The Wright brothers first became interested in flying machines after their father brought home a toy helicopter for his two youngest sons. Orville and Wilbur played with it until it broke, then proceeded to build their own. This passion simply grew and intensified over the years, helped along by their other inventions.
They first built a printing press(and published a newspaper for over a year). They repaired bicycles, then began to design
and build their own in their shop. They
used various bicycle parts for their “flyers” and with the bicycle repair shop,
were equipped to create their own tools and parts.
Ingenious
guys!
Of
course they did not have the distraction of wife and family, each a bachelor,
living with their father (a bishop) and younger sister Katherine in their
modest home in Ohio.
Their
sister would not let them give up - after one of their last unsuccessful attempts
at launching their glider and crashing, one of the brothers declared as they
were taking the train back home, that flying is an impossibility and would
never be resolved in this lifetime.
Katherine
would not hear of it and told them that if anyone could solve the problems they
were encountering, her brothers could and would.
She
was right. They did.
Of
course there were a few fundamentals concerning aerodynamics that they had to
figure out, namely the ability to steer and bank their craft. Once they had
their first success with their 1902 glider, the next step was to build an engine to power a
craft. It was their employee in their bicycle repair shop, Charlie Taylor, who built the engine.
Ideas
rarely spring from a vacuum, but typically grow based on the work of others who also make
it their life’s quest to understand and explain revolutionary ideas. And often it's the mistakes of others that lead one to the right path. The brothers drew on the work of other aviation pioneers like Chanute, Lilienthal (who died in one of his glider attempts), Langley and even Leonardo da Vinci.
So
how is it that two Ohio brothers came to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to conduct
their gliding experiments which would eventually help them solve the problem of
controlled flight?
The brothers contacted the Weather Bureau with four specific criteria they needed to be able to launch their gliders and asked for recommendations for places that were:
1) windy with sustained winds to 20mph
2) hilly to be able to launch their gliders
3)
had suitable ground for soft landings to minimize injury
and
4) fairly private and isolated from gawkers and the press
Kitty Hawk came up as the 6th place on the list, meeting all criteria yet close enough to travel to by train. Located on Carolina's Outer Banks, the area was remote, windy, with numerous hilly sand dunes and soft beach sand. The few folks who lived here came to know the brothers and also offered their help to launch the various gliders.
The brothers packed up their “flyers” into
crates and came here to spend months on end pushing each other off the dune in their gliders, as
they continued their quest for understanding flight. It took four years and more than 1,000 glider
flights for them to understand and figure out three challenges: lift, power,
and control. Their 1902 glider, successfully solved most of those issues and
set them on the path towards their 1903 first
powered flight.
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| busts of Orville and Wilbur flank the granite monument atop Kill Devil Hill |
 |
| boulder marking where the craft took off |
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| the four spots where the first powered craft landed on December 17, 1903 |
There
is also a Visitor Center where we attended a presentation, and enjoyed the various
displays, including replicas of the brothers’ glider, plane, and first wind
tunnel they themselves built and used to try to understand the principles of flight.
I
am no pilot or aeronautical whiz. But I
came away with an appreciation for what these two brothers achieved. Through sheer persistence, the love of tinkering and inventing, like-minded cooperation and support for one another, and learning from
previous men who also tried to solve the mystery of flight, they eventually connected the dots and came up with a formula that resolved the issues of controlling a craft with wings.
My
favorite discovery, however, was learning that their mother’s sewing machine played an important part in the history of flight. The brothers covered the wings of their "flyers" with canvas cloth, sewn on their mother’s sewing machine. That made my day! I would like to have known what brand and model sewing machine that was.
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| one of those two little fellows was the nursing home resident |
He had in
fact been one of the two boys caught on a photograph, watching the brothers’
successful first flight.
From
those beginnings to the landing on the moon, and all in one man's lifetime.
Amazing!
Today, we take for granted the fact that you can fly to any part of the world within a few hours. Yet it took years of experimentation, some resulting in injury and even death, for aviation to become reality.
The National Memorial marking the Wright brothers' achievement is both a grand and fitting monument to these two pioneer brothers who ultimately solved the last pieces of the puzzle of flight.
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| Below the granite monument at the top of big Kill Devil Hill, there is a life-size bronze sculpture of the first successful powered plane with Orville piloting and his brother steadying the wing until the plane lifted off |