DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From High School Dropout to Aviation Pioneer

Imagine This: It’s 1896 and you’re seriously ill with typhoid fever. Your brother is at your bedside reading an article about the death of a famous German glider pilot and, because of this article, your lives will never be the same again!

You’re born in Dayton, Ohio, on August 19, 1871, the fourth of five children. Your father Milton is a minister and your mother Susan can build or fix almost anything. You and your older brother Wilbur look to your mother for mechanical expertise and to your father for intellectual challenge.

Even as very young children, you and your brother Wilbur are interested in any kind of mechanical device. Although you leave home every morning to go to kindergarten, your family is stunned to learn that, instead of going to school, you stop by each morning at the home of a neighbor boy where you and he play with an old sewing machine every day.

In your teens you work for a printer for two summers and then drop out of high school your junior year to open your own print shop. Your dream of publishing a newspaper comes true in 1889 with the publication of the West Side News, a weekly paper. Wilbur does the editing while you print and sell it.

In 1892, you and Wilbur want a new challenge, so you open a bicycle repair shop and three years later, you create a company to manufacture bicycles.

In August 1896, you become seriously ill with typhoid fever and while Wilbur is reading at your bedside, he comes across an article about the German inventor and engineer Otto Lilienthal and his flying machine. And your lives will never be the same again!

Both you and Wilbur are convinced that there must be a way for humans to fly and you both spend many hours watching birds in flight. You notice that some birds are able to soar for long periods of time without flapping their wings and you wonder how this is possible.

You study all the inventors who have tried to build flying machines and observe that curved wings, like those of the birds, apparently develop more lift than flat ones, so you build a double-winged glider which you intend to fly as a kite.

As you study lift and control, you realize that you’ll need a larger place for your experiments. The United States Weather Bureau suggests the Outer Banks of North Carolina and those long narrow islands seem perfect for your experiments. The wind off the ocean blows steadily almost all the time and as far as you can see, there is nothing but gently sloping sand dunes.

You spend the winter of 1899 and the spring and summer of 1900 building a large glider. Late that summer you take the glider apart, pack all the pieces and parts into a large shipping trunk, and set off for the village of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where in 1900 you begin testing your glider.

You go back and forth between Kitty Hawk and Dayton while you work on the problems of the curvature of the wings and control. You also have to build a motor that meets your specifications.

On September 23, 1903, you leave Dayton for your third trip to Kitty Hawk with what Wilbur calls your “whopper flying machine.” Twenty-one feet long, wings stretching more than 40 feet from tip to tip, the entire airplane weighs 605 pounds.

On December 14, 1903, you both toss a coin for the honor of making the first try. Wilbur wins the toss and his “flight” lasts just three and one-half seconds as the airplane rolls forward 40 feet, climbs 15 feet into the air, and then sinks back onto the sand, splintering several pieces of its wooden structure in the process.

You repair the plane and on Friday, December 17, 1903, it’s your turn to try. The Flyer goes only 120 feet and is in the air only twelve seconds, but it has flown!

The world’s First Flight has taken place on Friday, December 17, 1903, and is indeed a great moment in aviation history. No matter how fast, how big, or how powerful the airplanes we use today, they are all direct descendants of that fragile, white-winged glider-with-a-motor that was the first successful powered airplane.

“If birds can glide for long periods of time, then ... why can’t I?”

                                                 Orville Wright (1871-1948)

                                                 Wilbur Wright (1867-1912)

Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

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http://www.history.com/topics/wright-brothers/videos#wright-brothers

Giving Back: Orville and Wilbur Wright accomplished something that the vast majority of people believed to be impossible—they invented aircraft controls that allowed them to fly.

Did You Know  that Orville Wright had a fear of heights?

Something to Think about: Why do you think Orville and Wilbur Wright never gave up during their four long years of experimentation and setbacks?

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week’s true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!