Questions to ask Orville Wright

The brothers in brief

Orville Wright was born on 19 August 1871 in Dayton, Ohio, the fourth surviving child of Milton Wright, a bishop of the United Brethren Church, and Susan Koerner Wright. His brother Wilbur was four years older. Neither finished high school with a diploma. Orville ran a printing business, and in 1892 the brothers opened a bicycle shop, which paid for their flying experiments.

They began in 1899 with a kite to test their idea for control, flew gliders at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina from 1900 to 1902, and made the first powered flights there on 17 December 1903. They perfected a practical aeroplane over Huffman Prairie near Dayton in 1904 and 1905. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville sold the Wright Company in 1915 and lived in Dayton until his death on 30 January 1948.

The four flights of 17 December 1903

Know these numbers before you interview him. Five local men watched; one of them, John T. Daniels of the lifesaving station, took the famous photograph with Orville's camera.

They flew into a wind of over 20 miles an hour, which shortened the distances over the ground. Soon after the fourth flight a gust flipped the machine and wrecked it; it never flew again. That afternoon they sent their father a telegram, which the telegraph operator garbled to give the longest flight as 57 seconds.

Questions about the Dayton years

• 1. In 1878 your father brought home a toy helicopter. What did you and Wilbur do with it?
• 2. You built your own printing press as a teenager. What did that teach you about machines?
• 3. Your schoolfriend, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, had you print his newspaper. What was he like?
• 4. How did a bicycle shop prepare you to build an aeroplane?
• 5. What made Wilbur write to the Smithsonian in May 1899 asking for everything it had on flight?

What the record says: the toy was a rubber-band helicopter of the French Pénaud type; the brothers later said it started their interest. Orville printed the Dayton Tattler for Dunbar in 1890. The bicycle trade gave them light, strong construction, chains and sprockets, and the idea that a rider balances a machine that is naturally unstable. The death of the German glider pilot Otto Lilienthal in 1896 pushed them to think hard about control.

Questions about solving flight

• 6. What is wing warping, and how did twisting a cardboard box give Wilbur the idea?
• 7. Why Kitty Hawk, a fishing village on the Outer Banks?
• 8. Your 1901 glider lifted far less than the published tables predicted. How did that feel?
• 9. You built a wind tunnel from a wooden box and a fan in autumn 1901. What did you test?
• 10. Why did you put a movable rudder on the 1902 glider?
• 11. No engine maker would build what you needed. How did Charlie Taylor build one in six weeks?
• 12. Why did you have to invent your own propellers?

What the record says: their article “The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane” (Century Magazine, September 1908) explains the problem in their own words. They chose Kitty Hawk using Weather Bureau wind records and a letter from a local man, William Tate. In the wind tunnel they tested about 200 small wing shapes and built their own tables of lift and drag. The 1903 engine produced about 12 horsepower. They treated propellers as rotating wings, a new idea. Their patent, US 821,393, was filed in March 1903 and granted on 22 May 1906.

Questions about 17 December 1903

• 13. Why did Wilbur go first on 14 December, and what went wrong?
• 14. How did you decide who would fly on the 17th?
• 15. What could you see and hear lying on the lower wing on that first flight?
• 16. Why did newspapers ignore or garble the story for years?

What the record says: the brothers tossed a coin on 14 December; Wilbur won, but he stalled the machine on take-off and damaged it slightly. Orville's turn came on the 17th. Orville flew lying flat in a hip cradle that worked the wing warping. His account, “How We Made the First Flight”, appeared in Flying magazine in December 1913. Few reporters believed the early reports, and the brothers' flights near Dayton in 1904 and 1905 got little attention.

Questions about fame, a crash and a patent war

• 17. On 17 September 1908, at Fort Myer, Virginia, your propeller cracked and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge was killed. What happened?
• 18. Your sister Katharine nursed you and then travelled with you in Europe in 1909. What did she do for the business?
• 19. Why did you sue Glenn Curtiss and other fliers over your patent?
• 20. Wilbur died in May 1912. Did the lawsuits wear him down?
• 21. Why did you sell the Wright Company in 1915?

What the record says: Selfridge was the first person killed in a powered aeroplane crash; Orville broke his left leg and several ribs. The Army bought a Wright aeroplane in 1909 after Orville completed the trials. Orville believed the patent suits contributed to Wilbur's death from typhoid on 30 May 1912. Historians are divided over whether the brothers' patent war held back American aviation. Answer question 17 plainly and briefly.

Questions about the Smithsonian feud and later life

• 22. Why were you angry that the Smithsonian credited Samuel Langley's Aerodrome?
• 23. Why did you send the 1903 Flyer to the Science Museum in London in 1928?
• 24. You lived to see aeroplanes used in two world wars. How did that make you feel?

What the record says: Langley's Aerodrome crashed into the Potomac twice in 1903. In 1914 Curtiss rebuilt and altered it and flew it briefly, and the Smithsonian then labelled it the first machine capable of flight. Orville lent the Flyer to London in 1928 in protest. The Smithsonian published a correction in 1942; the Flyer came home after his death and went on display in Washington on 17 December 1948. On war, biographers report his unease, but there is no single statement to quote, so paraphrase carefully.

Sample answers in the brothers' own words

For question 15 or 16, from Orville's own account:

For question 8, on the old tables:

For question 9, on the wind tunnel, the same article ends with their “laboratory experiments, which alone made an early solution of the flying problem possible.”

For a technical question about the design, from the patent:

Questions to leave out

• Jets, the Moon landing (a piece of the Flyer's fabric went to the Moon in 1969) and drones all came after his death in 1948.
• “Were you the first to fly?” is too loose. Balloons and gliders flew before. Ask about the first powered, sustained and controlled flight, which is what the brothers claimed.
• Supporters of Gustave Whitehead claim a flight in 1901, and Connecticut passed a law in 2013 favouring him. Mainstream aviation historians and the Smithsonian credit the Wrights. Present it as a dispute, not as fact.
• Do not make Orville the leader. He always called it joint work and credited Wilbur's early lead.

Practise the interview

Orville was shy in public and precise in private, and he answered technical questions far better than vague ones. That makes him a good test of your question writing. You can rehearse with an AI recreation of Orville Wright on Yuga, by voice or text. It is built from the brothers' writings and the record, but it is a recreation and can be wrong. Cite the 1908 and 1913 articles and the patent in your project.

Where to read the Wrights' own words

• The Early History of the Airplane, free on Project Gutenberg, which reprints the 1908 Century article and Orville's 1913 account.
• The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers at the Library of Congress: diaries, letters, photographs and the 1903 telegram.
• US Patent 821,393, readable on Google Patents.
• The 1903 Wright Flyer at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, with its object record online.
• Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills and Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, both run by the National Park Service.

For more inventors to interview, see famous inventors and inventions.