Though the brothers continued to dream of flying, they were not the kind of lads who spent all their time in dreaming. They made kites which flew a little better and a little higher than those made by the other boys in the neighborhood. They built a press to print their own little newspaper, and they dabbled in woodcuts. To carve out porch posts for their father’s home they built an eight-foot wood-turning lathe. Indeed, they were the sort of boys who caused the neighbors to say, “What will they think of next?”
Small town pastors in the early 1890’s did not receive princely salaries. The brothers knew that if they ever wanted to see their dreams come true they must earn their own capital. In the early nineties America was in the midst of the bicycle craze. Everyone who could possibly afford to do so owned a bicycle of some sort and belonged to a cycle club. Being mechanically minded, the brothers did the logical thing. They set themselves up in a small bicycle shop in Dayton, next door to their home.
The bicycle shop in Dayton prospered, for the brothers were careful and expert mechanics, and cyclists in need of repairs made their way to the Wright Brothers’ shop.
The two boys who had never forgotten the little toy helicopter which their father had given them years before, were Orville and Wilbur Wright. Although their bicycle shop prospered the brothers continued to dream of flying. Unlike others, who, all over the world, had been dreaming of the same thing, the dreams of the Wright Brothers persisted. They read everything that had been written about experiments in flying. Every spare moment of their time was spent in thinking about flight.
Soon after Octave Chanute’s book Progress of Flying Machines was published in 1894, Orville and Wilbur Wright read a copy. Although they had long discussed the idea of flight, it was not until they read Chanute’s book that they were able to consider seriously any experiments of their own.
Chanute’s book did not give the answers to the questions in the minds of the Wright Brothers. It was primarily a record of man’s attempts to fly and of his failures. However, it served its purpose because it created many more questions in the minds of Orville and Wilbur Wright. They wrote to Chanute for further information on what man had to do in order to fly.
The noted scientist answered the questions of the Wright Brothers as best he could and sent them a set of tables derived from his studies of air pressure in relation to wing surfaces. The Wrights saw in these figures a possible clue to the mysteries of flight, and in 1900 they built an experimental glider based on the information they had received from Chanute. What followed this first glider experiment is the key to the problem of why the Wright Brothers eventually succeeded while other men failed. When the glider they constructed on the principle of the then most perfect data failed to fly, they were capable of realizing that the scientific research—and not their own efforts—had been at fault.
