Biographical Sketches

ORVILLE/ WILBUR WRIGHT

Born: August 19, 1871 / April 16, 1867    In: Dayton OH / Millville IN
Died: May 30, 1948 / January 30, 1912    In: Dayton, OH / Dayton, OH

At Kitty Hawk NC on December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright realized one of mankind’s earliest dreams -- they flew! Although balloons and gliders existed, the Wrights made the world’s first successful sustained and controlled flight of a man-operated, motor-driven aircraft.

Sons of a clergyman, their mechanical abilities surfaced at an early age and they shared similar interests, becoming inseparable. Neither one ever married. The brothers opened a bicycle shop in 1892 and were soon manufacturing their own wheeled creations. Even as youngsters they were fascinated with flight, playing with kites and a toy helicopter. The glider flights of Otto Lilienthal attracted their interest, as well as experiments by Octave Chanute and Samuel Langley. By observing how buzzards maintained balance while soaring, Wilbur was first to realize that an airplane had to operate on three axes to fly successfully.

In 1900 they built their first of several gliders, a biplane that soared for 300’. In 1901, using aerodynamics tables compiled by Langley and Lilienthal, they constructed new wings for a larger glider. However, its flight was marginal, so they challenged the accuracy of the tables by analyzing 200 model wings in a small, home-made wind tunnel. The tables proved to be wrong, and the Wrights painstakingly computed new ones. Using this information, their 1902 glider had almost double the efficiency of their previous ones, and at Kitty Hawk that year made more than 1,000 flights.

By the end of 1902 they were ready to begin work on a powered machine. With their mechanic, Charles Taylor, they designed and built an engine with the necessary lightness and power -- 12hp at 1200 rpm, weighing 170 pounds -- and hand-carved two efficient propellers. In 1903, with a strong wind at Kitty Hawk, the Wrights tested Flyer I. Orville, as pilot, laid alongside the motor on the lower wing while his brother steadied the craft at one wingtip. After a 40’ run the plane became airborne, and in the 12 seconds before it touched the ground it flew for 120’. Wilbur later piloted the longest flight of that day, 852’ in 59 seconds.

Returning to Ohio, the brothers began experimenting with new planes and motors and flew an improved Flyer II at Huffman Prairie near Dayton in 1904. In 1905 Flyer III became the world’s first practical airplane, one that could turn, bank, fly figure-eights, and remain airborne for more than half an hour. Yet they attracted little attention. After more than 200 flights in 1904 and 1905, a patent was granted for the airplane on May 22, 1906, but it was not until 1908 that they began to receive credit and attention for their invention. Submitting a bid to the Army for a military flying machine, Orville brought a Flyer to Fort Myers VA in 1908, passed the trials and won a contract for the world’s first military airplane. Later that year, his plane crashed after a propeller failure, seriously injuring him and killing his passenger, Lt Thomas Selfridge.

Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville continued flying actively until 1915, when he sold his interest in the Wright Company, then retired to serve on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and for years argued with officials of the Smithsonian Institution over whether the Wrights or Langley had built the first successful plane. Angered by their championing Langley’s "swan dive" as an actual first flight, he loaned Flyer I to London’s Kensington Museum in 1928 [SEE Why the Wright Flyer Went To England]. In 1942 Smithsonian officials made a public apology, but it wasn’t until after Orville died that Flyer I was finally returned for permanent display at what is now NASM. (K O Eckland)

Orville enshrined in National Aviation Hall of Fame 1962.

Wilbur enshrined in National Aviation Hall of Fame 1962.

REFERENCES:
The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright; by Tom Crouch (W. W. Norton & Co., April 17, 2003)Airborne at Kitty Hawk; Michael Harrison (Cassell 1953)
Conquest of the Air: The Story of the Wright Brothers; Patrick Moore (Lutterworth 1961)
First in Flight: The Wright Brothers in North Carolina; Stephen Kirk (Blair 1995)
First Men to Fly: The Wright Brothers; Laurence Meynell (Werner Laurie 1955)
Flight Into History: The Wright Brothers and the Air Age; Elsbeth E Freudenthal (U of OK 1949)
The Flight of Adventure; Louis Sabin (? 1983, paperback 1990)
How We Invented the Airplane; Orville Wright (Dover reprint 1988)
Kill Devil Hill: Discovering The Secrets of the Wright Brothers; Harry Combs (Houghton Mifflin 1979)
Miracle at Kitty Hawk; The Letters of Wilbur & Orville Wright (1972, 1996)
No Longer an Island: Britain and the Wright Brothers 1902-1909; Alfred Gollin (Heinemann 1984)
One Day At Kitty Hawk: The Untold Story of the Wright Brothers; John E Walsh (Crowell 1975)
Twelve Seconds to the Moon; Rosamonde Young (USAF Museum 1983)
Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention; Peter L Jakab (Airlife 1990)
Wilbur and Orville: A Biography of the Wright Brothers; Fred Howard (Knopf 1987, Ballantine 1988)
Wind and Sand: The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk; Lynanne Wescott & Paula Degen (Abrams 1983)
The Wright Brothers: A Brief Account of Their Work, 1899-1911; Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith (HMSO London 1978)
The Wright Brothers: The Authorized Biography; Fred C Kelly (Ballantine 1969)
The Wright Brothers: First To Fly; Madge Haines and Leslie Morrill (Abingdon Press 1955)
The Wright Brothers: How they Invented the Airplane; Russell Freedman (Holiday House 1991, Scholastic 1991)
The Wright Brothers: Pioneers of American aviation; Quentin Reynolds (Random House 1950)
The Wright Brothers: They Gave Us Wings; Charles Ludwig (Milford 1985)
The Wright Brothers and Their Development of the Airplane; Barbara Craig (NC State Dept of Archives 1967)
The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk; Donald Sobol (Scholastic 1961)
The Wright Brothers’ Engines and Their Design; Leonard S Hobbs (Smithsonian 1971)

Denotes an individual known to have soloed an aircraft prior to December 16, 1917, whether they were members of the "Early Birds of Aviation" Organization or not.