How It Flies; or, The Conquest of the Air / The Story of Man's Endeavors to Fly and of the Inventions by Which He Has Succeeded

by Richard Ferris

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS.

The Wright Brothers have so systematically linked their individual personalities in all their work, in private no less than in public, that the brief life story to be told here is but one for them both. In fact, until Wilbur went to France in 1908, and Orville to Washington, the nearest approach to a separation is illustrated by a historic remark of Wilbur’s to an acquaintance in Dayton, one afternoon: “Orville flew 21 miles yesterday; I am going to beat that to-day.” And he did—by 3 miles.

Their early life in their home town of Dayton, Ohio, was unmarked by significant incident. They were interested in bicycles, and at length went into the business of repairing and selling these machines.

Their attention seems to have been strongly turned to the subject of human flight by the death of Lilienthal in August, 1896, at which time the press published some of the results of his experiments. A magazine article by Octave Chanute, himself an experimenter with gliders, led to correspondence with him, and the Wrights began a series of similar investigations with models of their own building.

By 1900 they had succeeded in flying a large glider by running with a string, as with a kite, and in the following year they had made some flights on their gliders, of which they had several of differing types. For two years the Wrights studied and tested and disproved nearly every formula laid down by scientific works for the relations of gravity to air, and finally gave themselves up to discovering by actual trial what the true conditions were, and to the improvement of their gliders accordingly. Meanwhile they continued their constant personal practice in the air.

The most of this experimental work was done at Kitty Hawk, N. C.; for the reason that there the winds blow more uniformly than at any other place in the United States, and the great sand dunes there gave the Wrights the needed elevation from which to leap into the wind with their gliders. Consequently, when at last they were ready to try a machine driven by a motor, it was at this secluded spot that the first flights ever made by man with a heavier-than-air machine took place. On December 17, 1903, their first machine left the ground under its own power, and remained in the air for twelve seconds. From this time on progress was even slower than before, on account of the complications added by the motive power; but by the time another year had passed they were making flights which lasted five minutes, and had their machine in such control that they could fly in a circle and make a safe landing within a few feet of the spot designated.

Turpin, Taylor, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Brookins, and Johnstone discussing the merits of the Wright machine.

On the 5th of October, 1905, Wilbur Wright made his historic flight of 24 miles at Dayton, Ohio, beating the record of Orville, made the day before, of 21 miles. The average speed of these flights was 38 miles an hour. No contention as to the priority of the device known as wing-warping can ever set aside the fact that these long practical flights were made more than a year before any other man had flown 500 feet, or had remained in the air half a minute, with a heavier-than-air machine driven by power.

The Wrights are now at the head of one of the largest aeroplane manufactories in the world, and devote the larger part of their time to research work in the line of the navigation of the air.