The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright

by Crouch, Tom D.

  Wilbur and Orville were much better known as bicycle mechanics than as racers. The two young men who had constructed printing presses from scratch were already legendary mechanics on the West Side. Now they found themselves besieged by friends in need of bicycle repairs. The second business for which they had been searching was literally thrust upon them.

  Milton always believed that the cycle business was Wilbur’s idea. Perhaps so. Wilbur was certainly the one who broached the subject soon after his father’s return to Dayton on October 25, 1892. They would begin on a small scale, he explained, with a rented storefront that would serve as both showroom and repair shop. With the continued assistance of Ed Sines, they could cover both the new bike store and the print shop without any additional help. The bishop approved of the plan—there was obviously money to be made in the bicycle trade.

  The brothers’ bright dreams of business expansion were almost dashed on November 6. Milton left home late that afternoon to meet the train bringing Katharine back from Kansas City. When the two of them arrived at the house, they found Wilbur doubled up in pain. The bishop immediately summoned Dr. Spitler, the physician who had nursed Susan through her final illness.

  Wilbur, suffering from appendicitis, was in far greater danger than he had been at the time of the hockey accident. Dr. Spitler was a fine diagnostician who kept up on the latest advances. Appendicitis had been identified, described, and named by Reginald Heber Fitz, a Boston pathologist, only six years before.

  An appendectomy was the indicated treatment in acute cases—as one surgeon noted, the idea was to “get in quick and get out quicker.” But it was still a very new and dangerous operation, and Dayton was far from the mainstream of surgical advance. St. Elizabeth’s, the first real hospital in the city, was only twelve years old. Anesthesia was primitive and, while the need for antisepsis in the operating room was well known, death as a result of postoperative infection was still common. Dr. Spitler chose not to risk sending his patient under the knife. He prescribed rest, a bland diet, and the avoidance of cold. It worked, though Wilbur was still suffering from recurring pain in mid-December.

  As his health improved, the brothers took the first steps toward establishing the bicycle shop. In December 1892 they rented a storefront at 1005 West Third Street, and began laying in a stock of parts for the opening of the Wright Cycle Exchange the following spring. The repair business would be their bread and butter, but they would also sell new bicycles and offer a complete line of parts and accessories. Anxious to build a reputation as scrupulous businessmen, they refused to push the cycling geegaws that flooded the market. They regarded cycle dealers who urged local city councils to require the use of bells and lights as little more than thieves.8

  The Wrights took a similar approach to the sale of bicycles. A cycle, they realized, was a major investment. Between 1890 and 1900, the mean annual wage of the American worker (total wages paid divided by the average total number of wage earners) hovered around $440. A good boy’s bicycle cost from $40 to $50; adult bikes began at $50, with the finest machines priced at $100 and up. At those prices, the brothers were careful to emphasize the quality of the products they sold.

  Over the years, they would carry at least eight brands of cycle: Coventry, Cross, Duchess, Envoy, Fleetwing, Halladay-Temple, Smalley, and Warwick. These were the best machines on the market. Like other dealers, they developed time-payment plans, and accepted trade-ins as a means of enabling their customers to afford a higher-quality cycle for their hard-earned dollars.

  Some trade-ins represented a pure loss; they refused to resell the cheap safety bicycles accepted in trade. Orville gave one such machine, a Viking, to his friend Paul Dunbar. A pair of high-wheel models turned in for new safety bikes did provide some amusement: they produced a gigantic bicycle-built-for-two using a pair of the large four-foot front wheels. No one who watched Wilbur and Orville peddling their monster along the streets of the West Side would ever forget the sight.

  Trade boomed during spring and summer of that first year. By the fall of 1893 the bicycle shop was their primary business. When the volume of work became heavy at the print shop, they hired Lorin to give Ed Sines a hand.

  The Wrights moved to larger quarters at 1034 West Third that year, and renamed their enterprise the Wright Cycle Company. But competition was growing stiffer. In 1891, there had been only four bicycle shops and one repair facility in the city; by 1892–93, the number had grown to fourteen, including the Wrights.9

  Small-scale operators had a difficult time of it. Business flourished in the spring and summer, when bike and accessory sales and the repair trade were all at a peak. In the fall and winter, however, there were so few customers that it scarcely seemed worthwhile to remain open. Wilbur discussed these difficulties in a business report to his father in the fall of 1894:

  The bicycle business is fair. Selling new wheels is about done for this year, but the repairing business is good and we are getting about $20 a month from the rent of three wheels. We get $8.00 a month for one, $6.50 for another and the third we rent by the hour or day. We have done so well renting them that we have held on to them instead of disposing of them at once, although we really need the money invested in them.10

  He went on to request a $150 loan, to which Milton agreed, but the brothers continued to face financial difficulties. Two weeks later Wilbur wrote again to tell his father they had decided to close the store at 1034 West Third and consolidate their two firms at the print shop. “There is hardly enough business to justify us in keeping so expensive a room any longer.”11

  Beset with business problems, Wilbur was reassessing the decisions that had brought him to this point in life. He admitted his basic discontent and remarked that he was once again thinking of taking a college course.

  I have thought about it more or less for a number of years but my health has been such that I was afraid that it might be time and money wasted to do so, but I have felt so much better for a year or so that I have thought more seriously of it and have decided to see what you think of it and would advise.

  I do not think I am specially fitted for success in any commercial pursuit even if I had the proper personal and business references to assist me…. I have always thought I would like to be a teacher. Although there is no hope of attaining such financial success as might be attained in some of the other professions or in commercial pursuits, yet it is an honorable pursuit, the pay is sufficient to live comfortably and happily, and is less subject to uncertainties than almost any other occupation. It would be congenial to my tastes and I think with proper training I could be reasonably successful.12

  The problem, Wilbur noted, was money. He would need $600 to $800 to get through college. He could earn most of that, “or at least enough to help along quite a bit,” by continuing to work in the bike shop. Still, he would have a difficult time without a loan from his father. Milton agreed that “a commercial life” would not suit him well, and offered to help with “what I can in a collegiate course.”

  There the matter rested. Wilbur did not pursue his father’s offer, nor, so far as we know, did he ever raise the issue of college again. He may have felt that he was too old. He would certainly have been reluctant to ask Orville to accept full responsibility for their joint enterprises. Whatever the reason, he decided to redouble his efforts to make the bicycle shop a success.

  In the spring of 1895 the Wrights attempted to expand beyond an exclusively West Side market. They opened not one but two bike shops that season, centralizing the printing and bicycle repair business in a rented building at 22 South Williams Street, just around the block from 7 Hawthorn, and opening a downtown bicycle showroom at 23 West Second Street.

  They were also experimenting with imaginative advertising, and tried particularly to attract the high school crowd. When rumors circulated that a copy of an upcoming test had been stolen from a teacher, the Wrights immediately printed up advertising flyers resembling a standardized Central High test sheet, then
hired a student to distribute them between classes. Each question and answer extolled the virtues of the Wright Cycle Company.

  They explored other ways in which their printing facility could enhance the cycle business. The first issue of Snap-Shots of Current Events, a weekly publication aimed at Dayton cyclists, appeared on October 20, 1894. Snap-Shots contained enough topical articles, humorous sketches, and jokes to justify charging a subscription fee, but it was primarily intended to promote the Wright Cycle Company and the other West Side merchants who advertised in its pages. The little journal enjoyed a modest success, running until April 17, 1896.13

  In the fall of 1895 the Wrights reassessed their operation. The downtown store, opened with such high hopes the previous spring, had sapped their time and energy without attracting many additional customers. Competition remained the major problem. There were three other bike shops within two blocks of their showroom. They chose not to renew the lease, and retreated back across the river to the main shop on South Williams.

  They had already decided to expand their operation in a different direction. The brothers had given a great deal of thought to how they could apply their peculiar strengths to improving their business position. They reasoned that the best way to increase sales was to market a better product, as Orville explained to their father in October 1895: “Our bicycle business is beginning to be a little slack, though we sell a wheel now and then. Repairing is pretty good. We expect to build our own wheels for next year. I think it will pay us, and give us employment during the winter.”14

  The Wrights had been riding, selling, and repairing bicycles for almost three years when they decided to produce their own brands. They knew the strengths and weaknesses of the various models on the market, and were certain that they could design and build a superior product. It was precisely the sort of challenge that most appealed to them. Orville, in particular, took enormous delight in devising highly personal solutions to mechanical problems.

  Ed Sines recalled how eagerly Orville rose to meet any new technical challenge:

  Why there was that 10-key adding machine. After I left the Wrights [in 1896] I learned book-keeping. One day I told Orville about a new adding machine that the office had bought. I told him there were nine rows of keys on it, nine keys to the row. “Too many keys,” he said. He told me he could make one with just ten keys, and I laughed at him. Sure enough, some time later he showed me a model of it, made with sticks tied together instead of metal rods. And it worked too.15

  Orville (shirtsleeves) and Ed Sines working in the bicycle shop, 1897. Ivonette Wright Miller never forgot her Uncle Orv’s blue tick apron, nor that he always emerged from the shop looking as though he had stepped “right out of a band box.”

  The brothers transformed the back room and upstairs of the South Williams Street store into a light machine shop. The tools were simple: a turret lathe, a drill press, and tube-cutting equipment. They installed a line shaft on the ceiling to drive the machinery. The design and construction of the single-cylinder internal combustion engine that would power the shafting was a pure pleasure. Fueled by the city gas piped in to light the shop, the engine was a joint project. “The boys have tried their gas engine,” Milton told Reuch on March 17, 1896. “Orville’s plan to raise the valves and regulate the explosions works all right. It simplifies much and gives increased regulation of the explosions. Wilbur’s governor works well and his plan to obviate the necessity of the water jacket promises success. The trade opens well, and lack of capital seems their greatest hindrance.”16

  And there were other opportunities for ingenuity. They devised an electrical welding apparatus to be used in building bicycle frames, and designed their own oil-retaining wheel hub and coaster brake. They had no intention of mass-producing bicycles after the fashion of the large manufacturers. Each of their machines was a hand-built original, made to order.

  The official announcement of the Wrights’ new line came in the final issue of Snap-Shots on April 17, 1896:

  For a number of months, the Wright Cycle Co. has been making preparations to manufacture bicycles. After more delay than we expected, we are at last ready to announce that we will have several samples out in a week or ten days and will be ready to fill orders before the middle of the month. The Wright Special will contain nothing but high grade materials throughout, although we shall put it on the market at the exceedingly low price of $60. It will have large tubing, high frame, tool steel bearings, needle wire spokes, narrow tread and every feature of an up-to-date bicycle. Its weight will be about 22 pounds. We are very certain that no wheel on the market will run easier or wear longer than this one, and we will guarantee it in the most unqualified manner.17

  They named their original model the Van Cleve, in honor of those pioneer Van Cleve ancestors of whom Milton was so proud. Always the top of the Wright line, the Van Cleve initially sold for $60 to $65. By 1900, with sales down and enthusiasm for cycling on the wane, the price dropped to $50.

  They also unveiled the St. Clair, a lower-priced line, in 1896. Named in honor of Arthur St. Clair, first governor of the Northwest Territory, these machines sold for $42.50 during the peak years of 1896 and 1897; the price had fallen to $30 when production of the line ceased in 1899. The Wrights may have built and sold at least one sample for a third brand, the Wright Special, priced at $27.50 in 1897.

  Both men’s and women’s models were available. Customers could choose to have their bicycles finished with a variety of brand-name seats, tires, and handlebars. Every model was brush-painted with five coats of rubber baking enamel, either black or carmine. The Wrights built their own wheels with both wooden or metal rims, according to customer preference. The key mechanical elements, the cranks and hubs, were also built in the shop.

  The production of their own line of machines marked a turning point in their financial fortunes. By the spring of 1898, Orville reported with some pride that they were “getting in better shape” and “keeping very busy. The wheels,” he continued, “are selling very well.” During the years of peak production, 1896–1900, Wilbur and Orville constructed perhaps three hundred bicycles. They were by no means rich, but they had established themselves as reasonably successful small businessmen. In a typical seven-month period (February–August 1897) the print shop showed a profit of $127.29. The rest of their income, perhaps $2,000–3,000 a year, came from the bicycle shop.

  Most of their friends and neighbors on the West Side must have assumed that the Wright boys would be pleased to spend the rest of their lives splitting their time between the print shop and the bicycle business. In fact, their attention had already begun to wander.

  As early as the summer of 1896 Orville was fascinated by a new kind of vehicle chugging along the streets of the West Side. Cordy Ruse, a close friend and a part-time employee at the bike shop, had designed and built the first automobile in Dayton. Orville and Cordy fiddled with the machine for hours, discussing the intricacies of ignition, carburetion, and differential gearing systems.

  Wilbur was less interested. He recommended that Cordy fasten a bed sheet beneath the machine to catch the parts that fell off as it lurched down the street. When Orville suggested they build a car of their own, Wilbur expressed doubt that there would ever be a market for such a noisy contraption.

  For once, he was wrong. One wonders what he would have thought of a prediction from the editor of the Binghamton, New York, Republican who on June 4, 1896, remarked that the invention of a successful heavier-than-air flying machine would likely be the work of bicycle makers. “The flying machine will not be the same shape, or at all in the style of the numerous kinds of cycles,” he maintained, “but the study to produce a light, swift machine is likely to lead to an evolution in which wings will play a conspicuous part.”18

  It was not such an outrageous prediction. Bicycles and flying machines were both in the news that summer, and there were many who saw at least a metaphorical connection between the two. It seemed difficult to describe the sen
se of freedom, control, escape, and speed experienced in cycling without making a comparison to flying.

  One minister informed his congregation that the bicycle was “a scientific angel, which seems to bear you away on its unwearied pinions,” and a second praised the machine that “enables us to fly in this life before we get the traditional angelic wings.”19

  Budding poets filled newspapers and cycle magazines with similar praise:

  Hurrah, hurrah, for the merry wheel,

  With tires of rubber and spokes of steel;

  We seem to fly on airy steeds,

  With Eagle’s flight in silent speed.20

  James Howard Means, a wealthy Bostonian, had retired as manager of the family shoe factory to promote the cause of flight. In an article published in the 1896 number of his influential journal The Aeronautical Annual, Means noted the tendency to equate cycling and flying: “It is not uncommon for the cyclist, in the first flash of enthusiasm which quickly follows the unpleasantness of taming the steel steed, to remark: ‘Wheeling is just like flying!’”21 He urged those who sought to fly to pay serious attention to the bicycle. Once in the air, the operator of a flying machine would have to balance his craft and control its motion through the air. Balance, control, and equilibrium were all problems thoroughly familiar to the cyclist.

  Human beings would learn to fly just as they had learned to ride a bicycle, with practice. “To learn to wheel one must learn to balance,” Means pointed out. “To learn to fly one must learn to balance.”22

  The manned glider was the aeronautical equivalent of the bicycle. Only when he had mastered his craft during repeated short glides would a prospective aviator be ready to move on to experiments with a powered machine.