Last month I walked into a Goodwill store to look at their books. I have done this before because I love to read and you can get books for only $2 I glanced through two large bookcases and found three books for under $7. I love history and one book was, "The Wright Brothers," by a very famous historian, David McCullough. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and he's best known for his book on President Harry Truman.
Twenty pages into reading the book I was thrilled, it is an incredible story, of two brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright from Dayton, Ohio. I would have liked to sit down and read the whole book that day, but I did take a few weeks. I will spare you many of the details, but below are the things that amazed me the most.
On the very first page I learned that the inspiration for flying came from a French toy that their dad gave them when they were young. It was a small helicopter with sticks and propellers and it flew up. The brothers called it, "the bat." Orville's first grade teacher asked him one day what he was doing with the wood he was fiddling with and he said he was making a machine and his brother and him would fly one day. (I've never fiddled with wood, but I carried a lot out of it out of my parents house when we moved them.)
Their father was a Bishop and he had an extensive library in the house that encouraged his kids to read a lot. Wilbur had a promising career that ended when he was hit with a hockey stick in the face in high school and he spent three years at home as a recluse, but he read everything he could.
The brothers started a print shop and a newspaper and eventually a very successful bicycle shop where they made their own bikes. Their sister Katherine was a very important part of their life and helped them achieve their success during their life and she was their biggest cheerleader.
The brothers believed that the secret to flying was to study birds and Wilbur learned everything he could to see how they flew. He even requested many books and writings on flying and birds from The Smithsonian Institute.
They built the Wright Flyer pictured above and made the first successful flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. They flew it almost in front of no one since the local media was not interested in the story. Kitty Hawk was 700 miles from where they grew up and it was a remote location with the open space and winds perfect for them. They found the location by asking for advice from the United States Weather Bureau in Washington D.C.
As news spread of their achievement, our government was not interested, but the French were. They had had several people trying to fly and the Wright Brothers became heroes overseas before getting the recognition at home. Thousands of people including kings of countries came out to see them fly in Europe. The flights were all successful except one where a propeller fell off when Orville was flying a Lieutenant in the US Army. Orville had serious injuries but he recovered. Unfortunately, the lieutenant was the first airline casualty in history.
Eventually are government came around and the two brothers who had no formal education, had many years of success growing the airplane business and being applauded and rewarded for their invention. A writer in Europe gave a fitting tribute by writing that they,
"Made the conquest of the sky their existence. They needed this ambition and profound, almost religious, faith in order to deliberately accept their exile to the country of the dunes, far away from all... Wilbur is phlegmatic but only in appearance. He is driven by a will of iron which animates him and drives him in his work."
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