Orville Wright

“ The names of these two brothers who wrote themselves indelibly into history, were Wilbur and Orville Wright.
The story of the Wright brothers is an inspiring narrative of success. Wilbur and Orville combined to a rare degree the searching intelligence of the scientist, the ability to visualize of the inventor, and the practical craftsmanship of the builder. In addition they had great personal courage.
The Wright brothers were by no means the first who sought the secret of flight. Particularly in Europe, able men had delved deep and risked much in the effort to fly like a bird. ”

“ Abbot expressed the wish that they might come to an agreement by which the Kitty Hawk plane could be returned to America and placed under the care of the Smithsonian in the National Museum. Orville Wright said that this could easily be done. All that he asked for, he said, was a correction in the Smithsonian publications of the false and misleading statements previously made in those publications. Dr. Abbot expressed a willingness to do so, provided this could be accomplished without injuring the reputation of his predecessor or the prestige of the Institution. ”

“ And as318 Orville Wright once said he had discovered, “Silent truth cannot withstand error aided by continued propaganda.”
After the exchange of letters with Chief Justice Taft, Orville Wright still delayed sending the Kitty Hawk plane to England. There was nothing impetuous about what he did. Not until early in 1928, or fourteen years after the fraudulent tests at Hammondsport, with the Smithsonian still showing no intention to correct its false record of those flights, did he send the machine to the Science Museum at South Kensington. ”

“ Northcliffe, after his meeting with the Wrights at Pau, became one of their most enthusiastic supporters in England.
Long afterward, he publicly made this comment:
“I never knew more simple, unaffected people than Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine. After the Wrights had been in Europe a few weeks they became world heroes, and when they went to Pau their demonstrations were visited by thousands of people from all parts of Europe—by kings and lesser men, but I don’t think the excitement and interest produced by their extraordinary feat had any effect on them at all.” ”

“ Not long afterward, one of those who had overheard that conversation was in Dayton, Ohio, and inquired of his friend Orville Wright: “Do you think the expectation of profit is the main incentive to inventors?”
Orville Wright didn’t think so. He doubted if Alexander Graham Bell expected to make much out of the telephone. And it seemed to him unlikely that Edison4 started out with the idea of making money. Certainly, he said, Steinmetz had little interest in financial reward. ”

“ Orville Wright called attention to them in an affidavit in 1915 in the Wright-Curtiss lawsuit. One way to learn most of the facts is astonishingly simple. All that is necessary to any observer who knows what to look for is to make careful comparisons of the Smithsonian photographs of the original Langley machine with Smithsonian photographs of the machine tested at Hammondsport. ”

“ The Wrights decided that Wilbur should go to France to make the demonstrations there. Orville would stay in America to build the machine for the United States Government and test it at Fort Myer, near Washington. Wilbur did not return to Dayton from Kitty Hawk but went to New York where he sailed for Europe on May 21. ”

“ Orville, at the shop in Dayton, was a little alarmed about that part of the speech. What if something about their own work had been wrong and the figures compiled by various scientists should finally be proved correct? Certainly it was no small responsibility for anyone74 so little known as Wilbur or he to denounce publicly the work of eminent scientists, dignified by preservation in books long regarded as authoritative. It would be both presumptuous and risky to brand supposedly established facts as untrue unless the person doing so could be unassailably sure of his ground. ”

“ A common argument had been: “God didn’t intend man to fly. If he did, he would have given him a set of wings.”
It was the regret of his life to the Wrights’ friend, “Bill” Tate, that he missed witnessing that first flight. He had decided that “no one but a crazy man would attempt to fly in such a wind,” and made no effort to be there.
After preparing and eating their lunch, and then washing their dishes, Wilbur and Orville set out, about two o’clock that afternoon, to walk over to the Kitty Hawk weather station, four or five miles away, to send a telegram to their father. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Along in the early 1890’s, both Wilbur and Orville were likely to read any article they saw on a scientific subject, and to talk about it. Occasionally an article in a magazine that came to the Wright home dealt with attempts of man to fly. As time went on, such articles interested the brothers more and more. In 1895, both were impressed—perhaps more than they then realized—by a brief item they had come upon about the glider experiments, in Germany, by Otto Lilienthal. He had been gliding through the air, down the side of a hill, on a machine he had built. ”

“ Commercial companies were formed in France and Germany to manufacture Wright planes before the Wright Company was organized in the United States with Wilbur as president and Orville vice president. In financial affairs the Wrights were remarkably shrewd—a match for American and European businessmen. They grew wealthy as well as famous, but they were not happy as businessmen and looked forward to the time when they could retire to devote themselves again to scientific research. ”

“ Why, he asked himself, wouldn’t it be possible for the operator to vary the inclination of sections of the wings at the tips and thus obtain force for restoring balance from49 the difference in the lifts of the two opposite wing tips? That seems today an obvious enough idea, but no one had ever done anything about it before. Orville had hit on a fundamental principle. (Indeed, this principle later became the basic claim of the original Wright patent, and the claim was sustained, as covering the idea of the aileron control, in all countries where the Wright patents were adjudicated.) ”

“ The Wrights soon saw, however, that for two reasons this particular design did not provide a good structure for a gliding machine. First, with two-thirds of the entire weight of the machine and operator carried by the two shafts, the structure would be weak; and, second, with the ends of the wings free to turn about the shafts, there would not be enough rigidity for a machine that would have to be toted about.
Then one night, some five or six weeks later, Wilbur came home from the bicycle shop, to tell Orville enthusiastically of an idea he had hit upon. ”

“ On his return to Dayton, Orville opened a flying school at the same Huffman field14 the Wright brothers had used for their experiments in 1904–5. Here he trained A. L. Welsh and Duval LaChapelle. When Brookins arrived there from Montgomery, near the end of May, he took on the training of Ralph Johnstone and Frank T. Coffyn, besides completing the training of Hoxsey. Two others trained at the same field later in the year were Phil O. Parmalee and C. O. Turpin. ”

“ The negative was developed by Orville after his return to Dayton.
5 The Wrights carried 70 pounds of iron bars in many of the flights of 1904-’05, and could fly with less power than if that load had not been carried. Here is the explanation: The center of gravity of their machine was so far back of the center of pressure on the wings that an air pressure of 70 pounds was required on the top side of the horizontal elevator in front, to make the center of lift and center of gravity coincide. ”

“ Not long afterward Wilbur tried to build an improvement on that toy helicopter. If so small a device could fly, why not make a bigger one that could fly longer and higher? Orville was still too young to contribute much to the actual building of larger models, but he was keenly interested as Wilbur made several, each larger than the one preceding. To the brothers’ astonishment,9 they discovered, that the bigger the machine, the less it would fly ”

“ More than one man of wealth in Dayton has encouraged the belief that he financed them. One persistent story is that they raised money for their experiments by the sale of an Iowa farm in which they had an interest. The truth is that this farm, which had been deeded by their father to the four Wright brothers, was sold early in 1902 before Wilbur and Orville had even begun work on their power plane or spent much on their experiments. The sale was made at the request of their brother Reuchlin, and had no relation whatsoever to aviation. ”

“ Orville made this matter-of-fact entry in his diary: “After dinner we went to Kitty Hawk to send off telegram to M. W. While there we called on Capt. and Mrs. Hobbs, Dr. Cogswell and the station men.” Toward evening that day Bishop Milton Wright in Dayton received the telegram from his sons:
Success four flights Thursday morning all against twenty-one mile wind started from level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty-one miles longest 57 seconds inform press home Christmas. ”

“ The plane was shipped in crates from Dayton April 11, but had to be left for some time in a freight depot at Elizabeth City until the new shed was216 completed at Kitty Hawk. Both Orville and the plane reached there on April 25.
It might have been expected that with at least two governments now showing interest in the Wright plane, each of the brothers would have been besieged en route by reporters and others. But the general public, including reporters, still seemed disinclined to believe in human flight. ”

“ Model B, 285 Wright planes, prices of, 172–73, 184–85, 208, 211–12, 282 Wright records, 228–29, 238, 240, 263, 264, 281 Wright, Reuchlin, 22, 113 Wright, Wilbur NOTE: For joint activities with Orville, see above, Wright brothers. Birth, 22; boyhood enterprises, 7, 8–9, 12–13, 15; schooling, 23–24; illness, 26; joins O. in printing newspaper, 37–38; in bicycle business, 38–44; makes warping device for glider, 49–50; goes to Kitty Hawk, 58–72; makes Chicago address, 73–75 Goes to England, 196–97; Paris, 197–204; Berlin, 204–206; appears before U. S. Ordnance Board, and bids, 208 ”

“ One hot Saturday afternoon, when the College had holiday, Mr. Henry went to the railway station to inquire after an expected parcel of books. Saturday afternoon was no holiday for him. He had three private lessons to give in it. As he left the station, walking very fast to keep his time at Mrs. Gall's, a sharp, sudden pain seized upon him. He was leaning against the fence of the plantation, white and faint, when Sir Simon Orville passed.
"Why, bless me, what's to do?" exclaimed that hearty gentleman. "Have you been run over?" ”

“ I suppose you must eat, though you have done your best to kill a boy. Will you have some dinner? There's a beautiful couple of ducks."
"I can't stay, Uncle Simon: the Head Master ordered me back at once. Thank you all the same."
Sir Simon nodded, and Bertie set off back again; leaving Pond Place behind him, and the cherished pistols that had come altogether to grief.
Sir Simon Orville knew the hours at the college, and he timed his visit so as to catch Dr. Brabazon at the rising of afternoon school. ”

“ Paradyne. She folded her gloved hands one over the other, said a word or two in slighting disparagement of Mr. Henry, and then resolutely closed her lips. Evidently she had not yet forgiven the mistake which had brought them to Orville. George, as if reading her thoughts and struck with their injustice, glanced reproachfully at her as he turned to Sir Simon.
"Mr. Henry is very kind to me," said the boy: "he is kind to us all. Nobody knows how good he is. ”

“ Rage, in his hands, became peace; mountains of evil melted down to molehills; fierce recrimination gave place to hand-shaking. He did all so quietly, so pleasantly, so patiently! and, but for the under-current of feeling against him that was being always secretly fanned, he would have been an immense favourite. Putting aside the untoward events at its commencement, the term had been one of the most satisfactory on record.
Loftus and his brother, Trace, James Talbot, and Irby were spending the holidays at Pond Place. Sir Simon Orville generally had two of the boys, besides his nephews. ”

“ Mr. Henry shook his head with a smile: coaches-and-four don't always bring happiness with them, or drive their owners on the best road to it. "Could any one have been more bountiful than you, Sir Simon? You have—"
"Tush!" crossly interrupted Sir Simon. "Is it not my duty to do it, as Robert Trace cannot? 'Twould be a second fraud on my part if I didn't."
The allusion was this. Sir Simon Orville had hastened to announce his intention of refunding to Mrs. Paradyne, and with interest, the three thousand pounds her husband had put into the Liverpool firm, and which had been lost in the vortex. ”