Orville Wright on Wilbur Wright

For its new 14th Edition in 1929, Britannica sought a biography of that pioneering 20th-century Daedalus, Wilbur Wright. To write the piece Britannica tapped Wilbur’s comrade of the skies, his brother, Orville. Written with charming modesty, the piece is a legendary example of fraternal biography.

Wright, Wilbur (1867–1912), American inventor, son of Milton and Susan Catharine (Koerner) Wright, was born near Millville, Ind., on April 16, 1867. When Wilbur Wright was one month old his father was elected editor of the official organ of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, necessitating moving his family to Dayton, O.; and eight years later he was elected a bishop of that denomination requiring other changes of residence. As a result Wilbur Wright received his education in the public schools of Dayton, Ohio, Richmond, Indiana, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Just when he was expecting to enter college, an accident, while playing in a game of ice hockey, disabled him for some six or eight years for active work. These years of poor health he devoted to the care of his invalid mother and to assisting his father in legal matters connected with the church. In 1890 he joined his brother, Orville, who was publishing a small weekly newspaper.

Experiments in gliding

Reading of the experiments of Otto Lilienthal in Germany, Wilbur and his brother became intensely interested in gliding as a sport. Lilienthal’s experiments were suddenly ended in 1896 by his death, resulting from an accident due to insufficient control of the equilibrium of his glider. Lilienthal had balanced his machine by shifting the weight of his body. The brothers, believing this method incapable of expansion to meet the requirements of flight, set about to develop a more effective system. They developed a system in which the centre of gravity remained constant and the equilibrium was maintained by varying the air pressures on different parts of the machine through adjustments of the angles of the wings and auxiliary surfaces. This system, patented by them, is now generally known as aileron control.

Although Wilbur and his brother had taken up aeronautics merely as a sport, their chief interest soon turned to its more scientific aspects. Having found in their experiments that the existing scientific data was almost altogether untrustworthy, they cast it all aside and began investigations of their own, using methods which avoided many of the errors in the work of their predecessors. In 1901 they set up a small wind tunnel in their work-shop at Dayton in which they made measurements of the lift and drag of a great number of different-shaped aerofoils at angles from zero to 45 degrees. The results derived from this tunnel so stimulated their interest that often they worked into the early hours of the morning. Measurements also were made to determine the position of the centre of pressure on cambered surfaces and to determine the effect on the lift and drag when one surface was placed above another or when one surface followed another.

The first motor-driven aeroplane

With this mass of data in their possession they thought it now possible to predict from calculation the performance of a flying machine; they thought they could design a machine which would require not over one-half to one-fourth of the power that would have been necessary for any of the earlier proposed machines. Accordingly in Oct. 1902, they began the design of a motor-driven aeroplane. When completed the machine including the pilot weighed 750 lb. and was propelled by a four cylinder petrol motor of 12 horse power. Tested at Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1903, the machine carrying a man made four sustained free flights. The longest of these had a duration of 59 seconds and a speed of 30 m. an hour. This machine is now exhibited in the Science museum at South Kensington, London.