Wright Activities Before and After 1903

The best scientists of the day tried to solve the riddle of powered flight and failed. Yet, two brothers without formal high school diplomas found the answer. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, referred to them as ” doers with dreams.” An examination of their boyhood environment provides some clues as to why they were successful.

Their father, Milton, was a bishop in the United Brethren Church. He was a man of strong fundamental Christian values and an iron will to follow them. Born in a log cabin in Rush County, Indiana in 1828 in a religious household, he knew from a young age that the church would be his career.

At the age of eighteen an itinerant preacher introduced him to the United Brethren Church. He experienced a religious conversion and felt salvation. The church doctrine emphasized the importance of a moral life, temperance and abolition of slavery. The church was a protestant sect that was popular in the rural areas of the Midwest in the 1890s.

Milton preached his first sermon on his twenty-second birthday in 1850. He was earning his living by working on the farm and teaching in local schools to supplement his income.

In 1850 he entered Hartsville College, a small Indiana school run by the United Brethren Church, and was ordained a minister in 1856. He also became certified to teach penmanship, grammar, reading , writing, arithmetic and geography.

Milton was a strong supporter of women’s rights. He gave encouragement and support to daughter Katharine who attended and graduated from America’s first coed college, Oberlin College in Ohio. He had selected and recommended Oberlin to Katharine. At the time only 2% of girls attended college. In later years Milton and Orville marched in a women’s suffrage parade in downtown Dayton.

Milton met his future wife, Susan Koener, at Hartsville College. She trained as a teacher studying literature, mathematics, Latin and Greek. Two years younger than Milton, she was scholarly and shy.

She was born in Hillsboro, a town located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her family later migrated to Indiana. Her father was a wagon maker and wheelwright. Susan, growing up, spent much time in her father’s shop where she became adept in using tools. It would be Susan, not Milton that would help the children in their early construction projects. Milton was an intellectual and amateur scientist, but he was not good with his hands.

Milton’s career grew in influence. He was elected and reelected bishop and became editor of the church publications. The latter assignment necessitated his move to Dayton.

After their marriage in 1859, Susan spent the next 25 years moving the family, as Milton’s church duties required frequent moves to new locations in Indiana, Iowa and Ohio.

Susan considered it was her fulltime duty to raise these children into healthy, strong adults with moral fiber, and model citizens.

Milton inculcated in his children strength of character, firmness of purpose and self-confidence in their pursuits. He taught them that with hard work they could accomplish anything.

Orville and Wilbur lived a moral lifestyle. They never flew on Sundays and abstained from the use of liquor, beer and tobacco. They maintained a strict dress code even while working in the barren sands of Kitty Hawk – wearing white shirts, stiff collars, and vests along with suit and coat.

Milton placed a very high value on the concept of family and maintained a loving environment among family members. He believed that a tightly unified family was the best defense against the pressures of an essentially wicked world which was not to be trusted.

Bishop Milton became involved in serious controversies that produced crisis within the church. The controversies involved what Milton viewed as changes in traditional doctrines. The schism continued for sixteen years and ultimately split the church. Wilbur, while in high school helped his father in his battles by writing and distributing position papers.

The brothers learned from their father’s devotion to correct principles, justice and course of action regardless of opposition and obstacles.

Their father’s philosophy would ring true in Orville and Wilbur’s later battles with Glen Curtiss and other infringers of their patent on their airplane and with the Smithsonian Institution’s claim that Langley was the first to construct an airplane that was capable of flying.

The close bond between the brothers, their self confidence and their secrecy with regard to their experiments and their mistrust of outsiders were also extensions of their father’s philosophy.

Milton and Susan encouraged openness and curiosity and a willingness to pursue scientific inquiry and speculation.

Both brothers, from an early age, were fascinated with mechanical devices. Orville, particularly, enjoyed taking things apart to see how they worked and then reassembling them. This was mechanical aptitude was most likely inherited from their mother who could make or repair almost anything.

Milton encouraged the boy’s scientific interests even while traveling. His duties as a bishop in the church required him to be absent from home much of the time.

One day he returned from one of his numerous trips with a toy helicopter designed by Alphonse Penaud of France. It fascinated the boys who were ages eleven and seven at the time. The rotating twin propellers would fly as high as 25 feet in the air when released from two tightened rubber bands.

The brothers tried to build their own helicopter of a larger design, but weren’t successful. It wouldn’t be until they were older that they figured out why. (The size of a helicopter of only twice as large would require eight times the power to fly). Later in life they cited the toy helicopter as inspiring their initial interest in flying.

Milton would carry on with other educational activities while traveling. He would give his sons geography lessons by describing in great detail the places he visited. He would encourage the children to write him using good grammar and he would critique their efforts.

Both parents believed in formal and informal education and encouraged their children to pursue intellectual interests outside of school. They believed that children needed time to investigate whatever aroused their curiosity and encouraged the boys to skip school on occasion for that purpose.

Their home was filled with books – history, novels, encyclopedias, scientific papers and religious. There was even a religious book by the agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, because Milton believed in learning from studying a diversity of viewpoints.

The children were taught to read at an early age using McGuffey readers. Both Wilbur and Orville acquired excellent reading skills before they went to school. They both enjoyed could read scientific articles in their father’s encyclopedia at an early age.

Orville was home schooled prior to the second grade. When he entered the second grade he told his second grade teacher he wanted to move on to the 3rd reader. She told him to read a particular passage out of the 2nd reader to demonstrate his proficiency. Orville turned the book upside down and read the passage. He passed the test.

Milton didn’t always agree with how reading was being taught in the classroom. One day he went to school to complain that the teacher should stop telling kids to guess at words.

Neither brother received a high school diploma. In 1900 the average American adult had just 5 years of formal education.

Wilbur did not receive his high school diploma in Richmond because his family move to Dayton, Ohio, just before commencement.

The fact that Wilbur did not graduate was discovered more than 80 years later when, in an attempt to award Wilbur Wright the Outstanding Alumni award, a requirement was to have graduated. In 1993, the Richmond Community Schools rectified matters by approving an 1884-style diploma for him, making him the high school’s most famous graduate.

Orville didn’t attend his senior year of high school to devote full time to his printing business.

At the turn of the century a high school diploma was not considered that important. Only 8% of 14-17 year-olds attended high school as most formal education ended with elementary school.

The influence of their parents had a powerful influence on their later achievements. Wilbur, the reflective visionary, and Orville, the impulsive mechanic/engineer, had different but complementary talents that were critical to inventing powered flight. Orville once told a friend, “In a different kind of environment our curiosity might have been nipped long before it could have borne fruit.”

Following Wilbur’s success at Les Hunaudiere and Camp d’Auvours near Le Mans, he moved his flying activities to the elite resort town of Pau on January 14, 1909. The weather was warmer and the flying field was much better. His major task was to train three Frenchmen to fly the airplane now that he had satisfied the airplane’s performance requirements for the French syndicate who planned to build Wright airplanes in France. He was not in Pau to set any flying records although he wowed everybody who saw him fly in Pau.

He was provided a level unfenced field almost a mile square known as Pont Long located eight miles south of Pau with a fine view of the Pyrenees Mountains. The virtual absence of trees allowed Wilbur the luxury to fly large circuits of three to four miles and not stray too far from his hangar-shed.

The shed at Pont Long was much better that the two he had at Le Mans. It was large enough that he didn’t have to dissemble the Flyer’s tail frame and front rudder every time it entered or left the shed. His living quarters were much nicer and he had his meals provided by a French chef selected by the mayor. He also had a special telephone line to Pau where Orville and Katharine were staying in a fancy hotel.

Wilbur for the first time wore a good-looking black leather motorcyclist’s jacket for flying in cold weather. It was the first leather aviation jacket.

His three student pilots were balloonist Paul Tissandier, Captain Paul Lucas-Girardville and Count Charles de Lambert. Tissandier would later be the first to fly around the Eiffel Tower.

This is how the New York Herald described his first flight at Pau on February 3, 1909:

“A constant stream of automobiles bound for the flying field was reported everywhere after one o’clock this afternoon,.. as Mr. Wilbur Wright’s preparations came to an end today and it was believed that he would make his first flight.

Early comers, however, saw nothing to indicate that a flight was being prepared, the only change being a derrick for weights in position and a long metal rail over which Mr. Wright was continually walking, testing and examining the joints. A wind from the west began to blow, a strange event in Pau, and clouds began to gather.

Several people had left when, without notice, the doors of the aeroplane shed opened slowly and a weird structure, the Wright aeroplane, came out. Its motor is a new one, made in Paris on Mr. Wright’s design. Mr. Wilbur Wright examined it with loving care, Mr. Orville Wright assisting. Miss Wright was in the crowd, looking hardly at all nervous.

Suddenly the propellers began to whirl round at a great rate. After another careful examination the Wrights announced that the motor was working well. The engine was stopped and the structure was wheeled out in front of the spectators to the starting rail. It took some time to get the machine properly balanced and to hoist the counterweight, which is about three hundred pounds heavier than that used in America.

Again the curious propeller whizzed round, and Mr. Wilbur Wright took his seat, but descended to oil another bearing. It had been thought that Mr. Paul Tissandier would go up with the aviator, but he stayed on the ground directing the men. Dr. Speakman, official timekeeper of the Aero Club took his stand by the derrick, a stopwatch in hand.

Are you ready?

Up to this there had been quite a loud hum of conversation from the people assembled, but now a hush fell on the assembly, a pause almost of dread.

Let’s go!

The weights fell, and with whirling propellers the fairylike machine tore along the rail to the end by the turn of one lever, and at twelve minutes past four it soared into the air, turning and wheeling up and down as graceful as an albatross, showing the perfect command which the aviator had over every movement and every part of the machine. It had an undulating movement of its own.

Activated by these wonderful levers, the aeroplane glided down to the ground, skimmed over it, then went up forty meters, down again, and so on. As it turned and the movement of the wings prevented the sound of the motor from being heard. All thought the machine had stopped, and an “Oh!” was heard from the whole crowd, which was fascinated by the maneuver, but there was no pause, as the aviator, wheeling on a frightfully acute angle, again circled.

And in this way he seemed to describe a couple of circles and something like a figure eight, and for a second or two the machine seemed to rest motorless against the white line of the Pyrenees. The scene was very beautiful.

Then Mr. Wright came to the ground just beside the starting point, having been in the air just under six minutes.

Mr. Wright traveled at an estimated speed of sixty-five kilometers an hour. He received a great ovation on coming down, and at twelve minutes to five again left the ground. This time he attained a far higher elevation, but there was no height balloons and no measures of length, it is difficult to give an accurate estimate.

He went away to the northwest, turned with consummate ease and came over the heads of the crowd, soaring away to the east over the crowd of automobilists, then back again toward the Aero Park and over it at a tremendous elevation, the machine looking like a thing of life.

Then, to show his power, Mr. Wright made several circles with an extremely small radius, the aeroplane heeling over to an angle of forty-five degrees, after which it descended, coming down as gently as any bird. He spent more than five minutes in the air.

The Mayor congratulated Miss Wright gracefully on the marvelous skill of her brother, and the universal expression was one of wonder at the immense reserve of power Mr. Wright possesses. He never seemed to exert himself. It was the most marvelous performance ever seen at Pau.”

New students who were being trained to fly first flew as a passenger. The student first learned to manipulate the horizontal front rudder (elevator) in straight-line flight. Then he was allowed to manipulate the warping and rudder control stick located between the two seats. Wilbur would sit with his hands on his knees ready to react to any mistakes.

Wilbur explained the operation of the lever located between the seats to a journalist:

“You see by moving this lever forward, you warp the right wing downward into a greater angle of incidence and lessen the angle of the opposite wing. That throws a greater resistance on this side, and he pointed to the end of the right wing. It tends to turn the machine, but when I move this lever forward, see, the rear rudder (vertical tail) moves to the left and counters any turning effect. The wings are warped with a fore and aft movement, and with the same hand the top of this lever can be bent to the right or left and the rear rudder turned to steer in a corresponding direction. When desired, by bending over this lever to the right or left, the rudder can be worked independently of the wing warping.”

Student pilots were designed either right-handed or left-handed pilots. The pilots trained by Wilbur (or Orville) sat on the right and learned to manipulate the wing warping rudder lever, located between the two seats, with their left hand. These were called left-handed pilots.

When a left-handed pilot trained another pilot, the student sat in the seat at the left and learned to manipulate the lever with his right hand and was therefore known as a right-handed pilot.

Orville once attempted to fly a Wright machine as a left-handed pilot, that is sitting in the seat at the right and manipulating the wing warping-rudder stick with his left hand. He said, “that was the wildest flight of my life. I never again attempted to pilot using the let-hand controls.”

Wilbur missed his family and convinced Orville and Katharine to visit him in France. They joined Wilbur in Pau after first spending two days in Paris. They almost didn’t make it to Pau because they were involved in a serious train wreck thirty miles outside of Pau. The express train they were on collided with a slow local train. Two passengers were killed and many injured. Fortunately Orville and Katharine both escaped with no injuries.

Many famous people came to watch Wilbur fly at Pau. One of these was King Alfonso XIII of Spain. He was greatly interested in the Flyer and asked all kinds of questions of Wilbur. He didn’t fly, although he greatly wanted to, because his wife and senior advisors told him not to.

Katharine later heard about it and commented that King Alfonso was a “good husband” for keeping his promise to his wife that he would not fly.

That didn’t stop Katharine from flying. Just as night was beginning to fall on February 15, she flew with Wilbur for seven minutes and four seconds. That was the first flight she had ever been on. On March 17 she flew again for 12 minutes 22 seconds. This time it was in front of King Edward VII on one of the two flights that he observed. He vigorously waved his hat and cheered as they flew by the stands. He proclaimed that she was the “ideal American.”

Katharine made a big impression on everyone and some of what they wrote about her was exaggerated. Such as, she helped her brothers financially and solved difficult mathematical problems for them. She exclaimed, “I did no pioneer work in connection with the invention of the airplane.”

Wilbur was also subjected to false statements. He was named co-respondent in a divorce suit filed by a lieutenant in the French Army. It turned out that a newspaper reporter substituted Wilbur’s name for the real person in order to get publicity.

The day before Wilbur made his final flight at Pont-Long, Tissandier and de Lambert each made solo flights of more than 20 minutes each. These flights served to silence the skeptics who claimed that you had to have acrobatic ability to fly the Wright machine.

Wilbur made his last flight at Pont-Long on March 20 and then headed for Rome where he had accepted an offer of $10,000 from the Aeronautical Society of Rome for a Flyer and the training of a pilot to fly it.

He made sixty-four flights during his stay at Pau. Some of his flights were recorded on movie film; the first films ever made of Wilbur flying.

The airfield site at Pont Long is still used today as the airport for Pau.

Wilbur gave the four-year old Flyer he flew at Pau to Lazare Weiller and members of the French syndicate. He had a new machine shipped from Dayton that he forwarded on to his next stop in Rome.

The following article described a day of work in the life of the Wright Brothers as they prepared for their Army test flights as it appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Star in July 1909:

They put their aeroplane together at Fort Myer to the tune of the “Traumerie.” It’s a sad, sweet old tune by Robert Schumann, its name in English means “Dreaming.”

“Charlie (Taylor), where’s the sled hinges?” asks Wilbur in the little shed at Fort Myer.

“There they are,” says Charley, the Wright mechanic.

“Not enough. Ought to have lots of those.” For a minute he looks tired with Charlie. Then he begins to whistle “Traumerie.” And then he becomes gentle again.

He is putting one of those long sled runners on the plane. It is necessary to bore some holes in it. He gets the drill and sits on the floor, with the runner beneath him. It’s an awful hot day. The suit he got in France is of heavy cloth; his funny, foreign shoes squeak with the heat, when he bends.

He drills and whistles the dreaming song.

Orville is on the other side of the workshop, pulling at the lever that twists the planes. At least they’re right. Then he, too, begins to whistle: “Our life is like a busy day.”

Pretty soon Charlie that has been filling a piece at the bench finishes his job. He bends down to examine it carefully, and he takes up the tune:

“When evening comes we look and wonder what our toil has done.” They are all three whistling it.

Then Lieutenant Lahm, the aeronaut of the United States army signal corps, enters the shed. He has a book in which he writes in a very mysterious fashion every now and then.

The Wrights shake hands with him and then go on about their work and their whistling.

Pretty soon Lahm begins to whistle the same air. He stops only when he writes in his mysterious book.

“Charles where’s the center punch?”

“Well, I brought one. It’s somewhere,” says Charles.

“Oh, all right. Here it is. Never mind.” Says Wilbur.

Punch. Punch. Punch. He is marking three holes in the hinge that will fit on the rudder.

Suddenly he stops, goes over to a corner of the shed and gets a small lard pail. He is going for water. There’s a little spring in the rear of the shed. Lots of folks would have had spring water with ice, sent out to them from the city, if they were in the places of the Wright Brothers. But that’s not their way.

Out in the hot sun he goes. Its rays fairly gleam on his bald head. You’d hardly think there in the sunlight, that the laurels of the civilized world are resting on the head of that man with the lard pail – that man who wades through the weeds and whistles as he goes, “The Traumerie.”

“And in our sleeping, dream the sweeter for the vic’tries we have won,” he whistles as he re-enters the shed.

“Oh, good,” exclaims Orville.

He buries his face in the pail. Charlie, wiping his hands on his trousers, comes over and waits until Orville’s face emerges from the lard pail – this face that is known to the whole civilized world.

Its Charlie’s turn.

Orville wheels about to his job and his tune. He’s tinkering with the engine now. Charlie drinks.

Wilbur stands by.

Charlie hands him the pail and goes back to his bench.

And Wilbur’s gleaming dome rises above the shining tin pail, as he pours into his charmed person not less than a pint of water.

Then he gets back to work.

And it isn’t long until they’re all three whistling again. And working. And dreaming, as all the rest of the world is dreaming, of the day when mankind shall be at home in the air.

“Sure that works easy enough?” Wilbur asks Orville. “Better try that lever to see.”

“No it doesn’t,” says Orville, as the planes, in warping fairly squeak.

The rest of the forenoon Orville, who is scheduled to make the flights, works at the warping apparatus.

You see, when a man is going to risk his life in a machine he wants to know how the machine is put together. He’s willing to get his hands pretty horny and dirty in getting things just right.

Noon Arrives.

“For goodness sake, when do we eat?” asks Orville.

Wilbur, who is puttering contemplatively with a hinge, stops whistling and says:

“Well, we might as well go now.”

So off they go across the hot, weedy, clayey testing grounds. No automobiles for them. They wait for the streetcar. It takes them two miles across the Potomac River from Virginia to Georgetown, which is part of Washington. And here, in a little outskirts restaurant they have ham and eggs and buttermilk.

The man who gets to the cashier first pays the bill, and then they hustle back to the shop, where all the afternoon they work the lever, the drill and hammer.

Yes, that machine will be perfect when they make the real fly before Uncle Sam’s scrutinizing eyes.

Orville and Wilbur hadn’t flown since 1905. Now they were returning to Kitty Hawk for practice and renewing their pilot skills.

They had finally secured contacts to sell their airplane. One was with a French syndicate and the other was with the U.S. Army. In 1905 they decided not to fly again unless they secured a contract for their airplane. As luck would have it they secured two contracts requiring demonstration flights at the same time – one at Ft. Myer and the other in France.

They shipped a modified 1905 Flyer to Kitty Hawk on April 4, 1908 and unpacked and assembled the machine at Kitty Hawk on April 27. The modified Flyer had two upright seats and an improvised control system to accommodate the design change.

They flew for the first time on May 6 averaging 41-mph over a distance of 1008 feet.

The Wrights wanted privacy, but the press found out about their return to Kitty Hawk and a number of newspapers had reporters there, including the New York Herald, New York American, London Daily Mail and Colliers Weekly.

Several of the reporters tried to hide their presence so as not to spook the Wrights, but they didn’t fool them.

Here is one of the news accounts of the Wright flights that had a byline of Manteo, May 11 and appeared in the May 12 edition of the Chicago Record-Herald.

“In flying-machine flights at Kill Devil Hill today the Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, made long gains over distances heretofore flown. The longest flight today, the distance being computed by the telegraph poles of the United States weather bureau, was two and seven-sixteenth miles, almost a mile in excess of their best record previous to today.

Starting from the foot of Kill Devil Hill at 9:36 o’clock this morning the machine did not again touch ground for three minutes and seven seconds, making the two and seven-sixteenths miles. Its course was directed north, almost parallel with the beach for a mile and three-eighths, then it was turned west, passing around a sand hill for five-sixteenths of a mile, after which it circled southwest back toward the starting point for three-fourths of a mile.

It was then made to light easily on the ground, the average time by the machine on the flights computed at 46.774 miles an hour.

Comment: It’s interesting that the reporters, hiding a distance from the Wright camp, used telephone poles to estimate distance and then calculated speed to a three decimal point accuracy.

At no time was the machine more than twenty feet above the ground, the only rises in its course being taken to avoid sand hills.

Imagine a noisy reaper flying through the air, with a rising and falling motion similar to that of a bird, and a fair picture of the Wright brothers’ flying machine in action is obtained.

Another flight made today was of two and one-sixteenth miles. The machine pursued the same course on this flight as it did before, until it reached the point of last turning in the previous flight. Whether from design or accident, the machine kept straight ahead when it reached the point, and when it had passed it three-eighths of a mile and was approaching a body of water it was made to light easily.

The machine moved slowly in this flight, taking three minutes and fifty seconds to make the distance, or at the rate of 32.281 miles an hour. Another flight of a mile in length and several shorter were also made.

After the machine lights it has to be rolled back to the rail before it can be started again. To do this it is placed on a pair of wheels, and, with its engine in action, it almost forces itself along.

The Wright brothers guard their machine with the utmost care. They will not operate in sight of a stranger, if they know it.

A result of these trips the brothers are confident that their aerial locomotive will carry them as great a distance as 500 miles and easily at a speed of forty miles an hour.

They believe in fact that the only limit to the distance will depend upon the duration of the supply of gasoline in the engine and that they could have gone as high as the clouds today, had they been so disposed.

Comment: I wonder where the 500-mile figure came from?

It was 10:30 o’clock this morning when the brothers were ready for the flight. The weather conditions were favorable, a lively breeze from twenty to twenty-five miles an hour blowing.

First the airship was placed on a single-track railway about 300 feet long and run along the rails for the purpose of getting the engine up to speed, Orville Wright, the operator, and his brother, both lying flat on their faces in order to give less resistance to the wind.

Comment: The Flyer had vertical seats so neither Orville or Wilbur would be lying flat, nor did they fly together at the same time at Kitty Hawk. They did take up their first passenger, Charlie Furnas of Dayton, Ohio.

While this was being done the machine was held by a sort of trap. Rapidly gaining momentum until it had reached a velocity of about twenty-five miles an hour, the car was then released by springing of this trap and the huge aeroplane sprang aloft to the accompaniment of a chorus of cheers from the few spectators.

When about one-quarter of a mile from the starting point the engine was shut off and the vessel sank gently to the ground.” (End of Article)

The Wrights flew a total of 22 flights between May 6 and May 14.

On May 23, the Scientific American reported on the Wright Flights at Kitty Hawk and admitted for the first time that “In view of these semi-public demonstrations, there can be no further doubt of the claims made by the brothers as to their ability to fly.”

Wilbur left Kitty Hawk for France by way of New York on May 17.

Orville left for Dayton by way of Ft. Myer on May 23. At Ft. Myer he inspected the grounds he would be flying from for the U.S. Army trials.