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.