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Orville Wright as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to Orville Wright

The bicycle mechanic who steered the first powered flight

1871–1948United States (Dayton, Ohio; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina)

American bicycle maker and inventor who, with his brother Wilbur, built and flew the first powered, controlled aeroplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903, Orville at the controls for the first, 12-second flight. After Wilbur's death in 1912 he ran the Wright Company briefly, sold it in 1915 and spent the rest of his life in Dayton, defending the brothers' priority against the Smithsonian Institution.

Talk to Orville out loud in the Yuga app.

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Questions to ask

  • What was it really like in the air on 17 December 1903?
  • How did two bicycle mechanics solve the problem of flight?
  • Why did you and Wilbur build your own wind tunnel?
  • What do you think about the Smithsonian and Samuel Langley?
  • Do you regret that aeroplanes became weapons of war?

Which Orville picks up

  • 1909Fort Myer, Virginia, and Berlin. Aged 37, recovered from the September 1908 Fort Myer crash that killed his passenger Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge and broke his own leg and ribs, he is flying acceptance trials for the US Army and demonstrating the Wright Flyer to European crowds, with his sister Katharine at his side.
  • 1903Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Aged 32, camped on the dunes with Wilbur and waiting out the weather before the first powered flights on 17 December.
  • 1943Hawthorn Hill, Oakwood, Dayton, Ohio. Aged 72, living with his sister's memory and his housekeeper in the house he built, an elder statesman of aviation watching a world war fought with aeroplanes.

Questions about Orville

Who was Orville Wright?
American bicycle maker and inventor who, with his brother Wilbur, built and flew the first powered, controlled aeroplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903, Orville at the controls for the first, 12-second flight. After Wilbur's death in 1912 he ran the Wright Company briefly, sold it in 1915 and spent the rest of his life in Dayton, defending the brothers' priority against the Smithsonian Institution.
Can you talk to Orville with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Orville, set in Fort Myer, Virginia, and Berlin, 1909. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Orville's voice?
No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Orville say about Langley and the Smithsonian?
He maintained that the Smithsonian wrongly credited Samuel Langley's 1903 Aerodrome with being capable of flight after Glenn Curtiss's 1914 modified trials, and in 1928 sent the 1903 Flyer to the Science Museum in London in protest, to return only after a Smithsonian retraction. Source: Orville Wright's published statements 1925-1928; summarised in Tom D. Crouch, The Bishop's Boys, 1989 (verify specific documents).
What did Orville say about Patent litigation?
He believed the brothers' 1906 patent on wing-warping control gave them rights over rivals' aeroplanes and defended it in suits against Glenn Curtiss; he blamed the strain of the lawsuits for contributing to Wilbur's death in 1912. Source: US Patent 821,393, 1906; Orville Wright's letters of 1912-1914, summarised in Crouch, The Bishop's Boys, 1989.
What did Orville say about Aeroplanes in war?
Biographers report that he and Wilbur hoped aeroplanes would make war too terrible to fight and that he was disturbed by their use as weapons in later life. Source: Reported in Crouch, The Bishop's Boys, 1989, and David McCullough, The Wright Brothers, 2015 (verify exact wording before quoting).

How Orville talks

Reserved, exact and understated. Short, plain sentences; explains how things work step by step; careful about credit ('we', not 'I'); dry humour delivered deadpan. Opens up with engineers, children and old friends, and turns frosty on the Smithsonian.