This year — 2023 — we’ll celebrate the 120th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first powered flight. That flight took place on December 17, 1903.
Wilbur and Orville Wright are regarded as the geniuses who ushered in the “age of flight.” When their contraption (airplane) — named the Wright Flyer — left the ground, it proved that heavier-than-air flight was possible.
The Wright brothers really were brothers and they weren’t the only Wright kids. Two of the Wright family siblings, Otis and Ida, both died before they were one year old. There were two other brothers, Lorin and Reuchlin, and one sister — Katharine.
Neither Wilbur or Orville ever finished high school. Supposedly Wilbur, who was the brilliant brother, was very athletic and planned on going to Yale, but during a hockey game during his senior year in high school, he was badly injured and he suffered severe depression for a few years. During that period of depression he began to read extensively about flight.
Orville was a gifted writer and dropped out of school to create his own newspaper, the West Side News.
The Wright brothers were raised and lived most of their lives in Dayton, Ohio. Wilburn was born near Millville, Indiana and Orville was born in Dayton.
On the day of their historic flight, Orville and Wilbur decided who would fly first that day with a coin toss. Wilbur won the toss, but his first attempt failed. Orville went second and managed to fly for 12 seconds. Later that day, Wilbur flew their plane for 49 seconds, over a distance of 852 feet.
In 1892, Orville and Wilbur opened a bicycle repair shop. They designed their own bicycle with features like an oil-retaining wheel hub and coaster brakes — things still used today in many/most modern bikes. The bicycle business financed their work to invent the world’s first controlled flight, power driven, manned, heavier-than-air airplane.
The Wright brothers only flew together once — on May 15, 1910, they made a six-minute flight together, piloted by Orville with Wilbur as his passenger.
Wilbur Wright was only 45 when he died — in 1912. He probably died from shellfish he ate in Boston, but the headlines said he died of Typhoid Fever. With Wilbur no longer a part of the Wright Company, the aircraft company the brothers founded, Orville decided it was time to retire, and he sold the company.
Neither brother ever married.
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