Look! It's a Bird! No ... it's an airplane!!!!

When I said we were getting up at the crack of dawn to road trip I wasn’t kidding. Dayton was our destination of choice and a 2.5-hour drive from the Toledo area. Add to that an hour of morning primping and the desire to arrive at the Aviation Heritage National Historic Park when it opened at 8:30 a.m. I’m calculator dependent; you do the math. Let’s just say I was neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed when we hit the road at o’dark thirty. True to form (and without harboring even an iota of guilt in shirking my navigator responsibilities with trusty Bernice Garmin leading the way), I snoozed for most of the drive down. When we arrived I was ready to soar through the birthplace of aviation.

The Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park was established to commemorate the lives and legacies of three exceptional Daytonians: Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright and Paul Laurence Dunbar. The park consists of four sites: The Wright Cycle Company Complex, Huffman Prairie Flying Field, the John W. Berry, Sr. Wright Brothers Aviation Center and the Dunbar House. I’ll save the latter for the next post and stick to the brothers Wright and their flying machine.

Wilbur and Orville were the third and sixth children, respectively, of Milton and Susan Koener Wright. The family often moved due to their father’s ministry in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, but they eventually settled in at 7 Hawthorne Street in Dayton where they stayed for 30 years. The Wright brothers’ interest in aviation was first piqued in 1878 when Milton gave them a toy helicopter after one of his trips out west.

From childhood the Wright brothers tinkered, built and displayed an entrepreneurial spirit. In 1889 they formed a business partnership and opened a printing shop. They moved their business to the second floor corner suite of offices in the Hoover Block of West Dayton when it opened in 1890 and continued to operate there until 1895. This historic building is now the location of the main visitor center for the park.

In 1892 they responded to the bicycle craze sweeping the nation and also opened a repair and sales shop. Business boomed and soon overtook their print shop to become their primary livelihood.  They began manufacturing and selling bicycles of their own design, the Van Cleve and St. Claire, named after their ancestors. This became the first step on their path to the invention of the airplane. The building at 22 South William Street was the fourth bicycle shop operated by the Wrights and is the only building remaining as testament to their bicycle business. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1990.

The news of German experimenter Otto Lillenthal’s death in a gliding accident in 1896 rekindled the Wrights’ interest in solving the problem of flight. Recognizing parallels between controlling a bicycle and an aircraft, they ultimately adapted bicycle technology to aeronautical design. Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institute to discover what was already known on the subject of human flight. As soon as they received a reply, their work began. Their airplane was born in the back of their cycle shop.

On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville became the first in the world to make a controlled flight in a powered, heavier-than-air machine. This, however, was only the beginning. They would have to begin the long, laborious process of building a machine that could make lengthy, routine flights and safely land. This second phase in the invention of the airplane may not have been as well known as their first flight, but it was just as important. The Wright brothers decided to continue their flight experiments closer to home. Local banker Torrence Huffman offered them a cow pasture eight miles northeast of Dayton.

The first attempts in 1904 were less than impressive, but Wilbur and Orville worked on perfecting their airplane. To take off by engine power alone in Dayton’s light winds, the Wright brothers had to lay out as much as 240 feet of wooden rails. If the breeze shifted, the track had to be moved and pegged down again to face the new wind direction. But after they built a catapult, they could launch their flyer with only 60 feet of rail. A team of horses pulled a 1600-pound counterweight to the top of a wooden derrick. When the weight fell 16 feet, it added enough speed to get their flying machine airborne, regardless of wind direction and strength. They flew their first circle in September 1904 and had been airborne for five minutes by December.

The brothers were big on secrecy in the competitive race for aviation claim to fame. They even went so far as to paint their airplane components silver to lend the impression that the aircraft was constructed of metal instead of wood. They had originally built a hangar at the far end of the field in 1904 to keep their progress under wraps, but dissembled it at the end of the season. The following year they constructed a new hangar to store essential tools and house the invention that would change the world.

When spring arrived in 1905, the Wright brothers were at the flying field every day. Their hard work finally paid off in mid October when Wilbur amazed a small crowd with a 40-minute, 24-mile flight. He only landed because he ran out of gas. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, they had mastered the principals of controlled, powered flight and had perfected their machine into the world’s first practical airplane. They were ready to stop test flying, secure a patent and start marketing their invention.

Wilbur and Orville launched the Wright Company in Dayton in 1909 where they began making airplanes and training pilots a year later. Sadly, in 1912 Wilbur contracted typhoid fever while on a trip to Boston in early May and ultimately passed at the end of the month. He was 45 years old. Orville made his last flight as a pilot in 1918. In 1920 he was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a federal agency devoted to research and development for the nation’s aircraft industry. He remained on the NACA’s board for 28 years.

The Wright Memorial in Dayton, Ohio, a stone obelisk of pink granite from North Carolina, was erected by Daytonians in 1940 to honor the Wright brothers’ achievements. Orville attended the dedication of the monument on his 69th birthday, which overlooks the Huffman Prairie Flying Field.

The John W. Berry, Sr. Wright Brothers Aviation Center at Carillon Historical Park houses the original 1905 Wright Flyer III; it is the first airplane designated as a National Historic Landmark. In 1948 Orville assisted with the planning of Wright Hall. He wanted to show the plane below ground level so visitors could see it from above to understand how the controls operated.

Shortly thereafter, flags throughout the U.S. flew at half-staff after the nation learned he had succumbed to a heart attack. He was 75 years old.

Wilbur and Orville Wright never graduated from high school. Neither married. They were not wealthy nor were their experiments funded. They withdrew from the world and devoted themselves to their work. People thought they had taken leave of their senses. Yet, as inventors, builders and flyers, they further developed the airplane, taught man to fly and opened the era of aviation. Not bad for two brothers from Dayton, huh?