A couple of weeks ago, on December 17, was the 115th anniversary of the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine. The inventors and first pilots were two brothers from Dayton, Ohio.
Wilbur and Orville Wright were younger sons of Bishop Milton Wright and his wife Susan, who died young following the birth of her only daughter, Katharine. The brothers were close; never attended college; never married; and were business partners for their adult lives. Initially, they developed a printing business and then followed popular fashion by opening a bicycle shop in their hometown.
But something was missing when older brother Wilbur, at age 32, wrote the Smithsonian Institution in 1899, asking for guidance in studying the phenomenon of flight. The brothers then began to study the work of early aviation scientists, namely Otto Lilienthal, Samuel Langley and Octave Chanute. Based on prior work and detailed study of birds in flight, the brothers developed a glider kite and took it to North Carolina's Outer Banks for testing in favorable wind conditions from offshore winter Atlantic breezes.
At Kitty Hawk, amongst the sand dunes known as Kill Devil Hills, Wilbur and Orville tested their inventions. They were assisted by the locals who ran the life guard station and post office, including Bill Tate and John T. Daniels. Otherwise, their work was in isolation on this lonely coastline. The Wrights built a camp where they would return on several occasions for testing their theories and machinery. Back in Dayton, their shop was minded by a mechanic named Charlie Taylor and their sister Katharine.
After several trips, the brothers discovered that the work by the early pioneers was in error and they would have to begin anew if they hoped to conquer manned flight. In the shop above Dayton's Wright Cycle Company, they built a wind tunnel and began to scientifically test their airfoil models, carefully recording the data. Meanwhile, Charlie kept the shop going below, providing their only income.
When their experiments led to success, they built a full sized bi-wing glider to test their theory at Kitty Hawk and began to build non-powered flying experience. The two brothers would fly alternately, laying in the middle of the bottom wing and controlling their patented wing warping with a hip cradle. When both theory and experience were successfully completed, they returned to Dayton to build a motorized Wright Flyer.
Two critical development functions were left to accomplish: the motor and propellers. Charlie Taylor built the four-cylinder engine from a block of lightweight aluminum. His goal was to get eight horsepower out of a 150 pound motor and over-achieved with an engine that produced 12 horsepower at full speed. Meanwhile, the Wright's developed and tested a propeller design based on their wind tunnel experiments that was perfectly efficient. Both of these achievements were monumental in their pursuit.
In December 1903, the brothers returned to Kitty Hawk and prepared for the first flight. They needed to wait for the wind and weather to cooperate. Finally, on the morning of December 17, the conditions turned favorable. They laid the 30 foot launching track into the prevailing wind. It was Orville's turn to fly. Wilbur manned the right wing for stability.
At 10:35, Orville released the Flyer with the engine operating at full speed. Down the track it traveled and rose into the air, traveling 120 feet in the next 12 seconds before Orville nosed the elevators forward to land. John Daniels snapped a photograph of the airborne Flyer at the end of the track to record history being made. It is one of the most important photographs ever made in the 20th Century.
On that day, the brothers made three more flights; the longest being the last by older brother Wilbur, that traveled more than 800 feet. Not long afterward, a gust of wind flipped the machine over, damaging the first Wright Flyer, and their work was finished on the Outer Banks for that season.
Despite evidence to the contrary, few believed that the Wright Brothers had conquered the science of flight. For the next three years, they perfected their machine and skills on Huffman Prairie, an 80 acre cow pasture northeast of Dayton, in near anonymity. In 1908 when they took their much improved machine to France and Army trials in Virginia, they finally received overdue acclaim.
In every endeavor, someone has to be first and ‘push the envelope' where no one has ever gone before. That two brothers from southeastern Ohio achieved the science of flight with no schooling beyond their own God-given intellect and ingenuity is the stuff that dreams are made of. That they did this with less than $1000 of their own money makes their achievement even more remarkable. Simply put, they changed history and transportation forever.