38. Seen during a break in the shade of the Kill Devil shed are (left to right): Orville, Octave Chanute, Wilbur, and Edward Huffaker.
39. Wilbur takes wing in the 1902 glider soon after the brothers’ return to Kitty Hawk in 1903. Their camp and shed stand alone in the distant wind-swept sands.
40. Plans for the historic 1903 “flying machine.”
41. Charlie Taylor.
42. A reproduction of the Wrights’ wind tunnel with which they tested different wing shapes.
43. A reproduction of the four-cylinder aluminum gasoline engine built by Charlie Taylor.
44. John T. Daniels (second on the left) and his Kill Devil Hills life-saving crew, the Wrights’ primary support force.
45. The dramatic collapse of Samuel Langley’s aerodrome, December 8, 1903. The story below is from the Washington Evening Star.
46.
47. Orville Wright’s own diary account of what happened at Kill Devil Hills the morning of December 17, 1903.
48. One of history’s turning points recorded in one of the most famous photographs ever, as the Wright Flyer takes off for the first time. Orville is at the controls; Wilbur runs beside him. The picture was taken by John T. Daniels. The time was precisely 10:35 A.M.
49. Diagram of the “starting apparatus” or catapult devised by the Wrights to compensate for a lack of sufficient winds at Huffman Prairie.
50. The Wrights’ 1905 Flyer, the world’s first practical airplane, takes to the air over Huffman Prairie with Orville at the controls, September 29, 1905, a day when he flew 12 miles in 20 minutes. On October 5, Wilbur flew 24 miles in 39 minutes.
51. Amos I. Root, the Ohio beekeeper who, in the January 1, 1905 edition of his publication, Gleanings in Bee Culture, provided the first full, eyewitness, accurate account of the magnitude of what the Wright brothers had achieved.
52.
53.
54. RMS Campania, the luxury ocean liner on which Wilbur sailed for France in 1907.
55. The Jardin des Tuileries in the Paris postcard on which Wilbur marked with an X for those at home the location of his hotel on the rue de Rivoli.
56. Dressed in a new, custom-tailored suit, Wilbur strikes a handsome pose in Hart Berg’s elegant Paris apartment.
57. Hart Berg with his “Exhibit A.”
58. The dirigible La Patrie (The Homeland), one of the spectacular French achievements of the new air age.
59. A sociable crowd in the grandstand at the Hunaudières racetrack at Le Mans waits patiently for Wilbur to put on his demonstration.
60. The response of the crowd on seeing the “miracle” with their own eyes, as featured on the cover of one of France’s popular magazines.
61. Wilbur takes to the air on his triumphant, all-important first flight at Le Mans, Saturday, May 8, 1908.
62. Wilbur with the immensely helpful Léon Bollée.
63. Orville (in plaid cap) and Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge ready for takeoff at Fort Myer, Virginia, September 17, 1908.
64. The close association of Selfridge and Alexander Graham Bell had led Orville to distrust the young officer.
65. The disastrous crash at Fort Myer, in which Selfridge became the first fatality in an airplane and Orville was severely injured.
66. Katharine’s first letter to Bishop Wright after her arrival at Fort Myer to help Orville in every way possible.
67. Wilbur and Edith Berg at Le Mans, as she was about to become the first American woman to go up in an airplane, her long skirts secured at the ankles with a rope in a way that quickly became a fashion sensation.
68. Katharine (far left), the Comtesse de Lambert, Orville (with cane), and Wilbur stroll the long promenade at Pau.
69. Katharine sits beside Wilbur ready for her first takeoff at Pont-Long, February 15, 1909.
70. Orville and Wilbur explain their flying machine to King Edward VII at Pont-Long, March 17, 1909.
71. Wilbur (left) and his best and favorite French “student,” the Comte de Lambert.
72. A French print showing Louis Blériot setting off on his celebrated flight across the English Channel, July 25, 1909.
73. Glenn Curtiss, the American aviator who took first prize for speed at the world’s first international air race at Reims, France in August 1909.
74. Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine at the White House, where President William Howard Taft (center) presented the brothers with gold medals from the Aero Club of America.
75.
76. With speeches, posters, flags, and bunting, a “Court of Honor” on Main Street and a parade stretching two miles, the welcome home for the Wright brothers surpassed anything ever seen in Dayton.
77. A 1909 tribute to what the brothers meant to the nation by cartoonist Homer Davenport, autographed for Katharine: “The sister of men who have won the admiration of all of us, even to the birds of the air.”
78. A Wright plane, flown by the Comte de Lambert, becomes the first plane ever to appear in the skies over Paris.
79. On Governors Island in New York Harbor, Wilbur and Charlie Taylor see to final details, emergency canoe and all, in preparation for Wilbur’s flight up the Hudson River. The American flag provided by Katharine flies at left.
80. Wilbur creates a sensation by circling the Statue of Liberty, symbol of friendship with France and of welcome to America. Harper’s Weekly proclaims him “a new kind of gull.”
81. “The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.” Signed Wilbur and Orville Wright, March 12, 1906.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is to the incomparable Library of Congress and its staff that I wish first to express my utmost gratitude. The great body of Wilbur and Orville Wright’s extensive papers—those letters, diaries, technical data books, documents, and proposals prepared by the brothers, as well as a much larger quantity of private family papers than is generally known—are all to be found there.
Rare is the collection that provides so much depth and range, and all in such detail. In a day and age when, unfortunately, so few write letters or keep a diary any longer, the Wright Papers stand as a striking reminder of a time when that was not the way and of the immense value such writings can have in bringing history to life. Seldom ever did any of the Wrights—father, sons, daughter—put anything down on paper that was dull or pointless or poorly expressed. And much that they said to each other, and only to each other, was of great importance. In all, the family letters in the Library’s collection number in excess of a thousand. In addition, there are their large scrapbooks, a gold mine of insights.
Of the Library staff, I thank especially my old friend Jeff Flannery, head of the Manuscript Reading Room; Laura J. Kells, senior archives specialist; Science Manuscript Historian and Wright Brothers specialist, Len Bruno; and Michael Klein. Watching and listening to Laura Kells as she explained the actual technical diaries and data books kept by the brothers, and particularly those from the crucial weeks at Kitty Hawk, was an exciting experience.
Like so many who have taken up the study of the Wrights, I am greatly indebted as well to the landmark work of the late Marvin W. McFarland of the Library of Congress, who edited The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 1899–1948, in two volumes first published in 1953. His extensive footnotes alone are of matchless value.
As he has in our efforts together over many years, Mike Hill provided immense help with his expert research and particularly in his work with the Library collection. He has as well traveled with me across the whole geographical route of the Wright story, from Dayton to Kitty Hawk to the landmark flying fields at Le Mans and Pau in France. If ever there was a more skilled or good-spirited detective-on-the-case, I’m not aware of it. Again I thank him from the heart and count my lucky stars for all he does.
In addition to typing and retyping my many drafts of one chapter after another, Melissa Marchetti has been a godsend from the start in the effort she has put into a variety of rese
arch assignments, the compiling of a bibliography, and working with Mike Hill on source notes. Betsy Buddy, from her base in Paris, has provided much-needed research help there and translated a wealth of new material. I am ever thankful for her contribution.
My daughter, Dorie Lawson, has done so much and in such a variety of ways to keep the project on track that she deserves a medal.
For anyone trying to understand the immense accomplishment of the Wright brothers and its impact on history, the Smithsonian Institution must figure prominently, as it did in their own lives. There, hanging overhead at the National Air and Space Museum, is the original 1903 Flyer. There, too, can be found numerous other key elements of the story and abundant documentation on file.
In my early efforts, I was helped greatly by Tom Crouch, the Air and Space Museum’s senior curator of aeronautics and author of the superb book The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright. For the time he so generously gave me, talking about the brothers and conducting me and Mike Hill on a tour of the Wright machines exhibited at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy facility at Dulles Airport, I remain highly grateful.
And for the observations and insights he offered over lunch several years afterward, I thank Peter Jakab, another of the Smithsonian’s Wright brothers experts and editor with Rick Young of the excellent anthology The Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright.
The extensive photographic collection at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, has been of exceptional value, as there is much to be found of the Wright story in the photographs of their family life and the many hundreds of their experiments, most all of which they took themselves. The time spent with the collection and its very knowledgeable archivist Dawne Dewey and her associate John Armstrong, was both helpful and highly enjoyable. I am further indebted to Dawne Dewey for her work as editor of Bishop Wright’s Diaries, 1857–1917. The book has been for me not only a key source, but one to turn to for pure reading pleasure.
My thanks to Dean Alexander, superintendent of Aviation Heritage National Park in Dayton, a treasure house of Wright memorabilia, and Ed Roach, chief historian of the Park, who was the first to show me and Mike Hill about Dayton and Huffman Prairie and who has been most helpful answering questions over the time since.
Much appreciated, too, has been the help of Alex Heckman, director of education and museum operations, and Mary Oliver, director of collections at Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park, and Nancy R. Horlacher, local history specialist at the Dayton Metropolitan Library.
The recollections and observations provided by two Wright family descendants, by Amanda Wright Lane and her brother, Stephen Wright, during the course of several evenings together in Dayton were of particular value as well as a delight. Their friendship has been one of the rewards of the work.
That such a number of people at Kitty Hawk went out of their way to give of their time and help mattered immensely. I want to thank especially Bill Harris of the First Flight Society for sharing so much that he knows about the Outer Banks at the start of the nineteenth century, as well as much of his own valuable research; Kaeli Schurr, curator, and Sarah Downing, assistant curator, and Tama Creef, archivist at the Outer Banks History Center in Manteo; and Josh Boles and Darrell Collins at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, U.S. National Park Service, at Kill Devil Hills. Both Bill Harris and Sarah Downing were also good enough to read my chapters on what happened at Kitty Hawk and offered a number of good suggestions and corrections prior to publication.
Grateful am I, too, for the friendship and hospitality provided by John Tucker and the staff of the First Colony Inn at Nags Head.
In Virginia, Paul Glenshaw and Leah Rubalcaba generously provided a day’s tour of Fort Myer, answering any number of questions about the time of Orville’s sensational flights and terrible crash there.
I wish to thank, too, Patricia Mooradian, Christian Overland, Marc Greuther, Terry Hoover, Matthew Anderson, and Linda Skolarus, all of the Ford Museum at Dearborn, Michigan, who did so much to make two visits of such great benefit and so enjoyable. That the home of the Wrights at 7 Hawthorn Street, along with its original furnishings, as well as the Wright bicycle shop, are there intact, exactly as they were, takes one literally into their world and way of life as nothing else could.
At Le Mans, Marc Denoueix, an authority on the importance of Wilbur Wright’s performances there, and at Pau, Paul Mirat, no less an expert on that part of the story, provided tours as fine as one could wish for. I appreciated also the chance to talk with a senior member of the famous Bollée family of Le Mans, Gerard Bollée, and to have been treated to a tour of the noted Automobile Museum at Le Mans by François Piquera. And again, thanks, too, to Captain Nicole Sammels of NetJets.
I’m grateful also to the Medina County Library and the Medina County Historical Society in Ohio, and the Camden Public Library and the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Maine, Judy Schiff of the Sterling Library at Yale, and Melissa Cronyn and Miles Barger of the U.S. National Park Service.
I salute my old friend and literary agent, Mort Janklow, and sing his praises still again for providing sound advice and the kind of enthusiasm that keeps the batteries charged.
To Michael Korda, author, editor, former RAF pilot, and friend of long standing, I am indebted for much continuing interest, advice, and encouragement. As for those at Simon & Schuster—Carolyn Reidy, Jonathan Karp, Julia Prosser, Johanna Li, and my highly accomplished editor, Bob Bender—I hope you know how greatly I appreciate the role you’ve played and how very much, as always, I’ve enjoyed working with you.
My sincere thanks to Wendell Minor for his splendid design of the dust jacket and to Amy Hill, who designed the book. They are two masters of their art and it has been a privilege to work with them on this as with others of my books.
I am grateful for the close reading and improvements provided by copy editor Fred Chase, to Lisa Healy, and to Chris Carruth for such a superb index.
For the interest they have shown in my work on the book and for their many kindnesses, I thank Bob and Happy Doran, Bob and Dianthe Eisendrath, Adam van Doran, Jeff Dunn, Mike Buddy, Kenny Young, my brother George McCullough, and in particular my daughter Melissa McDonald, sons David, William, and Geoffrey McCullough, and son-in-law Tim Lawson, each of whom also read and commented on the manuscript.
Then there is Tom Furrier, specialist in typewriter care, who has kept my old Royal in prime condition the whole way along.
Most helpful of all, most encouraging, inspiring, and indispensable, as always, and most deserving of my wholehearted gratitude, is my editor-in-chief and guiding star, my wife, Rosalee.
Also by David McCullough
“From a dazzling beginning that captures the thrill of arriving in Paris in 1830 to the dawn of the 20th century, McCullough chronicles the generations that came, saw and were conquered by Paris.” —Bruce Watson, The San Francisco Chronicle
The Greater Journey
* * *
“A gripping read: readable, even thrilling popular history, and a graphic reminder of the parlous circumstances that attended the birth of this nation.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
1776
* * *
“[A] masterwork of storytelling that blends colorful narrative with sweeping insights . . . . Grand and flavorful.” —Walter Isaacson, Time
John Adams
* * *
“Meticulously detailed, elegantly written, tightly constructed, rich in revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights. It is, as its subject demands, biography on the grand scale.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
Truman
* * *
“It will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that Mr. McCullough's first ambition was to be a portrait painter. He has supplied us with admirable portraits. . . . All his subjects come alive.” —Dallas Morning News
Brave Companions
* * *
“An extraordinary and fascinating picture of the famil
y, home life and background that created the endlessly interesting man and president.” —Barbara Tuchman
Mornings on Horseback
* * *
“David McCullough’s detailed and compelling narrative captures the magnitude and complexity of the Panama enterprise—the vast, unprecedented feat of engineering, the death and sickness exacted in the four decades of effort—but never neglects the human and symbolic dimensions of this drama.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review