We all learned about the Wright brothers in school – Orville & Wilber, Kitty Hawk, airplanes. But that is the much simplified version. This book goes into much more detail. Of course, the Wright’s were not the first to come up with the idea of creating a flying machine, but they were the first to solve most of the problems involved. And make no mistake, there was intense international competition to be the first. This is the era when the “safety bicycle” became poplar, and automobiles were still new-fangled. While the brothers were interested in bicycles, as evidenced by their ownership of a bicycle shop, Wilber had no interest in the automobile.
One thing I don’t remember learning is that the Wright’s were from Dayton, Ohio, nowhere near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Of course, if you grew up in Ohio, you probably did learn that. The other thing they didn’t mention in school was how much interest there was from other countries in their invention, and how little, at least early on, there was from the United States government. Also, few people believed them at first. They had to do quite a few public demonstration flights to convince people. Even their neighbors in Dayton were skeptical at first!
For me the most interesting part of the book was how the brothers went about creating their invention. It was not just a fluke. They read and studied everything they could, including how birds fly. And the fact that they built bikes was not completely incidental. While their business building bicycles sounds unrelated, many of the skills they used in their business helped them create the first airplane. They also managed to build the small engines needed to power their flying machines. Of course, they also relied on the wind at the beginning of their flying experiments.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Did anyone in your family get a patent for an invention? You can go to https://patents.google.com and search by their name to find out. Searching for Orville Wright under inventor predictably brings up several for flying machines. Something else to keep in mind when you are researching your ancestors, is what kind of transportation was available to them where and when they lived. Orville and Wilbur took trains and boats to get from Ohio to Kitty Hawk, and ships to get to Europe. They took an electric trolley to get to and from their testing field in Ohio!