This week marks 100 years since the Wright brothers' first flight. How exactly did two uneducated bicycle fixers from Ohio manage to change human history
Southern Uri
Above: The first flight on December 17, 1903. The first flight, with Orville as pilot, lasted 12 seconds. The fourth, with Wilbur as pilot, had already reached a record of 59 seconds. Bottom photo: Wilbur (right) and Orville Wright. It all comes down to a question of knowledge and talent
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"Designing an airplane is nothing.
Building a plane is something.
Flying a plane - that's all!" (Otto Lilienthal, 1896-1848)
At the end of May 1896, a Viennese journalist published a story about a group having a conversation about the affairs of the day. One of the participants had just returned from Paris, and he talked about the new inventions: how the bicycle changed the face of the streets, how the carts appeared without the horses and "what will they bring in their wings?". Then one of those present says: "I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the piloted airship." "But we all thought about her," replies another.
"Yes," says the first, "because sooner or later this invention will come into the world." Perhaps the person who will summon the greatest of these surprises to the human race already lives within us. I would like to know what the world will look like then." "And I," says one of the women in the group, "I would like to know what the man who invented it would look like: he would be a hero, almost an idol!"
The Viennese was Theodor Herzl, who wrote this story shortly after publishing "The Jewish State". But will the inventor of the airship really be a hero or an idol? The initiator of the conversation does not think so. "I tend to think that he will be a ridiculed figure," he says, "a poor brat, with whims and will not succeed. They will probably steal his secret. Others will get rich from him, and he will get nothing - only a monument after his death. whereas in his days he will bitterly live his life properly. And rightly so. It will probably be a simple discovery, almost obvious. Why did we distract from her, all of us as one? I think if I hear that one of my acquaintances invented the piloted airship, I will slap him in the face. Why him, why not me?"
Herzl is quite accurate. It's just that there were two, not one, who at the time he wrote these prophetic words were already working on the breakthrough that would change the face of humanity - and these two were indeed going to have a bitter week until they were properly appreciated. It was Wilbur and Orville Wright, the brothers who this week 100 years ago made the first motorized flight, on the "Kill Devil" hill in Kitty Hawk, to the coast of the state of North Carolina in the USA.
In the matter of the monument, Herzl was only half correct. In 1932, a monument was erected in Kitty Hawk in honor of the Wright brothers, which became part of the National Parks Authority. Wilbur was no longer alive for 20 years, but Orville still walked among us and so was the only American to receive a monument named after him during his lifetime. Today, the celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the historic flight begin at the venue, which will begin with flights of antique airplanes and will reach their climax next Wednesday, December 17, when at exactly 10:35 a restored model of the "flying plane", the Wright brothers' plane, will pass overhead.
all their passion
Who were the two brothers who one morning 100 years ago became heaven and earth? Wilbur, born in 1867, and Orville, born in 1871, were the fifth and sixth sons of the seven children of Reverend Milton Wright and his wife Susan (a twin brother and sister died young). Milton, who reached the status of a bishop in the Evangelical Church (which is why the two were later called "the bishop's children"), wandered around Indiana, Iowa and Ohio, dragging his family with him. The family was displaced from their home 12 times, until they settled in their permanent residence in Dayton, Ohio.
In 1878, on his return from one of his trips, the bishop brought with him a gift for Wilbur and Orville, a toy model of a helicopter whose propeller runs on a rubber spring. This helicopter was designed by a French engineer named Alphonse Fano, but because he could not find funding to develop his invention, he despaired and committed suicide. But his invention did not go down the drain.
The two brothers were filled with admiration for the model, sat down to sketch the helicopter and tried to build enlarged models of it. The whole family followed their attempts with sympathy.
The bishop, although he was one of the most prominent representatives of the conservative line in his church, had a huge library in his house and in it volumes that encompassed the entire range of human knowledge, even those that included heretical words. First you have to learn everything, he argued, and only then come to a conclusion. In this spirit he encouraged his children to satisfy their curiosity within the walls of his library. The school didn't satisfy them anyway: Wilbur did finish high school, but he was filled with doubts about college and finally decided to give up; Orville, with a mischievous nature and fond of pranks, dropped out of school and dedicated himself to a small printing house he founded. Wilbur soon joined him.
Like the father, the mother Susan was also an exceptional woman in her education. She was among the few women who attended college at that time and always encouraged her children to be open-minded. Apart from that, she had a rare practical sense, she knew how to fix everything that broke in the house and even did wonders when she made knives and forks and other useful utensils. When she fell ill with tuberculosis, the older Wilbur abandoned all his pursuits and nursed her until she passed away. Her place was taken by the younger daughter Kate, who constantly encouraged the brothers and during their later flight experiments she knew how to encourage them in moments of despair.
Even if the close-knit and supportive family was a fertile ground for the great invention, it is doubtful if it was a normal family. Here are two men who don't leave each other's side, who live until old age with their parents, the woman in their lives is their younger sister. So much so that when Kate, at an advanced age, fell in love and asked to be married, Orville refused to give her his consent, was absent from her wedding and cut off all contact with her. Only when he learned that she was on her deathbed did he feel for her and held her hand when she died.
The two brothers never married. The accepted cliché is that all their passion was directed towards aviation, and another cliché is that they were "married" to each other. Louis Belleriou, on the other hand, the Frenchman who in 1909 first crossed the English Channel by flight, declared upon landing at the end of the historic flight: "I did it! But will I continue to fly? No, because I promised Mrs. Bellario that I would."
After abandoning the printing house, the brothers turned to establishing a bicycle shop and workshop on Third Street in Dayton. The bicycle was the craze of the time and the business prospered. Dayton itself was buzzing at the time as a hive of technological invention. In 1900, the city registered more skull patents than any other city in the US. The brothers returned and gave their opinion in the field that had turned them on since the toy they received from their father and in the meantime employed many in America and overseas, aviation.
In 1896, they read in the newspaper about the death of the engineer Otto Lilienthal, the pioneer of German aviation, and their curiosity was sparked. Lilienthal followed the flight of Hasidic birds for years and was the first to state that the curvature of the wing is a key factor in creating lift, which enables flight (the curved wing divides the air flow: above it the flow is faster, therefore the pressure is lower; below the wing the flow is slower and therefore the pressure is higher. This is according to Bernoulli's law, which states that the sum of the pressure and speed of a flow - liquid or air - is constant. As a result, an upward thrust is created called lift). Together with his brother Gustav, Lilienthal was the first to build man-carrying gliders and performed a large number of glides himself, until he crashed and was killed. The brothers from Dayton obtained his records and wondered why he had failed.
In his many experiments, Lilienthal stood for the changing pressures exerted on the down during flight. He thought that this could be overcome by the pilot, maneuvering his body in response to the pressures. The solution spoke to the hearts of the Wright brothers: as cyclists on the streets of Dayton, they knew how essential the combination between man and machine was. But they suspected that this was also where the problem lay. They needed more information. On May 30, 1899, Orville wrote to the Smithsonian Institution, the US temple of scientific knowledge, and asked that they send him any material he could use. He stated that since childhood he has been interested in the issue of flight, and that "my observations since then have convinced me even more strongly that human flight is a possible and practical thing. It all boils down to a question of knowledge and talent."
With the materials they received from the Smithsonian, the brothers closed themselves in a building they added to the back of the store. So that the customers would not disturb them, they installed two bells: one was activated when the front door was opened, and the other - when the air pump was activated, which most of the customers came for and knew how to activate it themselves. That way the brothers could know when they themselves were needed. They spent all their time building models of gliders, with which they tried to find out where - if indeed - Lilienthal went wrong. Wilbur was the one who went deep, who went down to investigate things, but also the one who was dragged into despair when he reached a dead end. Orville was practical, passionate, who did not let problems depress him. Their arguments were loud and sometimes continued into the night. Charlie Taylor, the mechanic they employed at the workshop, however, said that in the morning they would show up and Orville would hasten to say: "I thought about it and I came to the conclusion that I was wrong", while Wilbur would tear him apart: "No, no, it turned out to me that you were right".
Suddenly the plane lifted off
From this fruitful dialogue grew the most important conclusion of the Wright brothers, the one that finally led them to the great breakthrough: the problem of problems, the one that led to Lilienthal's crash, was the lack of control of the Down. As a remedy for this, they came up with the idea of twisting while flying the tips of the wings in a way that would increase their camber, thereby increasing the lift in the desired direction while turning. In 1900, they built a glider based on this concept, towed it to Kitty Hook, off the coast of North Carolina, where the right winds prevailed and the sand dunes were suitable for soaring experiments. The two made several successful flights and returned to Dayton satisfied, but did not know what the next step would be.
Wilbur's doubts arose again. "When I reach a corner", he once wrote, "I tend to get stuck in it". He contacted Octave Chanute from Chicago, a wealthy man who was also involved in the Downs and who has since become a supporter and benefactor of the brothers. But at that early stage his advice did not advance them practically. Oriel then had the breakthrough, and the two were the first in the world to carry out practical experiments in a wind tunnel, which they built in their workshop. In the series of experiments they conducted between the summer of 1901 and the fall of 1902, they came to the conclusion that a two-wing down would suit them best, and they also calculated the area of the wing that would give the down an optimal lift. They perfected the ability of the wings to bend while flying, so that they could control the rolling action of the down, and with the pitch rudder they installed in front they could make the down climb or dive. When they added, in 1902, a rear tail, aka a rudder that turns the nose of the aircraft to the right or left, they had in their hands the first aircraft in the world that could control its flight in all axes of movement.
Now they approached to deal with the question of thrust, the force that would propel the aircraft forward. Orville assumed responsibility for the engine. At first he hoped that salvation would come from the young car industry, but it soon became clear that the available engines were excessively heavy. With no choice, he built a four-piston engine with Charlie Taylor, which weighed 90 kg and provided only 12 horsepower. Wilbur, at the time, was handling the development of a propeller that could translate this minuscule force into thrust in the most efficient manner. He thought his job would be easy, because ship propellers had already existed for about 100 years. However, after plowing through Dayton's libraries and researching elsewhere, he discovered to his dismay that no written theory exists in the field of propellers. With no choice, the brothers once again closed themselves in the workshop on the third street and while trial and error built the most successful air propeller.
In September 1903, the brothers returned to Kitty Hawk, with their motorized descent, which they called "the flying one". On December 14, Wilbur tried to take off for the first flight, but the takeoff did not go well. On the morning of December 17, they left the cabin they had built on the hill and examined the sultry weather. Should we wait until the wind subsides? "We've waited enough," Wilbur decided, "today is the day." They flipped a coin, and Orville won. Then they handed over their camera to a local named John Daniels and walked towards the "flying".
Daniels followed the two who talked in a low voice and then shook hands "as if they would never meet again". He urged them to smile for the camera, but they did not abandon their serious faces. The engine sprang to life, and at 10:35 Orville gave the signal and the "flyer" sprang forward, with Wilbur running beside him, holding his right wing. Suddenly the plane lifted off, soared to a height of about three meters, with Orville lying on the wing trying to control it. Daniels captured the big moment. The first flight lasted 12 seconds, during which the "flying" Gamma traveled a distance of 37 meters before hitting the ground and stopping.
Wilbur also took off for the flight, which had already reached 53 meters and also lasted 12 seconds, and after another sortie by Orville (61 meters, 15 seconds), he took off again, and this time set a record: 260 meters, in 59 seconds of flight. The two brothers walked to the nearest telegraph station and telegraphed a report of their success to Dayton, ending it with the request: "Inform the press, we'll be home for Christmas."
The proud father did hurry to announce, but surprisingly the revolutionary event received very little media coverage. Only a year (!) later, on January 1, 1905, a detailed article about the experiment was published in a beekeeping bulletin. What is the meaning of this neglect? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the press is tired of all those exaggerators who announced day and night about their success in taking off with a motorized plane. But the source of the neglect may be in the great skepticism that the press showed towards the possibility of motorized flight in general. The "New York Times", for example, predicted only a few days before that many are talking about a flight, but it seems that it will only take a long time for this to happen. Since then The Times has improved its ability to admit mistakes, but then it seems it had a hard time swallowing its pride. So did the "Chicago Tribune", which ruled in an editorial at the time that a person's chances of flying are slim, "unless we become angels".
The battle for glory
Those who did follow the great achievement were the competitors, both from home and from Europe. In America, Glenn Curtiss, also a bicycle (and motorcycle) builder, began to develop airplanes and threaten his own flight. In France, which since the Montgolfier brothers, the pioneers of the hot air balloon (late 18th century), has seen itself as the world leader in aviation, Santos-Domon flew shortly after the Wright brothers, but he did so in a motorized airship like the Zeppelin (filled with gas lighter than air). Many doubted the reports from Kitty Hawk and wanted to see the Wright brothers fly with their own eyes. But these behaved in a strange way, when they hid behind a veil of secrecy and declared that they would make a demonstration flight only for a customer who would sign a purchase contract with them.
But the pressure took its toll, and in 1908 Wilbur went to France and demonstrated his ability to the appropriate Parisians, while Orville went to Fort Myer, Virginia to make a demonstration flight for the US Army. This flight ended in a crash, with Orville slightly injured and the passenger, Lt. Thomas Selfridge, going down in history as the first fatality in an air accident.
The troubles did not end there. Curtis began flying a plane that resembled the Wright brothers' plane and they sued him for stealing their patent. They won, but in 1912 Wilbur died, and although the cause was typhoid, Orville and Kate claimed that the legal battle with Curtis shortened his life. Then World War I broke out and the sudden demand for airplanes resulted in a temporary freeze on patent protections. They all built and sold unlimited planes.
The fight over the patent was just one of many battles. If the press initially ignored the Wright brothers, it followed with interest a more connected man, Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Nine days before the Wright brothers' flight, a pilot tried to take off with the steam-powered plane built by Langley, the "Great Aerodrome", but the plane crashed into the Potomac River, to the great dismay of Langley, the institute and the US government that funded the project. Langley died three years later of a broken heart, but his supporter and successor at the Institute, Charles Walcott, was determined to save his predecessor's prestige. He turned to none other than Curtis and offered to rebuild Langley's plane and fly it.
Curtis did build the plane, but added several improvements to it, and in 1914 Kebal flew with a committee. The Smithsonian hastened to publish a report stating that this is exactly the same plane - "without improvements!" - where Langley's pilot tried to take off at the beginning of December, 1903, and even if he couldn't do it, he was able to do it. From this, the Smithsonian concluded that "former Secretary Langley built the first airplane capable of long-duration manned flight." The institution added insult to injury by placing Langley's restored plane in its museum, with a sign indicating that it was the first plane.
Orville Wright was seething with rage, and not just because the Smithsonian had robbed him and his brother of fame. Saa was intrigued by the fact that Curtis was involved: if the claim was true, then it could help him in his defense argument in his trials against Orville, that the Wright brothers did not make the first flight.
Orville's revenge was severe. He sent the "flyer" to the Science Museum in London and wrote in his will that it would remain there even after his death, unless he changed his mind by then. The removal of the plane from America's borders caused a tumultuous protest, but Orville was firm in his opinion and the "flyer" became the main attraction of the London museum. Only in 1940 was it dismantled and stored in the basement, for fear of being damaged by the Luftwaffe bombings (the "Stuka" dive bombers that attacked London were developed by a German pilot named Ernst Odette based on a plane he built in America...Glen Curtis). But in 42, Orville changed his mind, because the Smithsonian retracted the 1914 report. The "Flyer" was returned to its homeland and in 48 it was placed in the museum with the sign next to it guaranteeing, once and for all, its premiere.
The golden virtue in a fierce spirit
After selling the aircraft company he founded, Orville devoted himself to his favorite occupation, inventions. Before he passed away in 1948, he saw how the airplane was transformed by man into a revolutionary means of transportation, but also into a formidable means of warfare. He died of a heart attack while fixing the doorbell of his house.
The Wright brothers were cultural heroes, a symbol of the spirit of American initiative. Their flight was chosen by readers and journalists as one of the four most important events of the 20th century, after the Hiroshima bombing, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the moon landing. It is interesting how many have noticed that the first three events are a consequence of the fourth. In 1999, the weekly "Time" published the list of the 100 most important personalities of the century. The Wright brothers, of course, star on the list, with Bill Gates saying about them: "Two engineers who taught themselves everything, who worked in a bicycle repair shop, made the world a smaller place once and for all."
At the inauguration of President Kennedy, in January 1961, the poet Robert Frost drew inspiration from the Wright Brothers for the model of the new American statesman, who combines vision with the ability to execute, and read "Kitty Hawk", a poem he composed especially: "... an exalted God, who took human form, has Interpretation: because the virtue of gold is in a strong spirit, in realization." In his private diary seven decades earlier, Herzl also saw a connection between the future airplane, statesmanship and the golden virtue of a fierce spirit: "Great affairs do not need a solid foundation. An apple should be placed on the table so that it does not fall. The earth floats in the air. And so I can possibly establish the Jewish state and maintain it without a secure support. The secret is in the movement. I believe that in this direction the navigable airship will also be found somewhere."
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