The Wright brothers solved flight by thinking like cyclists, not engineers
Rivals of Wilbur and Orville Wright bolted powerful engines onto airframes and hoped to stay aloft. The Dayton bicycle makers believed the real puzzle was control. Their first patent, drafted in March 1903 before any powered flight, claimed not a flying machine but a way of steering one, and that idea still governs airplanes today.
Their father, a bishop in the United Brethren church, moved the family twelve times before settling in Dayton in 1884. In 1878 he brought home a rubber-band toy helicopter of paper, bamboo and cork, based on Alphonse Pénaud's design; once the boys wore it out, they made copies, and they later traced their fascination with flight to that toy. Neither received a high school diploma. Orville built a printing press with Wilbur's help and the pair ran newspapers, printing work for Orville's classmate Paul Laurence Dunbar, before opening a bicycle shop in 1892 and making their own brand from 1896.
The glider pioneer Otto Lilienthal's fatal crash in 1896 turned their curiosity into serious research. They shared his belief in practising with gliders first, but judged his method of shifting body weight inadequate. Watching birds, Wilbur saw that they twist their wingtips to roll left or right, much like a cyclist leaning into a turn. Idly twisting a long inner-tube box in the shop suggested how: wing warping. They tested it on a kite with a 5-foot span in July 1899, and a homemade wind tunnel later gave them better data on wings and propellers than anyone before.
Unlike Samuel Langley and Octave Chanute, who sought planes that balanced themselves, the Wrights wanted the pilot fully in charge, and even gave their 1903 flyer drooping wings that were inherently unstable but less upset by crosswinds. Their mechanic Charles Taylor built the engine. On December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Flyer made the first controlled, sustained powered flight. The 1904 Flyer II flew the first circle, and the 1905 Flyer III was the first truly practical airplane.
They always shared credit publicly, though biographers see Wilbur as the driving force. Neither brother married. Wilbur died in 1912; Orville lived until 1948.
Source: Wright brothers
