thoughts, and aspirations together.
At the age of 17, Wilbur, a master typesetter who loved working as a printer, chose not to return to school for his senior year in high school. Instead he started a weekly neighborhood paper, The Westside News. The paper was a great success. However, when the boys decided to convert the paper to a daily evening newspaper, The Evening Item, they could not compete with the local established daily paper and the Wright’s paper folded after only three months.
Not to be stopped by this little setback, their next venture was to set themselves up in business as Wright and Wright, Job Printers. The business promptly became a success and was the first of many entrepreneurial endeavors they created, all of which were very successful. About this time the bicycle craze began to sweep the country. Wilbur and Orville bought bicycles and quickly became avid cyclists. When their friends started bringing their bikes to them for repairs, they found themselves in the bicycle repair business.
In 1892, they put their printing business into the able hands of their pressman, Ed Simes, and formed the Wright Cycle Company, opening a bicycle shop directly across the street from their printing shop. The bicycle business grew so rapidly that they promptly required bigger quarters and very quickly opened four bicycle shops in rapid succession. The Wright Cycle Company initially rented, sold, and repaired bicycles. However, it wasn’t long before the lure to experiment and build better bicycles soon had them manufacturing their own designs. The Wright Bicycle Company manufactured two custom-built bikes, the St. Clair and a more expensive model the Van Cleve. They owned the bicycle manufacturing business until 1912, when Orville sold it after Wilbur died from typhoid fever at the age of 45.
Since the bicycle business was seasonal, it left the brothers with plenty of spare time. They built porches all around the house, a fireplace in the parlor, and installed shutters on the windows. Wilbur learned to play the guitar and mandolin, while Orville chose to learn the harmonica.
More important, they took up photography, converting a shed behind the house into a darkroom to develop glass-plated negatives and prints. This hobby would become very important and played a vital part in history, as they documented and photographed everything that they did. The brothers kept extensive notes, diaries, and wrote a number of letters. A very complete history is available today of almost every aspect of their lives and work.
Most of their photographs were taken between 1898 and 1911. They left over 300 glass plate negatives and hundred of prints, which are currently housed in either the Library of Congress in Washington DC or the Wright State University Library in Dayton, Ohio. The famous picture that you see of Orville’s first flight was made by the brothers setting up their own camera and having one of the fisherman squeeze the bulb at the time they thought that the airplane would take off. Both the flight and the photo were a success!
In 1896, Orville and Wilbur began reading about the flight experiments that several men were conducting. Otto Lilienthal, a German, had made some 2000 glider flights. An American civil engineer, Octave Chaunte, was also working on the problems of flight. Chaunte was famous for building the first bridge across the Missouri River, in 1868.
At the same time another American, Dr. Samuel Pierpont Langley, had successfully launched a steam engine model he called an Aerodrome from a houseboat in the Potomac River. Langley, a distinguished scientist, was the head of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. The U.S. Army was so impressed with Langley’s flight that they gave him $50,000 to continue his experiments. They wanted a passenger-carrying, full size, mechanical powered, flying machine. The Smithsonian also contributed $20,000 to the project, a very sizable fortune in those days.
In the spring of 1899, the brothers began to get serious about flight research and experiments. Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institute asking for information on flight experiments. The Smithsonian mailed them a list of available books and a number of pamphlets. On the list was Samuel Langley’s Experiments in Aerodynamic and Octave Chanute’s Progress in Flying Machines. The boys not only read all the books, but sought advise from both men. Chanute took a fatherly interest in them and became one of their most ardent supporters.
As Wilbur and Orville studied the fledging technology of aeronautics, they determined that three basic requirements would have to be met. One, they would need wings that could lift a flying machine into the air. Two, they would need a power plant sufficient to propel the machine into the air and sustain it. Three, a method of controlling the machine in flight would be needed.
The first two problems had been solved to some extent, they thought. However, the problem of control had hardly been addressed. Orville and Wilbur were amazed that the problem of balance and control had received so little attention. Otto Lilienthal had attempted to balance his gliders by swinging and thrashing his body and legs about. Langley’s model was capable of only straight-line flights; his goal was simply to be the first man to fly.
After studying the problem, Orville and Wilbur thought an effective means of controlling the flying machine was the key to successful flight. What was needed was a control system that an airborne pilot could operate, and at the same time, keep the machine flying. First, it would need to balance and keep the aircraft on course as it climbed and descended. Second, it would need to be able to turn the aircraft.
Like bicycling, flying required balance in all its motions. Studying birds, Orville and Wilbur observed that birds kept adjusting the positions of their outstretched wings. It seemed that birds balanced themselves and controlled their flight by changing the angle of how each wing met the oncoming air. One day in the bicycle shop while he was talking to a customer, Wilbur begins twisting the ends of the box in the opposite directions. Looking down at his hands, he saw the solution to the problem. By having a spiral twist running along an aircraft’s wings, it would be possible to tilt one wing up and the other down at the same time.
To test Wilbur’s idea, the brothers designed their first experimental aircraft, a bi-wing glider with a five-foot wing span, designed to be flown as a kite. They tested the kite by pulling long strings attached to the controls from the ground. The kite responded immediately by climbing, diving, and rolling to the right or left on command. Convinced they were on the right track, the brothers were ready for the next step.
Wilbur wrote to the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, DC, asking for a list of the windiest weather stations in the country. One site sounded ideal, even though they had never heard of it. It was a remote-fishing village called Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There the wind averaged 10-20 miles per hour and had endless stretches of sandy beach for soft landings and plenty of solitude so that the brothers could experiment in secret.
.CALLOUT Progress was slow because the boat was in such bad shape that it started to sink, requiring all hands to bail water to keep the rusty old tub from sinking.
The following year they built a larger glider and decided to take it to Kitty Hawk for testing. Having made arrangements ahead a time to stay with the local postmaster, William Tate and his family, Wilbur set off on the adventure of his life. The trip was not easy. First he traveled by train, then by ferry to reach Norfolk, VA. Back on the train a second time, he went from Norfolk to Elizabeth City, NC. Once in Elizabeth City, it took him three days to find someone to take him the thirty-five miles across Albemarle Sound to Kitty Hawk.
Next, the boat trip took another two days. Progress was slow because the boat was in such bad shape that it started to sink, requiring all hands to bail water to keep the rusty old tub from sinking. The second day found them sitting out a raging storm that rolled the boat back and forth, drenching everyone with water. Arriving in Kitty Hawk, on September 13, 1900, Wilbur discovered it was a small, lonely, weather-beaten settlement of just a few scatter houses, set among the trees that line the bay. About a mile to the east, on the ocean side, stood a U.S. Lifesaving Service Station. Everything was surrounded by miles and miles of sand.
Ten days later, Orville joined Wilbur and they moved a scant mile down the beach and set of their camp. They had brought an amazing three truckloads of equipment, along with their glider. This included a tent, folding cots, an acetylene lamp, and a generous assortment of canned and package food supplies. The 17-foot wing span, bi-wing glider which had been shipped in several large crates, now had to be assembled. Made of a lightweight wood frame, the glider was covered in tightly woven cotton, sateen fabric. The total cost of materials to build the glider was $15.
The brothers got the winds they wanted, but the blowing sand made living conditions less than idyllic. In fact, they were down right uncomfortable, especially when they had to go out at night to work on the tent to keep it from blowing away. They had to carry their water in buckets for a long quarter of a mile. Orville cooked, while Wilbur washed the dishes. For entertainment, Orville played his mandolin and Wilbur his harmonica.
After they had assembled the glider, they enlisted the postmaster, Bill Tate help to move it. They loaded the glider on his wagon, and moved it nearly four miles down the beach to an area of large sand dunes known as Kill Devil Hills. Hauling the glider to the top of the largest hill, Big Hill, they launched the glider, with Wilbur laying on his stomach. Orville and Bill ran along side, holding on to the wings to help balance it, in order to get it off the ground.
They made a dozen flights the first day.
While each flight only lasted 15 to 20 seconds and flew only about 300 to 400 hundred feet, for a grand total of about two minutes, it showed Orville and Wilbur that their control system was working. The winds stopped the next day, and it turned out this would be the only flying that they would do in 1900. Filled with hope and enthusiasm from the success of their control experiments, they planned to return the next year with an even bigger glider. The brothers gave the glider to Bill Tate, who salvaged the wood for projects around the house, and his wife made their two small daughters, Irene and Pauline, dresses out of the sateen fabric.
Back in Dayton, Wilbur and Orville set about designing and building a new glider. It would have a wingspan of twenty-two feet, with wings seven feet wide, and would weigh about 100 pounds. To help with the landing they added a ski. When the brothers went back to Kitty Hawk in 1901, they moved their camp to the bottom of Big Hill. They were also accompanied by Octave Chanute and two of his associates, who stayed for a time to observe and make calculations of their own.
Camp had barely been established when torrential rains swept the Outer Banks for a solid week. This was followed by the worst outbreak of mosquitoes in a number of years. The mosquitoes were relentless, there was no escaping them. They were so bad, they bit completely through clothes, leaving giant bumps all over everyone’s body. The mosquitoes finally disappeared, but Orville and Wilbur’s troubles were not over.
After they had assembled the glider they were disappointed to find that it refused to fly as well as the previous year’s model. At times it seemed to be completely out of control. They had designed the wings from the air-pressure tables published by Otto Lilienthal, but the wings did not have anywhere near the lifting power they had expected. To make matters worse, the movable part of the wing was not working as it should. This was the part of the wing that controlled the up and down movements; it was not working as effectively as expected either.
They stopped testing and began making design changes. These adjustments helped the movable part of the wing to work properly, but the glider still would not lift off and perform as Lilienthal’s tables predicted. After Wilbur received a black eye, facial cuts, and several bruises, they gave up trying to fly themselves and just flew the glider as an unmanned kite. When the rains returned the brother spirits plunged along with the weather, so they closed up camp a lot sooner than they had planned and returned home.
Back in Dayton, discouraged, Orville and Wilbur begin speculating on their problems. They decided that the calculations that they had been relying on were not correct, so they threw them all out and decided to undertake their own investigations.
First, they built a wind tunnel, with a glass-viewing window, that used a fan to create wind. It was not the first wind tunnel ever built, but it was the first to be used in the study of aerodynamics. They spent several weeks testing wings and making their own calculations. As always, the Wright brothers kept meticulous notes, especially since they knew they were exploring uncharted territory. When their lab tests were complete, they felt confident that they could calculate what the performance of a wing would be, before they ever built and tested it.
Armed with the new knowledge, they designed and built their biggest glider yet. The wings, were longer and narrower, thirty-two feet long, by five feet wide. They also, added two 6-foot high vertical fins and a tail to help stabilize the glider during turns. The hip cradle would be the same as the previous year. All together the machine weighed just under 120 pounds. Wilbur sewed the cloth for the wings, assisted by Orville.
Back on the Outer Banks by the end of August, 1902, surrounded by their many trunks, crates of supplies and glider parts, the brothers discovered that the winter winds had damaged the wooden storage shed they had built the previous year. It took them until the middle of September to set up and repair their camp and assemble the new glider.
This year, they would take turns flying, giving Orville a chance to fly for the first time. Always aware of safety, they made short, low glides from the slope of Big Hill to practice working the controls and learn how to steer right, left, up, or down.
On most of flights the glider performed well, but every so often it would spin out of control when the pilot tried to level off after a turn. They were at a loss to know just what was causing the problem. First, they altered the wing tips and went back to Big Hill for more testing. Again, the glider spun out of control during turns. Next they turned the attention to the 6-foot double vane tail rudders, which were rigidly fixed in place. They had installed the tail to help stabilize the glider during turns, but it was not working. Lying in bed one sleepless night, Orville figured out what the problem was. It was the fixed tail.
They removed the double tail and replaced it with a single-vane, 5-foot movable rudder. After this change, the Wright brothers finally had complete control of their glider. With the wings and tail coordinated, the glider would always make smooth banked turns. They stayed until late October practicing at every opportunity.
Back in Dayton, Wilbur and Orville turned their attention to the final part of the project: finding an engine and building propellers. The engine needed to be lightweight, yet powerful enough to produce sufficient trust to drive a flying machine thorough the air. In addition, the aircraft itself would need to be strong enough to carry the necessary weight and withstand the vibrations of the motor and propellers. Finally they needed to design and build propellers.
.CALLOUT No company was willing to build them an engine, so the brothers decided they would build their own.
Wilbur wrote to several gasoline engine manufacturers, asking if they would supply an engine that could produce at least 8 horsepower, yet weighed less than 200 pounds. No company was willing to build them an engine, so the brothers decided they would build their own. Working in their usual methodical fashion, with the help of their mechanic, Charlie Taylor from the bicycle shop, they had a motor ready for testing in just six weeks. It was lightweight and efficient, weighed only 179 pounds, but generated over 13 horsepower.
Designing the propellers turned out to be a far more difficult problem. Orville reasoned the machine was moving forward, the air was flying backwards, the propellers were turning sideways, and nothing was standing still. It seemed impossible to find a starting point from which to begin.
After five months of study, discussion, experiments, and five notebooks filled with formulas, diagrams, computation, and tables of data, Orville and Wilbur finally understood that an aerial propeller worked the same way as a rotary wing. The same laws of physics that produced lift upward, when a curved wing sliced through the air, also produced forward thrust when a curved propeller blade rotated through the air. Once they had grasped this idea, they were able to design propeller blades with the right diameter, pitch and area for their aircraft. The Wright brothers were the first to understand this basic premise of aeronautics.
For their new flyer, Orville and Wilbur decided to use two propellers, turning in the opposite directions to neutralized any twisting effect on the aircraft. The propellers were connected to the motor by a sprocket and chain transmission similar to the kind used on bicycles. The motor rested on the lower wing to the right of the pilot, so that it would not fall on him in case of an accident.
To balance the extra weight, the right wing was four inches longer than the left. The controls were comparable to the 1902 design, with a wingspan of slightly over forty feet; the new machine was the biggest one yet. In this latest design, only the rear of the wings would flex. For the first time the brothers gave their aircraft a name. They called it the Flyer.
With not enough room in their shop to put the flyer together, they had to wait until they got to the Outer Banks to assemble it for the first time. Wilbur and Orville arrived at Kill Devil Hills on September 25, 1903, where they once again had to repair their storm-damaged camp. This time, they not only made repairs, but put up a second building to be used as a workshop for assembling and housing the Flyer.
On good, windy days, they took out their old 1902 glider for practice flights. On calm or rainy days, they worked on the Flyer indoors. Progress was slowed because the propeller shafts and transmission sprocket wheel kept coming loose as the motor turned. The propeller shafts gave them so much trouble that Orville was forced to go back to Dayton to have new ones made. On the return train trip, Orville read in the newspaper that Samuel Piepont Langley’s second and last attempt to launch a manned aircraft on December 8, 1903, had failed once again. Both Langley and the Great Aerodrome crashed into the cold waters of the Potomac River, taking $73,000 and Langley’s hopes along with it.
Meanwhile, in Kitty Hawk, winter arrived early with rain, snow and freezing wind. Orville returned to Kill Devil Hills on December 11th. To launch the Flyer, they had built a movable rail for a starting track. The four, fifteen-foot wood sections of rail were covered with a thin metal strip on the top. For takeoff, the Flyer was placed over the track with its landing skids resting on a small two-wheeled dolly. The Flyer would then ride down the monorail on the dolly, into the wind until it gained enough airspeed to lift off and fly. Orville and Wilbur called the starting track the "Grand Junction Railroad".
They were finally ready for the first trials on Monday, December 14th, but the wind was not strong enough to launch from flat ground. Anxious to test the Flyer, Orville and Wilbur decided to try a downhill launch from the side of Kill Devil Hill. They ran the red signal flag to the top of the flagpole, alerting the lifesaving station a mile away that they were ready to begin. The lifesavers had agreed to be witnesses to the flight, and to help move the flying machine over the sand.
Before long, five men, two small boys and a dog came trudging up the beach.
The brothers tossed a coined to see who should try first. Wilbur won the toss. He lay down in the hip cradle with the engine all ready running. When Wilbur released the rope, the Flyer shot down the track so fast that it left Orville behind, gasping for breath. After about 35 or 40 feet the Flyer lifted off from the rail into the air. However, Wilbur aimed the machine at too steep an angle and after climbing only a few feet it stalled, fell backwards, and smashed the left wing. Wilbur was not hurt, but it took two days to repair the damage to the Flyer. Orville’s stopwatch showed that the Flyer had flown for 3-1/2 seconds.
On Thursday, December 17, 1903, they were finally ready to try again. They woke to freezing temperatures and a cold, blustery 27 mph wind. They waited indoors awhile where it was warm, to see if the wind would die down and it would warm up some. At 10:00am, it was blowing as hard as ever, so under less-than-ideal conditions, they decided to attempt a flight.
They once again hoisted the red signal flag to summon the life boat crew. In the freezing wind, they started laying the starting track on a level stretch of sand just below camp. It was so cold that they had to go inside several times to warm up. By the time the track was all laid, four men and a teenage boy from the life saving station had arrived. Orville set up the camera and placed the rubber bulb in the hand of John Daniels, one of the lifesaving men. Daniels was instructed to squeeze the bulb just as the Flyer took off. He took the picture shown in Figure A of the Flyer lifting off, recording forever the greatest event in the history of man.
.FIGPAIR A The Flyer lifts off.
The flight lasted 12 seconds and flew for 120 feet.
Orville and Wilbur both made two flights each that day. Orville’s diary recorded that they "Did not time or measure the second or third flights, but they were both about 175 feet long." Wilbur flew the fourth flight at 12:00 noon; it lasted 59 seconds and was the longest flight of the day at 852 feet. Minutes later, a gust of wind turned the Flyer over, damaging it and badly bruising John Daniels, who boasted for the rest of his life that he survived the first airplane crash.
After the Wright Brothers record-setting flights in 1903, they spent 1904 and 1905 improving, testing, fine tuning, and refining their airplane, which was now the Wright Flyer II.
On October 5, 1905, Wilbur set a new endurance record of 39 minutes over a distance of 24 1/2 miles while flying in a circle around a field outside of Dayton. The world was not impressed! The news did not go much further than Ohio. Another event occurred in 1903 that impressed the public much more — the arrival of the first Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Most of the world had never heard of the airplane, let alone that one had actually flown. They probably wouldn’t have believed it, even if they had heard about it. The war department even turned down Orville and Wilbur’s offer to sell the Wright Flyer to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The government was still smarting from Samuel Langley failures, for which the military had spent a turn-of-the-century $50,000 fortune on. They would not even investigate the Wright brothers claims.
Not deterred, the brothers spent the next two and half years keeping a low profile, while they obtained patents and worked out a marketing plan.
Keeping communications open with the Army, in 1908 they again offered to deliver an aircraft to the Army Signal Corps that would meet army specifications. First, however, they wanted a contract guaranteeing the army would purchase their airplane if it performed as promised. The army would not agree without a demonstration flight, which Wilbur and Orville were not about to do, so they had a Mexican standoff of sorts for a period of time.
Now that they had protected their work legally, Orville and Wilbur were ready to start building and testing airplanes again. They returned to Kill Devil Hills, NC in 1908, where they made history for a third time. On May 14, 1908, Wilbur and Orville each took turns flying their first passenger, a mechanic named Charlie Furnas, in the first two person airplane every built.
After this, Orville returned to Dayton to start working and testing a Flyer for the U.S. Signal Corps. Meanwhile, Wilbur sailed for France to see if the brothers could promote airplanes in Europe. This was the first time Wilbur and Orville were ever separated for more than a few days.
Orville’s tests with the Army went well until September 17, 1908, when the Flyer piloted by Orville crashed, killing Signal Corps Officer Lt. Thomas Selfridge and seriously injuring Orville.
As Orville recovered from his injuries, Wilbur was taking Europe by storm. Things were beginning to look up for the Wright family. Katherine and Orville soon joined Wilbur in Europe, while Orville continue to recover from his injuries. People all over Europe flocked to aero fields by the hundreds to witness the miracle and the romance of flight for themselves. All over Europe, airplanes and flyers were popping up and setting records everywhere.
All three Wrights, Wilbur, Orville, and Katherine, spent much of 1908 and 1909 in Europe. During the tour, Wilbur trained several French and Italian pilots. In Pau, France, he garnered another "first" when he gave a flight to a news cameraman, who took the first motion pictures ever made from an airplane in flight.
Initially, Orville and Wilbur’s popularity was greater in Europe than the U.S. However, word was slowly getting back to America. To this point, 1909 was the best year the Wright brothers had and is probably the year that aviation truly began. The world was finally beginning to take notice that airplanes really could fly.
In the spring of 1909, all three Wrights, Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine, began a triumphant journey home, stopping in Paris, London, New York, and Washington, where they were cheered by crowds and honored at countless banquets along the way.
On May 13, 1909, when their train pulled into Dayton, Ohio, they were met by thousands of people and driven home in glory. Riding in a carriage pulled by four beautiful white horses, they rode home with cannons booming thirty-one gun salutes, church bells pealing, and factory whistles tooting.
Six years late, America’s romance with the Wright Brothers had begun!
On September 29, 1909, Wilbur made his first public flight in America, flying across New York harbor, around the middle of the Statute of Liberty and back again, as part of the great Hudson-Fulton Celebration. On October 4th, he made a second momentous flight, flying up the Hudson River from Governors Island to Grant’s tomb and back again, a flight of about 20 miles. He was again accompanied by the music of bells, whistles, and foghorns.
Toward the later part of 1909, Orville and Wilbur started their own manufacturing company to build Flyers. This was the first fluttering of an aviation industry. After much hard work and negotiating, they finally had a contract with the U.S. Army Signal Corps and delivered their first military plane to the U.S. Army for the princely sum of $30,000.
Three years later, on May 30, 1912, tragedy struck the Wright family, when Wilbur died of typhoid fever. A spark in Orville died along with Wilbur.
In 1915, Orville, a millionaire, sold their aircraft company but continued to do aviation research for many years, developing a number of aircraft systems over the years. Wilbur died on January 30, 1948, at the age of 76, just 21 years before the Apollo II landed on the moon in 1969.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong took a piece of cloth from the Wright Flyer with him when he walked on the moon.
Today, aviation has established a firm foothold in the world and has changed our lives forever. Never in the wildest dreams of the Wright brothers would they have believed that aviation would have the profound effect on the world that it has had.
.BEGIN_KEEP
We can all learn from the accomplishments of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Let each of us, in our lives and in our own way, try to give something back to the world. In this, the 100th year of powered flight, do something special in your own world, be it for a neighbor, or in your own area of expertise. We are limited only by our dreams. Follow Your Dreams!
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 About this series
This week, we’re running fifteen articles celebrating the anniversary of flight across all our magazines. Be sure to read them all; they are each quite exceptional:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Read The twelve seconds that changed history by Mardell Haskins.
.BULLET Read An out of this world experience with Burning Blue by Dave Spragg.
.BULLET Read The Centennial by Marilyn Dash.
.BULLET Read Thanks, Wilbur and Orville by James Aronovsky.
.BULLET Read The Oshkosh Fly-In by Dennis Deery.
.BULLET Read The spirit is born by Kathy Walker.
.BULLET Read 99 years and 350+ days by Matthew Justice.
.BULLET Read First flights by John I. Williams, Jr.
.BULLET Read The British Chairwoman’s Challenge by Mardell Haskins.
.BULLET Read The Wonder Machine by Stephen Till.
.BULLET Read Faster than the sun by Mick Moignard.
.BULLET Read Tiger cruise by Jon Canfield.
.BULLET Read The age of romance by Mardell Haskins.
.BULLET Read Aviation firsts by Mardell Haskins.
.BULLET Read The World War II years and beyond by Mardell Haskins.
.BULLET And read my editorial Celebrating flight across the years and across the magazines.
.END_LIST
Next week, we resume our regular coverage.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Mardell Haskins is a 65 years old widow with 8 children, 25 grandchildren, and 6 great grandchildren. She lives on Lake Mead near Overton, Nevada, is a cross country air race pilot and retired construction heavy equipment operator, and a member of The Ninety-Nines, International Organization of Women Pilots. She works with students and has a Scout Aviation Explorer Unit in Overton. She’s the Founder and Chairman of Overton Airport Day (10 years) which gives free airplane rides to students, ages 8-17 called Young Eagles Flights. They have flown over 1,000 students. Mardell also does a lot of speaking at schools and organizations. She’ll be speaking at a math forum for girls ages 8-10 in Erie, Penn in May. Mardell Haskins has organized women pilots groups for 99s in Brazil, Hungary, and Germany. She does a lot of international travel for the 99s and will be flying in a race in New Zealand in March and April of 2004.
.END_KEEP
