Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up in Dayton, Ohio, in a home filled with books. Their father, Bishop Milton Wright, encouraged curiosity and reading, and one day he brought home a small toy helicopter powered by a rubber band. The boys played with it until it broke, then built their own. That fascination with flight never left them.
Neither brother finished high school. Wilbur had planned to attend Yale until a hockey accident left him injured and depressed, and he spent the next few years at home reading his father’s library and caring for their dying mother. Later, the brothers ran a printing business and then opened a bicycle shop, which gave them the mechanical skills and income to chase their dream.
They studied birds, wrote to the Smithsonian for everything it had on flight, and tested gliders on the windy dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. When existing data proved wrong, they built their own wind tunnel and gathered their own. On December 17, 1903, Orville made the first powered, controlled airplane flight, lasting 12 seconds. Later that day, Wilbur flew for 59 seconds. They did it with no college degrees, no government funding, and very little money, while better-funded rivals failed.
The world didn’t believe them at first. That changed in 1908, when Wilbur flew before stunned crowds in France and Orville demonstrated their machine for the U.S. Army. In 1910, their 82-year-old father took his first flight, shouting, “Higher, Orville, higher!” Wilbur died of typhoid in 1912. Orville lived until 1948, long enough to see aviation change the world.
The Wright Brothers’ story is covered in Deeply Driven Episode #30.
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