The Wright brothers were the first to make manned, powered flights in an airplane. In order to achieve this feat, they conducted wind-tunnel experiments on wing lift and drag, revealing major errors in the existing data, which they replaced with their own tables. They also conducted four years worth of glider trials to test their design innovations, such as the warped wing, the elevator (navigational equipment that is adjustable on the horizontal), and the tail rudder, a triaxial system they patented that remains the standard in the industry. After their first flight, they promoted this new technology, ushering in the age of flying.
Wilbur Wright was born on April 16, 1867, in Millville, Indiana, and Orville Wright was born on August 19, 1871, in Dayton, Ohio. They had two older brothers, Reuchlin and Lorin, and one younger sister, Katharine. Their mother, Susan Catherine Koerner, suffered from tuberculosis, and their father, Milton Wright, was a teacher and a pastor who became a bishop of the United Brethren Church. He bought his boys a toy helicopter in 1878 that sparked their interest in flying. Both boys loved learning, though they were largely self-taught, as Wilbur only finished high school, and Orville did not even pursue his education that far. Orville built printing presses, and in the late 1880s, the brothers collaboratively edited, published, and printed local newspapers (the West Side News and The Evening News) out of their home.
In 1892, the Wright brothers initiated their careers in mechanized self-propulsion by opening a bicycle shop. Within four years, the Wright Cycle Company was manufacturing the Wright Special, an $18 bicycle. On August 10 of that year, 1896, the German aviator Otto Lilienthal died after a glider accident, an event that rekindled the Wrights’ interest in flying. They studied Lilienthal’s wing-lift tables, scoured the literature on aviation, and even contacted Samuel Pierpoint Langley, an aviator who directed the Smithsonian Institution, and Octave Chanute, a French-American aviator.
Orville Wright, circa 1905, began his career in mechanized self-propulsion by opening a bicycle shop with his brother Wilbur. The pair would later be the first to make manned, powered flights in an airplane.
Realizing the necessity of maneuvering the wings (after observing birds in flight), the Wrights designed and built a biplane kite with maneuverable wings of a five-foot span, which they tested in August 1899. This innovation allowed them to create lateral balance, or aileron control, by adjusting the angles at the wingtips, a key to manned flight. Next, they asked the U.S. Weather Bureau to suggest an ideal location for flight testing; Kill Devil Hills at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, combined steady winds with sandy dunes, the bureau replied.
After conducting trials there in the fall of 1900 (using a glider they had constructed with a 17-foot wingspan) and the summer of 1901 (using a glider with different wing camber and a hand-operated "elevator" on the plane’s tail), the Wright brothers concluded that Lilienthal’s lift tables were erroneous. After Wilbur reported this opinion to the Western Society of Engineers at its Chicago meeting that year, the brothers experimented with an 18-inch wind tunnel and 48 different wing cambers to compile their own correct tables of lift and drag.
Wilbur Wright, circa 1905, and his brother Orville were the first to make manned, powered flights in an airplane.
When the Wrights returned to Kitty Hawk in the fall of 1902, their glider had a 32-foot wingspan and a double vertical fin behind the wings, which Wilbur redesigned as a single tail rudder operated by the wing-control wires. They also designed and built propellers (which were actually wings operating on the vertical axis, they realized) and a 12-horsepower engine, which they mounted on "Flyer," their 750-pound aircraft with a 40-foot wingspan, for their 1903 trials.
At 10:35 on the morning of December 17, Orville Wright took off, rising about 10 feet in the air, and landing about 100 feet away, thus navigating the first manned, powered flight. On the last flight of that day, Wilbur Wright stayed airborne for just under a minute, traveling about a half-mile at a speed of some 10 miles per hour. After this flight, the wind smashed "Flyer." The brothers announced their achievement on January 5, 1904, to an indifferent world.
Over the next several years, the Wright brothers improved upon their airplane design, building the Flyer II (which Wilbur flew three-quarters of a mile in about a minute-and-a-half in 1904) and the Flyer III (which flew just over 24 miles in just over 38 minutes). In 1906, they patented their triaxial control system—consisting of an elevator, rudder, and wing-warping— which remains the standard for airplanes. By then, airplane manufacturers had sprouted up in Europe as well as in the United States, many of them infringing on the Wright brothers’ patent, which they spent years defending. During this protracted litigation, Wilbur contracted typhoid fever and died on May 30, 1912.
Before his brother’s death, Orville and his brother Wilbur shared a medal granted by the French Academy of Sciences in 1909. After Wilbur’s death, Orville received numerous other honors, including the 1910 Langley medal from the Smithsonian Institution, the 1914 Elliot Cresson medal from the Franklin Institute, and a cross of an officer from the French Legion of Honor in 1924. In 1930, he received the first Daniel Guggenheim medal.
Orville sold the Wright Company in October 1915; he then founded the Wright Aeronautical Corporation and subsequently became director of the Wright Aeronautical Laboratory. In this position, he made his last major contribution to airplane technology: split flaps. Orville died of a heart attack on January 30, 1948. Both brothers died in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio, and neither ever married.
Orville and Wilbur Wright are shown here circa 1909 in Pau, France. In 1924, many years after Wilbur’s death, Orville received an officer’s cross from the French Legion of Honor.
