The Wrights had now reached a point where they felt that they were ready to apply motive power, rise like a bird from the earth and direct their course through the air. A new machine was built with two planes, each six feet six inches wide and measuring forty feet from tip to tip. The planes were arranged one directly above the other with an intervening space of six feet. An elevating rudder of two horizontal planes ten feet in front of the machine, and a rudder of two vertical planes about six feet long and one foot apart in the rear of the machine were under control by levers close to the hands of the pilot, who, prostrate on the lower large plane, directed the course up or down, to the right or left at will. But the most remarkable features of all were the gasoline engine that was to give motive power and the propellers by which that power was to move the machine in its flight through the air. The mechanism, the result of patient study and arduous labor, had been perfected in the little shop at Dayton and had been brought to the barren sand coast of North Carolina for its first practical test. The engine, which developed sixteen horse power, was connected by chains with the two propellers, each eight feet in diameter at the rear of the biplane. The total weight was 750 pounds.
To give the machine a “start” it was driven rapidly along an iron rail by a cable attached to a weight of one ton suspended at the top of a derrick. When everything was at last in readiness, the engine was started, the propellers were set in rapid motion, the weight at the top of the derrick was released, the biplane was driven rapidly forward, and lo! bearing a man, it skimmed over the sand dunes! It continued only eleven seconds but landed without injury to pilot or machine. A small beginning indeed, but it proved the practicability of man flight and ushered in the era of aviation. A few days earlier in the same month on the banks of the Potomac a crowd of witnesses saw with keen disappointment the failure of Professor Langley’s flying machine, and as they turned away said mentally and not a few of them audibly, “Impracticable!” “It can’t be done.” On the sand near Kitty Hawk, in the presence only of the inventors and five others, life savers and fishermen from Kill Devil Hill Station near by, fortune rewarded two brothers unknown to the world and they achieved what had long been regarded as impracticable and impossible. Professor Langley worked long and patiently on his models and was very properly given $50,000 by the government to aid in an enterprise that was to give man dominion of the air. The Wright brothers with the same faith and unflagging zeal worked secretly in their little shop at Dayton without financial assistance and out of their small earnings conducted experiments on the Carolina coast, doing their own cooking to lighten expenses, and solved the problem that had thwarted the inventive genius of the world. No crowds, appreciating the significance of the event were present to applaud, nor did the brothers exult over the achievement. It was indeed only what they had confidently expected.
On the day of their initial success two other nights of slightly longer duration were made. The fourth flight continued fifty-nine seconds, almost a minute, and extended over a distance of 853 feet. The machine was then carried back to camp. In an unguarded moment it was caught by a gust of wind, rolled violently over the ground and was partially wrecked. But what mattered the loss? For the first time in the history of the world a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in free flight, had sailed forward on a level course without reduction of speed and had landed without being wrecked.
[Machine Balanced by Warping of Planes]
The Wrights found one of the greatest difficulties to be overcome was the balancing of their machine. This was only measurably and unsatisfactorily accomplished by the horizontal rudder. They began to study the flight of soaring birds for a solution of the difficulty. They found that the hawk, the eagle and the gull maintained a horizontal position by a slight, almost imperceptible upward or downward bending of the extreme tips of their wings. They then began experiments with slightly flexible planes that could be bent or warped at will by the pilot. This was one of their most important and original contributions to the problem of aviation, and it gave the pilot in a marked degree control of his machine. The scientific arching of the planes to give them the maximum lifting effect was also the result of their investigations.
They now removed the field of experiment to Hoffman Prairie near Dayton where at first they met with indifferent success. They invited friends and reporters from their home city to witness a flight, but the machine acted badly in the presence of company. While the spectators were not favorably impressed the inventors were in no wise discouraged. Their perseverance was later rewarded in 1904 by a flight of three miles in five minutes and twenty-seven seconds. The year following a flight of 24.20 miles was made in thirty-eight minutes, thirteen seconds, at heights of seventy-five to one hundred feet. These attracted small attention. The inventors fully satisfied with their success and working industriously to perfect their machine were also safeguarding the results of their labors by carefully patenting every device that helped them to the goal of practical aviation. While Europe was applauding the achievements of the intrepid and wealthy Brazilian, Santos-Dumont, who made public flights near Paris, the world was practically unaware of the greater achievements of the Wright brothers a year earlier. Newspaper accounts of their flights were received with a degree of incredulity, but the indifference of the public was favorable to the modest brothers who with tireless energy and slender means triumphed over difficulty after difficulty as they moved toward the larger success that they ardently desired and the fame that they sought not.
[Newspaper Reports Verified]
In 1907 the United States Government asked for bids for a flying machine that would carry two men, remain in the air an hour and make a cross-country flight of forty miles an hour. The Wright brothers entered into a contract to build such a machine. This fact and rumors of their success that reached the large cities from time to time led a party of newspaper reporters to organize themselves into a spying party to trace the Wrights to their secret retreat and verify the claims made in their behalf or publish the deception to the public. After a long and tedious journey from Norfolk they finally sighted the rude hut of these birdmen. They then secreted themselves until they were rewarded with evidence that the reports were true and promptly announced to the world that these quiet men had actually solved the problem of aerial flight.
[Trial Flights at Fort Meyer]
In 1908 Orville Wright began trial flights at Fort Meyer preliminary to the tests required by the government contracts. A record flight was made in June. The morning was still and beautiful; the leaves hung motionless on the great plane trees of Washington as Orville Wright and August Post, Secretary of the Aero Club of America left the city about six o’clock and proceeded by way of Georgetown to Fort Meyer where trial flights were to be made with the biplane. It was taken from its shed and placed on the starting rail. The weights were lifted into position, the engine started, the propellers set in rapid motion and all was in readiness for starting. Only a few persons were in sight, including a squad of soldiers who were cleaning the guns of a field battery. Mr. Wright took his place on the machine. At a signal the weights were released, it was drawn forward, and rising gracefully at the end of the rail gradually ascended in a circuitous course upward. Mr. Post kept time and marked circuits on the back of an envelope. Round and round went the machine, rising higher and higher. After a little the spectators realized that a record flight was in progress. Ten--twenty minutes passed. Higher and higher circled the aeroplane. Now it has been aloft on wing for half an hour! The spectators stand rigid and look upward. Mr. Taylor, chief mechanic, in almost breathless interest exclaims, “Don’t make a motion. If you do he’ll come down.”