The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough

  Neither his left arm nor the Flyer was in a condition he would have liked, and a first public demonstration that failed in almost any way would be a serious setback.

  Reporters on the scene were becoming increasingly impatient and, to Wilbur, increasingly annoying. A correspondent for the London Daily Mail, Joseph Brandreth, would write, “We voted him ‘mule-headed,’ ‘eccentric,’ ‘unnecessarily surly,’ in his manner toward us, for it was impossible to discover from such a Sphinx what he intended to do or when he intended to do it.”

  “I did not ask you to come here,” Wilbur told them. “I shall go out when I’m ready. No, I shall not try and mislead you newspaper men, but if you are not here I shall not wait for you.”

  When the exasperation with the press became acute, the genial Berg would appear out of the shed and tell them some amusing story that would almost always put everyone in good humor again.

  Bollée talked happily to reporters about Wilbur and his ways, describing how he would not let anyone touch his machine or handle so much as a piece of wire. He even refused to allow mechanics to pour oil into the engine, Bollée said, so sure was he that “they don’t do it the correct way.” Their nickname for him was Vieille Burette, “Old Oilcan.”

  Somehow the Daily Mail reporter, Brandreth, managed to get a peek at how the American eccentric was living:

  In a corner of the shed was his “room.” This consisted of a low packing case from which the top had been removed. Resting on the edges of the case was a narrow truckle bed. Nailed to the side of the shed was a piece of looking glass and close by a camp washstand. This together with a cabin trunk, a small petrol cooking stove—he cooks his own breakfast—and a camp stool, comprised the whole furniture. He takes his baths from a hosepipe attached to a well sixty feet away. He sleeps practically under the wings of his aeroplane. And early in the day he starts to work, whistling the while.

  III.

  Saturday, August 8—the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new century—was as fine as could be hoped for. The sky overhead was a great blue vault with not a cloud. A northwest breeze was a little gentler than Wilbur would have wished, but he was up to go.

  Word of the preparations at the racetrack had spread rapidly, and by the looks of the day it seemed certain the show could now begin. Those who gathered were nearly all from Le Mans and though not impressive in numbers, they looked appropriately festive as they began filling the little wooden grandstand, quite as if turning out for the horse races—gentlemen sporting straw boaters and Panama hats, ladies in full summer skirts, their oversized summer hats covered by veils as further protection against the sun.

  Here and there in the trees encircling the track could be seen perched a number of youngsters from the town. The spirit was of a summer outing, the whole scene as different, as far removed from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as could be imagined. Some couples carried baskets with picnic lunches. As the hours passed, waiting for something to happen, nearly all kept on happily chattering.

  Here and there among the crowd could be seen several notables not from Le Mans. There were two Russian officers in uniform and Ernest Archdeacon of the Aéro-Club de France, noted for his skeptical opinion of the Wrights, and, of greatest interest to the others gathered, the celebrated French aviator-hero Louis Blériot. What Blériot may have been thinking as he sat waiting is unknown, but Archdeacon was busy proclaiming his confidence that Wilbur Wright would fail and was happy to explain to those close by in the grandstand all that was “wrong” with the Wright plane.

  Archdeacon’s open scorn of the Wright brothers had been made especially clear at an Aéro-Club dinner in Paris in October 1907 when he declared:

  The famous Wright brothers may today claim all they wish. If it is true—and I doubt it more and more—that they were the first to fly through the air, they will not have the glory before History. They would only have had to eschew these incomprehensible affectations of mystery and to carry out their experiments in broad daylight, like Santos-Dumont and Farman, and before official judges, surrounded by thousands of spectators.

  On hand, too, and in substantial numbers as expected, were the representatives of the press, reporters and correspondents from Paris, London, and New York, all waiting for what could well be one of the biggest stories of the time.

  Wilbur, who had been up early as usual, showed no sign of nervous tension or excitement. Such “quiet self-confidence” was reassuring, said Hart Berg afterward:

  One thing that, to me at least, made his appearance all the more dramatic, was that he was not dressed as if about to do something daring or unusual. He, of course, had no special pilot’s helmet or jacket, since no such garb yet existed, but appeared in the ordinary gray suit he usually wore, and a cap. And he had on, as he nearly always did when not in overalls, a high, starched collar.

  Inside the shed he proceeded to work on preparations, checking everything with total concentration. As would be said by one observer from the press, “Neither the impatience of waiting crowds, nor the sneers of rivals, nor the pressure of financial conditions not always easy, could induce him to hurry over any difficulty before he had done everything in his power to understand and overcome it.”

  For the spectators the only signs of what might be about to take place were the launching track and the tall, four-legged catapult set in place at the center of the field, the track placed at right angles to the grandstand, pointing directly at the trees at the opposite end of the field.

  About noon Hart Berg walked out onto the field to announce over a loudspeaker that no photographs would be permitted. After much show of despair, the press photographers, who had been waiting day and night, held a brief meeting, after which they gave their word that if Mr. Wright agreed to allow photographs on Monday, they would take none until then. To be sure that no photographs were taken by amateurs, one press photographer would patrol the field on a bicycle.

  It was nearly three in the afternoon by the time Wilbur opened the shed doors and the gleaming white Flyer was rolled into the sunshine, where he continued to fuss with it. He then walked the full length and width of the field, made sure the starting rail was headed exactly into the wind, checked the catapult to see if all was in order, and supervised the raising of the iron weight, never hurrying in the least.

  With Berg, Bollée, and several others helping, the aircraft, mounted temporarily on two sets of wheels, was gently rolled to the middle of the field, and positioned on the starting rail.

  Finally, at six-thirty, with dusk settling, Wilbur turned his cap backward, and to Berg, Bollée, and the others said quietly, “Gentlemen, I’m going to fly.”

  He took the seat on the left. Two men started the engine, each pulling down a blade on the two propellers. Not satisfied with something he heard as the motor was warmed up, Wilbur called to a mechanic who was standing at the back of the machine to ask if some small, last-minute adjustment had been made on the motor. The man said it had. According to an eyewitness, “Wilbur sat silent for a moment. Then, slowly leaving his pilot’s seat, he walked around the machine just to make sure, with his own eyes, that this particular adjustment had, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, been well and truly made.”

  Back again in his seat, Wilbur released the trigger, the weight dropped, and down the rail and into the air he swept.

  Cheers went up as he sailed away toward a row of tall poplars, where, at what seemed the last minute, the left wing dropped sharply, he banked off to the left, turned in a graceful curve, and came flying back toward the grandstand.

  Those in the crowd who had brought field glasses had seen how he twisted the wings as he turned and rounded corners as naturally as though he were on a bicycle. Very near the point where he had started, he made another perfect turn to fly full circle once again, all at about 30 to 35 feet, before coming down to a gentle landing within 50 feet from where he had taken off. In all he was in the air not quite 2 minutes and covered a distance of 2 miles.<
br />
  The crowd was ecstatic, cheering, shouting, hardly able to believe what they had seen. As said in the Paris Herald, it was “not the extent but the nature of the flight which was so startling.” There were shouts of “C’est l’homme qui a conquis l’air!” “This man has conquered the air,” and “Il n’est pas bluffeur!” “He is not a bluffer.” One of the French pilots present, Paul Zens, who had been waiting since morning, told a reporter, “I would have waited ten times as long to have seen what I have seen today.”

  “We are children compared to the Wrights,” said another pilot, René Gasnier, and Louis Blériot declared outright, “I consider that for us in France, and everywhere, a new era in mechanical flight has commenced.” Then, catching his breath, Blériot said he was not yet sufficiently calm to express all that he felt, except to say, “C’est merveilleux!”

  Spectators waving hats and arms raced onto the field, everyone wanting to shake the hero’s hand. Hart Berg, knowing how Wilbur felt about such things, did all he could to keep the men from kissing Wilbur on both cheeks. “The enthusiasm,” reported Le Figaro, “was indescribable.” Even Wilbur lost his customary composure, “overwhelmed by the success and unbounded joy which his friends Hart O. Berg and Léon Bollée shared.”

  Then, “very calmly,” his face beaming with a smile, he put his hands in his pockets and walked off whistling. That night, while the normally sleepy town of Le Mans celebrated, the hero retired early to his shed.

  That summer Saturday in Le Mans, France, not quite eight years into the new twentieth century, one American pioneer had at last presented to the world the miracle he and his brother had created on their own and in less than two minutes demonstrated for all who were present and to an extent no one yet had anywhere on earth, that a new age had begun.

  In less than twenty-four hours it was headline news everywhere—“WRIGHT FLEW” (Le Matin); “MR. WILBUR WRIGHT MAKES HIS FIRST FLIGHT: FRENCH EXPERTS AMAZED BY ITS SMOOTHNESS” (Paris Herald); “MARVELOUS PERFORMANCE, EUROPEAN SKEPTICISM DISSIPATED” (London Daily Mail); “A TRIUMPH OF AVIATION” (Echo de Paris); “WRIGHT BY FLIGHT PROVES HIS MIGHT” (Chicago Tribune); “WRIGHT’S AEROPLANE ASCENDS LIKE A BIRD” (Dayton Journal).

  “It was not merely a success,” said Le Figaro, “but a triumph . . . a decisive victory for aviation, the news of which will revolutionize scientific circles throughout the world.”

  “The mystery which seemed inextricable and inexplicable is now cleared away,” declared Le Matin.

  Wright flew with an ease and facility such that one cannot doubt those enigmatic experiments that took place in America; no more than one can doubt that this man is capable of remaining an hour in the air. It is the most extraordinary vision of a flying machine that we have seen. . . .

  Wilbur Wright, wrote Joseph Brandreth of the London Daily Mail, had made “the most marvelous aeroplane flight ever witnessed on this side of the Atlantic.” The length of the flight was not what mattered, but that he had complete control and, by all signs, could have stayed in the air almost indefinitely.

  Leaders of French aviation joined in the chorus of acclaim. “Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question today the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly,” announced the greatly respected publication L’Aérophile. Even the stridently skeptical Ernest Archdeacon, who had run on with so many negative comments while waiting in the grandstand, stepped forth at once to say he had been wrong. “For a long time, for too long a time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff. . . . They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure in counting myself among the first to make amends for the flagrant injustice.”

  An exuberant Hart Berg wanted Wilbur to keep flying the next day, but Wilbur would have no part of it. As was explained in the French press, “Today, because it is Sunday, M. Wright, a good American, would not think of breaking the Sabbath.” The crowd that came to Hunaudières would have to be content with looking at the closed hangar.

  On Monday, August 10, when the demonstrations resumed, more than two thousand people came to watch, including a number of Americans this time. Nearby inns and cafés were reaping “a harvest of money.” Those who had made the effort to attend were to be even more dazzled by what they saw than those who had been there two days before. It was another perfect summer day, but as the hours passed, with nothing happening, the heat became intense. Still no one left.

  Sitting among the crowd was a French army captain in uniform carrying a camera. Previously told he was to take no photographs, he had given his word he would not. But shortly afterward he began using the camera and was spotted by Wilbur, who, “ablaze with anger,” climbed directly into the grandstand and demanded both the camera and the plates. At first the captain hesitated, offering excuses, but as reported in the papers, “Mr. Wright set his mouth firm, folded his arms and waited.” The captain handed over the camera and plates and left the field.

  Perhaps it was the heat, or the stress he was under, or a combination of both that caused Wilbur to do what he did. Quite upset afterward, he said he was not in the habit of making trouble, but it had been too much for him when he saw the man deliberately break his word.

  Wilbur’s performance that afternoon was surpassing. On one flight, heading too close to some trees, he had to turn sharply. As the correspondent for the Daily Mail reported, “In a flight lasting 32 seconds, he took a complete turn within a radius of thirty yards and alighted with the ease of a bird in the midst of the field.” It was “the most magnificent turning movement that has ever been performed by an aviator.”

  That evening, the light fading, Wilbur flew again, this time making two giant figure eights in front of the crowd in the grandstand and landing exactly at his point of departure. An aircraft flying a figure eight had never been seen in Europe before.

  Blériot had been so impressed by what he had seen on Saturday that he had returned to watch again. Present also this time was the pioneer French aviator Léon Delagrange, who, after hearing of Wilbur’s performance on Saturday, had halted his own demonstrations in Italy to hurry back. Both men were as amazed as anyone by Wilbur’s figure eight. “Well, we are beaten! We just don’t exist!” Delagrange exclaimed.

  As a thrilled Léon Bollée declared, “Now all have seen for themselves.”

  With the mounting popular excitement over the news from Le Mans came increasing curiosity about the man making the news. The Wright machine had been shown to be a reality. But what of the American flying it? Of what sort was he?

  Correspondents and others on the scene did their best to provide some clues, if not answers. In a memorable portrait written for the Daily Mail, Joseph Brandreth seemed a touch uncertain whether he liked Wilbur. (Nor, it is known from a letter he wrote to Katharine, did Wilbur much like him.) Brandreth was struck most by how greatly Wilbur resembled a bird, an odd bird. The head especially suggested that of a bird, “and the features, dominated by a long prominent nose that heightened the bird-like effect, were long and bony.” From their first meeting, Brandreth wrote, he had judged Wilbur Wright to be a fanatic.

  A writer for Le Figaro, Franz Reichel, fascinated with the flecks of gold in Wilbur’s eyes, came to much the same conclusion. “The flecks of gold,” wrote Reichel, “ignite a passionate flame because Wilbur Wright is a zealot.

  He and his brother made the conquest of the sky their existence. They needed this ambition and profound, almost religious, faith in order to deliberately accept their exile to the country of the dunes, far away from all. . . . Wilbur is phlegmatic but only in appearance. He is driven by a will of iron which animates him and drives him in his work.

  Without wanting to diminish the value of French aviators, Reichel wrote that while Wilbur Wright was flying, they were only beginning to “flutter about.”

  Léon Delagrange, who before becoming an aviator had been a sculptor and painter, could not help puzzling over what went on behind Wilbur’s masklike countenance, and
, being French, found it hard to comprehend or warm to someone who seemed so devoid of the elemental human emotions and desires. “Even if this man sometimes deigns to smile, one can say with certainty that he has never known the douceur [sweetness] of tears. Has he a heart? Has he loved? Has he suffered? An enigma, a mystery.”

  That said, Delagrange openly declared in the article he wrote for L’Illustration, “Wilbur Wright is the best example of strength of character that I have ever seen.

  In spite of the sarcastic remarks and the mockery, in spite of the traps set up from everywhere all these years, he has not faltered. He is sure of himself, of his genius, and he kept his secret. He had the desire to participate today to prove to the world he had not lied.

  To François Peyrey, who had seen more of Wilbur than had others and knew more, he was “un timide”—shy, a simple man, but also a “man of genius” who could work alongside the men of the Bollée factory, just as he could work entirely alone, who could cook his own meals and do whatever else was necessary under most any conditions and quiet by nature. He went his way always in his own way, never showing off, never ever playing to the crowd. “The impatience of a hundred thousand persons would not accelerate the rhythm of his stride.”

  Further, Peyrey, unlike others, had discovered how exceptionally cultured Wilbur was, how, “in rare moments of relaxation,” he talked with authority of literature, art, history, music, science, architecture, or painting. To Peyrey, the devotion of this preacher’s son to his calling was very like that of a gifted man dedicating his life to a religious mission.