The Wright Brothers Conquered the Challenge
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BONUS READ The Wright brothers Orville Wright conquered the challenge of UP IN flies over Fort Myer, Virginia, flight in four years; in a 1908 public demonstration. convincing the world took longer THEBY DAVID MCCULLOUGH FROMAIR THE WRIGHT BROTHERS 06•2016 [[2R]] | | READER’S DIGEST NE OF THE GREAT unsolved challenges of the 19th engine warmed up. century was controlled human flight. Prominent At 10:35 a.m., Orville slipped engineers, scientists and original thinkers, including the rope restraining the flyer and it headed forward, but not Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, worked very fast, because of the fierce on the problem. None succeeded. headwind. Wilbur had no trou- For more than 50 years, would-be “conquerers of ble keeping up. The total time the air” and their flying machines served as a continuous source of comic airborne was twelve seconds. relief. Among the ideas flooding the U.S. Patent Office was a gigantic, By 11 a.m. the wind had eased O off somewhat. Wilbur took a fishlike machine, propelled by exploding pellets of nitroglycerine. turn and “went off like a bird” “It is a fact,” The Washington Post later declared, “that man can’t fly.” for 175 feet. Orville went again, In no way did any of this discourage brothers Wilbur and Orville flying 200 feet. Near noon, on Wright, owners of a bicycle business in Dayton, Ohio. Nor did the fact the fourth test, Wilbur flew 852 that they had no college education, no formal technical training, no feet through the air in 59 sec- onds, reaching an airspeed of financial backers and little money of their own. Or the possibility that 31 miles per hour. they could be killed. By 1903, their flying machine was ready. Turning Point To their friends in History they were Orv (right) ON DECEMBER 17, 1903, Wilbur, 36, force of 20 to 27 miles per hour, far hey had done it. and Will (left), and Orville, 32, hung a white bedsheet from ideal. It had taken four industrious and on the side of the shed at Kitty Hawk With everything in place, the broth- years, in which virtually on the Carolina coast. It was the sig- ers stood close talking low under an Tthey endured violent inseparable. chine took off under its nal to the men at the Life-Saving Sta- immense overcast sky. Wilbur, at 5 storms, accidents, public own power into the air in tion that their help was needed. Only foot 10, was lean. Orville was a bit indifference or ridicule, and full flight, sailed forward with five men showed up. As Orville later stouter but with the same gray-blue clouds of mosquitoes at their remote no loss of speed, and landed at a point explained, many were apparently eyes. Dressed in their dark caps and sand dune testing ground. No matter. as high as that from which it started. It unwilling to face the “rigors of a cold dark winter jackets, beneath which There was talk of going again, but was one of the turning points in his- December wind to see another flying they wore their customary white shirts, a sudden gust caught the Flyer and tory, the beginning of change for the machine not fly.” starched collars, and dark ties, they tossed it along the sand. It was a total world far greater than any of those The day was freezing cold. Skims could as well have been back home in wreck. The men walked back to the present could possibly have imagined. of ice covered several nearby ponds. Dayton chatting on a street corner. Life-Saving Station. Wilbur and Orville In Dayton, older brother Lorin took Working together, they and the men The two shook hands. Orville posi- ate lunch, then walked four miles to the brothers’ telegram to Frank Tuni- hauled the Flyer to the 60-foot launch- tioned himself on his stomach at the the weather station to send a telegram son, city editor at the Dayton Daily ing track, four two-by-fours sheathed controls, while Wilbur stood at the tip home. “SUCCESS,” it began. Journal. “Fifty-seven seconds,* hey?” with a metal strip and laid end-to-end of the lower right wing of the biplane, Success it most certainly was. And on a flat, level stretch. It ran straight ready to help keep the machine in bal- more. The flights that morning were *A mistake in the telegram’s transmission into the wind, blowing at nearly a gale ance. Minutes passed while the gas & UNDERWOOD/CORBIS ©UNDERWOOD PHOTO: IMAGES © SSPL/GETTY PHOTO: the first ever in which a piloted ma- caused 59 seconds to become 57. 1234567890 1234567890 [[1L]] | 06•2016 06•2016 [[2R]] | | READER’S DIGEST about the German gliding enthusiast tem of cords whereby the operator on Otto Lilienthal, who had recently been the ground, using sticks in both hands, killed in an accident. Much that he could control the wings. read he read aloud to Orville. The test demonstrated the efficiency Lilienthal took his lessons from the of their system on control. With “wing birds. He wrote that the secret of “the warping,” or “wing twisting,” Wilbur art of flight” was in their arched or had already made an immensely im- vaulted wings, by which they could portant advance toward their goal. Dec. 17, 1903: ride the wind. Wilbur’s reading on the The central objective was to solve Orville goes flight of birds became intense. the problem of equilibrium, or bal- airborne in the Flyer, On May 30, 1899, Wilbur wrote to ance in flight, the all-important factor. as Wilbur runs alongside. the Smithsonian Institution in Wash- The difficulty was not to get into the air ington to ask for published papers but to stay there. The chief need was on the subject of human flight. “I am skill rather than machinery—and skill about to begin a systematic study of came only from experience in the air. he said. “It if had been 57 minutes, father and sister, with whom the bach- the subject in preparation for practical A year later, in August 1900, the then it might have been a news item.” elor brothers lived, they had tremen- work,” he wrote. From the list of books brothers built a full-sized glider that Elsewhere in the country, a ludi- dous energy. Working hard was a way and generous supply of pamphlets on they intended to reassemble and fly crously inaccurate account appeared of life. Modest, with no yearning for aviation forwarded to him, he and Or- first as a kite, then, if all went well, fly on the front page of the Norfolk Vir- the limelight, they were at their best ville both began studying in earnest. themselves. ginian-Pilot under a banner head- and happiest working together on their The dream had taken hold. Idle cu- The “soaring machine” consisted of line: “Flying Machine Soars 3 Miles in own projects. riosity had been transformed into the two fixed wings, one above the other, Teeth of High Wind Over Sand Hills The times were alive with invention, active zeal of workers. They would de- each measuring 17 long by five feet and Waves at Kitty Hawk on Carolina technical innovations, new ideas of ev- sign and build their own experimental wide. It had warping controls and a Coast.” Variations appeared in The ery kind: the “Kodak” box camera, the glider-kite. movable, forward rudder of 12 square Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, first electric sewing machine, the first feet. It weighed slightly less than and The New York Times, among oth- motor cars built in America, all in the An Important Early 50 pounds. The total cost of all the ers, but little happened as a conse- past dozen years. Advance pieces—the ribs of ash, wires, cloth to quence. When bicycles became a craze ev- heir first aircraft, a flying kite cover the wings—was not more than As for the reaction in Dayton, prob- erywhere, the brothers, then in their with a wingspan of five feet, $15. ably not one person in a hundred twenties, opened a small bicycle busi- was a biplane, with double All was packed up for shipment believed the brothers had actually ness. Orville loved bicycles the most. Twings, one over the other. Observing east to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a flown in their machine, or if they had, When sales grew slack Wilbur turned birds in flight, it had occurred to Wil- remote spot on the Outer Banks, a it could only have been a fluke. restless, uncertain what to make of his bur that a bird adjusted its wings so narrow chain of sandbars and islands life. as to present the tip of one wing at a along the coast. Wind was the essen- The Dream Takes Hold In the summer of 1896, Orville, 25, raised angle, the other at a lowered tial, and Kitty Hawk had steady winds To their friends in Dayton, they were was struck by typhoid. It was a month angle, thus its balance was controlled as well as soft sand beaches on the Will and Orv, ever industrious and vir- before he could sit up in bed. During by “utilizing dynamic reactions of the chance of an “upset.” tually inseparable. Like their preacher this time Wilbur had begun reading MUSEUM AIR AND SPACE OF SMITHSONIAN’S NATIONAL COURTESY PHOTO: air.” So, included in the kite was a sys- They moved into a tent at Kitty 1234567890 1234567890 [[1L]] | 06•2016 06•2016 [[2R]] | | READER’S DIGEST Hawk, living mainly on local eggs, to- face.