The Wrights Revisited
David McCullough’s new look at the Wright brothers is an engaging read, but doesn’t plow much new ground.
On my office wall is a print of a photograph any pilot will—or should—know. Its title is The First Twelve Seconds of the Age of Powered Flight. It's a riveting photograph snapped by Tom Daniels, a Kill Devil Hills surfman, the moment Orville Wright lifted off from the sands of Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. Daniels had never seen a camera; no one had seen a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft fly and the moment it did, Daniels made what has become an iconic image of the age of flight. (Technically, Wilbur made the first flight; but Orville's in the picture.)
Documenting the dawn of that age is David McCullough's new The Wright Brothers, which I just got around to reading. (Actually listening via audio book.) I think all of us in aviation know the story of the Wrights well, but it's such a compelling one that it deserves a retelling so that at least some of the passengers that step aboard a modern airliner will have an inkling of the intellect, creativity and determination it took to build a modern air transportation system that we all take for granted.
McCullough has a well-deserved reputation as a writer of popular history, of which he has written nearly a dozen. As a reader of those volumes, I have to say The Wright Brothers doesn't strike me as his best work. Understandably, pilots may be a tough audience because they're likely to know a good deal of the history already and will be sticklers for historical detail and technical accuracy. As a popular history, The Wright Brothers does a competent job of describing the grand historical sweep of early aviation and the Wrights' place in it. Readers not interested in significant technical detail will still take away a lucid grasp of what Wilbur and Orville accomplished and how. Over the space of barely a decade, they built a profound legacy that would eventually fundamentally reshape transportation on a global scale.
In listening, however, I hungered for more detail. For example, in explaining the early experimental flights, McCullough explained that the aircraft used its rudder to control pitch. That will strike a discordant note with a pilot because while it's true the Wrights originally described what eventually became the elevator as a rudder, McCullough missed a chance to explain this insight. There are some technical errors, too. One, if I heard it correctly, was that the fifth and final flight of December 17 was 852 feet or nearly a half mile. But that distance isn't even a quarter mile.
These are nitpicks, but I'd hope for better. A larger oversight is a complete lack of detail on Orville's glider experiments at Kitty Hawk in 1911. These are considered by some to be as technically significant as the work in 1903.
Where McCullough finds his strength is in his descriptions of Wilbur's demonstration flights in France during 1908. This puts into perspective the timeline of the Wrights' influential moment in the sun. They didn't begin serious experimentation until 1899 and a scant four years later, they had achieved controlled powered flight, including the development of an engine. Yet continuing experimentation during the Huffman Prairie years drew little notice and much skepticism from the press, fellow experimenters and the general public. The U.S. government and military showed no enthusiasm for heavier-than-air flight, although some public funds were used for Samuel P. Langley's ill-starred aerodrome work.
Five years after the first flight, in 1908, that all changed when Wilbur electrified the world with his flight demonstrations in France, where interest in aviation had reached a fever pitch. Interestingly, Wilbur promoted aviation the same way we still do it: by giving rides to as many people as practical. It was during this same year that Orville, demonstrating the Flyer for the U.S. military at Fort Myers, Virginia, suffered a structural failure and a crash that badly injured him and killed Lt. Thomas Selfridge, earning him the dubious title of the first military aviation fatality.
Nor does McCullough offer much detail or explanation of the protracted patent and legal skirmishes that bogged the Wrights down and all but stifled their further contribution to the rapidly advancing science of aeronautics. This period in the Wrights' history remains controversial to this day and even though he doesn't illuminate it with much texture, McCullough reports something I didn't know: The Wrights won all the suits they filed and all the actions filed against them. Still today their reputation is under assault. As recently as 2013, the Connecticut state legislature passed a bill declaring Gustav Whitehead the first inventor to achieve heavier-than-air flight, despite the lack of any credible evidence.
McCullough's history, although lacking in detail I'd like to read, illustrates that these two talented brothers burned brightly for a decade, but were soon overtaken by events and the work of others. In fact, Wilbur, who by 1909 was the world's most experienced pilot, never flew after 1910 and died in 1912 at the age of just 45. Orville's last flight was in 1918, but he lived until 1948, long enough to see supersonic flight and the development of practical rocketry. His was an eventful life.
Despite its view from 10,000 feet, The Wright Brothers is certainly worth reading. The story is so remarkable and such a key part of the 20th century that any telling of it can't help but be engaging. Readers interested in more aeronautical detail should try Tom Crouch's The Bishop's Boys. It's nearly twice the length of the McCullough book and obviously has more space for a more granular treatment.
