An idea is born
The shop of the Wright Cycle Company on West Third Street in Dayton ... birthplace of the aeroplane.
The Wright brothers sprang from pioneers who settled Dayton when the Ohio country was young. Their father, the Reverend Milton Wright, became a bishop of the United Brethren Church. His vocation necessitated frequent changes of residence. Thus it came about that Wilbur was born April 16, 1867, on a farm eight miles from Newcastle, Indiana, while Orville was born in a house at 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton. This house was the Wright home for more than forty years.
From earliest childhood, the boys were mechanically minded. They had both the inclination and the aptitude for creative work. The pioneering urge and the gift of original thinking were theirs.
An issue of the “West Side News,” an early Wright venture.
One day the Bishop came home from a short trip, bringing the children a present. He held something in his hands and then tossed it toward them. It was a toy helicopter. Instead of flopping to the floor, it ascended to the ceiling where it fluttered before it fell. That helicopter set up a milepost in the lives of the Wright boys. The idea of their future conquest of the air, in all likelihood, was born then and there.
Wilbur Wright in the bicycle shop, 1897.
Orville Wright, in white shirt, at work in shop.
At an early age they began to fly kites. They became interested successively in wood cuts, printing and photography. The urge for invention was strong in them. Wilbur got a job folding the entire issue of an eight-page church paper. When he found the handwork tiring and tedious, he designed and built a machine that did the folding.
The house on Hawthorn Street, home of the Wrights for 40 years and now re-erected in Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
Orville was no less enterprising. When he was 15, he entered into a partnership with Ed Sines, a neighbor boy, and launched the printing firm of Sines and Wright. The plant was located in a corner of the Sines kitchen. One of their first ventures was to print a little paper called “The Midget.”
One of the Wrights’ first efforts to measure the effect of air pressure was this horizontal bicycle wheel mounted on one of their own bicycles and equipped with two metal vanes. This bicycle was placed in the Park through the co-operation of the family of the late Frank Miller, former Superintendent of Dayton Schools.
Later Orville started a weekly newspaper called the “West Side News.” Wilbur joined him as an editorial writer. These publications and others which followed were printed on a press which the Wright boys designed and built.
In 1892 came the enterprise that was to provide the setting for, and the approach to, the supreme adventure with which the names of the Wright brothers are associated. The boys became absorbed in bicycles. Orville became interested in track racing and participated in several events. In their enthusiasm the boys decided to go into the bicycle business. After embarking on bicycle selling they discovered they must have a repair shop. Punctures provided the bulk of their business, with free air as a side issue. The first shop of what became the Wright Cycle Company was at 1005 West Third Street.
Business increased to such an extent that the Wrights moved to South Williams Street. Here they began to manufacture bicycles. Their first model was called the Van Cleve, named after one of their pioneer Dayton ancestors. Continued expansion of the business necessitated a move to 1127 West Third Street. This was the shop linked with the birth and development of aviation. It was here that Wilbur and Orville not only dreamed of flying but practically built the first plane.
A hint of what the future had in store came one day when the brothers were discussing what was then the new-fangled horseless carriage. Since it was an original idea, it appealed to them. Orville suggested that they might engage in the automobile business. “No,” replied Wilbur, “you’d be tackling the impossible. Why, it would be easier to build a flying machine.”
A replica of the Wrights’ original wind tunnel which secured its pressure from a fan mounted on the shaft of an old grinding wheel.
The first active interest in flying that the Wrights displayed developed in 1895 when they read about the glider experiments being carried out by Otto Lilienthal in Germany. They now began to read everything they could lay hands on that bore on the attempts of man to fly, going back to the days of the great Leonardo da Vinci. They wrote to the Smithsonian Institution for a list of books on the subject. The germ of flying now entered their systems, never to be eradicated.
The Wrights went thoroughly into the problem of gliders. After Lilienthal had been killed while gliding, the brothers discovered that neither he nor any other man who glided had an adequate method of insuring lateral balance. In seeking the solution to this problem, Orville worked out a theory for the operation to vary the inclination of sections of the wings, thereby obtaining force for restoring balance. Thus he hit upon a fundamental principle which became a claim in the original Wright patent.
One of the most valued possessions of the Wrights, a balance made of hacksaw blades. With this balance they evolved their own tables of air pressure which eventually enabled them to fly. The original balance is in Franklin Institute, Philadelphia; this replica is in Wright Hall, Carillon Park.
Many glider flights at Kitty Hawk preceded the first attempt to fly in a power-driven plane. Here the Wrights are flying a glider as a kite, controlling it from the ground. Later flights were made in man-carrying gliders.
The brothers now began to study wing structure, but hit upon many difficulties. A simple incident set them on the right track. In selling a customer an inner tube for a tire, Wilbur had taken the tube from the pasteboard box and was idly twisting the box back and forth as he talked to the customer. In doing so he noticed that although the vertical sides remained rigid at the ends, the top and bottom sides could be twisted so that they made different angles at the opposite ends. He immediately wondered why the wings of a gliding machine could not be warped from one end to the other in this same way. In this way the wings could be put at a greater angle at one side than the other and there would be no structural weakness. Wilbur explained the plan to Orville and it seemed so satisfactory that they adopted it for their gliders.
The Wrights were now glider-conscious. They built a bi-plane kite with a new system of controls. In 1900 the brothers constructed a man-carrying glider. In order to get practice in operation, they decided to fly it first as a kite. For kite flying they required flat, open country; and for gliding, sand hills free from trees or shrubs were necessary. Favorable winds were also needed.
From reports received from the Weather Bureau in Washington, the Wrights learned that a place named Kitty Hawk in North Carolina seemed to meet all requirements. So they wrote to the man in charge of the weather station there for further information. On his and other data, the brothers came to the conclusion that Kitty Hawk was suitable for experiments. What was then a tiny spot on the map was to become, in time, a center of world interest.
Diary of Orville Wright, showing page recording the first successful flight.
Map of Kitty Hawk area.