6

The Wright Brothers Conquer the Air

Alexander Graham Bell sat calmly in his rowboat, camera in hand. He hoped to get a photo of major historical importance. The great scientist Samuel Langley was on the shore holding a stopwatch, about to launch his miniature “aerodrome.” Suddenly, Langley signaled, and his flying machine took off from the nearby houseboat into the air. After a wobbly start, the two wings steadied, the small engine buzzed, and the unmanned plane soared over the Potomac River in a circular path. Bell was so excited he almost forgot to snap the picture.

Langley clocked the flight at ninety seconds, and computed the distance at a half mile. “Like a living thing,” he wrote, it “swept continuously through the air.” He added, “As I heard the cheering of the few spectators, I felt that something had been accomplished at last.”1

Langley’s triumph on May 6, 1896, made him the favorite to fulfill man’s dream of flying. Sure, most people still doubted that humans would ever fly, but here was the intrepid Langley, age sixty-two, leading the way to invent the airplane. Engineers in England, France, and Germany had all started aeronautical societies, and they recorded their progress in new academic journals.2 But it was an American, Samuel Langley, head of the Smithsonian Institution and author of Experiments in Aerodynamics, who had launched a miniature craft that seemed to fly. After this, the world would praise him as the undisputed global leader in the quest to invent the airplane.3

Langley inhaled the accolades of his peers and the “cheering of the . . . spectators.” As one of his employees once noted, Langley was a “born aristocrat.” He exuded authority, confidence, and strength. Growing up in Boston, he excelled in mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy. He became a Renaissance man as he also mastered literature and history. Later he built his own telescope and invented the bolometer, which measured energy and heat given off by the sun.4

As Langley moved from academic posts in astronomy at Harvard, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the University of Pittsburgh, he easily rubbed elbows with the rich and famous along the way. Perhaps his best friend was fellow inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who foresaw that air travel would benefit mankind even more than his own invention of the telephone twenty years earlier. Bell wanted to be present at Langley’s demonstrations, even as a mere photographer. Langley also dazzled scientists and intellectuals around the world. He traveled to Europe frequently and cultivated the friendship of great English thinkers, such as historian Thomas Carlyle, who called Langley “the most sensible American he had ever met.” He attended parties at the estates of the English elites, and Oxford University awarded him a doctorate of civil law.5

Langley was honored at home as well. American historians, including Henry Adams, and university presidents, such as Andrew Dickson White of Cornell, cultivated Langley’s advice and even wrote articles about him. The prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science elected Langley—author of more than two hundred scholarly publications—as its president. In 1887, when the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., was seeking a president, Langley was the logical choice, and Professor Asa Gray of Harvard eagerly recommended him for the job. Some observers thought Langley was America’s greatest scientist, and the experiments he began at the Smithsonian to unravel the mysteries of flight earned respect around the world.6

After Langley completed a second test of his miniature flying machine in November 1896, he pondered his next step: building a larger version of his “aerodrome,” as he called it, powerful enough to carry a passenger. “I believe,” Langley wrote, “that the results already accomplished on May 6/96, and Nov 18/96, make it as nearly certain as any untried thing can be, that with a larger machine of the same model, to carry a man, or men . . . flight could be maintained for at least some hours.”7

The problem for Langley was finding the cash to build his larger plane. He wasn’t independently wealthy, and he preferred to spend what he earned on travel and fine living. Thus, he sought a philanthropist to fund his aerodrome. For example, Langley wrote Octave Chanute, a Chicago engineer and flight enthusiast, “If anyone were to put at my disposal the considerable amount—fifty thousand dollars or more—for . . . an aerodrome carrying a man or men, with a capacity for some hours of flight, I feel that I could build it and should enjoy the task.” But Langley made it clear to Chanute and others that advancing science, not making a profit, was his motive. He shunned “commercial strife,” and asked Chanute if he knew “anyone who is disposed to give the means to such an unselfish end.” Chanute replied, “I know of nobody who is disposed to give the means for a purely scientific experiment”—and indeed no one came forward to fund Langley’s Great Aerodrome, as some called it.8

So Langley pursued another angle. On February 15, 1898, the Maine blew up in Havana harbor, and the United States and Spain lurched toward war. Congress appropriated $50 million for defense, so Langley developed an argument about the military value of flight. Five weeks after the sinking of the Maine, Langley exploited his connection with Charles Walcott, head of the U.S. Geological Survey, who had access to President William McKinley. Langley told Walcott of his ability to build “a man-carrying aerodrome as a possible engine of war for the government.”9 Would Walcott meet with McKinley and help secure the funds?10

Walcott did even more. He showed McKinley the photo that Bell had taken of Langley’s earlier unmanned flight, and then sold the president on the project, and key cabinet members as well. Teddy Roosevelt, assistant secretary of war, was especially exuberant: “The machine has worked. It seems to me worthwhile for this government to try whether it will not work on a large enough scale to be of use in the event of war.”11

Roosevelt’s endorsement was important because the subsidy disasters with the Union Pacific Railroad and the Collins steamship line had, for the past generation, knocked the government out of economic planning. Many politicians doubted the government’s ability to pick winners and losers through federal aid. But Langley and his Great Aerodrome seemed to be different, and worthy of political support. First, Langley was a seasoned and preeminent scientist who was leading the international race to invent the airplane. Second, he had already shown he could “fly” miniature planes. Why not fund him for a bigger model? Third, Langley had friends in high places. As one employee at the Smithsonian observed, “[Langley] was invited to dine at the White House, he was on familiar terms with the Chief Justice of the United States. . . . Members of the House of Representatives and sometimes senators waited in his anteroom.”12

Perhaps this was the moment in history when a strategic federal gift would foster the invention to vault the United States into military dominance in the world. Langley found himself before key political and military leaders with the chance to state his case.

First, he pitched his proposal to a special committee of key officers from the army and navy, and then to the Department of War, through its Board of Ordnance and Fortification (BOF).13 Of his flying machine, Langley tantalized these military men with the prospect of using it as “an engine of war.” These army and navy men salivated at the thought “of dropping from a great height high explosives into a camp of fortification.” With the prospect of a government subsidy, Langley was deferential to the BOF, but firm. “Concerning the use of the aerodrome in war, it is hardly for me, a civilian, to insist upon its utility to a board of military men. But I think I might be justified in saying that anything which, like this, would enable one party to look into the enemy’s tactics and movements . . . would tend to modify the present art of war, much as the game of whist might be modified if a player were allowed to look into his opponent’s hand.”14

The BOF peppered Langley with questions, and he answered them readily. He expected his aerodrome to fly for hours at a time, perhaps at a speed of 25 to 30 miles per hour. He added that “the machine will be completely built and ready for trial within a year,” but might take longer to test and modify for use in war. He exuded confidence. The BOF members were impressed. They concluded that Langley’s proposed aircraft gave “promise of great military value,” and they authorized a fifty-thousand-dollar subsidy for his aerodrome.15

With federal cash flowing, Langley began his work. First, he hired engineer Charles Manly, a recent Cornell University graduate, as pilot and supervisor for construction of the aerodrome. Langley also hired engineers, carpenters, machinists, and mechanics. Manly came to Washington, and the Smithsonian bustled with activity. It became the international clearinghouse for knowledge and research on flight.16

With all of Langley’s duties and his regular trips abroad, he couldn’t answer incoming mail. One of his clerks responded to a May 5, 1899, query from a thirty-two-year-old bicycle mechanic—a man who had lost several teeth as well as the chance to go to college because he had been ill for many years. This bicycle mechanic requested materials on the subject of flight, a topic he said interested him. “I wish to avail myself of all that is already known,” he said. The clerk at the Smithsonian dutifully mailed Langley’s short bibliography on flight to the modest home of the mechanic in Dayton, Ohio. His name was Wilbur Wright.17

To the casual observer, Wilbur Wright, or Will as he was called, had no training and no aptitude that would ever enable him to advance the science of aerodynamics. He was the third son of a minister, and seemed least likely to succeed even within his own family. Unlike his parents, his two older brothers, and his sister, Will never went to college. He was smart, well read, and athletic, but he seemed to be perpetually ill. It started when he had several teeth smashed out in a hockey game at age nineteen. After that, he became bedridden by various ailments and stomachaches. He rarely left home, which, during his twenties, kept him idle rather than making his place in the world. True, he cared for his invalid mother and helped his father with ministry business. But he became quiet, pensive, and more of a loner. “What does Will do?” wrote his older brother from Kansas. “He ought to be doing something. Is he still cook and chambermaid?” As Will regained his health, he helped his younger brother Orville set up a print shop to publish their church’s theological materials and also a local newspaper. Then Wilbur and Orville opened a bicycle shop, where they built and repaired bicycles together.18

Will’s life revolved around family activities, but he also read widely, reasoned impeccably, and thought deeply about many things. “The strongest impression one gets of Wilbur Wright,” a friend observed, “is of a man who lives largely in a world of his own.” Printing newspapers and fixing bicycles gave him time to think and dream about what he might yet accomplish in life. “My imagination,” Will told his sister Kate, “pictures things more vividly than my eyes.”19

The subject of flight entered Will’s imagination in 1894, when he read an article in McClure’s about Otto Lilienthal, the German engineer who had built wings and experimented with hang gliding. At first, Lilienthal explained, he merely hopped off a hill and let the wind under his wings take him a short distance. With practice, he tried bigger hills and soon was in the air for five and sometimes ten seconds. His article in McClure’s had a picture of him in flight, and Will and Orville both studied the photo and marveled at the idea of airborne travel. But Lilienthal died during one of his flights in 1896, the same year that Langley flew his model plane over the Potomac, so attention now focused more on Langley. Three years later, with Langley’s aerodrome in the news, Will composed his letter to the Smithsonian.20

After reading the items on Langley’s list, Will was most impressed with the German and French contributions. In particular, Lilienthal, a German, and Louis Mouillard, a Frenchman, stressed the mastery of gliding as a prerequisite to mechanical flight. Both men watched birds carefully and noticed how they artfully used wind against their wings and even coasted through the sky. Lilienthal had stressed “continual practice,” trial and error, and step-by-step improvement to master the art of gliding. Octave Chanute, Langley’s friend, wrote Progress in Flying Machines, and Will learned from that book, too. Chanute described the importance of stability and balance, which had to be achieved in the midst of varying wind patterns.21

Then there was Samuel Langley, the leader in the race to fly. Unlike Lilienthal and Chanute, Langley stressed engine power more than gliders and wind control. After all, Langley’s unmanned aerodrome had soared across the Potomac on a calm day with a capable engine and not much attention to wings and balance. That time, it worked. What he needed next, he argued, was another calm day and a bigger aerodrome with a lightweight gas engine that could propel it, and the pilot, through the air. Langley dismissed his critics, who pointed out that some of the test models for his aerodrome had simply dropped into the river. Was the one success that had sailed half a mile just a lucky fluke? The skeptics compared that “flight” to a kite being caught on a strong breeze.

Langley liked to make an analogy between flight and ice-skating. A skater can sometimes skate effectively on thin ice until he stops—at which point the full weight of the skater breaks the ice. As long as the skater is moving, he can pass over ice that is not able to bear his full weight. In the case of flight, Langley argued, a powerful engine moves the plane rapidly through air, which normally would bear no weight. But with the powerful engine propelling the plane, the air allows the plane to pass through smoothly.22

Thus, Langley made his top priority the building of an engine, light in weight and strong in power. Once he had his federal aid, he hired Stephen Balzer, an expert engineer who had already designed the first automobile to run in New York. Langley called Balzer “the only competent [engine] builder in the United States,” which gave Langley confidence he could produce his Great Aerodrome in 1899, as he had promised the BOF.23

Wilbur Wright disagreed. He concluded, after studying Langley and his work carefully, that stressing engine power over glider maneuvering was wrong. Will wanted to build a new type of glider that could harness the wind, but he wanted to balance and steer with his hands while lying prone on the glider, not dangling beneath it as Lilienthal and Chanute had done. Only when Will had learned and mastered the art of gliding would he build the engine. If he could learn to control a glider, he believed, the engine would take care of itself. With both Lilienthal and Mouillard dead, and with Langley headed down a different path, Will wrote to Octave Chanute, explained his ideas, and the two men gradually formed a friendship.24

When asked later about Langley’s strategy of engine first, then wind control later, Will responded, “Unfortunately, the wind usually blows.” That statement spoke volumes about the practical and financial side of Will’s thinking. He wanted to invent the airplane, in part, to make a profit. But Will knew that to make a plane that people would want to buy, or to fly in, he would have to invent one that could fly safely in all kinds of weather. What good was a plane that could be used to drop bombs, deliver mail, or carry passengers if it was regularly grounded by even light winds? Langley, by contrast, wanted fame but not profits. His Great Aerodrome, funded by taxpayers, would be his gift to the nation, and his legacy to science. If it had the potential to make money, that task would be left to others.25

As Langley, with federal subsidy in hand, was testing his theory of flight, Will prepared for his own tests. He searched for a climate warmer than Dayton’s, and for an area with hills, wind, and privacy, where he could build his glider and test it. He would use his own money to pay the bills, so the tests had to be as cheap as possible. Chanute recommended the Atlantic coast, leading Will to write to weather stations near the ocean. Finally he settled on the windy and remote village of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.26

Will needed a talented confidant and for that he had his younger brother Orville at hand. Orville soon captured the vision and became a full partner in flight, just as he was in bicycles. The two brothers were inseparable and each influenced the other. “From the time we were little children,” Will said, “my brother Orville and myself lived together, played together, and worked together and, in fact, thought together.” But they also loved to argue with each other. “Orv is such a good scrapper,” Will once said, but he liked that. “Honest argument,” he insisted, “is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each other’s eyes so both can see clearly.” And Will wanted to see as clearly as possible when he built his first glider in a spare room in their bicycle shop.27

In building their glider, the Wright brothers had to construct a device that could control the energy of the wind. In doing so, they used existing knowledge and then modified or advanced it. For example, the principles of lift and drag were widely understood: Lift is the force of the wind pushing a wing upward, and a curved surface, like that of birds’ wings, captures that force better than a flat one. Drag is the force that slows the wing’s forward motion. Knowing this, Will invented wing warping, by which he curved the wing’s surface to capture more energy from the wind. He decided that double-decker wings, recommended by Chanute, were best both for wing warping and efficient, steady gliding. The Wrights also needed to turn their glider in the air, so they added a rear rudder. To control up and down movements, they added a horizontal rudder. They installed wires to control the horizontal rudder and raise and lower the wings. The pilot, lying prone in the middle of the bottom wing, used his hands and feet to pull these wires to guide the glider through the air.28

Much of this process evolved through trial and error. Winter was the off season for bicycle work in Dayton, so the Wright brothers descended on Kitty Hawk for five weeks in late 1900 for the first of four annual visits. Before leaving Dayton, Will wrote his father, “While I am taking up the investigation [of flight] for pleasure rather than profit, I think there is a slight possibility of achieving fame and fortune from it.” But not that winter. In their first visit to Kitty Hawk, they set up their tent near the hills outside of town, made the acquaintance of the few locals, and drafted (and paid) some of them to help them with their homemade glider. While one of the Wright brothers manned the glider, the other brother and a local would do the running launch from a hill. They also measured wind patterns and the distances of their flights.29

Over time, the Wrights became familiar figures to the residents of Kitty Hawk, even though their glider seemed to be an odd contraption. “They were two of the workingest boys I ever saw,” said John Daniels, “and when they worked they worked. I never saw men so wrapped up in their work in my life. They had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing.” But Daniels and other locals liked the Wrights; they were “good with the children” and “courteous to everyone.” Ever the minister’s sons, the Wrights didn’t drink or smoke, and they always rested on Sundays. When they conducted their flights, they wore white shirts with stiff collars and ties.30

From 1900 to 1903, Orville and Wilbur spent spring and summer in Dayton at the cycle shop, and parts of the fall or winter in Kitty Hawk. They funded their flight experiments from profits in their shop, so they were frugal and used time wisely. Each year, during downtime in Dayton, the brothers used part of their shop to build new and bigger gliders with improvements to the wings, the wiring, and the rudders. They speeded up their progress by building a six-foot wind tunnel with a glass top and a powerful fan on the side. Next they built miniature wings of different sizes from scrap metal. By using the fan to produce a strong wind in the tunnel, the brothers tested different curvatures for the wings and used the results to improve their designs. “Wilbur and I could hardly wait for morning to come,” Orville said, “to get at something that interested us. That’s happiness.”31

For the tests at Kitty Hawk, the brothers brought their tools and equipment to make adjustments on the spot. One year, for example, they improved their glider by adding a movable tail to the wing-warping wires. Sometimes, however, they were delayed by crashes, by wind gusts that would blow down their tent, and by pesky mosquitoes, which, according to Orville, “chewed us clear through our underwear and socks. Lumps began swelling up all over my body like hen’s eggs.”32

Octave Chanute began to respect the unknown Wright brothers, and he read Will’s letters with interest. He even visited the Wrights at both Dayton and Kitty Hawk. He watched their remarkable progress first hand. “You have done a great work,” Chanute told them, “and have advanced knowledge greatly.” Perhaps thinking of the subsidized Langley, Chanute asked the Wrights if “some rich man should give you $10,000 a year to go on, to connect his name with progress, would you do so? I happen to know Carnegie. Would you like for me to write him?”33

Will considered his words carefully. “I do not think it would be wise for me to accept help in carrying our present investigations further,” he said. He added, “I would not think it wise to make outside work [on the flying machine] too pronounced a feature of business life.” Orville reached the same conclusion in a different way. He later said, “Unfortunately, unlike many who use other people’s money in their experiments, and therefore must keep records to make a showing of their work, we were working for ourselves, and just for the fun of it.”34

In October 1902, Chanute wrote a letter to Langley warning him that the Wrights were no mere tinkerers; they were “very ingenious mechanics and men of high character and integrity.” Langley wondered what he could learn from the Wrights. He sent a telegram to Kitty Hawk and asked the Wrights if he might visit them, but Will declined politely and said they would soon be returning to Dayton. The Wrights later refused to travel to Washington to meet with Langley at his expense.35

Langley probably thought little of the upstart Wright brothers at the time. He had enough problems of his own trying to complete his Great Aerodrome. When he wrote to the Wrights, he was already three years overdue with the Department of War, and had to explain his many delays. One problem was the engine, which was, of course, the key to his theory of flying. Stephen Balzer, the builder of his engine, was having problems creating the powerful lightweight engine he had promised. Langley wanted at least ten horsepower to fly his plane, but Balzer struggled to get that power without adding too much weight. He also wrestled with overheating, breakdowns, and malfunctioning parts. Langley was regularly sending Balzer cash from the subsidy, and when two of Balzer’s machinists quit, Langley even sent him two machinists from the Smithsonian.36

At one point, Langley and his pilot Charles Manly went to Europe in search of a workable engine, or for someone who could make one. He visited Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, the English expert who had tried to build a flying machine in 1894. Langley was pleased when Maxim insisted, “Without doubt, the motor is the chief thing to be considered,” but Maxim had no engine to offer. Langley next went to Paris to plead for help from the renowned Comte Albert de Dion, who had built superb gas-powered engines for cars. But the Frenchman had no help for Langley, either. In a similar way, Manly traveled to Germany and Belgium, searching in vain for something to power the aerodrome. Finally, Langley and Manly came home empty-handed, and thus Manly himself designed the engine that would ultimately launch the Great Aerodrome.37

Even with Manly’s diligent work, Langley was frantic. Problems with the engine, with the construction of the aerodrome, with getting work out of his carpenters and machinists, with the persistent questions from the War Department—all this delayed him. His government subsidy was gone, and he raided a reserve fund at the Smithsonian for another twenty thousand dollars. He simply had to get his aerodrome in shape to fly. If that could be done, Manly argued, “the funds for the further prosecution of the work would be readily forthcoming.”38

Before launching the Great Aerodrome, Langley and Manly tested a miniature model of their plane. They shot it upward from their catapult on their houseboat on the Potomac on August 8, 1903. Reporters flocked to the site and watched it soar gracefully over the Potomac for a minute, and then flutter into the river. Success! Manly was invigorated as he described its “strange, uncanny beauty”; to him it “seemed visibly and gloriously alive.”39

The “entirely successful” launch of the unmanned version set expectations high for the real thing. Langley’s confidence knew no bounds, as he told Manly not to fly more than ten or twelve minutes at most. Manly, meanwhile, became “thoroughly familiar with this portion of the [Potomac] river, so that I can recognize all the landmarks while flying through the air.”40

Two months later, on October 7, 1903, Manly’s staff hoisted the Great Aerodrome onto the houseboat and prepared for the launch. Manly stepped into the cockpit at 12:20 p.m. and signaled an assistant to fire two rockets into the air to announce the big event. From the houseboat, another assistant released the lever on the catapult, and the aerodrome surged down the sixty-foot track. For an instant it was airborne, and Manly had “an indescribable sensation of being free in the air.” Soon, however, the sensation became more describable as the aerodrome plunged nose first into the Potomac. Manly frantically struggled to eject himself from the submerging machine and groped upward for air. He reached the surface without injuries.41

The reporters present were very critical. The Washington Post writer, for example, called the crash “a crushing blow to [Langley’s] theory.” The editorial writer at the Post said, “any stout boy of fifteen . . . could have skimmed an oyster shell much farther, and that without months of expensive preparation or . . . government fleets, appliances and retinues.” Langley, however, rationalized the result by insisting that success “is in no way affected by this accident, which is one of the large chapters of accidents that beset the initial stages of experiments so novel as the present ones.”42

Meanwhile, the engine was fully salvaged, and so were other parts of the aerodrome. While Langley desperately scoured the Smithsonian for cash, Manly quickly began repairs for one final trial. To get further federal funds, they had to score a success and do so quickly. On a cold and windy December 8, with chunks of ice floating in the Potomac, Langley and Manly prepared the Great Aerodrome for another launch. “It seemed almost disastrous to attempt an experiment,” Manly admitted. But “it was practically a case of ‘now or never.’ ”43

Manly, wearing a cork-lined jacket, climbed onto the houseboat and into the cockpit, while Langley watched hopefully from a tugboat nearby. No rockets were fired this time to advertise the event. The engine whirred smoothly and an assistant triggered the catapult. Suddenly Manly felt “an extreme swaying motion immediately followed by a tremendous jerk which caused the machine to quiver all over.” Then, according to one witness, “the whole rear of the wings and rudder [were] completely destroyed” in midair. The gigantic wings tore apart at the rapid speed of the aerodrome hurtling off the catapult. Manly, after some “intense moments,” struggled under water to climb out and get to the surface once more. He “uttered a voluble series of blasphemies” after being fished out of the water. He would not be the first pilot to fly after all.44

Reports of the event varied from mirth at the pretentious disaster to irritation at the wasted federal funds. The Boston Herald urged Langley to abandon flying machines and focus instead on submarines. The New York Times had already concluded that a flying machine might yet be built, but only if mathematicians and engineers worked hard at it for the next million or so years.45

The San Francisco Chronicle put Langley’s “disastrous” effort in economic perspective: “The destruction of Langley’s machine should put an end to Congressional appropriations of any kind in every field of experiments which properly belongs to private enterprise.” The editor concluded, “The reward which will surely follow the production of a practical airship is a sufficient stimulus in itself to private competition.”46

During 1903, the Wright brothers, working in obscurity, had also been preparing for motorized flight. On their gliders, they had mastered the hand controls to bend the wings and harness the wind. To go from a glider to an airplane they needed sturdier wings to hold the added weight, two propellers for thrust, and, of course, a lightweight engine to power the flight.

On the subject of the engine, they happily knew little of Langley’s travails. Will naively wrote to several manufacturers and asked if they could provide an eight-horsepower gas engine that weighed less than two hundred pounds. Everyone said no. So Will next asked Charlie Taylor, a mechanic in their cycle shop, if he could do the job. He studied the matter, gathered parts locally, and made some tests. “We didn’t make any drawings,” Taylor said later. But in six weeks he had built a superb twelve-horsepower engine that weighed only 179 pounds. What took Langley four years and an international search took the Wright brothers six weeks, using only labor and materials found in Dayton, Ohio.47

Making propellers that worked well was much more complicated. The Wrights filled five notebooks with formulas, tests, and computations that showed how forward thrust could be created by the rotating of specially curved propeller blades. “Isn’t it astonishing,” Orville wrote, “that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so that we could discover them?” By the fall of 1903 they were ready to load up the parts of their plane, return to Kitty Hawk, and piece them together for a test flight.48

Oddly, the Wrights hardly took notice of Langley’s highly publicized attempts to fly. They assumed their theory of flight was the right one, and so they pursued it where it logically led. After Langley’s first crash, Will said, “I see that Langley has had his fling, and failed. It seems to be our turn to throw now.”49

Back in Kitty Hawk, the Wrights assembled their plane and built a movable starting track from which to launch it. The track was a long wooden path, which they could strategically assemble and place on a downward slope; the plane sat atop landing skids on a two-wheeled dolly that would roll slowly down the track. The brothers flipped a coin to see who would try first. Wilbur won, but his maiden effort on December 14 crashed into the sand, which forced a minor delay. Nonetheless, Will telegrammed his father these words: “Success Assured Keep Quiet.”50

Orville’s turn came next. On a cold and windy December 17, the brothers, aided by a stray teenage boy and five men from a nearby lifesaving station, slowly moved their seven-hundred-pound plane toward the hill to position it on their wooden runway. At 10:35 a.m., Orville crawled onto the bottom wing, assumed a prone position, and grabbed the controls. As he later said, “The [weather] conditions were very unfavorable.” Will, noting that fact, clapped, cheered him on, and urged the others to do so. They started the engine and let it warm up. Then they let the plane go, but strong 27 mile-per-hour winds made the trip down the runway slow. Soon the plane lifted from the ground. Orville was in the air. “The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic,” he said later, “partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to [my] lack of experience in handling this machine.” This first motorized flight through the air lasted twelve seconds and covered 120 feet. The brothers tried three more flights that day with Will setting the record by staying aloft for fifty-nine seconds and traveling 852 feet before a hard landing finished their flights for the day. Their victory telegram to their father opened with the key word, “Success.”51

December 17, 1903, became a landmark date in U.S. history, but almost no one knew it at the time. The men helping to push the plane up the hill for each of the launches realized that they had seen something remarkable. One of them, Johnny Moore, was so excited that he ran toward Kitty Hawk to spread the news. He told the first person he met, “They done it! They done it! Damn’d if they ain’t flew!” But no newspaper reporters had been present. The Dayton Daily News was one of the few papers to report the event, and in the following months the story became garbled in those newspapers that did report it. Even enthusiasts in the aeronautics community didn’t fully grasp what had happened. When Octave Chanute, for example, heard from the Wrights, he told them he was “immensely pleased at your success.” But then he wrote the skeptical Langley, “As you surmise, the Wrights have not performed what the pesky newspapers credit them with.”52

The confusion over the Wrights’ flight on December 17 opened the door for Langley, who was trying to overcome his mechanical disasters. He and Manly now insisted that their aerodrome had always been perfectly sound, and that their two flight attempts were thwarted by a malfunctioning pin in the launch mechanism. Since they could easily fix that, they should be granted more federal funds to try a third launch. Alexander Graham Bell became a public spokesman for Langley, and announced that the Great Aerodrome “was a perfectly good flying machine, and . . . the first flying machine ever constructed capable of carrying a man. . . . There was nothing the matter with it. It stuck in the launching ways.”53

In March 1904, Langley made a pitch to the BOF for more federal funding. The launching mechanism caused the failure the first two times, he explained, and “a cessation of these experiments at this point will be unfortunate.” He requested $25,000 for “a new launching apparatus” and for “some slight change” in the aerodrome to bring “the experiments . . . to a successful conclusion.” Bell and Octave Chanute supported Langley’s request. “To do otherwise,” Chanute explained, “would be to confess that the Board of Ordnance did not know what it was about in providing funds.” Langley, in fact, refused new offers of money from private donors. His Great Aerodrome was his gift to his country, and he thought the federal government should pay for it.54

As Langley struggled with his problems, the Wright brothers had their own set of challenges. They were startled by skeptics, but Will and Orville had proof they had flown from pictures taken of their plane in the air. And they would be prepared to fly again, and longer, during 1904. In their public statement, the Wrights said, “From the beginning, we have employed entirely new principals [sic] of control; and as all the experiments have been conducted at our own expense without assistance from any individual or institution, we do not feel ready at present to give out any pictures or detailed description of the machine.” If they talked too much and showed their pictures, they believed others would evade patents, copy their machine, and deny them the profits of their labor.55

Meanwhile, as the weather improved, the brothers moved their testing to Huffman Prairie, Ohio, near Dayton. They had to learn how to turn an airplane in a circle. Flying only in straight lines wasn’t practical or safe; airplanes had to get back to where they started, and circling a landing strip made sense. On September 20, 1904, Will flew the first complete circle in history in a manned plane, staying aloft about a minute and a half and traveling almost one mile. In later years they converted Huffman Prairie into the nation’s first airport.56

Even though the Wright brothers’ accomplishments weren’t fully recognized for several years, Langley didn’t get his new subsidy from Congress. “You can tell Langley for me,” one congressman said, “that the only thing he ever made fly was government money.” Congress and the War Department were embarrassed by Langley’s crashes, but they still wanted flying machines for the military if they could be proved to be functional and reliable. They hatched a solution that improved on their subsidy idea. The army would be willing to buy airplanes, but only after a successful flight demonstration, not before.57

The Wrights endorsed that new policy. “We have not thought of asking financial assistance from the government,” Will said. “We propose to sell the results of experiments finished at our own expense.” Without subsidies, the Wright brothers continued to improve their airplane. In 1905, they designed the Wright Flyer III with improved hand controls for the pilot. Will, at one point, set a new record when he dazzled spectators by circling Huffman Prairie thirty times in thirty-nine minutes.58

“We had hoped in 1906,” Will later said, “to sell our invention to governments for enough money to satisfy our needs and then devote our time to science.” Instead, they were involved in patent disputes—and they were also rebuffed by skeptical purchasers in the War Department. In 1905, the Wright brothers, through their congressman, Robert M. Nevin, had written to the BOF offering to sell their proven Wright Flyer to the government for military defense. In the letter, the Wright brothers announced that “one hundred and five flights were made at our experimenting station on the Huffman prairie east of this city.” Two of their flights, they boasted, were each about five minutes long and covered three miles.59

The BOF, in a remarkable move, rejected the Wrights’ offer. The BOF members had the chance to redeem themselves for their failed subsidy to Langley, but either they didn’t believe the Wright brothers, or didn’t read their letter carefully. They concluded that the Wright brothers’ “machine has not been brought to the stage of practical operation.” Consequently, during 1906 the Wrights began negotiating with leaders in France to sell them the airplane the U.S. government didn’t want.60

The event that really cemented the Wright brothers’ place in history finally came in 1908. For five years, ever since their first successful flight in 1903, Wilbur and Orville had been perfecting their airplane. They knew that stability in flight was crucial, or else their plane could crash, just as Langley’s had. In five years of experiments, they learned not only how to stabilize flight but to circle and land smoothly. They had also developed better controls for the three axes of motion during flight: pitch, roll, and yaw.

When the U.S. government rejected their airplane, the Wright brothers had offered to show the French military what they could do. Will and his sister Kate traveled to Le Mans, France, in the summer of 1908, while Orville prepared for a flight for U.S. military leaders at Fort Myer, Virginia. They would show the world how maneuverable their flying machine really was and prove their critics wrong.61

In France, Wilbur and an assistant put together the latest model of the Wright Flyer from the packing crates used to ship the plane overseas. French papers had been calling the Wright brothers “bluffeurs” (bluffers) and ridiculing their claims to have flown hundreds of miles over the past five years. But on August 7, Wilbur was finally airborne over French soil. The onlookers were amazed as he executed a perfect figure eight with the grace of a bird on the wing. François Peyrey, a young journalist who knew something about the problems of aviation, was transfixed as Wilbur’s flight continued: “To behold this flying machine turn sharp round at the edge of the wood . . . and continue on its course is an enchanting spectacle,” Peyrey reported. “The wind does not seem to trouble him.” The Wright brothers were no “bluffeurs.” They were the real deal.62

Meanwhile, Orville traveled to Fort Myer with the latest model of their plane in several packing crates. On September 3, he was ready for a flight similar to Wilbur’s French triumph. As Orville’s plane lifted from the ground—and stayed airborne—a reporter from the Washington Star heard “a long, in-drawn breath from the crowd.” Orville also turned the plane to circle over the field. Some in the crowd wept as they realized the accomplishment they had just witnessed. Man had conquered the air.63

The Wright brothers, making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic, were the undisputed inventors of the airplane. That year, the U.S. government agreed to pay twenty-five thousand dollars for the Wright Flyer, with more cash to come later.64

The idea of awarding contracts for airplanes on the basis of merit improved government purchases. The Wrights dominated the early sales, but other entrepreneurs soon emerged with ideas of their own and innovations to improve flights. Glenn Curtiss, for example, a car racer, developed seaplanes and sold them to the navy.65

Starting in 1908, some countries, and some organizations within those countries, began awarding prizes for flying achievements. France often took the lead. The Coupe Michelin prize of twenty thousand francs was made available for the pilot making the longest flight for 1908. Wilbur Wright won the prize that year with a flight time of two hours, eighteen minutes. In England, the Daily Mail dangled a prize of one thousand pounds for the first pilot to fly across the English Channel. The Wrights won some of these early prizes, but younger pilots emerged with better planes and the energy to surpass the Wrights’ achievements. The awarding of prizes, not government subsidies, spurred innovation and competition, which spared taxpayers the costs of backing more losers.66

Will’s health let him down once more in 1912, when he was traveling on business. He struggled to get back to Dayton, where doctors diagnosed typhoid fever. He died a few days later, at age forty-five. Orville and Will had been partners in their work ever since Orville could remember. Without Will, Orville became more interested in documenting past triumphs than in creating new ones.

Today the accomplishments of the Wright brothers continue to amaze experts. With less than two thousand dollars of their own funds in their small bicycle shop in Dayton, the two men created the first machine that really flew. Their propeller, which took so much study and effort to design, has been proved to be over 80 percent efficient. Today’s wooden propellers are about 85 percent efficient, which is only a small improvement on Wilbur and Orville’s original design. The Wrights showed more than possibly any other entrepreneur what men with ingenuity, persistence, and commitment can produce when they have the freedom to develop their ideas.