How The Wright Brothers Did the Impossible

It had taken 4 years. They had endured violent storms, accidents, one disappointment after another, public indifference or ridicule, and clouds of demon mosquitoes to get to and from the remote sand dune testing ground. They had made 5 round trips from Dayton to the Outer Banks, a total of 7,000 miles by train, all to fly little more than half a mile. No matter, they had done it. This folks is the story of the Wright brothers. Welcome to Ambition, a show about the most ambitious people in history and what we can learn from them. I'm your host, Justin Gordon, an entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. My main source for this episode is The Wright Brothers by David McCullough, which was published in 2015. This is a phenomenal book. David McCullough is a great writer. I will have to check out other books of his as well as we kind of move forward with this podcast over time. But let's get right into this story of the Wright brothers. According to both Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, it began for them with a toy from France, a small helicopter brought home by their father, Bishop Milton Wright, a great believer in the educational value of toys. And first teacher in grade school, Ida Palmer, remember him at his desk tinkering with bits of wood, already interested in physical things, building things early on. And one of the early, early quotes we have in this book is from Wilbur Wright. He says, if I were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother and begin life in Ohio. This is a theme that is going to showcase itself throughout the book. This idea of environment as advantage. They were in Ohio, Dayton specifically. Their environment, both the city they grew up in, as well as a father who was endlessly curious and who you're going to hear about in this story is a tremendous human being who gave them just such great insight and built their character so well. These are not accidents for them. They are the foundation of what allowed them to essentially do the unthinkable in the world, which is obviously creating flight. We're going to come back to this. I first want to get into a little background on the partnership between Orville and Wilbur, a little background as to who they are, compare them, And their relationship working together. They lived in the same house, worked together six days a week, ate their meals together, kept their money in a joint bank account, even thought together. Wilbur said Orville was also noticeably better dressed. Both loved music. Like their father and sister Catherine, the brothers had tremendous energy. That's a theme that goes throughout everyone I've ever studied in deep dives or in the first episode with Sai Newhouse. They were working hard every day except Sunday. which was a way of life. They always took off Sundays. Wilbur was older by 4 years. Things didn't always go smoothly between them. They could be highly demanding and critical of each other. Neither ever chose to be anything other than himself. Not only did they have no yearning for the limelight, they did their best to avoid it. An old schoolmate said of Wilbur, He is a man who lives largely in a world of his own. He was never rattled, an exceptional public speaker and a lucid writer. And Orville and Wilbur throughout their lives are inseparable. They build trust. They are phenomenal co-founders, as we're going to find out here soon. And they also have this tremendous energy, as I mentioned. But it's just like every great entrepreneur, all these ambitious people, they seem to have an endless supply of energy and they are energized because they're working on things that matter to them, which is what we're going to find out in this story as well. And hard work for them was like conviction. They avoided the limelight like Cy Newhouse did. Cy Newhouse was very secretive, as you may have heard in the first episode. And also, there's a point in the book they're talking about Wilbur just kind of being on his own, looking off into the distance at some point. It reminds me of Elon Musk in many ways, was in a world of his own. They would say Elon would be staring out thinking of things, and it very much so reminds me of him. What the two have in common above all was unity of purpose and unyielding determination. They had set themselves on a mission. Very much so, they are on a mission throughout this entire story. Orville was the more gentle of the two, painfully shy but more cheerful, the more naturally entrepreneurial, with remarkable mechanical ingenuity. Neither drank hard liquor nor smoked nor gambled. They were bachelors and by all signs intended to remain so. This also gave them just a tremendous amount of focus, time for focused work, which they would need in this story, as you're about to find out. And this theme of picking the right co-founder, obviously they were brothers, so they had this relationship built up over time. But because they spent so much time with each other, but were willing to also challenge each other, they made each other better. Their trust was complete. They had full trust in each other's capabilities and they balanced each other out perfectly. I remember hearing a lot when I was in venture capital, always these VCs are looking for founders who kind of have this like yin and yang, this balance between each other. If one is a salesperson, one is the product builder and vice versa. Like this is the thing you're going to see with Orville and Wilbur. They balance each other out relatively perfect. Also, they have a younger sister, Catherine, who's younger than Orville by 3 years, and all knew her to be a force that she was— a tireless all-season talker— and they adored her for that. And their parents, as I mentioned with their father, but both of their parents were highly impactful on them. Susan Wright, their mother, was highly intelligent, affectionate, and painfully shy. And she recognized something unusual in Will and Orv, is what they call them, and would never destroy one thing the boys were trying to make. The mechanical aptitude of the boys came directly from their mother. That support from their mother didn't destroy their inventions, didn't destroy any of their creations. So important to them as they move on and gives them this, this self-confidence that you don't see in everybody. They have tremendous levels of self-confidence, which carry them through in this entire story. And her death from tuberculosis in 1889 at 58 was the worst blow the family had ever known. We're going to talk a little bit about that in a second. Their father Milton was the editor of United Brethren's National Weekly Newspaper. I find that just funny because we just studied Cy Newhouse talking all about newspapers. And it was— this is a newspaper that was published in Dayton, and by 1877 he was elected a bishop. So he talked freely to his children on all subjects. Orville would later say, except money-making, a matter to which he gave little consideration. Here's a quote from the book: From wide reading and observations of life, he had acquired what seemed an inexhaustible supply of advice on behavior, habits, good and bad things to be aware of in life, goals to strive for. He lectured on dress, cleanliness, economy at home. He preached courage and good character, good mettle, as he would say, worthy purpose and perseverance. Another quote from him: Make business first, pleasure afterward, and that guarded. All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden on others. We're going to see in this story Bishop Wright was such a massive influence on his children, and both their parents were. They get this self-confidence, they get this entire demeanor, and the ability to to tinker and have this mechanical aptitude. To be able to build things on their own, which we're gonna find out a little bit about soon, but it's pretty remarkable. And even this entrepreneurial streak, we see it in a very early age. Orville was selling kites at 10 years old and reminds me of Cy Newhouse in many ways as well from the first episode of just how early they were. They started in, in business. So Cy was 13 years old when he started working full-time cuz he had to. And Dayton was described as a Fine place to live, work, and raise a family, as indeed was all of Ohio. Ohio was the native state of 3 presidents thus far and Thomas Edison, and the people of Ohio were the sort of idealists who had the courage of their dreams, which is very fitting for the Wright brothers. Also, the National Cash Register Company, which I think is an amazing name, had been founded and was thriving in Dayton. In little time, it would become the largest manufacturer of its kind in the world. And I'm hammering home this point of environment and location. I think it's super important. And there's an essay from Paul Graham. It's called Cities and Ambition. And Paul Graham, if you don't know, is the co-founder of Y Combinator, which is a startup accelerator based in SF. But in this essay, here's a quote from it. Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In 100 subtle ways, the city sends you a message. You could do more. You should try harder. Surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you above all, you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper, you should be better looking, but the clearest message is that you should be richer. What I like about Boston, or rather Cambridge, is that the message there is you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to. When you ask what message a city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is you should be more powerful. Again, this theme of environment as advantage is such an important one, which is why I'm making the point multiple times. Dayton was a place that produced inventors. The environment you're in shapes what you conceive of doing. I think this is a part of the reason why— I'm from Wisconsin, if you didn't know. I moved to Las Vegas in 2015 and then Los Angeles in 2018, I want to be in an environment around other ambitious people doing interesting things. And I know my career has definitely jumped since then. I think it's something that's super important for all of us. And there's an early, early, early story of Wilbur's youth which shaped his entire life. And Wilbur excelled at everything in his youth. He's a star athlete, outstanding student, grades in the 90s, which is really good, obviously. Much talk of him going to Yale. All such plans ended when he was playing hockey on a frozen lake and he had his face smashed in with a stick, knocking out most of his upper front teeth. The man who threw the stick, Oliver Howe, or Hawe, was later executed in 1906 for the murders of his mother, father, and brother, and was believed to have killed as many as a dozen others. What an insane Start to Wilbur Wright's life when he's like 17, 18 years old, thinking of going to Yale, and he gets his face smashed in. And after this, for weeks, Wilbur suffered excruciating pain in his face and jaw, serious digestive complications, then heart palpitations, spells of depression that seemed to only lengthen. All talk of Yale ended. His ailing mother did what she could to care for him, but as her health kept deteriorating, He began looking after her. Wilbur remained a recluse, more or less homebound for fully 3 years. 3 years when he began reading as never before. This ended up being important, actually, those 3 years to start reading and start exploring, which we'll find out here why in a second. I want to give you a little bit of background on their, their home life to start with. The brothers were well into their 20s before there was running water or plumbing in the house. Weekly baths were accomplished sitting in a tub of hot water on the kitchen floor with the curtains drawn. An open well, wooden pump, outhouse, no electricity. Meals cooked on a wooden stove. The tracks of the Dayton Western and Union Railroad were only blocks away. The smell of coal smoke was the smell of home. This is the scene. This is what their life was like. And at the— at their home, the Wright family had a book collection that was neither modest nor commonplace. So Bishop Wright, their father, a lifelong lover of books, he heartily championed the limitless value of reading, which served them very well in their lives. And he was never overly concerned about his children's attendance at school. He ranked reading as a worthy reason to not attend class, which I find funny, and they took advantage of that for sure. And everyone in the house read all the time. So their sister Catherine had her favorites. And then obviously Orville had his favorites. Wilbur had his favorites. Everyone had their own favorites, but they're all reading all the time, which makes me think I'm on the right path with this podcast for sure, showcasing these, these books now and these stories of the most ambitious people in history. And this love of reading really comes from their dad who was reading all the time. And this also reminds me in our first episode, talked about Sy Newhouse. He had these Saturday morning learning sessions and these sessions on Saturdays when he would read all the time and find ways to improve his business directly influenced him becoming incredibly successful, which in many ways is the same story of the Wright brothers. And Bishop Wright also wanted them to have an open mind and receptive minds to think for themselves. And there's one of the books from Robert Ingersoll. He says, quote, every mind should be true to itself, should think, investigate, and conclude for itself. This is such an important line. This reading as fuel is another theme that we're going to see in the story of the Wright brothers, their house being a library, reading all of the time, and really developing this muscle to think for themselves, which they will showcase throughout this entire story. And a friend of theirs would say years later, a friend of Orville's, that he and his brother would always stand as an example of how far Americans with no special advantages could advance in the world, but it wasn't true. Orville responded emphatically. He said, to say we had no special advantages? The greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there is always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity. Again, that highlights my point of how important it is to have grown up in an environment or put yourself into an environment that can help you thrive. They were in that sort of environment 100%. And honestly, it makes me think of my own environment, not only moving to Los Angeles, but just thinking broader of having a supportive family, my mother in particular, who's just tremendously supportive of me and everything I've been doing to build a business the last few years and obviously my entire life. But it gives you that confidence to go pursue things. It develops in you a large amount of self-confidence that you can take risk and go after things knowing that you have the support of others. Around you. And from this supportive environment, we see how Orville and Wilbur build their early businesses. So we see this in early 1889 when Orville, who's around 18 years old at the time, starts his own print shop in the carriage shed behind the house. He designed and built his own press using a discarded tombstone, a buggy spring, and scrap metal. And with the help of Wilbur, who's around 22, when he was ready to resume life at that point in time, he began publishing the West Side News. The first edition was 4 pages on March 1st with 17 local advertisers, which showcases their hustle. They had that many advertisers in their very first edition. The subscription rate at the time, to give you an idea of cost, was 45 cents a year. And by the end of April, the paper was showing a small profit. And then Orville moved the business to a rented space on West 3rd Street, and Wilbur, now 22, was prominently listed as an editor. Now, this is one of their very early ventures, which showcases the stories of just how these founders and entrepreneurs and ventures They don't always start with where we know them from. There's steps to this. There's levels to this. There's this process of becoming successful. And the sad thing is then the paper starts in early 1889. In July of 1889, the paper carried the obituary of their mother. She died at home on July 4th, age 58, after an 8-year struggle with tuberculosis. Never afterward was July 4th to be a day of celebration for the family. Can you imagine you're in the first year of building your business and your paper carries the obituary of your mother? I cannot imagine this, but they are 2 people who constantly overcome struggles and challenges throughout their lives to succeed. And the printing business had been Orville's idea from the start. So in 1891, He said he'd be making like $2 to $3.25 in the office, but he had to divide it with Wilbur. And so he doesn't really have much left over. And he says, Will is working on the press. At least he says he is, but I can see little signs of it from the appearance of things. I think it just showcases that Wilbur Wright was not that interested in this to begin with. But once he did find what he was interested in, you can see how deep he goes on it and how obsessed he becomes very shortly after. And around this time in 1892, bicycles had become a sensation. So the bicycle was proclaimed a boon to all mankind, good for the spirits, good for health, good for vitality. Everybody was riding a bicycle. And in the spring of 1893, Wilbur and Orville opened the Wright Cycling Exchange. And this just reminds me honestly of right now in 2026, thinking about AI and how this AI craze and everyone's building in AI. I think if the Wright brothers were around in this time, they'd probably be building an AI company in some way and trying to find a way to do it differently. And it also reminds me of this quote from Marc Andreessen, so the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm. He talks about how markets pull products out of founders. And here's the quote. In a great market, a market with lots of real potential customers, the market pulls product out of the startup. This is what happened in the bicycle craze and Wilbur and Orville Eventually building products, so bicycles during this craze. And this is this theme of like riding the wave. They didn't invent the bicycle craze, they positioned themselves inside it, same as the printing business before it, always building where the energy already is. And my note on this too is they not only started by riding a wave, they rode a wave which allowed them to then spend the time creating another, which obviously ended up being flight. And they were ever enterprising, incapable of remaining idle. This is exactly the same as Cy Neuhaus last week when we talked about him. They cannot remain idle. So even when they're not working on their bicycle shop, they turn their off hours into redoing the interior of their home. They built a gas fireplace and mantelpiece, redesigned and built the stairway, refinished all the trim, laid new carpets. And they just never stop. They just have to be doing things and They are just never idle. We see this throughout the entire story. Business remained good, but with more bicycle shops in town, competition kept growing. When sales grew slack, Wilbur turned conspicuously restless, uncertain what to make of his life again. This is 1894. Wilbur is 27 years old. He had long thought he would like to be a teacher. He was weighing the advisability of taking a college course. So just picture this. They're doing the bicycle shop. He doesn't know what he wants to do. He's not sure this is the path because it's kind of struggling and not working out too well. And he says in this quote, he says, I do not think I am specially fitted for success in any commercial pursuit. Even if I had proper personal and business influences to assist me, I might make a living, but I doubt whether I would ever do much more than this. Intellectual effort is a pleasure to me, and I think I would be better fitted for reasonable success in some of the professions other than business. He doesn't think he's going to be a businessman because he doesn't think he's fit for it. And he has this self-awareness, which is actually pretty impressive. And in one more quote, he has this letter to his brother, Loren. So they have another brother, another sibling, they have a few siblings. And it says, in business, it is the aggressive man who continually has his eye on his own interests who succeeds. Business is merely a form of warfare in which each combatant strives to get the business away from his competitors and at the same time keep them from getting what he already has. No man has ever been successful in business who is not aggressive, self-assertive, and even a little bit selfish, perhaps. There's nothing more reprehensible in aggressive disposition so long as it is not carried to excess, for such men make the world and its affairs move. I entirely agree that the boys of the Wright family are lacking in determination and push. That is the very reason that none of us have, have been or will ever be more successful than ordinary businessmen. We have all done reasonably well, better in fact than the average man perhaps, but not one of us has yet made particular use of the talent in which he excels other men. That is why our success has been only moderate. We ought to not have been businessmen. This is pretty impressive self-awareness. And because of this time period for Wilbur, his father offered to actually help the cost of the college course. And that was the path he very much so could have gone down. Instead, the bicycle sales picked up again and they were selling about 150 bicycles a year. And so Wilbur stays with it. In 1895, they moved to a new building with a machine shop upstairs. They began making their own model bicycles. So they sold their bicycle, which is called the Van Cleve, for like $60 to $65, and income grew to $2,000 or $3,000 per year. So they're doing well in this bicycle shop, but no major successes yet. And Wilbur kind of is not sure about this business, but then it picks up again, so he's fine with it. It's important to have this success with the bicycle shop because this allows them to spend their time inventing. And this is kind of like Ryan Peterson from Flexport, which is this multibillion-dollar supply chain management company. He had a very profitable bootstrap business called Import Genius, which then allowed him to take a much bigger swing on Flexport. And actually he describes it as I did a, I wrote a deep dive on Ryan Peterson when I was running for Just Go Grind, this newsletter I had. And he says, uh, in this one quote, he's saying like he was in the 99th percentile of the GMAT, which allowed him to do this like lucrative part-time job making $100 per hour teaching others to ace the test. Then he also, because he was running previous e-commerce business, he was able to find 2 clients for SEO consulting. And then also he did this like caseworks work for like $40 per hour to write a case for a Nigerian company. And so he said, with 3 different sources of flexible hourly work lined up, my financial position was reasonably secure. I was now free to run a bunch of startup experiments. And instead of running against the clock, hoping I could attract venture capital for an idea before I went broke, I now had time on my side. And there's one other quote from him that I think is relevant here where he says, I don't know what timeframes will be successful, but I know that if we stay in the fight, we'll win. You just want to make sure you set yourself up in a way that you can't lose because you're in the fight in perpetuity. You know, just keep finding new hacks. I didn't know what business I'd make successful, but I knew that I would do it. As long as I could make those debt payments, make my rent, afford some food, Then I'd buy myself an indefinite period of time to experiment. And this is exactly the Wright brothers. The bicycle shop allows them to have time to experiment. And obviously they had to take care of that, but it allows them to spend the time on flight, which was how we know them today. But of course, this is not a straight path for them. It's a very rocky road. In summer of 1896, At age 25, Orville was struck by the dreaded typhoid fever. For days, he lay in delirium close to death, fever at 105 degrees. It was a month before Orville could sit up in bed, another 2 weeks before he could get out of bed. During this time, Wilbur had begun reading about the German glider enthusiast Otto Lilienthal, who had recently been killed in an accident. Much that he read, he read aloud to Orville. And learning from Otto Lilienthal is the same idea we get again and again here, is that greats learn from greats. Lilienthal inspired the Wrights. Later, they give him credit for, even though his data was wrong, they give him a lot of credit for his inspiration. Same pattern with Newhouse, who we studied last week. Newhouse learned from William Randolph Hearst. We see that Steve Jobs learns from Edwin Land, Kobe Bryant from Michael Jordan. You just see this again and again. The greats learn from the greats. So around this time, obviously Orville does not die, but he's deathly sick. And they start learning more and more and more from these different people. And Lilienthal had taken his lessons from the birds. So over the years, he designed and built more than a dozen different gliders. He also had himself repeatedly photographed in action, photos that appeared all over the world. 1896, flying number 11 glider, he died of a broken spine in Berlin at age 48. News of Lilienthal's death aroused in Wilbur an interest that had remained passive from childhood. His reading on the flight of birds became intense. On the shelves of the family library was an English translation of Animal Mechanic— Mechanism by a French physician. I'm not gonna say his name. I don't know how to pronounce that. Wilbur had already read it. Now he read it anew. We see this theme of reading a book multiple times. Wilbur Wright did this. We probably should do the same. I read the Cy Newhouse book twice. Before I actually ended up doing a podcast episode on him when I started this show. And I think it's super valuable. You get different insights each time you read it. And also you are a different person every time you read it. And so around this time, authorities and science had declared at different periods as a result of lengthy calculations that human flight was essentially impossible to achieve. It was an impossible dream. But in one of the books they read, it says, but how many inventions have we seen realized? Which had been pronounced impossible. And that book was exactly what Wilbur needed. And their study of these different books, so with Wilbur and Orville reading these different books, it's funny, it actually reminds me a lot of Ben and David from Acquired, how they're studying together and then bringing together their insights to then create their podcast. In this case, with Wilbur and Orville to run experiments on flight. It's so helpful. You're reading and then you're applying what you learned. In the spring of 1898, We've also seen another challenge of theirs. Dayton suffered basically the worst flood in 40 years, less than a year after they moved into their new shop. They succeeded in building a levee just high enough to keep the water out. Had the water risen another 4 inches, both their home and their workshop would've been under 3 or 4 feet of water. And can you imagine what this would've done in setting them back? Days, months, who knows how long it could've been. I, I think obviously like they are so determined that they're gonna find a way to make it work regardless, but We just see struggle after struggle as they're going through their career. Then on Tuesday, May 30th, 1899, we have a very consequential moment. Wilbur writes one of the most important letters of his life addressed to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and says, and quote, I've been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight ever since as a boy I constructed a number of gliders of various sizes. After the style of Cayley's and Panhard's machines. My observations since have only convinced me more firmly that human flight is possible and practical. I'm about to begin a systematic study of the subject in preparation for practical work, to which I expect to devote what time I can spare from my regular business. He's writing to the Smithsonian Institution, trying to get all the information he can on flight. And he has to write to this, you know, essentially now we know it as the largest, like, museum, basically. In the US, and he has to write just to get the information. And today we have all this information at our fingertips, which is so underrated at a time. Think about him having to write a letter just to get the information he needs to then be able to study this topic of flight, which I just find remarkable. And from this letter, he ends up getting a lot of different resources that they can use, but they're not the only ones working on flight at this time. There is this Sir George Cayley. Sir Hiram Maxim, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison— none of them had succeeded. And Hiram Maxim had reportedly spent $100,000 of his own money on a giant steam-powered pilotless flying machine, only to see it crash in attempting to take off. And for more than 50 years, strange or childish flying machines had served as continuous source of popular comic relief because they just didn't see it possible that someone could fly. The Washington Post Said, quote, it is a fact that man can't fly, end quote. But as you see from the story, they are not discouraged by failures or people making fun of this idea of flight around them. They're focused on very narrowly a few things. Wilbur and Orville are focused on learning and solving the problem only. That's it. Focus, focus, focus. All this invention around them, people trying to create different products that they haven't quite figured out yet. Orville and Wilbur just remain so focused on the problem and Again, it reminds me of this environment thing again, of AI being in San Francisco, deep tech and hard tech being in El Segundo. Our environments shape us so much. And this self-confidence, there's a quote in a book that kind of showcases this. It says, in no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright any more than the fact that they had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, No friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, little money of their own, or the entirely real possibility that at some point, like Otto Lilienthal, they could be killed. Nothing deters the Wright brothers. When you think about what they accomplished and where they came from, it is truly remarkable. They had no special advantages. They were just so freaking determined to make this happen. And they did it. So about this time, according to the U.S. Patent Office, Dayton ranked first in the country relative to population in the creation of new patents, which I had no idea. And I honestly could not like believe this. It's pretty remarkable that they happened to be then in Dayton as all of this is happening. Again, you just think about the environments around us. Obviously, I mentioned two of the places, but think of, you know, automakers in Detroit or like podcasters nowadays in Austin or All these different locations where people are building the same thing or similar industries, which then almost like a rising tide lifts all ships or lifts all boats. It's just being in this environment that pushes you to learn and to grow. And then around this time, there's a book that I read called The Empire of Air, something different in France, by a French farmer, poet, and student of flight. And he warned that once the idea of flight invaded the brain, it possesses it exclusively. Wilbur would long consider it one of the most remarkable pieces of aeronautical literature ever published. That line, when once this idea has invaded the brain, it possesses it exclusively. This is exactly the story of Wilbur and Orville. They are possessed by the idea of flight. They cannot shake it. Wilbur took up birdwatching along the banks of the Miami River. The works of Lilienthal and Millard, the brothers would attest, had infected us with their own unquenchable enthusiasm and transformed idle curiosity into the active zeal of workers. And from learning about flight from these other people, they understand their downfall and where they need to focus. So Lilienthal's fatal problem had been an insufficient means of control. The chief need was skill rather than machinery. It was impossible to fly without both knowledge and skill. Skill came from— only came from experience in the air. And Wilbur calculated that in 5 years Lilienthal had devoted to gliders and gliding, he spent only a total of 5 hours in actual flight. It was hardly enough. That was not how he and Orville would proceed. So 5 years, Lilienthal was only actually in the air for 5 hours, which is a very, very important distinction, observation. that Wilbur had about the situation. They knew they had to control that problem. They knew they had to figure out the problem of control. In the summer of 1899, above the bicycle shop, the brothers built their first aircraft, a flying kite made of split bamboo and paper with a 5-foot wingspan, a biplane, same design Chanute used. In early August, Wilbur tested it in an open field. Tests demonstrated the efficiency of their system of control. And in April of 1900, Wilbur was 33 years old. And then in May, Wilbur wrote his first letter to Octave Chanute asking for advice on location, somewhere with steady winds of 15 miles per hour. And the data from the U.S. Weather Bureau pointed to a remote spot on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Kitty Hawk, some 700 miles from Dayton. And for context, Octave Chanute was an engineer and he was now involved in flight. He had shifted his focus into flight and he had done a bunch of work with gliders and Have been really beneficial and serves as like a massive mentor and kind of advisor for them over time. But they have a falling out near the end of his life, but very much so he was helpful for them. And this is just the same idea as nowadays we have, whether it be a cold email or DMs on Twitter. It's so easy to reach out to people, pretty much anyone in the world now through the internet. There's no excuse. In regards to problem solving and having to break down problems to their individual parts as well as we just kind of read about. Their experience and thinking, this is super important. They spend as much time as they can on the individual parts of flying and kind of solve each piece of this to be able to put the whole thing together. So the first trip to Kitty Hawk, which was in 1900, final weeks of August, the brothers had built a full-size glider with an 18-foot wingspan. The total cost of all necessary pieces, not more than $15. Wilbur was going first and he brought a camera, a box camera and a tripod. Not forgetting the example set by Lilienthal. So again, learning from people of history, people who came before you, bring a camera to keep track of your experiments. And I have to tell you about these conditions and what, what it took just to get to Kitty Hawk. Again, just this question that comes up repeatedly in my mind as I'm reading this book was just how bad do you want it? So the Outer Banks in 1900, few people lived there other than fishermen and their families. There's no real roads. And Wilbur reached Norfolk on September 7th, uh, 24 hours after leaving Dayton. So that's 24 hours to reach one location, which is Norfolk. Checked into a hotel, temperature is like 100 degrees. Then he boards a train, a 4:30 AM train, to Elizabeth City, which is 60 miles to the south. He asks around about Kitty Hawk. He gets blank stares. So he's asking like, how do I get to Kitty Hawk? So he just gets blank stares from people. It's another 4 days before he finds a boatman on the waterfront. His name's Israel Perry. And the schooner was in sadder shape than the small skiff that got Wilbur there. The sails were rotten, ropes badly worn, rudder post was half rotted, the cabin so dirty and vermin-infested that Wilbur kept out of it. A severe gust blew the foresail loose, the mainsail tore. They anchored for the night. Not until 9 the following night, September 13th, 2 days after leaving Elizabeth City, did Wilbur reach Kitty Hawk. This is an example of the lengths they have to go just to get to Kitty Hawk, which I find insane. Would you have done the same? Would you have done all this work just to be able to test your idea? It is just remarkable. And it's this question of how bad you want. The question runs through the entire story, as I mentioned. And the journey to Kitty Hawk, It's like the physical answer of how bad do you want it? Well, I'm willing to go to Kitty Hawk just to solve this problem. But also even at Kitty Hawk, there are way more issues than just getting there. Because even when arriving, he actually needs these like spruce bars to be able to build the wing and build out what he needs to for the Flyer. Doesn't have them. That's all good. He uses a shorter pine substitute. There's always a way around a problem for the Wright brothers. And you see this again and again and again. Also, this idea of clear thinking and sequencing matters a lot. So for them, if you solve equilibrium, the engine is much easier. You can control the flyer and you master that part of flight. Once you have an engine that you can get in the air, you can fly longer, which obviously is great, but you have to first solve the problem of equilibrium. And so there's a quote from Wilbur saying, my idea is merely to experiment and practice with a view to solving the problem of equilibrium. A failure of a motor will then mean simply a slow descent and safe landing instead of a disastrous fall. At this time, his father is also very worried about his safety given that he's trying to fly, which was thought of as impossible. And Wilbur stressed that he did not intend to rise many feet from the ground. He said, quote, The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepting Risked. This is so true for all of us. We have to de-risk experiments to be able to work on the problem long enough to make real progress, which is all they wanted to do. They wanted to actually solve this problem. And so experiments began October 3rd. At one point in time, a sudden gust caught a corner at 20 feet and smashed it to pieces. And so Orville was yanked off his feet, landed in a heap 20 feet away, shaken but unharmed. They photographed the wreckage, dragged it back to camp. After a night's sleep, They decided there was hope. They repaired the damage, but it took 3 days. So obviously Orville by this time is there with Wilbur as well, so he came afterwards. And this was very simple living at the time. They lived on like local eggs, tomatoes, and hot biscuits. The only things that arrived on the Outer Banks, Orville decided, were bedbugs, mosquitoes, and wood ticks. Far from home in a way they had never been, the brothers seemed to sense they had the adventure of life. Orville would later say that even with all the adversities they faced, It was the happiest time they had ever known. They're happy because they're making progress. They're doing this adventure of life, which is trying to create a flying machine. And it's just such slow going though. They have 3 days to repair damage. Even when they're there to fly, they have to always constantly make repairs. They fly, they crash, they repair. It's just this cycle and they have to always wait for the right conditions. They are just constantly, constantly, constantly trying to figure out How to make this work. And it's very slow going, but because they have a worthy mission and a worthy goal, they are their happiest. There's a quote from them, I think it's from Wilbur, it says, no bird soars in a calm. And that is the perfect way to describe what they are doing. They came there for wind and they got it. They got the conditions they had to deal with, but that's the reality of trying to make this work. You can't complain about what you ask for. You know, it comes with the territory. You can't complain when you get it and then things that come along with it. The Wright brothers were thought of as nuts and crazy, but just like Cy Newhouse, we talked about last week, they don't care at all what other people think. They are just on a mission and the mission is too important. It's way too important to stop regardless of whatever it takes to be able to do that. And one of the people there at Kitty Hawk, who is around the— there's only a few people there at the time, says, quote, we couldn't help thinking they were just a pair of They'd stay on the beach for hours at a time just looking at the gulls flying, soaring, dipping. And he goes on to say, they had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing. And more on these conditions. They said, when we crawl out of the tent to fix things, the sand fairly blinds us. It blows across the ground in clouds. Nights when a 45-mile-per-hour storm struck, no sleep. Winds cold. We each had 2 blankets but almost froze every night. And on October 19th, Wilbur made one manned flight after another. He recorded flights of 300 feet to 400 feet, and they had hoped to learn much value there, and they had. More than even expected. But remember, these are gliders at the time. They're just gliding off the banks, essentially. But let's remember, to finance these experiments, they have to work the bicycle shop. They return to Dayton. Work at the bicycle shop, routines of family life continued over the next 8 months. Nothing, however, occupied their free time and thoughts as preparations for a return to Kitty Hawk. The bicycle business occupied their attention 12 to 14 hours a day. They were entirely free on Sundays. Octave Chanute arrived in Dayton on June 26th. He was 70 years old. He brought a gift, a portable French anemometer. They could now accurately measure wind speed, something of great value they had been unable to do before. Charlie Taylor, who's an important person in this story as well, arrived in Dayton in 1896 in his 20s. The Wrights offered him $18 a week. He said, so far as I can figure it out, Wilbur and Orville hired me to worry about their bicycle business so they could concentrate on their fine studies and experiments. And they didn't hire anyone else for 8 years. So let's remember here, they accomplished flight largely alone, working with themselves, but they were able to do so because their shop was obviously being taken care of. So right people, right roles. They had Charlie Taylor to free them to think. Chanute gave them instruments and the brothers built the actual machines. Obviously they learned a lot from people around them. They read books constantly, but they knew they had to delegate their bicycle shop, which was their cash cow at the time, to be able to do these experiments. So they had to hire Charlie Taylor and he was very competent. He actually helps them a little bit later, which we'll get into in a second here. But their second expedition to Kitty Hawk, they left together. This is July 7th, 1901. They arrived after one of the worst hurricanes in memory, winds at like 93 miles an hour. They built a long shed, a hangar of like 16 by 25 feet in remarkable little time. But they get the next big issue, the next big challenge of their, their lives in building this, this flying machine. Then the mosquitoes arrived. As Orville wrote, they appeared in the form of a mighty cloud, almost darkening the sun. It was by far the worst experience of his life. The agonies of typhoid fever were as nothing by comparison. Here's the actual Our blankets then became unbearable. The perspiration would roll off us in torrents. We would partly uncover, and the mosquitoes would swoop down upon us in vast multitudes. We would make a few desperate and vain slaps and again retire behind our blankets. Misery, misery. Again, this comes back to my question: how bad do you want it, and what can you endure? So Orville vowed Come morning, they would head home. That's what he said during the night when they're obviously dealing with all these mosquitoes, which is insane. By morning though, as we see with them again and again, their characteristic resolve returned. So Atip Chanute left Kitty Hawk 2 days later. He was convinced that the Wrights had made more progress than anyone thus far and urged them to keep— and urged them to keep on with their work. This actually reminds me a lot of Edison, Thomas Edison encouraging Ford, which goes a long way. And the quote from Edison was, young man, that's the thing, you have it, keep at it. That's what he said to Ford about going after these automobiles. This reminds me just how simple and easy it can be to encourage someone else to do the thing that they're kind of debating doing and how remarkable products and inventions and ideas can be created from this. There are many inventions along the way, innovations from Wilbur and Orville as they're creating this flying machine. And their wing warping system was one of those things. They had not— it would not respond as expected in their first kind of earlier tests. And so many of the long-established, supposedly reliable calculations from Lilienthal, Langley, and Chanute had proven to be wrong, essentially. So those esteemed authorities who Some of the leading figures at the time, they had been guessing, groping in the dark. Wilbur was at such a low point, he declared that not in a thousand years would man ever fly. So they were very much in the Elon Musk mold, thinking from first principles. Their calculations were wrong, so they had to basically start again. There's a very timely New York Times article from October 9th, 1903, talking about flying. The New York Times published a piece that said essentially that men would not fly in 1 million to 10 million years. This was October 9th, 1903. As Wilbur and Orville continued experimenting, the pall of discouragement disappeared in a matter of days, replaced with a surge of characteristic resolve. Orville said, he was at work the following day and it seemed to me he was more hopeful and determined than ever. And this is after They do crash multiple times and have these downturns. So it was after one of those. And then Catherine, their sister at the time, reports to their father, we don't hear anything but flying machines from morning till night. They are obsessed. But they get right back to it. After any issue they have, any downturn, they always right back to it. This bounce back is so quick. Every time they hit a wall, whether it be mosquitoes or bad data or public ridicule, Ridicule, they are back to work immediately. They have this obsession. They just don't care what other people say. And then around this time, Wilbur gives a speech using a horse analogy. He's talking about 2 different ways to essentially learn to like ride a horse, saying, one is to get on the horse and learn by actual practice. The other is to sit on the fence, watch, and figure it out at leisure. The latter system is the safest, but the former on the whole Turns out the larger proportion of good riders. What's that mean for them? They have to actually get on the plane. They have to actually be in the air. Learning by experience, mounting a machine. That's how they do it. And it's crazy at this similar time, there's an article that comes out that says, even if a flying machine was devised, literally asked, quote, what useful purpose could it possibly serve, which of course in hindsight, us in 2026 and beyond, you know, we know how useful flight is and how ubiquitous it is now. I mean, I'm literally looking in the sky right now and see a plane overhead in Los Angeles. Like, that is crazy to me that we see that now. But people literally did not think it was possible. Much of the world did not think it was possible. I just had to hammer that point home because it makes it so much more remarkable what The Wright brothers did. And so, with their former trust in the calculations of Lilienthal and Chanute shattered, the brothers set out that autumn of 1901 to crack the code of aeronautics themselves. It was a brave decision and a critical turning point. They devised and built a small-scale wind tunnel, a wooden box 6 feet long and 16 inches square, with one end open and a fan at the other, powered by an extremely noisy gasoline engine. So they'd have to solve this problem. They basically make a wind tunnel. They needed their own datasets. So for 2 months, they tested some 38 wing surfaces, trying to find the right one for their Flyer. Around the same time, Octave Chanute offered financial help, and they were unwilling to accept it. So Wilbur wrote, Practically all the expenses of our aeronautical experiments lies in the time consumed, and we do not wish to increase the temptation to neglect our regular business for it. To be clear, at the time, Chanute was basically saying, should I ask Andrew Carnegie, the Andrew Carnegie we know, basically asking him if they should provide like $10,000 a year so that they could do their experiments full-time. Because remember, they still had the bicycle shop. They're running this bicycle shop, essentially working part-time on solving an impossible problem, a quote unquote impossible problem. Even more remarkable to me that they went after it as like part-time and they also turned down this funding they could have used to work on it full-time. It's just remarkable to me. So the trip to Kitty Hawk in 1902, which was very important. So late August 1902, the Wrights reached the final stage in building their new gliders. So they've learned a lot from this wind tunnel, other experiments of the past. A neighbor at the time still doubting them says, I don't believe they're that foolish. They basically saying there's no way they're correct here. And they improved their conditions at camp. And then in September 1902, The largest glider they built yet. It's like 32 feet by 5 feet. September 19th, Orville glides for the first time. Days later, he loses control and crashes. He gets out without a bruise or a scratch. But remember, makes it very, very real, the dangers of what they're doing. And Wilbur says to his father, everything is so much more satisfactory that we now believe the flying problem is really nearing its solution. So this is in September of 1902. And a month later, remember that article comes out from the New York Times. October 2nd. Orville couldn't sleep. He had too much caffeine. In bed, thinking of a better system of control, suddenly he has an idea. The rear rudder, instead of being fixed, should be hinged, movable. In the morning at breakfast, he proposed the change to Wilbur, expecting a critical response. This time, Wilbur liked it and went further. Why not connect control of the rudder With the wing warping. They began working on the change the same day. A couple things stand out here. One, the reason Wilbur was always in opposition is that he believed in a good scrap because it brought new ways of looking at things and it helps round off the corners. It was a characteristic of his family that he was able to see the weak points of anything. Now, it wasn't always a desirable quality. It makes him too conservative for a successful businessman. And limits their friendships, but it made for making tremendous progress in inventing when they had to question assumptions to be able to create this. In 2 months on the Outer Banks, they had made nearly 1,000 glides and resolved the last major control problem. Now they only had to build a motor. Fast forward to New Year's Day, 1903. Dayton by this time had grown full of promise. The Wrights sent letters to automobile engine manufacturers in 7 states. Only one responded, and that motor was too heavy. The brothers had no experience building engines at this time. Charlie Taylor, however, was a brilliant mechanic and he was a godsend for them. His only prior experience with a gasoline engine had been trying to repair one in an automobile. But that January, working with the same metal lathe and drill press used for bicycles, he went to work and 6 weeks later had it finished. The motor weighed only 152 pounds. As a bonus, it delivered 12 Think about this for a second. The brothers do not know how to make a motor. They reach out to automobile engine manufacturers and basically none of them work. Had to create something from scratch with someone they had working for them already. It is remarkable they are able to do all this. It continually amazes me. And this also makes me think that Elon Musk must have taken ideas from them. I've mentioned him a few times just because like he's so impressive what they've done with SpaceX and everything, but No experience building rocket engines? Doesn't matter. Elon does it. Same with, same with the Wrights. No experience building engines? No problem. We'll find another way. We'll find someone who can do it for us. And that's maybe the key thing here. Always being able to find talent and help if you need it. Obviously they did lots of this on their own, but when they didn't have the experience, one, they read books about it or talked to the people, or as the case in Charlie Taylor, had someone help them as well. And once again, we see this naming convention at the time. The Aluminum Company of America was one of the people they worked with. And the little gas motor was finished in February. First time they started it up, the engine block cracked. So it was another 2 months before a second block was delivered from Pittsburgh. The engine worked fine, and as a bonus, it delivered 12 horsepower. I think the first one actually delivered like 8 horsepower. But 2 months. You're excited. You need an engine to be able to do this. And remember, all the time, like, you're thinking of everyone else kind of working on this problem, and everything just continues to be slow and delayed. This is what also like kind of bothers me or gets to me. It's like all this is delayed over time. Everything's delayed. So like you don't have a motor. Cool. They build one in 6 weeks. You finally get to use the, use the motor. Guess what? Engine block cracks. 2 more months to get another one. This just continually comes to me. It speaks to me as the perseverance they have in this entire story. But of course, the engine is not the only thing. The design of the propellers became a still bigger challenge. Much to their surprise, they could find no existing data on air propellers. And once more, were left with no choice but to solve the problem themselves. There's a quote around this time saying, our minds became so obsessed with it that we could do little other work. Honestly, I'm feeling the same way about podcasting right now. I'm becoming so obsessed already, even in the early days with it. And the only realistic way to test the efficiency of a propeller would be to try it on the flying machine. So during those months, Their discussions became as intense as they ever had been before. Heated words at the top of their voices, and so Katharine would be crying out, if you don't stop arguing, I'll leave home. On March 23rd, the brothers applied for a patent on their flying machine's wing warping system and rudder. Octave Chanute, giving talks in Paris at this time, referred repeatedly to the Wright brothers as devoted collaborators. It was not only untrue, but grossly unfair. The brothers had never in any way been his pupils or collaborators. And this is just a reminder of human nature. Like, people will try to take credit for your work. But the reality is, the only option forward, the only option, the only way forward is to just keep doing the work. On July 14th, Samuel Langley tested a motor-powered airship called the Great Aerodrome. Cost about $50,000 in public money, plus another $20,000 contributed by Langley's friends. In the morning of August 8th, the machine launched and crashed into the river. Airship as a submarine ran the mocking headline in the New York Times. So even at this time, people are much more well-funded than the Wright brothers, but not making the same progress they are. And because of that, Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute, I see that Langley has had his fling and failed. It seems to be our turn to try now, and I wonder what our luck will be. will be. But at this time, their spirits are high. They're optimistic. They've been running so many experiments. They've done the work. So they're optimistic about what's going to happen. And even when, you know, Langley's machine failed, neither brother was ever to make critical or belittling comments about Langley. Rather, they expressed respect and gratitude for the part he had played in their efforts. Just knowing that the head of the Smithsonian believed in the possibility of human flight was one of the influences that led to them to proceed with their work. And as a note from me, just that everyone plays a part in innovation. Some fail, but the efforts and the greater efforts of everyone inspires others. Wilbur and Orville seem to have outstanding levels of character displayed again and again. And again, which is maybe why I admire these 2 so much, and this is a theme that comes across the entire book. They have impeccable character. And they're back to experimenting. Orville reached Kitty Hawk on December 11th. December 14th, the both of them were ready. They hauled the 605-pound Flyer the quarter mile to the hill, to the big hill. They flipped a coin. Wilbur won. He went down and sent the Flyer surging at a steep angle. Landed 100 feet from the end of the track. Took another 2 days, but the machine was ready on the 16th. Then on December 17th, 5 men showed up. It's freezing cold. There were skims of ice on nearby ponds, gusty winds of 20 to 27 miles per hour. Orville would later say he would express utter amazement over their audacity in attempting flights in a new and untried machine in such circumstances. Orville had positioned the camera on its wooden tripod almost 30 feet from the end of the starting rail and assigned Daniels, one of the people at the camp where they're at, to squeeze the rubber bulb to trip the shutter as the Flyer passed that point at exactly 10:35. Orville slipped the rope restraining the Flyer and it headed forward, not very fast because of the fierce headwind. Wilbur, with his left hand on the wing, had no troubles keeping up. At the end of the track, The Flyer lifted into the air, and Daniels, who had never operated a camera until now, snapped the shutter to take what would be one of the most historic photographs of the century. In Orville's words, the course of the flight was extremely erratic. The Flyer rose, dipped down, rose again, bounced, and dipped like a bucking bronco when one wing struck the sand. The distance flown had been 120 feet, less than half the length of a football field. The total time airborne was approximately 12 seconds. Were you scared, Orville? Whitley asked. Scared? he said with a smile. There wasn't time. It was only a flight of 12 seconds. He would also later stress that it was an uncertain, wavy, creeping sort of a flight. But it was a real flight at last. They sent a message. Success. 4 flights Thursday morning, all against 21-mile-an-hour winds, starting from level with engine power alone. Average speed through the air, 31 miles an hour. Longest, 57 seconds. And from the press, home for Christmas. Now let's just think about this for a second. The Langley project had cost nearly $70,000, the greater part of it public money. The brothers' total expenses from 1900 to 1903, including materials and all travel to and from Kitty Hawk, a little less than $1,000, was paid entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business. It's truly remarkable. And remember, they fly for the first time officially December 17th. October 9th was when the New York Times published that it would take a million to maybe 10 million years to fly. And they do it only a few months after that article is published. It is a remarkable, remarkable, remarkable feat. And guess what? No one believes them. They don't get any press. It's, it's insane. I mean, I guess I understand it being there at the time, but their brother takes the telegram to the city editor of the Dayton Daily Journal. He reads the telegram and shows no interest. He says like 57 seconds. If it had been 57 minutes, that might've been new, a news item. No mention of it was in the journal the following day. And somewhere else where basically the Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginian pilot says the flying machine soared 3 miles, which was obviously very wrong, uh, it was because the brothers had specifically told the weather station operator that his contents were confidential, but he shared it anyways, and it was wrong. It was the wrong story of what actually happened there. But they had flown for the first time. So the first time in human history, like, powered flight. And the brothers at this time just had a forward-thinking attitude. Their question is just like, what's next? So from Charlie Taylor, Of course they were pleased with the flight, but their first word with me, as I remember, was about the motor being damaged when the wind picked up the machine and turned it topsy-turvy. They wanted a new one built right away. They were always thinking of the next thing to do. They didn't waste much time worrying about the past. They are 100% forward-thinking constantly. So they officially make first manned flight December 17th, 1903. There's a lot more work to be done. We're going to go through that next kind of phase of this. So instead of continuing to go to Kitty Hawk to help cut expenses, because remember they're financing this thing from just their bicycle shop profits. They decided that travel to Kitty Hawk could be dispensed with. They found a peaceful cow pasture that was like 84 acres, 8 miles northeast of town. It's called Huffman Prairie. The owner, which is Torrence Huffman, agreed to let them use it as long as they moved the cows before flying, and he had little faith in their project. He said they were fools. At the time, their nephew Milton later on wrote, history was being made in the bicycle shop and in their home. But the making was so obscured by the commonplace that I did not recognize it until many years later. There's this theme that breakthroughs are hidden in the daily work. History was being made. Nobody was watching. No one believed them. But the mundane, this experimenting, is what leads to remarkable. The mundane leads to remarkable. This is the unsexy truth about invention and about progress more broadly. Prior to their first test flight at Huffman Prairie, the brothers invited friends and neighbors to watch. No photographs were permitted. Their concern was that photographs would allow study of the devices and control mechanisms that set their machine apart from others. And you'd think, cool, it all goes brilliantly, they have no problems and instant success, right? No, there's still work to do. Something had gone wrong with the motor. Almost nothing went right for the next 3 months. People felt sorry for them, thought they were fools neglecting their business to work on the airplanes. On August 13th, to their utter amazement, Wilbur flew over 1,000 feet farther than any of the flights at Kitty Hawk. August 24th, hit by a sudden gust, Orville smashed into the ground at 30 miles per hour, so badly shaken and bruised he was unable to fly for another month. To render themselves independent of wind, they designed and built a catapult Powered by gravity. A 20-foot tower, metal weights totaling as much as 1,600 pounds. We have to always remember in this story, like, their experiments are flying. If something goes bad, the consequences are, are dire. Obviously they're trying not to fly super high because of this, but there's very real risk involved in everything they did the entire time. So September 7th, they tested a new catapult. Uh, September 15th, not only flew For half a mile, but for the first time succeeded in turning a half circle, which was a major achievement at the time. Not one reporter bothered to attend. And speaking of this time, Charlie Taylor said of Wilbur and Orville, to Wilbur and Orville, it seemed fear was a stranger. They just did it anyways. They just experimented. They did what they had to do. Fear was a stranger to them. And the person who actually ends up Really breaking the story. Is Amos Ives Root of Medina, Ohio, a beekeeper who wrote a column for Gleanings in Bee Culture. It was he, of all people, who would recognize, as no one yet had, the genius of the Wrights and the full importance of their flying machine. September 20th, 1904, Root reached Dayton on the day Wilbur would attempt something never done before in the history of the world: fly a powered machine in a complete circle. Root had been astonished by the extent of their library and to find they were thoroughly versed not only in current knowledge, but in everything that had been done in the past. We need to highlight that point. They knew everything now, so current knowledge of what is going on in the industry, but everything in the past. They read all the books. They were more knowledgeable about flight than probably anyone else. And obviously they had their own original data as well, but. They understood that you need to understand the entire industry, A to Z, beginning to end, to then be able to make innovations on this. And Root sent a copy of his article to the editor of Scientific American saying it would be reprinted at no charge. The editor paid it no mind and said a full year later, Scientific American published the Wright plane and its fabled performances, casting still more doubt. Then a British Army officer appeared in Dayton and invited the brothers to submit a proposal for sale of the Flyer to the British government. They were unwilling. As patriotic Americans, they would be ashamed to offer it to a foreign government without their own country having a first chance. But when they did take it to the U.S. government, they rejected Wilbur and Orville. So you see this, like, it takes so much to convince people that, that their invention, that actually they had done it. It takes a tremendous amount of work to even get to this point. And the quote at this time says, We have taken pains to see that opportunity gave a good, clear knock on the War Department door. It has for years been our business practice to sell to those who wish to buy instead of trying to force goods upon people who did not want them. If the American government has decided to spend no more money on flying machines till their practical use has been demonstrated as an actual service abroad, we are sorry, but we cannot reasonably object. They are the judges. And as I'm thinking about this rejection again, disbelief from everybody, it just reminds you of how resilient and how persistent the Wright brothers were. I just can't get over how much they went through. It's pretty remarkable. And so work went on with a new Flyer in 1905. The Flyer III was the most sturdy machine yet, an engine producing as much as 25 horsepower, And the best dividends on labor invested, they said at the time, have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power. Then on October 5th, 1905, Wilbur circles the pasture 29 times, landing only when he ran out of gas. And their father wrote, I saw Wilbur fly 24 miles in 38 minutes and 4 seconds in one flight. And there's an amazing quote from Wilbur on this. When you know, After the first few minutes, the whole mechanism is working perfectly. The sensation is so keenly delightful as to be almost beyond description. Nobody who has not experienced it for himself can realize it. It is a realization of a dream so many persons have had of floating in the air. More than anything else, the sensation is one of perfect peace mingled with the excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination. And by this time, the brothers are making routine flights of 25 miles or more. The response from Washington is that they must provide drawings and descriptions necessary to enable construction before any consideration of the machine. And Wilbur just refuses this. He will not do that. But on May 22nd, 1906, they actually get the patent that they applied for in 1903. It was issued. This is patent number 821,393. And so because the US is not on board yet, they obviously have to go other places. So they end up going to Europe and there's testing that goes on both in Europe and in the US to like give them the contracts they need to make this a reality. So obviously it's one thing to invent flight, it's another to make it into a business, uh, and a sustainable business at that. So Flint and Company was offering the rights, $500,000 to sell the rights outside the US. So in February, Germany offered $500,000 for 50 right flyers and Hartberg, Who is the European representative, had become skeptical and wanted one or both of the brothers to come to Europe. Wilbur thought that Orville should go. Orville stubbornly disagreed, insisting that Wilbur would make the best impression in France. And Orville was right. This is a note of, you just have to send your best people. Wilbur went to fly in Europe, not Orville, because he was the better one at speaking and the better one at being able to close a deal, essentially. And around this time, they were very confident because they both had done the work and had put in the time. In Europe, there's a bunch of complex commercial dealings, extremely high stakes, with highly experienced entrepreneurs, politicians, and bureaucrats in a language that Wilbur had neither spoken nor understood. But Wilbur was more than holding his own. And it's a reminder that we are forced to grow, to level up as we make progress. Wilbur was in this complex situation, didn't think he'd ever be in that, but he was suited for it. And after spending years and years and years developing the flying machine, it became very clear that he was well-versed and very adept, fully capable of holding his own in any business discussion because he knew the product so well. And also, this is kind of a funny thing. Wilbur neither drank, smoked, nor showed the least interest in women, which remained, of course, a puzzlement to the French. And business dealings took a very long time, so Catherine and Orville back home felt left out. It was floated that those in power would need to be bribed substantially too at this time, and Wilbur refused. Again, they have the utmost character. There's no way that would happen. So Hartberg— so Berg at first considered Wilbur some sort of an exhibit, and he wrote that now they realize I see into situations deeper than they do, that my judgment is often more sound, and that I intend to run them. Rather than them run me. Now I control everything, and they give advice and assistance. He is such a high agency and clearly formidable individual. There's a great essay actually from George Mack who wrote the essay literally called High Agency. You can find it at highagency.com. And there's this quote in there that says, You wake up in a third world jail cell. You're only allowed to call one person you know to get you out of there. Who do you call? Why do you choose this person? What is it about them that made you pick up the phone? This person you picked has something, a spark, a je ne sais quoi. That something is high agency. And he says that Wilbur Wright was maybe the most high agency person of all time, given where he came from and what he did. And I would probably not disagree with that. I think it's very, very, very true. And so by late July, the brothers are reunited in Paris. In contrast to the Wright brothers, most of the pilots in France who are obviously trying out different planes and stuff were men of ample private means for whom the cost of aviation was of little concern. It's even more remarkable what the Wright brothers did, not only for inventing man-powered flight, but for doing so with far fewer resources than anybody else. And then finally, February 8th, 1908, the bid of $25,000 for a Flyer was at last accepted by the War Department. This is in the US. Less than a month later, they signed an agreement with a French company as well. Constant iteration and improving this product, making trade-offs, pushing the boundaries on sales had finally paid off. And then on April 27th, 1908, they made a big change. The Flyer had been modified to carry 2 operators riding side by side. So no more laying flat on their stomachs as they had been the entire time before. Test flights started on May 6th, and then a stream of reporters kept arriving. And they noted at this time that they knew they could never fly together. It was just way too risky. So it was very smart, obviously. Obviously they divide and conquer constantly. So when Wilbur is doing these tests in France, Orville is doing tests in Washington. So when he's doing these tests, so at Le Mans, he's opening the crate at one point in time. The Flyer was in shambles. There's a dozen broken ribs. One wing was ruined, torn cloth, and just damage was because of careless French customs inspectors. This is just another challenge he has to overcome, which is insane. And he at first blames Orville, but then he apologizes once he realizes it's because of the French customs, uh, people. But then Orville— and this is a great reason why they work so well together— Orville, knowing the stress his brother was under, made no issue of the matter. That is such an important piece of it, and understated actually, as to how well they work together. They are very supportive of everything. Well, Orville could have just been pissed pissed that he blamed him, but no, he wasn't. And in France, those who worked with him at the factory marveled at his meticulous craftsmanship, how he would make his own parts when needed, even a needle if necessary. And around this time, he has an accident, actually. So a radiator hose breaks loose, he's hit by a jet of boiling water. His bare left forearm took the worst of it. It would be a month before he could use his left arm. This is just another challenge, repeatedly, over and over again. Like, deal with, and he continued to find ways to, to make it work, which is so remarkable. So on August 8th, they finally are ready to fly. Many proclaimed that Wilbur would fail, and Wilbur showed no sign of nervous tension or excitement. Such quiet self-confidence was reassuring. Inside the shed where he's kind of having his plane, he checked everything with total concentration. 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. There were also no photographs permitted during this. But at that point, he has this quiet self-confidence because he had done the work. And he knew he had to do his checks. He had to do everything in his power to make sure he would succeed. So even though there's crowds around him wanting to have him fly, he's not bothered. And then Wilbur released the trigger, the weight dropped, and down the rail and into the air he swept. He banked off to the left, turned in a graceful curve, came flying back toward the grandstand, made another perfect turn to fly a full circle at about 30 to 35 feet, and came down to a gentle landing within 50 feet of where he had taken off. All told, not quite 2 minutes. About 2 miles. The crowd was ecstatic. And after this, obviously his successful flight in Le Mans, he had men trying to like kiss him on both cheeks, which I just find hilarious. And he had someone like trying to keep people away from him because they were so amazed by what he had done. I mean, can you imagine? You have never seen this before in your life. Flight was thought of as impossible. And there is this man flying a machine he made over the air in circles around you. Like, I can't imagine the feeling of what that would've been. It's kind of like— People today even seeing SpaceX and some of these launches they have and how remarkable they are, you see them on video, it's just like your jaw drops. It's mind-blowing. It's like the same thing. And because of this, even the largest skeptics came forward and apologized. Everyone was blown away by this. And there's an article where at one point it says about Wilbur Wright, he's the best example of strength and character. that I've ever seen. The impatience of 100,000 persons would not accelerate the rhythm of his stride. And at the same time that this is happening in France, Orville is getting prepared to fly in the U.S. And Wilbur sends encouragement to Orville saying, Do not let yourself be forced into doing anything before you are ready. Be very cautious and proceed slowly in attempting flights in the middle of the day when wind gusts are frequent. Do not let people talk to you all day and all night. It will wear you out before you're ready for real business. And Orville would be demonstrating their plane in the U.S. in Fort Myer. Uh, Fort Myer occupied a stretch of high ground on the Virginia side of the Potomac. It would be the first full-scale public performance of a Wright plane in the United States. Orville was extremely on edge. The crowd broke into a frenzy of enthusiasm as the plane circled overhead. At about 35 feet, then it veered off, hit the ground. The crowd rushed to find Orville calmly brushing the dust from his clothes. By his estimate, it had flown somewhat less than a mile at about 40 miles per hour. The day after, Orville and the Flyer remained in the air for more than 4 minutes, circling 5.5 times under perfect control. Then early morning, September 9th, Orville circled the Fort Myer parade ground 57 times, remaining in the air not quite an hour. On September 12th, 5,000 people encircled the parade grounds. Asked how it felt making history, Orville said, pretty good, but I'm more interested in making speed. I find that just amazing and hilarious at the same time. And at the same time, he's obviously flying in the US. There actually was not money enough for both Bishop and Katharine to make the trip to Washington to see Orville fly. They're relatively poor at this time. They'd make a lot more money very, very, very soon. But even that, the fact that they, that his sister and his father may not have enough money to see him fly is pretty crazy. Orville would say around this time, The excitement and the worry, and above all the fatigue of an endless crowd of visitors from daylight till dark, had brought me to such a point of nervous exhaustion that I did not feel myself really fit to get on On the machines. I can't stand it to have people continually watching me. It gets on my nerves. And then, after saying this, a few days after there's 5,000 people encircling the parade grounds, comes September 17th. September 17th, the day of the crash. An altitude of 125 feet. An unexpected sound, a loud tapping behind him. Then loud thumps, a terrible shaking. The machine hit the ground with a terrific force. Orville lay pinned beneath the bloodstained wreckage, conscious but moaning in pain. Lieutenant Selfridge lay unconscious, a great gash across his forehead. So this was when obviously Orville had taken Lieutenant Selfridge up with him. They had started taking passengers because they have a side-by-side, again, capable of carrying 2 passengers, and this crash is terrible. Orville had a fractured leg and hip and 4 broken ribs. Unfortunately, Selfridge died at 8:10 that night of a fractured skull without ever regaining consciousness. This was the first fatality in the history of powered flight. And after hearing this in France, Wilbur struggled with his emotions. And Wilbur says, who wouldn't feel bad about this business? Seems to me that I am more of us to blame for the death of poor Selfridge. And yet I cannot account for the accident. And their father, Bishop Wright, after the crash says, we learn much by tribulation and by adversity. Our hearts are made better. And then from Wilbur's own letter, now you understand why I always felt that I should be in America with Orville. 2 heads are better than one to examine a machine. And Bishop Wright goes on as well to say to Wilbur, It is sad that Orville is hurt and unpleasant that his success is delayed. It is lamentable that Lieutenant Selfridge lost his life. I am saddest over his death, but success to your invention is assured. The brighter day will come to you. I can't get over how good of a father Bishop Wright was to these boys. It's, it's admirable to say the least. He's an incredible father. And to that point, because of him and because of the people that Wilbur and Orville were, the crash was September 17th. His brother's in the hospital. A man died. And yet, 4 days later, Wilbur is back at it. 4 days after the crash, before 10,000 spectators, Wilbur flew 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 25 seconds. Over a distance of 40 miles, establishing another sensational world record. That should tell you everything you need to know about Wilbur Wright. And back home, back in the U.S., Katherine was at Orville's side every night, every day, without fail. Some nights, too tired for the return trip to town, she slept at the hospital. And eventually they figured out from the the crash, it was determined that one blade of the right propeller had cracked. The vibration tore loose a stray wire, which then wrapped around the blade, and the broken blade flew off. This was the only time anything had broken off on any of their machines while in flight in 9 years of experience, which is pretty remarkable, I would say. And Orville ends up spending 5 weeks and 5 days in the hospital. Finally, they can take a train to go home. And at home was a much better place to recover. Home and a little work proved to do exactly what he had hoped for. By late December, Orville and Katherine were letting it be known they would soon be standing together in France with Wilbur. I just want to underline that point. Home plus work is all an ambitious person needs to recover. I feel like that's so accurate. If you're ambitious and just being home, getting some work done, getting your mind to— putting your mind to work really helps with anything. And during the 6 months that Wilbur flew at Le Mans, 200,000 people came to see him. And essentially everyone wants a ride with him on the airplane. Yeah. He takes a lot of people up there over time, but everyone is watching him. You have like the Queen of Italy at the time, and she says, you've let me witness the most astonishing spectacle I've ever seen. You have princes, you have millionaires, you have a Plethora of people across everyone you can imagine coming to watch him. And there's a speech from Wilbur that he gave at this time. Part of it says, I sometimes think that desire to fly after the fashion of the birds is an ideal handed down to us by our ancestors. Scarcely 10 years ago, all hope of flying had almost been abandoned. Even the most convinced had become doubtful. And I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville, that men would not fly for 50 years. 2 years later, we ourselves were making flights. Only let us hurry and open the roads. And I think some time earlier I mentioned 1,000 years. Maybe he didn't remember what he said, but essentially he also thought that men would not fly for many, many, many years. And about him, about Wilbur, New York World says at the time, he is just himself in the most refreshing way. And that is so true about both of them. Honestly, they are both so much just themselves. It is so refreshing. It is so admirable as well. And Wilbur at this time continues to fly, of course, all over. In Paris at Christmas, the most popular toy being sold in the streets was a little reproduction of the Wilbur Wright plane. And then Wilbur competes in the Michelin Cup, uh, December 31st. He flies for 2 hours, 20 minutes, and 23 seconds, covering 77 miles, and he wins the cup, which then comes with a prize. He says to his father at the time, I could not afford to lose the Michelin prize, as the loss of prestige would have been Much more serious than the direct loss. If I had gone away, the other fellows would have fairly busted themselves on any record I left. I was ready to beat anything they should do, which kept them discouraged. And it also just shows that Wilbur is very competitive. I also find it very interesting that this cup, which I'm reading about 100+ years later, is by Michelin. So, is this the same company? Michelin stars idea, uh, for restaurants? It's a tire company. They have a Michelin cup as well. It also reminds me of Red Bull, and I'm going to definitely do an episode on Red Bull's founder, Dietrich Mateschitz. I have the book. I just bought it recently because I think they are so incredibly smart at marketing that you just kind of have to cover them. I want to know more about the story. So we'll cover that soon on an episode here as well. And by this time, between French syndicate payments, prize money, and cash awards, Wilbur and Orville had about $35,000 in the bank. which is more than $1 million today. And another funny aside, Wilbur has his own private chef from, from France at this time. So he's a French chef, and the first chef didn't last long. Yeah. Wilbur found their cuisine too fancy. A second successor didn't satisfy either. Finally, a third chef caught on to what Americans like to eat, and he finally used that third chef. And he had a luncheon at one point in time, 'cause he's meeting all these different people. He's meeting a ton of different people actually. And he has lunch with Alfred Harmsworth, the Lord Norcliffe and publisher of the London Daily Mail. They also met Joseph Pulitzer. And I, funny enough, just bought the book from— it's like a really old book actually about Alfred Harmsworth. They call it— the book is called The Chief, which is actually the same as the William Randolph Hearst book, which I will do an episode on at some point as well. But I think it sounds like he's a fascinating person. There's another time where Wilbur is flying and he's flying in this place that basically has all these bumps and like the ground is very uneven. And Wilbur just says, if we have to alter the face of the earth before we can fly, we may as well throw up the proposition. They're saying like at the time, such was the way of the man. He never sought to escape by the easy way round, which I think is tremendous. February 15th, Katherine flies for the first time with Wilbur, which I think is just an interesting moment of how much she had supported her brother's Especially Orville, uh, when he was recovering from his crash, and then she gets to fly in the air. I can't imagine seeing that, how crazy that must have been for them at the time. They're taking passengers up all the time by this point, and Northcliffe said at the time that he never knew more unaffected people than Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine Wright, and that the intense interest produced by their extraordinary feats Had no effect on them whatsoever. I think for them, it was always just a mission beyond themselves, which they were happy to see others use their products. It was not about them. So their inventions also improved very quickly. And among the other onlookers, there's so many people, as I mentioned, two others I think are interesting. There was like the King of Italy and also J.P. Morgan. James J. Hill is crazy. So Wilbur spends just over a year in Europe. Much of it in France. Accumulated compensation from contracts and prizes was for them about $200,000 in that year, which was a lot of money. But they also took time to see Europe, visit Europe, and just a reminder to take breaks, celebrate progress, you know, be rewarded for your hard work and sacrifice. Obviously, they always were on to the next thing, but they did take breaks. They were so Persistent and formidable, but they always proceeded. They always moved on, but they did take breaks over time as well. Finally, they come home to Dayton, and in the nearly 10 years the Wright brothers had worked to achieve their invention, this is the first formal recognition by their hometown. And while little of such elaborate fanfare appealed to the brothers, they knew that if Dayton saw it fit to celebrate, it was not for them to appear in any way annoyed or disapproving. And again, that goes back to their character. The thing I find funny though about even the celebrations about them, amazingly, all through both days of celebrations, they had multiple-day celebration, Wilbur and Orville managed to slip in and out of the picture back and forth to their West 3rd Street shop, one of the few buildings in town that remained unadorned. They show this like, this schedule of their, their time that day, and it's like, they're going out to the parade, they come back, they leave work. They come back, they work for a bit, then they leave again for a little bit, then they come back and work for a bit. It's just, they're obsessed. They're constantly making progress. And so Orville does end up flying, of course, successfully. The War Department gives them a contract, $30,000, and finally the US is committed to their achievements. The interesting thing around this time is that just a year before, at Le Mans, in August 1908, all the excitement had been about one man only, Wilbur Wright flying one airplane before about 150 people at the start. And by a year, you know, a year later, there's like 22 pilots taking off in obviously that many planes before grandstands accommodating 50,000 people at this big competition. So industries evolve quickly. Opportunities do not last forever. That is why the importance of speed remains for entrepreneurs, especially inventors. When you have so many people working on different problems constantly. And there's a great quote from Bishop Wright about this time. It says, a man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool. They're always working for the future, always looking at the next thing. And Wilbur clearly had an understanding of the future. He'd say that there'd be a great increase in the average elevation at which aviators would take their flights. Not only will they find a higher strata with more favorable atmospheric conditions, but in case of motor trouble, they'll have more time and distance in which to cover, recover control, or make a safe glide to Earth. But at this time as well, by the time they come home, you know, when they did actually arrive home, there's like no time to kind of enjoy things all that much. Obviously they had the parade, the celebration, but There's business decisions, there's patent issues, there's so many things they have to deal with over time. Then in January 1910, there's an unfortunate falling out with Octave Chanute. He thought they made a blunder basically bringing a suit against Glenn Curtiss about wing warping and like who was responsible for that and who actually had the patent for that. And so, but it showcases another opportunity for Wilbur to show like his like Incredible values. He said, like, my brother and I do not form many intimate friendships and do not lightly give them up. We prize too highly the friendship which meant so much in the years of our early struggles to willingly see it worn away by uncorrected misunderstandings which might be corrected by a frank discussion. He didn't want the issue with Octave Chanute and them to be a problem. They said, let's just discuss it, we'll be fine. And unfortunately, Octave Chanute actually dies before he can Kind of come back to them and they can mend everything. But I think he got the message at least. And a little bit later on in Huffin Prairie, this is May 25th, 1910, Orville Wright flew an astonishing feat. He flew at 2,700 feet, which was amazing at the time. All the Wrights were on hand and they take their father, who's then 82 years old, to go fly for the first time. He walked up to the starting point where Orville, without hesitation, asked him to climb aboard. They took off, soaring over Huffman Prairie at about 350 feet for a good 6 minutes. The bishop's only words were, higher, Orville, higher. Can you imagine seeing your son make that progress? You creating this, having your father flying with you for the first time. I think it would have been Quite a remarkable scene. And I'll leave you with this. Wilbur and Orville had never once flown together, but on this day at Huffman Prairie, where they had developed the first practical flying machine ever, the two of them seated side by side took off into the air with Orville at the controls. To many then and later, it seemed their way of saying they had accomplished all they had set out to do, and so at last no reason to postpone any longer. Enjoying together the thrill of flight. This was a wonderful book. I highly suggest reading it. Thank you so much for listening. 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