Wilbur Wright

EARLY LIFE 

Wilbur Wright was born near Millville, Indiana, on April 16, 1867.

Wilbur Wright in 1905

He was the older of the two flight pioneering Wright Brothers and had four other siblings.

His father Rev Milton Wright, was an editor, clergyman and later a non-conformist Bishop.

Wilbur was named for Willbur Fisk a clergymen that Milton Wright admired. His neighbors knew him and Orville simply as "the Bishop's kids", or "the Bishop's boys".

Because of their father's position as a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, he traveled often and Wilbur and his siblings frequently moved — twelve times before finally settling permanently in Dayton, Ohio in 1884.

Wilbur was an athletic child. He first developed his interest in aviation during three years of reclusiveness after being badly injured in an ice hockey game, when another player's stick hit him in the face. He lost his two front teeth in the accident.

The player who knocked his teeth out, Oliver Cook Haugh, grew up to become a notorious Midwest serial killer.

Wilbur in 1876

EARLY CAREER

Wilbur did not go to college; he started a newspaper instead with his brother Orville. After that, they started a shop where they built and repaired bicycles.

By the 1890s, the Wrights were interested in flight, especially the gliders of Otto Lilienthal. In 1896 they set about designing a kite big enough to carry a man and spent three summers testing and perfecting it.

By 1901 they testing gliders in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where there were strong and steady winds. They also made over 200 small versions of the wings and built a wind tunnel for model airplanes to test how well different wing shapes would lift an aircraft. The data it generated was critical to their first powered flight two years later.

Wilbur just after landing the 1901 glider

FLIGHTS 

After the success of their gliders, the brothers decided to build a flying machine with an engine in their bicycle shop. No manufacturer would provide them with an engine, so they had to build their own.

Orville and Wilbur Wright designed and built the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air airplane in Dayton, Ohio. The brothers took to the air for the first time making two flights each from level ground into a freezing headwind gusting to 27 miles per hour (43 km/h) at a North Carolina beach on December 17, 1903.

Two years later Wilbur Wright piloted Wright Flyer III in a flight of 24 miles in 39 minutes, a world record that stood until 1908.

Wright Flyer III

On May 22, 1906, the Wright brothers were granted a patent for their "Flying-Machine”.

The local newspaper editor decided not to cover their historic first manned flight in 1903. It took five years for the American public and newspaper reports to catch on, even ignoring reports in Europe where Wilbur had been demonstrating his flights and they were well known.

The Wright Brothers brought great attention to flying by Wilbur's flight around the Statue of Liberty in New York in 1909.

In 1909, the Wrights won the first US military aviation contract when they built a machine that met the requirements of a two-seater, capable of flights of an hour's duration, at an average of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) and land undamaged. $30,000 of the federal budget was reserved for military aviation. That year the Wrights were also building Wright Flyers in factories in Dayton and in Germany.

The Wright Brothers had a college-educated sister, Katherine, who kept their affairs in order so they could focus on making the first plane. Katherine later became an international celebrity when she accompanied her famous brothers in Europe.

The Wright brothers formed the Curtiss-Wright Corporation with Glenn Curtiss for the commercial manufacture of their airplanes on November 24, 1909.

The Wright Brothers only flew together on the same flight one time, a six-minute flight on May 25, 1910 near Dayton. They'd promised their father, Milton, they would never fly together to avoid the chance of a double tragedy and to ensure one brother would remain to continue their flight experiments.

PERSONAL LIFE 

The Reverend Milton Wright preached a sermon as an Evangelical United Brethren Bishop in which he said, "If God wanted to fly he would have given us wings". Three months after preaching his sermon, his sons, Orville and Wilbur Wright built and flew their first self-propelled plane. The brothers were nominal Protestant; they didn't attend church, but refused to work on Sundays.

Wilbur Wright was a baggy trousered thinker. He loved reading and writing and contributed stories to his clergyman father's magazine Religious Telescope.

Neither Wilbur nor his brother Orville ever married. They lived together and even shared a bank account.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH

In 1912 Wilbur Wright fell ill after eating a dish of Boston seafood during a business trip. His brother Orville, who ate the same meal, also fell sick and barely survived. After returning to Dayton in early May 1912 Wilbur fell sick again and was diagnosed with typhoid fever. He died, at age 45, at the Wright family home on May 30, 1912.