The Wright Brothers (2014)
Four Stars out of Five
David McCullough
David McCullough has developed a voice for the American people.
Whether he is narrating a documentary for Ken Burns (The Civil War) or telling the
life of an under-appreciated US president (Pulitzer prize winning books on Harry
Truman in 1992 and John Adams in 2001), David McCullough has a voice and style
that makes learning history an enjoyable experience. He also brings an
historian’s eye and expertise to the job as well as the enthusiasm of someone
who truly admires his subject and subject material. This English Literature
Graduate-turned Historian is able to bring to the American people stories that
illustrate the American psyche; often stories that lay hidden away from
the public view, more so that other more popular topics: Adams instead of Jefferson, Truman
instead of FDR, and now the Wright Brothers instead of (say) Steve Jobs.
In each of the books I list above, McCullough digs through
the literature and brings to light many topics that I thought I already knew but
didn’t (e.g. a much keener insight into Adams’ nature or Truman’s
under-appreciated intellect), or in the case of the Wright Brothers, a much
more informed opinion of what they did to develop the airplane. Like many
contemporary observers of the Wright Brothers’ achievement I was overly
influenced by the photographs of their early flights into believing it was a simple, almost intuitive thing they did. I was sure I could have
done the same thing had I been born in the late 19th century. I knew
nothing of the Wright Brothers’ exhaustive observations of bird flight, their
mechanical aptitude, their perseverance in the face of technical set-backs and
public ridicule, or even and more to the point, the mathematical and
engineering prowess that they (most especially the senior brother, Wilbur)
brought to the project.
The Wright Brothers would not have seemed the most promising
of team’s aiming to solve the problem of mechanically-driven heavier than air
flight. They were in opposition to many leading American inventors (Alexander
Graham Bell, Samuel Langley, Octave Chanute) as well as to very enthusiastic
efforts taking place in England, France and Germany. They lacked college educations, formal
training in engineering or aeronautics of any kind. Their work record ranged
from printing a local paper to building and selling bicycles. And yet, driven
by Wilbur’s passionate desire to understand flight, they embarked on a lengthy
study of birds, most particularly soaring birds. These careful and insightful
observations led Wilbur to begin an analysis of flight that was often the work
of genius. Drawing on literature he obtained from the Smithsonian and from
interactions with Octave Chanute, Wilbur developed concepts and mathematics to
explain his wing designs that were groundbreaking.
Wilbur and Orville travelled from their home in Dayton, Ohio
to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in order to utilize the nearly constant
winds and lack of prying eyes there. Both of these two needs go a long way to explaining
the Wright Brothers success and frustrations in the early years of the 20th
century. The Kitty Hawk area of North Carolina in the year 1900 was only accessible by
boat, but only just so. On his first trip to the region in September, 1900, Wilbur spent weeks trying to
find someone who could pilot a boat to Kitty Hawk from the mainland, and then when he did find
passage, he was very nearly killed in the transit. The Kitty Hawk and Kill
Devil Hills areas of the Outer Banks were to prove exactly what the brothers
needed in terms of wind and isolation. They were able to read and learn from
the efforts of others, and to incorporate their own ideas into wing design to
create a series of gliders. They sometimes flew these gliders as kites, while on other occasions they flew them, sometimes setting records for distance. From their
experience with the gliders, they eventually built the Wright Flyer I, a
powered flyer; the flyer with which they accomplished first the feat of manned
powered flight on December 17, 1903.
After their first successful series of flights with Flyer I,
flights they had recorded with photography, they returned home to Dayton in
order to advance their design such that their Flyers II and III did not require
the high winds of Kitty Hawk. They were successful in these efforts, but then
they began to encounter winds of a different sort. Much of the ensuing problems
that the Wright Brothers dealt with had their origins in the Wright Brothers
near pathological desire for secrecy and control over their invention. Because
few had witnessed their successes, and because so many others, others well
financed and educated in engineering had failed, the Wright Brothers were
widely called frauds. Orville’s mental issues (never really defined in the
book, but quite hard to ignore) and Wilbur’s often hostile attitude to
strangers did not help their case. What did help their case was Wilbur’s native
engineering skill and intellect, the brothers’ unflagging experimentation and
practice, and in only a few cases, the faithful assistance of others. Octave
Chanute was but the first of several French admirers of the Wright Brothers to
lend his assistance.
When at last in 1908, Wilbur felt they had finished their engineering
studies and their aerial practice, he arranged to demonstrate at Le Mans France
just what he and Orville could do. Wilbur was to create and then break one
flight record after another after moving to Pau France in 1909. Critics were turned to supporters, and
the fiscal and critical reaction to the Brothers’ accomplishments finally began
to turn their way. While Wilbur was accomplishing so much in France in 1908, Orville
was to do the American demonstrations at Ft. Meyer, VA. After beginning his
flights and setting several records, Orville suffered a catastrophic mechanical
failure, the first experienced by the brothers. Orville very nearly lost his
life; his passenger, in fact did lose his. Orville was to sink into a spiritual
and physical depression that took years to recover from. His sister Kathrine
hitherto having played a role in their lives by running the bicycle shop back
in Dayton was now to play a much more up front role. In a sense the public
image of the Wright Brothers changed dramatically once Katherine came into the
public view.
In time, the Wright Brothers were awarded the undisputed
title of inventors of manned mechanical flight and achieved financial security.
Sadly for them, the other realty of American life now took center stage. Wilbur
was for the last five years of his life to spend little time flying or doing
engineering work, but instead spent it fighting with the Herring-Curtiss Company and
others over patent infringement. He died at 45 from typhus. His sister was to
die only a few years later from pneumonia. Orville would sell the Wright
Brothers Company three years after Wilbur’s death in 1912, and while he lived to a reasonably
ripe old age, he faded from the aeronautical scene at about the same time as
his brother.
McCullough’s book on the Wright Brothers, their sister
Kathrine and immediate family is not really a biography in the traditional
sense. It is a relatively slim (compared to "Truman" and "Adams") and is far less an intellectual
examination of a short time during America’s history. While this book does not
stand with “Truman” or “Adams” for intellectual insight, it is still a
marvelous examination of a part of American culture that many Americans praise
themselves for: homegrown ingenuity, strength of character, and hard work. The
Wright Brothers are perfect examples of all these traits. Like Washington as an
icon for American integrity, Lincoln as one of American compassion and empathy,
or FDR as an example of leadership, the Wright Brothers could well stand as the
definition of the human (American or otherwise) passion to understand and to
conquer a part of the physical world in which we live. This book is unlikely to
win the Pulitzer Prize, but it is definitely one every American can enjoy, one
which every American would benefit by reading.
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